Dear Reader,
UJA-Federation of New York has tapped its new chief executive to replace John Ruskay. Editor Gary Rosenblatt has the first sit-down interview with 54-year-old attorney Eric Goldstein, who will take over the charity in July. A longtime lay leader at federation, Goldstein is calling for the charity to reach out to a wider segment of the Jewish community, including his own Modern Orthodox one, to forge what he calls a broader sense of "kehillah."
OPINION
Learning How My Father Escaped Execution At Auschwitz
Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Editor’s Note: Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
My father, Josef Rosensaft, decidedly did not want to be in Auschwitz. True, no one did, but my father actually did something about it.
Repeatedly.
Deported for the first time from the ghetto of his hometown of Bedzin in Southern Poland on June 22, 1943, he dove from the Auschwitz-bound train into the icy Vistula River. Hit by three German bullets, he managed to return to the Bedzin ghetto. He subsequently discovered that virtually all the Jews on his train, including his wife and her daughter, were sent directly to the gas chambers upon their arrival at the Auschwitz-Birkenau ramp.
Less than six weeks later, during the liquidation of the Bedzin Ghetto, my father avoided deportation to Auschwitz once more by escaping to the nearby town of Zawiercie. In late August 1943, however, he arrived at Birkenau as part of a transport from Zawiercie.
Auschwitz. Getty ImagesI knew that shortly thereafter, he spent five days, from September 30, 1943 until October 4, in the notorious Block 11, the so called Death Block, in the main camp of Auschwitz, but I never knew how and why he made it out alive.
Until now. I discovered the details of my father’s improbable first survival at Block 11 (he would be imprisoned and tortured there again the following year for some six months) in a book that was recently published in Israel, From the Depths to the Skies (in Hebrew, Tehomot u-shehakim), by journalist Moshe Ronen (Reinish). It is a biography of Auschwitz survivor Zeev “Yumek” Londner who, after Hebraizing his name, rose to become Colonel (Aluf Mishne) Zeev Liron, one of the highest ranking officers in the Israel Air Force in its formative years.
In September 1943, my father, then 32 years old, along with 21-year-old Yumek Londner, the son of a close friend of my father's, and Yumek's brother Moshe (Moniek) found themselves together in Birkenau. As Liron tells the story, “Rosensaft did not stop thinking about escaping.”
My father told the Londner brothers that he had developed a friendship with a German SS doctor stationed in the city of Katowice, some six miles from Bedzin, who had offered to hide my father and members of his family. Now my father plotted for the three of them to escape from their work detail, hide in a deserted tunnel until the Germans stopped looking for them, and then make their way to the SS doctor's house in Katowice where they would be able to stay at least for a while.
When their scheme was betrayed to the Germans by a German Unterkapo, the assistant to one of the inmates assigned by the camp’s administration to supervise his fellow prisoners, my father and the Londner brothers were taken from Birkenau to Auschwitz where a young German SS officer named Otto Klaus interrogated them.
The punishment for even plotting to escape, Klaus told the three Jews, is death. We are now going to take you to Block 11 and decide whether you will be shot or hanged, he continued. But prisoners are only shot on Mondays, and as today is Thursday, you will spend the next several days in Block 11.
A page of the Block 11 registry reproduced in the book confirms that on September 30, 1943, my father, Josef Rosensaft, number 140594, and the two Londner brothers, arrived at Block 11. There, the three were put into a small cell with two other prisoners. Liron recalls that my father quipped with “black humor” that it was a shame they didn’t have a deck of cards to pass the time.
On Monday morning, they heard prisoners being taken from other cells, followed by gunshots. Liron remembers that “Yossele” -- my father -- bid his friends good-bye, telling them that they might meet again in the next world. But no one came for them. After an hour, Jacob Kozelczyk, the Kapo in charge of Block 11, came to their cell and hugged them. “You're heroes,” he told them. “Nothing will happen to you, not today.” Later the same day, they walked back to Birkenau along the same path now taken each year by the Jewish youngsters who come to Poland on March of the Living. The registry confirms that they left Block 11 alive on October 4.
When Liron met my father again two years later in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany, my father told him that following the liberation, he had looked for and found his SS doctor friend from Katowice who cleared up what had been the mystery of the three young Jews’ survival.
The Unterkapo who had betrayed my father and the Londner brothers did not know the name of the man who was going to hide them but he gave Otto Klaus, the young SS officer, an address in Katowice. Intent on exposing and arresting the still anonymous traitor, Klaus rode his motorcycle to the address in question and rang the house bell. When the doctor opened the door, the two stared at one another in disbelief.
More than 25 years earlier, during World War I, the doctor had saved Otto Klaus's father's life. The two families had remained friends. Now Klaus had a decision to make, and he made it. Instead of taking the doctor into custody, Klaus returned to Auschwitz and reported that his investigation had not uncovered any scheme to escape, that the Unterkapo had lied, that my father and the Londner brothers were therefore innocent of any crime, and that there was no legal basis for executing them.
And so it is that I can now tell my grandchildren that their great-grandfather survived Block 11, which made it possible for their grandfather to be born, because a young German SS officer named Otto Klaus had at least one spark of decency, of humaneness, left within him at Auschwitz in the first days of October in 1943.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, and teaches about the law of genocide and war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia and Cornell universities.
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What was Hillary Clinton thinking when she accepted an invitation to be honored by the largely invisible American Jewish Congress? That's what one of her former advisers in the Jewish community is wondering this week after it was announced that she would attend the March 19 event.
NEW YORK NEWS
Hillary Clinton To Headline AJCongress Gala
Adam Dickter
Assistant Managing Editor
Amid intense speculation about her future political plans, former secretary of state, senator and first lady Hillary Rodham Cinton has accepted an invitation to be honored by the American Jewish Congress on March 19th.
