The (New York) Jewish Week . . . Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions – Wednesday, 8 January 2014

The (New York) Jewish Week . . . Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions – Wednesday, 8 January 2014

Dear Reader,

The grisly murder of a chasidic businessman from Brooklyn - and the callous coverage it received in the tabloids - has prompted contrasting images of the victim as either a sleazy landlord or a benevolent supporter of charities. Assistant Managing Editor Adam Dickter has the story, and media writer Ari Goldman discusses the controversial coverage.

NEW YORK NEWS

Who Was The Real Menachem Stark?

Snatched from a snowy Brooklyn street, the real estate developer left behind a trail of debt and questions about his character.

Adam Dickter, Assistant Managing Editor

In the wake of the grisly murder of chasidic real estate developer Menachem Stark, two distinct profiles of the 39-year-old father of eight children have emerged. One is of shady businessman, in debt and accused of treating his tenants unfairly. Another is of a pillar of his religious community, a generous supporter of charitable causes.

It’s possible both descriptions are true. Meanwhile, the mystery of his death has prompted a police investigation into his business practices and a long list of possible enemies, a strong backlash from Stark’s chasidic community and angry criticism of how his death was depicted in the tabloid press.

What is certain is that Stark never made it home on Jan. 2 from the Rutledge Street office where he managed a real estate empire of 17 properties, mostly in Brooklyn, which had fallen into a financial black hole.

About an hour after he disappeared, a nearby surveillance camera turned up images of two people struggling with Stark for several minutes before shoving him into a van. The images, taken just steps from the 90th Precinct police station, were obscured by a thick blanket of snowfall.

Hours later, and only minutes before the start of Shabbat, Stark’s burned and bruised body was discovered in a trash bin at a Great Neck gas station. As the hunt for his killers began, reports emerged about a $29 million loan on which Stark and his frequent business partner, Israel Perlmutter, defaulted in 2009, a resulting lawsuit, and the long string of violations against the properties they own. Stark also had endured foreclosures and a $1.3 million civil judgment. He was reportedly seeking backers for a new loan in his final days.

The New York Post’s Sunday headline -- “Who didn’t want him dead?” -- based on the numerous enemies Stark may have accumulated through his business dealings, provoked outrage among Brooklyn elected officials and family members who considered it deeply insensitive. (See Mixed Media story, page 20, and editorial, page 6.)

As the investigation went on with no publicly identified suspects, it seemed Stark himself was on trial, with chasidic community praise competing with tenants’ complaints and leaked tidbits about his past.

A police source told The Post that Stark faced a 2011 arrest for forcible touching of a young girl on the subway. The Daily News reported that the case was dropped, the alleged victim said that Stark was innocent and he later recovered damages from the city for the arrest.

Defenders of Stark said it was cruel to pillory a man after his murder, and that his financial shortcomings were not uncommon in the volatile world of New York real estate development and financing.

“Every single person I have come across from 2008 to 2012 who is involved in real estate has had troubles,” said Isaac Abraham, a politically active tenants rights advocate in Williamsburg who has known Stark since he was a child. “The [New York City Housing Authority] is the biggest slumlord of the last 20 years.”

The plot thickened on Tuesday when an unnamed law enforcement source told The Daily News that the police are eyeing Stark’s business associate, Perlmutter, 42, who may have given conflicting information to detectives. No possible motive was discussed.

On Monday, members of the Stark family announced a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the crime, after offering four times that sum for tips following his disappearance while hope remained that he was alive.

At a press conference with family members, community leaders and elected officials, Stark was praised as a devoted and compassionate father, husband and benefactor.

“I hate the fact that I have to come here and defend a good man for people who love to gossip and to talk nonsense,” fumed Moses Strulowitz, a brother-in-law. “There’s no such a thing as a guy who had over 1,000 tenants and you’re not going to have a few unsatisfied tenants. This is business.”

Another brother-in-law, Abraham Buxbam said, “he was a very charitable person, on a personal level as an individual and to the community.”

Isaac Abrahamssaid on Tuesday said the leak about Perlmutter was likely a “distraction” as cops investigate all angles. “He is a person of interest, as is every partner in a case like this,” he said. “They have to rule everyone out.”