The event comes at an interesting juncture for both host and honoree as the AJCongress struggles to regain its stature after ceasing operations and laying off most of its staff in 2010. A restructured group emerged last year, run by longtime president Jack Rosen and a few associates. Rosen was a fundraiser for Clinton's husband, Bill, and other Democrats, including Barack Obama.
No longer a membership organization, AJCongress, founded in 1918 to provide a unified voice for American Jewish leaders has kept a low profile in Jewish organizational life. It remains a member of the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, however.
A save-the-date notice for the upcoming gala at Cipriani's in Midtown was obtained by the Daily News Monday. A spokesman for the organization declined to comment on the event when contacted by The Jewish Week, saying more information would be forthcoming when available. He said Rosen was not available for an interview.
Hillary Clinton is widely expected to be a Democratic candidate for president next year, as she was in 2008. A New York Times Magazine story explored the vast network of political operatives already in place for such a campaign and how she might utiilize it.
"Having Hillary Clinton is always a big thing for any organization," said New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. "It pumps up the AJC and may help it get back in its feet."
Sheinkopf said the appearance would guarantee widespread attention to what might otherwise be an obscure dinner. "All she has to do is wake up and breathe and she creates attention."
If she decides to run, Sheinkopf said, Clinton and her team will likely keep a close eye on Massachussets senator Elizabeth Warren and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
"The cities are determining where the party is going," Sheinkopf said. "[Warren] is serious on repairing the income gaps. And O'Malley is an inside player who can raise money."
adam@jewishweek.org
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With the Winter Olympics in Sochi just a week away, staff writer Steve Lipman looks at the threat of terrorism swirling around the Games and how the Jews of Sochi are handling it.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
As Terror Threat Swirls Around Sochi, Jews Not Seen In Crosshairs
In marked contrast to other Games, small Black Sea community not on edge amid Chechen-Putin tensions.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Four years ago, on the eve of the last Winter Olympics, preparations for the Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, meant increased security for the city’s Jewish community. Jewish spokesmen, while not spelling out specifics, said upgraded security systems were installed at many Jewish buildings in the city.
In Turin, which hosted the 2006 Winter Games, leaders of the Italian city’s Jewish community reported that they had engaged in years of discussions with security officials over protection for Jewish sites.
And in Athens, security was on the mind of Rabbi Mendel Hendel, an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch chasidic movement, in the days before the 2004 Summer Olympics. “We’re very concerned,” the rabbi said at the time.
With this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi just a week away, the issue of security — especially the threat of terrorism at the hands of Muslim extremists from Russia’s Caucasus region — has emerged as a major concern of Olympic athletes, their famililies and visitors. But it appears that — given the nationalistic nature of the fierce conflict between Chechen separatists and Russian President Vladimir Putin — Israeli athletes and the Jewish community are not targets. The situation this time around stands in stark contrast to security planning for all Olympic Games years since 11 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Games.
According to representatives of several Jewish organizations in Russia, securityofficials there do not consider Russian Jews or the thousands of Jews from abroad — including Olympic athletes and various officials, as well as fans — who are expected to arrive at the shore of the Black Sea in the coming weeks to be in the crosshairs of militants who have vowed to disrupt the Sochi Games.
“I don’t see a security threat here,” said Rabbi Arie Edelkopf, an American-born Chabad emissary who, with his Israeli-born wife, Chani, serves as de facto leader of all Jewish activities that take place in 90-mile-long urban area, home to some 3,000 Jews. “I feel we’re a safe place.”
Baruch Gorin, head of public affairs for Russia’s Federation of Jewish Communities, agrees.
“I don’t think people have to be concerned” about anti-Jewish attacks at the Games, which begin on Feb. 7.
But Ariel Cohen, senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, sees a more active threat against Jews and Israelis. “Jews are always a target for radical Islamic attacks,” Cohen told The Jewish Week.
While the targets of Muslim terrorists who have declared their intention to disrupt the Olympics “are all athletes and [all] tourists,” the “al-Qaeda wannabes” in Russia “are all anti-Semitic and anti-Israel,” Cohen said.
The Sochi Games will be under the watchful eye of the most expensive and most intensive security procedures established for any Olympics.
“Large-scale public events such as the Olympics present an attractive target for terrorists,” stated a “Russian Federation Travel Alert” issued earlier this month by the U.S. State Department. The alert advised “U.S. citizens planning to attend [the Sochi Olympics] that they should remain attentive regarding their personal security at all times. … There is no indication of a specific threat to U.S. institutions or citizens, but U.S. citizens should be aware of their personal surroundings and follow good security practices.”
According to various news reports, the security effort for the Sochi Olympics will include extensive monitoring of electronic communications, thousands of video cameras installed throughout the area, robotic vehicles that will search for explosives, drones patrolling the skies, speedboats on the sea, 25,000 Russian troops and police officers posted on the surrounding mountains and wider region, fighter jets and missiles protecting Olympic sites.
“Wanted” posters of a suspected female terrorist appeared last week in the lobbies of Sochi hotels, and details were reported of a U.S. contingency plan — including warships and transport aircraft — to quickly evacuate American officials and athletes if a major terrorist attack takes place.
Several Russian security officials have warned in recent weeks that while a stepped-up security effort may prevent a terrorist attack in Sochi or at Olympic venues in the surrounding area, “soft targets” elsewhere in the country may be vulnerable.
While access to Olympic venues will be strictly controlled, open only to people with official accreditation, all sensitive buildings will be subject to heightened patrols. The JCC building, where most of Sochi’s Jewish community institutions are housed, is not considered a special target, said Rabbi Edelkopf. The rabbi added that buildings and offices of many religious and ethnic groups, including the few Jewish sites in Sochi, will be under security observation.
While Muslim terrorists in many settings often threaten and attack identified Jews — the 2008 attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai, India, which took five lives, was one glaring example — the Chechen Muslims who have called for attacks throughout Russia during the fortnight of competition, and taken credit for the recent attacks in nearby Volvograd, have aimed their rhetoric at Putin’s government and made no mention of Jews.
“The Muslim radicals” who cite present and historical grievances against indigenous Muslims “have their own conflict with the Russian government — and Jews are not part of that,” said Matvey Chlenov, deputy director of the Russian Jewish Congress. “I think Jews are pretty marginal in this issue.”
Angered by what they see as anti-Islamic acts committed by Russia’s government, Islamic militants have staged frequent attacks on property and individuals throughout Russia in the last few years. According to a Reuters report, three Russian servicemen and four gunmen were killed in a shootout in the southern part of the country this month during a sweep for militants ahead of the Olympics.
Chechen rebel leader Dukov Umarov has urged his followers to “do their utmost to derail” the Games, which he described as “Satanic dances on the graves of our ancestors,” a reference to Turkish Muslims who were expelled from the area by Russia in the 19th century.
Umarov’s followers, who took responsibility for last month’s twin bombings in Volgograd, 400 miles from Sochi, which killed 34 people and injured more than 100, are reportedly angered by Russia’s support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who has orchestrated a bloody crackdown on Sunni rebels.
Mark Galeotti, a professor of global affairs at New York University and an expert on crime and security issues in Russia, confirms that “the real focus of the insurgents” — both Chechens and fundamentalist Muslims from other parts of Russia — is Putin and “the Russian regime.”
“It’s been years since I’ve seen any mention of Jews or Israelis” in statements by leaders of the country’s Islamic extremists, Galeotti said. He said most of Russia’s Islamic separatists “have largely been insular from the currents of [outside] Islamic extremism” — in other words, from anti-Jewish, anti-Israel rhetoric. “To them, jihad is just an offshoot of nationalism,” a way “to get the Russians out of their country.”
Following the release last week of a video on a Caucasus Islamic jihadi website that warned of “a present” for Putin and for “all tourists who’ll come over,” Putin acknowledged that the high-profile Games will serve as an attractive target for terrorists. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed “a very serious fear” about the possibility of an attack during the competition, and security officials in this country said they were not receiving full cooperation from their Russian counterparts.
A series of attacks last year on Jewish and Muslim clergy in the Caucasus region — and anti-Semitic vandalism in several Russian cities — prompted Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar in December to request increased protection. “There are people in that region who are out to hurt religious leaders, and there has to be a stop to this,” he said.
There is “very little” anti-Semitism in Sochi, said Rabbi Edelkopf, who cited two recent instances — a book, and a poem in a local newspaper — that ended in prosecutions by Russian courts for the anti-semitic acts. He said that as an openly identifiable Orthodox Jew, he encounters no hostility on the street.
In an interview with Time magazine, Vladimir Shklar, vice president of Israel’s Olympic Committee, offered a cautionary note. “We have to remember that the terror attacks in Russia are because of internal tension between the Caucasus republics and Russia. It has nothing to do with Israel and the Jews,” Shklar said. “But of course we have to remember, wherever we are, we attract fire.”
Next week: Profiles of some of the Jewish Olympians at the Sochi Games.
steve@jewishweek.org
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Culture editor Sandee Brawarsky bids a poignant farewell to Loehmann's, the discount retailer popular among Jewish women, which announced that it is closing soon.
NEW YORK NEWS
Rending Our Garments
An elegy for Loehmann’s, and for all the ‘Back Room’ bargains that were.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
The closing of Loehmann’s has been a slow affair, giving women time both to lament and to shop. The huge yellow banner that screams “Going Out of Business” at the Upper West Side store will be up until March, unless every last steal of a cocktail dress, Italian handbag and cashmere sweater is gone before then.
At Loehmann’s, shopping is often a team sport, with many mothers and daughters and pairs of friends combing the racks together. Some enter the store with the spirit of Olympic athletes, masters of their game, full of confidence. Others seem a bit reticent, still carrying their bags from Fairway, pretty certain they don’t want or need anything but unable to resist a glance, and then another. Soon, they too enter the dressing room, laden with possibility.
These days, the shopping is solemn. The merchandise racks are thinner, but price tags with crossed-out numbers and signs of 40 percent off and “Nothing Held Back” lure us Loehmann’s loyalists in. Women who recognize in each other the decades-long and sometimes generations-long connection to the store easily fall into conversation and share stories of their best-ever bargains and rich memories. A woman told me that her mother used to travel from Philadelphia to Brooklyn, when Frieda Loehmann had a shop in the lower level of her home there.
Mrs. Loehmann was a pioneer with personality. Born Frieda Mueller in 1874, she was married to Charles Loehmann, a flutist with a symphony orchestra. When he could no longer play, Frieda, the mother of three, became the family breadwinner. While working as a coat buyer for a fashionable department store, she had a stroke of genius.
In 1921, Mrs. Loehmann opened a discount shop in Brooklyn, first called “Original Designer Outlet” and later Loehmann’s. She stocked the store by visiting the showrooms of top designers in the Garment Center, entering through a back door and paying in cash for their samples and overstock. When The New York Times reported in 1988 that she kept wads of cash in her bloomers, a reader wrote in to correct that she wore handmade French underwear and stashed her money elsewhere, either in the tops of her silk stockings or in her lace-up leather boots. Others say she carried a big satchel full of dollars. She was known to favor long black dresses, lots of rouge on her cheeks and a slender cigarette holder.
“A legend,” my cousin Marvin, a retired garment executive, says of Frieda. Sometimes, a shopper with a keen eye could buy — and wear — the couturier-designed dress (with its label cut out) later the same day that Mrs. Loehmann picked it up in Manhattan.
Her son Charles opened a second store in the Bronx in 1930, which she opposed, and she continued to reign on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, where she decorated the high-ceilinged shop with gilded furnishings and two grand lions at the entrance.