A Jewish community source, citing information from the police, said investigators are working on the theory that Stark was abducted by people hired to commit the crime. Because surveillance footage showed the captors struggling with their victim for several minutes, they appear to be amateurs who may not be very good at covering their tracks, the source said.

While police were not notified of Stark’s disappearance for about three hours while the volunteer Shomrim community patrol searched, Abraham said that was not unusual.

“It’s an adult, not like Kletzky,” he said referring to Leiby Kletzky, the young boy who vanished from Borough Park Streets in the summer of 2011 and was later found murdered. In that case, as well, the Shomrim were notified before the police, delaying the search and investigation.

“It’s not unusual for businessmen in the community to say I’ll be there at 10 and come home at 1,” Abraham said. “Anyway, the police don’t investigate a missing adult until after 24 hours.”

Asked by reporters about the delay in notifying the police, Rabbi David Niederman, executive director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, an umbrella group for local community services, said, “I can’t tell you exactly [when] they were called. As soon as they realized he was missing.”

Stark reportedly died of suffocation. Police said his remains appear to have been left the night before and his body was in a dumpster all day until a gas station employee investigated a strong odor.

Robbery was evidently not the motive as he was found with $4,000 in his wallet, reports said.

Rabbi Niederman told The Jewish Week on Monday he had no theories about who would want Stark dead. He said the businessman, whom he did not know personally, had troubles that are not uncommon.

“There are many buildings, governmental and non-governmental, that have violations against them,” he said of Stark’s reputation as a landlord. “He owed money? Show me one person in real estate or in business that doesn’t owe money. And great people go bankrupt. Show me one airline that hasn’t been bankrupt, and emerged.” He said reports of Stark’s dealings were unfair. “It’s terrible to do that to a person because he’s not around to defend himself.”

Rabbi Niederman said Stark’s children range in age from 17 to 1.

At the press conference announcing the reward, Councilman Steve Levin, who represents Williamsburg, said he was confident that “the police department in New York and Nassau County [where the body was found] are treating his case with the highest priority and leaving no stone unturned to solve his tragic, senseless murder.”

While stressing that he did not believe in revenge, Strulowitz said retribution for his brother-in-law’s death would come from God. “Good things happen from good people and the worst things happen from the worst people. God will punish them, no matter what.”

JTA contributed to this report.

adam@jewishweek.org

-------

NEW YORK NEWS

Blaming The Victim?

An infamously heartless tabloid hits ‘new low’ in coverage of murdered chasid; other media more restrained.

Ari L. Goldman, Special to the Jewish Week

The New York Post is famous for its tasteless headlines, like “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” “Eaten Alive: Giant Tigers Kill Pretty Zookeeper,” and a hundred puns on Anthony Weiner’s name.

But the Post reached a new low over the weekend with a front page with the quote “Who Didn’t Want Him Dead?” next to a picture of Menachem Stark and the words: “Slumlord Found Burned in Dumpster.”

The Satmar community was outraged that the paper would turn a family and community tragedy into a spectacle and vilify a man who could not defend himself. To be sure, Stark had a checkered past, but the headline pushed the ethical envelope, even for a tabloid. It was based on “one law enforcement source” who said, “Any number of people wanted to kill this guy.” The reader should always be wary of anonymous quotes and of editors who change quotes  -- the quote in the article (“Any number of people wanted to kill this guy”) is quite different from the quote in the headline (“Who didn’t want him dead?”).

Various critics jumped on the Post, from Satmar community leaders to newly elected officials like Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Public Advocate Letitia James. “Who did not want him dead?” Adams said in response to the Post headline. “Who didn’t? We didn’t. His children did not want him dead. The residents of this city did not want him dead.” Adams and James, both African Americans, held a rally with Satmar Hasidim at Brooklyn Borough Hall to demand that the Post apologize.

While stopping short of an apology, the paper issued a statement that recognized the implications of what it wrote. “The Post does not say Mr. Stark deserved to die,” a spokesman told the website Politicker. “But our reporting showed that he had many enemies, which may have led to the commission of this terrible crime. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this time of loss.”

Not surprisingly, the Post also got beaten up by its long-time rival, the Daily News, which demonstrated such contempt for the paper it didn’t even mention its name but called it “a down-market New York tabloid newspaper.” The News labeled the Post coverage “insensitive” and echoed condemnations of the paper for conveying “negative rumors.”