I had always assumed that Mrs. Loehmann was Jewish — the name, the connections in the garment industry and perhaps because of all the Jewish women I know with fond memories of shopping there. When I asked Gail Reimer, executive director of the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA), she made the same assumption and then checked in with some historians who specialize in New York Jewish history and who also agreed. But JWA researchers then came up with a 1934 JTA article clearing Loehmann of accusations that she and her husband were Nazi supporters. Her son William is said to have told the Jewish Daily Bulletin that the family doctor was Jewish as were many family friends. “I think we can pretty definitely say she was not Jewish,” Reimer writes in an e-mail.
Every day, until just before her death in 1962, Mrs. Loehmann made rounds to her suppliers in a black limousine or a panel truck, depending on whom you ask. Returning to Brooklyn, she’d keep watch from the balcony of the shop. After she died, the Brooklyn store closed, and loyal shoppers and their sisters and friends flocked to Fordham Road in the Bronx. My cousin June, who is married to Marvin, recalls that the saleswomen would call the Gabor sisters when items of special interest came in, and they would rush in.
The celebrated “Back Room” was the place of the highest prices and deepest discounts on designer treasures. Back Room regulars prided themselves on figuring out the makers of the clothing, even though labels were slashed. Women would hover as someone tried on something, waiting to inquire, “Are you taking that?”
In the 1950s Charles Loehmann began opening stores outside of New York City. He took the company public in 1964 and over the next 50 years, the company had more highs and lows than the seasonal hemlines. In the late ’90s, the Barney’s on 17th Street and Seventh Avenue was transformed into the downtown Loehmann’s. When company executives — no longer the family — declared bankruptcy in December 2013, it was actually for the third time in their history.
Loehmann’s was part of my family history, too. I shopped there with my mother, my sisters, my nieces and my daughter, and it was most fun when all of us went together, crowding into the communal dressing room with armfuls of stuff. We would pass around our own castaways, share opinions with each other and the women nearby who inevitably asked for them (and we’d listen to those who offered unsolicited advice to us), laugh a lot and take turns running to get another size of something with promise. We’d convince each other to buy when we understood the hint of desire couched in reluctance. Sometimes my father joined us and took his place in the row of men seated at the front of the door, holding pocketbooks.
My mother was a master at finding the unexpected. The daughter of a tailor who had his own Garment Center business, her approach was to move methodically through the racks, handling the fabrics and pulling out things for her daughters and then granddaughters. “You never know,” she would urge, handing over some item we had passed over. Often she was right. My sister reminds me that we never talked about how much money we spent at Loehmann’s, but rather about how much we saved.
After hearing the news of the stores closing, my family members all made sure to have a final fling, spending gift cards and then some. As sad as this is for us, my niece points out that the story of the end of Loehmann’s is truly sad for all those who work in the 39 shops around the country.
In the old days, Loehmann’s allowed no returns, so you had to be sure that you’d still like the clothing when you got home. Perhaps that’s why opinions are shared so freely; at Loehmann’s no one is a stranger for long. But at some point in recent Loehmann’s history, they started taking things back, offering gold membership cards and even leaving the labels in.
It wasn’t the same, and it will never be the same again. Now the Loehmann’s in Chelsea is slated to reopen as Barney’s. Let’s hope they keep the dressing room.
editor@jewishweek.org
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On the food beat, Helen Chernikoff profiles the chef behind Brooklyn's latest chic kosher venture. And education writer Amy Sara Clark reports on the appointment of Orthodox City Councilman Chaim Deutsch to a new subcommittee to deal with private schools, and what it means to the city's day schools.
THE BIG APPLE
Hipster And/Or Chasid?
Grab lunch or dinner at Brooklyn’s latest chic kosher food venture.
Helen Chernikoff
Web Editor
The question of whether the beard of a Brooklynite denotes a fervently religious Jew or a kale-besotted, workboot-wearing rooftop gardener first gained currency on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” On the show, the late night host asked it of a hirsute man on the street in a tight close-up that gradually widened to reveal whether the interviewee was hipster or chasid.
Most shrugged and concluded that facial hair can be deceptive, but Yuda Schlass mined the joke for a deeper truth. Both, he says, which is the spirit animating his two-month-old “sandwich lab” of almost the same name as Kimmel’s bit.
“Me, myself, as much as I’m chasidic, I’m also hipster,” said Schlass, 30, when The Jewish Week visited the Crown Heights duplex at 881 Eastern Parkway where he lives and operates a sandwich service he’s very careful to call “Hassid+Hipster,” emphasis on the plus sign.
Case in point: Two weeks ago, on the day Tu b’Shevat started, Schlass drew inspiration for his sandwich, the “Tu-bi-banh-mi” from both the tradition of eating the “seven species” of Israel — the fruits and grains named in the Torah — and a Vietnamese pork sandwich. Schlass braised veal belly in beer, brushed the succulent slices with pomegranate and date glaze, added a sprinkle of pickled raisins and citrus oil and piled it all on a baguette layered with smoky fig and eggplant pate.
“Since the end of the summer, I’ve wanted to get back into the creative side of food,” he said, “I was looking to do something that I enjoy and living here in Brooklyn, the food scene in the non-kosher world is amazing. Brooklyn is the Silicon Valley of food.
Schlass cut his teeth in the business by creating, with friends, a health-oriented meal delivery service called the “Fresh Diet,” which started out kosher, but didn’t stay that way as it grew. A home-based business in Miami serving about 70 customers when it started seven years ago, today the Fresh Diet has locations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles as well and generates more than $25 million in annual revenue.
After several years on the road for the Fresh Diet, Schlass decided to relocate to Crown Heights to be among friends and family. He found Brooklyn’s food scene much to his taste and began to refine his own cooking: rigorously kosher, but influenced more by the borough’s small-batch, locavore ethos than by any Manhattan steakhouse.
Each Hassid+Hipster sandwich costs $15; soup and desserts made by Schlass’ sister are also available. He cooks the food up in a kitchen that’s dairy on one side and meat on the other, and customers pick it up on their lunch breaks or on their way home from work for dinner. His hours are irregular; customers check his Facebook page to ascertain dates and times.
It’s no coincidence that Schlass’ operation, in name and vibe, resembles “Mason & Mug,” a new kosher small plates place in neighboring Prospect Heights. Mason & Mug likewise started in a private residence. In its first iteration, it was the “Hester,” a supper club hosted by one of the restaurant’s co-owners, Itta Werdiger-Roth, in her Ditmas Park Victorian. Schlass and Werdiger-Roth both also have Chabad roots.
Schlass was born in Jerusalem and raised in the Old City by parents who entertained incessantly in the sprawling, “sure come in” style of the Chabad’s missionaries, even after they were no longer officially affiliated with it.
“Chabad has always been the so-called open-minded chasidic sect,” Schlass said. “The mission is outreach work to other Jews, so you have to know what’s happening, what the trends are.”
He created Hassid+Hipster out of his Eastern Parkway bachelor pad in part to assess whether there’s enough demand in his patch of Brooklyn to open a storefront like Mason & Mug’s. The gourmet Basil Pizza & Wine Bar on Kingston Avenue and Pardes, a French bistro in Downtown Brooklyn, also serve the contemporary kosher crowd.
But this recent interest of the Orthodox in Brooklyn foodways like offbeat ingredients and farmers markets doesn’t make a trend, cautions Moshe Wendel, the classically trained chef at Pardes, whose food both Schlass and Werdiger-Roth cite as an inspiration.
Pardes opened in October, 2010 and he still finds the task of educating the observant palate a bit of a challenge, although it’s gotten easier over time.
“We had people wanting a well-done hamburger. Now they eat steak tartare and organ meats,” he said. “You’re always fighting an uphill battle. You’re feeding people who’ve eaten a yeshiva diet — overcooked hamburgers and pasta — their whole lives.”
Schlass knows restaurants are a famously challenging business with a high failure rate. His father, a former hippie who returned to the faith in the 1970s, once owned a macrobiotic restaurant in downtown Manhattan.
But for now he’s scoping out real estate anyway. He’s also building interest and spreading the word through social media; he uses Instagram and Twitter and posts his calendar and menus on his Facebook page, along with allusions to his inspirations.
The fact that he has no official kosher supervision doesn’t keep him from selling out his sandwich stock. It bothers some of his customers a bit, but those who give it a go anyway conclude that they either know him and trust him, or know enough people who do.
“Uh-oh,” said one such customer, Abe Zuntz, when the subject of supervision came up. He works in Crown Heights in auto leasing and sales and dropped by to pick up Tu-bi-banh-mis for his entire office.
“Most people would prefer it if there were supervision, but they accept it,” Schlass chimed in.
“Most people like it because it’s different,” Zuntz said. “It’s not the sandwich you can get at every sandwich shop. If [Schlass] did it three times a week we’d be here three times a week.”
helenatjewishweek@gmail.com
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NEW YORK NEWS
Private Schools Get A Subcommittee
What Orthodox councilman’s new legislative body can — and can’t — achieve for day schools.
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
Private schools now have their own City Council subcommittee, chaired by an Orthodox councilman from Midwood.
There’s no doubt Councilman Chaim Deutsch’s subcommittee will give private schools of all stripes more attention at City Hall. What’s not clear to what extent the committee will translate into cold hard cash for the schools.
Deutsch, who represents a heavily Jewish district that includes Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay and parts of Midwood, said he pushed for the subcommittee to get private schools their fair share of public funds.
“I’m looking to … give our children in nonpublic schools the same resources as children in public schools,” he told The Jewish Week in a telephone interview last week.
And while the lion’s share of funding decisions happen in Albany, there are some areas where the City Council has the final say.
Take school security, for example.
Every public school has an unarmed security guard provided by the NYPD. Deutsch hopes his committee can help pass pending legislation, introduced in June by Borough Park Councilman David Greenfield, that would require the NYPD to provide safety officers to private schools upon request.
He also hopes to secure additional funding for nurses, afterschool programs, services for students with special needs and textbooks.
But while it remains to be seen whether the new subcommittee will bring additional funding to the schools, it will do so for the councilman: Like all committee and subcommittee chairs, Deutsch’s appointment comes with a stipend added to his $112,500 salary, in his case $8,000.
And, like all appointees, the yeshiva graduate backed Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito in her bid for speaker. He jumped on the bandwagon particularly early, something that the Bronx councilwoman promised she would “never forget” in a statement last December.
While committees are permanent and meet at least one a month, subcommittees are created year by year and can meet as often (or infrequently) as they wish.
Traditionally, committees and subcommittees have had about the same amount of power: not much.
But that may be changing said Ester Fuchs, who teaches political science and public affairs at Columbia University.
“The way it’s been structured in the past is that legislation doesn’t go to the floor unless it goes through the speaker, and Melissa Mark-Viverito suggested that she would be changing that,” she said.
And while most school funding decisions happen at the state level the city often has power over the specifics, said Marty Schloss, director of day school and government relations at The Jewish Education Project.
“There is a lot that comes from Albany, but there is a lot that comes from Washington through Albany and is implemented through the DOE [Department of Education],” he said.
“More importantly,” he said, the committee creates a “formal mechanism to represent the interest of the nonpublic schools.”
Plus, the subcommittee could be involved in regulatory oversight, said Rabbi David Zweibel, executive vice president of the haredi umbrella group Agudath Israel of America and chair of the Committee of New York City Religious and Independent School Officials, which represents nearly all private schools in the city.
If universal, full-day pre-K comes to pass, the subcommittee could influence whether or not it would apply to private preschools, which he pointed out, make up more than a quarter of million students, more than 20 percent of the city’s school population, he said.
“When you speak about such a substantial constituency it’s about time that the council pays attention to it and does everything within their power to make sure these schools continue to survive and thrive,” he said.
Fuchs agreed. “That’s no guarantee that new policies will emerge, but it’s significant because it opens up the city council to a public conversation concerning nonpublic schools,” she said.
The appointment also shows that while Deutsch may be newly elected, he’s got City Hall politics down.
“He’s used his early support of the speaker to create a subcommittee that’s of critical importance to his constituency,” said Fuchs. “That’s smart.”
amy.jewishweek@gmail.com
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Enjoy the issue,
Rob Goldblum
Managing Editor
P.S. Please check out the newest version of our website faster and easier to navigate and read for breaking stories, videos and exclusive blogs, op-eds and features.
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Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt
'Enough': AJC Leads Effort To Take On Chief Rabbinate
http://newsrender.com/trend/AJC
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Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt
His Real Wealth: Service To His People
Family and dignitaries remember Edgar Bronfman at his shloshim service...
His family and friends called him “Tree.”
He loved doing crossword puzzles, watching “Jeopardy” and, after the age of 50, learning to play the piano and study Talmud.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a close family friend, recalled his risqué jokes and directness, including “occasional notes about my wardrobe choices.”
But most of all, in a grand, dignified “tribute celebration” to mark the shloshim, or 30-day mark, after the death of Edgar Bronfman, he was described lovingly by the former first lady and family members as a man of both regal bearing and genuine warmth who cared greatly about justice, honesty and doing the right thing.
Bronfman, the legendary businessman, philanthropist and activist Jewish communal leader on an international scale, died Dec. 21 at the age of 84.
More than 1,500 people, including a wide range of Jewish leaders, filled Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall late Tuesday afternoon to mark the occasion and recall a man that Rabbi Andy Bachman, in a brief invocation, called a “fierce friend and advocate of the Jewish people” who “redeemed captives and revitalized youth,” referring to his championing the cause of Soviet Jewry and launching programs like the Bronfman Youth Fellowships and providing major support to Hillel, the Jewish campus group.
The hall was darkened and the large stage was bare except for four large photographs of Bronfman, a memorial candle, and a tree in the middle, no doubt to mark his family nickname as well as symbolize roots, blossoms and growth.
Samuel Bronfman II described his father as a man of strength who told him, on joining the Seagram’s board he led, that his son would have two voting choices: “Aye, or I resign.” But in the hour-long service’s most emotional moment, his voice choked in recalling his father’s bravery after Samuel was kidnapped 40 years ago. Warned by the authorities against giving in to the kidnappers’ demand that Bronfman himself deliver the ransom in person, he defied the police and readily agreed — an act, his son said, for which he would always be grateful.
In a video presentation, Bronfman, in interviews, spoke of the importance of Judaism in his life as a source for his pursuit of “justice and truth,” and the value of a Jewish education “to know who you are.”
Jeremy Bronfman, one of Edgar’s 24 grandchildren, followed with reflections on his grandfather’s commitment to family. It was a complicated one — his father was married three times though only Jan Aronson, his third wife, to whom he was married the last 25 years, was mentioned publicly.
Dana Raucher, executive director of the Samuel Bronfman Foundation, recalled how she met Edgar when she was a 16-year-old Bronfman Youth Fellow and noted that more than a decade later he tapped her to head his foundation.
“He took young people seriously,” she said, “he believed anyone can change the world” and taught that “a philanthropist is someone who does, not just funds.”
Matthew Bronfman, one of Edgar’s seven children, spoke of his father as a Jewish leader, a man who cared less about being liked than being respected. As president of the World Jewish Congress, his son recalled, in 1985 his father chose to expose Kurt Waldheim’s past as a former Nazi officer even though the Austrian leader was running for president at the time. “For my father it was not a political issue, it was a moral issue, and he felt how dare he not do something?”
Matthew also spoke of accompanying his father to a key meeting in Moscow in 1990 with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to call for the release of Jews from the USSR. Despite the high stakes, Bronfman boldly interrupted a long monologue by the Soviet leader to bring up the issue of Soviet Jews — a move, his son said, that won him Gorbachev’s respect.
In a video presentation, Israeli President Shimon Peres said of Bronfman, “he came from the lions,” a “brave leader never reluctant to face the truth,” adding: “He was not afraid to argue with non-Jews, and with Jews as well.”
Bronfman’s “real wealth,” he said, was not money but “service to his people.”
Hillary Clinton’s talk blended warm personal remembrances with praise for Bronfman’s direct style as “a champion for justice and human dignity.” She spoke of his commitment in the 1990s to gain financial restitution for thousands of survivors and their families by forging an agreement with Swiss banks to release Holocaust-era accounts. “He knew it would not be easy but that it was the right thing to do,” she said, “and that time was running out.”
Bronfman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. honor for civilians, from President Clinton in 1999.
In closing remarks, son Edgar Bronfman Jr. said his father “died without regrets” and that he did not hunger for power but used it “for the betterment of mankind.”
“Thank you, Dad,” he said, “for the standards you set.”
The program began and ended with Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl leading the audience in a Havdalah “niggun” (or melody without words) Bronfman loved. A fitting coda to a man who infused countless young people with a love for their Judaism.
Gary@jewishweek.org
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NEWS and FEATURES
Justice Dept. Boosts Anti-Semitism Case Against Pine Bush Schools
Principals' efforts to stop bullying were ineffective, says U.S. attorney in brief rejecting dismissal of lawsuit.
Amy Sara Clark - Staff Writer
A lawsuit charging that an upstate New York school district failed to respond adequately to years of pervasive anti-Semitic bullying gained some heavy support last week when federal authorities backed the plaintiff’s case.
U.S. Attorney Office for the Southern District Preet Bharara filed a memorandum saying that there was enough evidence to show that the Pine Bush Central School District was so indifferent to name-calling, threats and physical attacks against Jewish students that officials violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
A Jan. 24 memorandum of interest issued by Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office urged the judge to deny the Pine Bush lawyers’ motion to throw out the case. Bharara argued that evidence shows that the school district’s efforts to stop the anti-Semitism were “clearly unreasonable,” because it “continued its practices despite their demonstrated inefficacy,” did not implement mandatory requirements to fix the problem and “ignored multiple signals that greater, more directed action was needed.”
The initial lawsuit was filed in November, when three Jewish families sued the district, the school board and six school officials claiming that they turned a blind eye to harassment, telling two Jewish girls that they were “just looking for trouble and causing [their] own problems,” that they should stop reporting anti-Semitism “every single day” and urging a victim’s family to move out of the district.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reacted strongly to the allegations, calling for an investigation and mentioning them in his State of the State address this month.
In December, the school district’s lawyer filed a brief to have the case dismissed, arguing that although anti-Semitic bullying happened, they cannot be held responsible because the school officials — including several who are Jewish — did everything they could to stop it.
Last week, the lawyer for the students’ families replied, detailing dozens of incidents of anti-Semitic harassment that followed the students from elementary to high school, and arguing that the administration responded to complaints “with callousness, apathy, threats and open hostility.”
“It’s an overwhelming case of pervasive anti-Semitism affecting a number of children over a number of years, and it’s an overwhelming case of apathy, hostility and indifference by the school district to this enormous problem,” Ilann Maazel, the plaintiff’s attorney, told The Jewish Week in a telephone interview Monday.
One student, called W.H. in court documents, said anti-Semitic incidents “happened on a daily basis” including swastikas “all over the high school” and on students’ clothing, name-calling including “kike,” “stupid Jew” and “f----g Jew.” Holocaust jokes, Hitler salutes and white power chants were common.
Student S.H. was so afraid of retaliation that she signed her statement “Jane Doe.” She testified that when a student drew a “giant swastika” on her junior varsity soccer jersey, the coach let the perpetrator “select her own punishment.” She chose to sit out the next game, causing S.H. to become “an outcast” on the team.
Another student, T.E., reported swastikas repeatedly drawn on her school desk and said students called her “crispy” and said she “should have burned” in the Holocaust. She claimed she was repeatedly threatened on the school bus, including by a 12th grade boy who threatened to “kick her ass” when she got to high school, according to the memorandum.
Her friend, known as O.C, was allegedly called “Jesus killer,” Christ killer, damn Jew, stupid Jew [and] dirty, disgusting Jew.” During recess, two students held O.C.’s hands behind her back and tried to shove a quarter down her throat, according to the complaint. Like T.E., she said she found swastikas drawn on her yearbook picture, her school locker and repeatedly on her school desk, once accompanied by words, which were either “die Jew” or “damn Jew.” She also had pennies thrown at her for “an entire month” in recess, she alleged.
O.C.’s older brother, D.C., reported being punched in the stomach and told he was going to hell because he was Jewish, spat upon, slapped in the face, pelted with change and told that if he “did anything … they knew where [he] lived.” One student called him “ashes” and threatened to “burn [him] in an oven,” he said.
Like the others, D.C. said he was called names including “f---g Jew kike.” Students constantly pretended to salute Hitler and sang “white power songs” in the cafeteria about “killing Jews and washing off their blood,” according to court papers.
“Every day seemed like it was the wors[t] day of my life, and when I got home I was constantly considering just killing myself … and when I had to go to school the next day and the torture persisted, I kicked myself for don’t doing it when I had the chance,” D.C. testified.
School officials aren’t contesting the anti-Semitic atmosphere in the district but say they were not indifferent to it.
In their motion to dismiss, the district’s attorneys say school officials didn’t address the harassment against D.C. because (as D.C. admits) he never reported it. When anti-Semitism was reported, they say they ordered graffiti to be removed, investigated allegations of misconduct, and “when they could be identified, disciplined the children engaged in improper behavior.”
They argue that the school addressed anti-Semitism in its annual anti-bullying assemblies, “researched anti-Semitism and sought out resources” from federal and state agencies and had a Holocaust survivor speak to a seventh-grade. It is the only district in the area to offer an elective on the Holocaust, the defense claims.
But the U.S. attorney sided with the plaintiffs, arguing that the district’s efforts to check the harassment were halfhearted at best.
“[W]hile a court should not second-guess the disciplinary decisions made by school administrators … the district may not ‘ignore the many signals that greater, more directed action [is] needed,’” writes assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Byars.
He agreed with the plaintiffs that treating cases of harassment on an individual basis is not enough — the district must follow the U.S. Department of Education’s mandate to take steps to end the culture of anti-Semitism such as separating the accused harasser and the victim (with minimal burden to the victim), providing anti-harassment training to the entire school asking parents and community groups to work with the school to prevent future harassment.
“[A]n approach that focuses only on disciplining the harassers and addressing each incident in isolation often may be insufficient to remedy a hostile environment, particularly where the harassment is pervasive,” Byars wrote.
Most significantly, the U.S. attorney’s memorandum agreed that administrators routinely downplayed incidents of harassment or failed to recognize them as anti-Semitic.
In one example, an assistant principal argued that when a student drew a chasidic Jew on his stomach and another student threw coins at its mouth it was not anti-Semitic because it wasn’t clear that the picture was of a Jew.
In another, administrators argued that when students tried to shove a quarter down O.C.’s throat it wasn’t anti-Semitic because no anti-Semitic remarks were made during the attack.
In a final example, the school superintendent said that students who chant “white power” and “pro-Hitler statements” on the school bus are “just being … meathead[s].”
Bharara’s office called the district’s failure to ever discuss the anti-Semitism with principals or the board, or report or keep records of the incidents “clearly unreasonable.”
The jury might also view these failures as “indicative of a desire by the district not to officially report bias incidents or allegations,” they add.
Attorneys for the defendants declined to comment on the plaintiff’s recent motion or the federal memorandum supporting it.
The plaintiff’s attorney, Ilann Maazel, calls Bharara’s decision to weigh in on the case “unusual and significant.”
“It reflects how egregious the civil rights violations were,” he said.
The plaintiffs are asking for “significant reform” in the district and financial restitution for the plaintiffs, the amount of which would be determined by a jury.
But a trial — if it happens — is still months away.
The defendants’ response to Maazel’s memorandum is due the third week of February. After that the judge will decide whether or not the case goes to trial.
But Maazel says he has no doubt it will, even if the DA hadn’t intervened.
“We have thousands of pages of testimony, dozens of documents, photos taken by school secretary of anti-Semitic graffiti,” he said. “I think in the end what will affect this case is the overwhelming evidence of anti-Semitic bullying and the complete failure of the school to stop it.”
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Travel
Brrrrrr!: Summer temperatures in Antarctica reach a balmy 30 degrees. Barbara Berresford
The Hottest Cold Spot Around
Hilary Larson - Travel Writer
Antarctica is the only continent your faithful correspondent is unlikely ever to reach.
There are myriad reasons, chief among them my distaste for cold weather — unless there is plentiful indoor distraction in the form of opera houses, cafés and museums.
But travel to Antarctica is exploding in popularity. For many people, the allure of the exotic and extreme, and the opportunity to explore one of Earth’s last virgin territories, eclipse the considerable expense and complexity of an Antarctic trip.
About a year ago — just past the solstice, when Southern Hemisphere days are longest — my friend Barbara made the 10-day voyage, and she’s been raving about it ever since. So as New Yorkers shiver through the Polar Vortex, I thought it appropriate to ask Barbara what it’s like to visit somewhere truly polar.
My first question, naturally: How cold was it?
“It wasn’t that cold, actually,” Barbara said with a laugh. “Certainly not as cold as it is in New York today.” Daily highs during her trip fluctuated between the 20s and 30s, which doesn’t sound terrible for a place where penguins live — except, of course, that this was midsummer.
And unlike New York in January, Antarctica is a place where you actually want to spend hours at a time outdoors, savoring the otherworldly beauty of blue glaciers, glistening ice sculpture and (of course) those adorable penguins. So Barbara and her husband, Geoff, heeded the counsel of their tour operator — Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic, a venerable outfit with long experience in the Antarctic — and came prepared with thermal clothing.
There was plenty of opportunity to sightsee. In the Southern Hemisphere summer, daylight never fades completely — “not that I stayed up all night to look,” noted Barbara (cabins are equipped with blackout shades for sleeping). The sun dipped, but never set, casting a pink glow over the icy, watery landscape. “There’s a sort of austerity about it that is beautiful,” said Barbara, speaking of the scenery overall.
Her long-anticipated journey began with a flight to Buenos Aires, an overnight stay with sightseeing in the Argentine capital, and then a flight to Ushuaia, the world’s southernmost city and a common jumping-off point for Antarctic trips.
From there, the M/S National Geographic Explorer took Barbara, Geoff and about 150 fellow travelers across the Drake Passage — a notoriously stormy and windswept waterway — to the Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches northward toward South America. The island archipelago that surrounds this spit of land is home to various scientific stations, including a U.S. base, Palmer Station, on Anvers Island.
Tourists are increasingly common at Palmer Station, but the scientists still seemed thrilled to meet new faces, presenting tanks full of krill and updates on local research to a captive audience. Lest voyagers go into retail withdrawal, the base even boasts a gift shop — a very popular activity, given how infrequently the opportunity arises for Antarctic postcard shopping.
Nearby, a British research station was abandoned more than a half-century ago when supply interruptions necessitated a total evacuation. The station is now a curiosity for sightseers, an eerie time capsule complete with underwear hanging out to dry, like Chernobyl without the radiation.
But the biggest thrills come courtesy of the stunning natural surroundings — which the Lindblad travelers explored during five days of professionally guided photography, small-boat cruises, fjord passages and hikes up snowy mountainsides. Massive ice formations, said Barbara, “are just like sculpture. It’s like an outdoor art exhibit, and they’re this unearthly blue, the most gorgeous turquoise you’ve ever seen.”
Spontaneity is an essential element of Antarctic adventure. The itinerary can from trip to trip, even day to day, as the captain makes calculations based on forecasts, currents and wind direction. Some harbors are only accessible, for instance, if weather is good; the same goes for activities like kayaking amid the ice floes. And travelers keep their all-weather boots handy for sudden announcements over the P.A. system: “Orcas off to the left!” can be a serendipitous photo-op.
With tour operators proliferating, Barbara advised looking for those with solid experience in the Antarctic — a place that remains, as a recent incident with a stranded vessel illustrated, a perilous and unpredictable corner of the world. A truly satisfying trip will include lectures by expert naturalists that put the scenery into context, as well as the good food and creature comforts that Shackleton — the British explorer whose legendary Antarctic voyages are the subject of a PBS documentary — could only dream about.
Most modern-day explorers are thrilled just to cross Antarctica off their list. “For many people, this was their seventh continent,” said Barbara. While she still has one or two to go, she acknowledged that apart from its natural thrills, Antarctica retains a singular and ineffable mystique.
“There’s something about the fact that it’s so difficult to get there, that so many people tried to get there and couldn’t,” she said. “You think, ‘Wow, I have been somewhere very few people will ever go.’”
editor@jewishweek.org
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