The very next day the News trafficked in some negative rumors of its own when it reported that Stark’s business partner, Israel Perlmutter, “is being eyed as a possible suspect in the grisly killing.” Who said so? “A police source.” The News followed up this questionable source with: “Another police official said no one had been ruled out.” Hardly an indictment of Perlmutter.

As might be expected, The New York Times was far more restrained when it came to coverage of this crime. “Charred Body of Kidnapped Man Is Found on Long Island,” the Times reported on Sunday, without using the word chasid in the headline. The next day’s article, “A Developer Is Mourned and Vilified in Brooklyn,” presented a more complex view of the man, much of it based on public records rather than anonymous sources.

Other notable coverage included WPIX 11 TV, whose crime expert, Wally Zeins, speculated on camera that the Stark murder could be the result of a Hasidic rivalry between the Satmars and the Lubavitchers. The police, he said, were “going to look into” any “animosity” between the groups. That falls into the “no one has been ruled out” category. The Satmars and the Lubavitchers, who had battles on the streets of Brooklyn decades ago (including a kidnapping in 1983), are now on much better terms. To the station’s credit, Zeins’ speculation, which came on its early news show, was edited out in a later broadcast.

The Jewish papers and websites played the story prominently. The haredi papers, like Hamodia, which bills itself as “the Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry,” ran articles emphasizing Stark’s generosity and goodness. “Grief and Outrage Over Murder of Reb Menachem Stark,” was the headline on the story about Stark’s funeral, which brought out 1,000 mourners on Saturday night. “Countless prayers were uttered on Friday on behalf of the greatly beloved member of the Williamsburg community,” the article said. The article noted that many of the participants wept openly.

A separate article in Hamodia said that the community expressed “disgust and fury” over the Post headline.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Forward ran an article, by its columnist Jay Michaelson, that labeled Stark a “crook” and “a slumlord who gave slumlords a bad name.” Michaelson lambasted a haredi community that tolerates and celebrates such a person in their midst and cries anti-Semitism when such a person is attacked. “The mourning of him as some kind of hero makes matters even worse,” he wrote.

Michaelson defended the Post against charges of hateful coverage and said that its over-the-top headline was “business as usual” for the tabloid.

For balance, one suspects, the Forward also ran an article by a brother-in-law of Stark, Alexander Buxbaum, with the headline: “Menachem Stark Was Good Man Who Didn’t Deserve To Die — Or Be Smeared.”

Tablet, the online magazine, did a roundup of the mainstream coverage of the Stark murder but then added a special touch of its own. It linked the article to a performance that Stark’s brother, Cantor Yaakov Yosef Stark, gave of the Kel Molei Rachamim, the memorial prayer for the dead. The performance, which can be found on YouTube, had been filmed months ago but seemed appropriate to reprise at this time.

Ari Goldman, a former New York Times reporter, teaches journalism at Columbia University. He is a past board member of The Jewish Week.

Menachem Stark, New York Post

-------

As Ariel Sharon fades from the scene, our Israel Correspondent Michele Chabin talks to Israelis about his legacy, Associate Editor Jonathan Mark reflects on his life and our Editorial pays tribute to a leader whose biography reads like the history of the Jewish state.

ISRAEL NEWS

What Would Sharon Have Done?

Reportedly near death, a warrior and politician’s complex legacy falls into place.

Michele Chabin, Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem – The news this week that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 85, was near death sparked accolades and criticism, as well as speculation over what path he might have taken had he remained healthy.  

Incapacitated by a massive stroke eight years ago that forced him out of office as prime minister and left him in a coma, Sharon was a complex man renowned for his personal bravery and bull-headedness, but also the ability to dramatically change course when he felt it was in Israel’s best interests. 

Writing in Haaretz, columnist Chemi Shalev called Sharon “a natural improviser, supremely adaptable to changing circumstances, capable of swift and dramatic changes in his policies and approach.” Throughout his military and political careers, “Sharon only played by the rules that he himself had set. He was the quintessential political maverick, defying convention, bucking party discipline, unashamedly reversing course in midair if it seemed to serve his purpose. And he never lacked for audacity or courage, on the battle field or in the Knesset, as even his critics admit.”

Like former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Sharon was a beloved field commander who played a central role in many of the country’s key battles, both on and off the battlefield. And like Rabin, Sharon became convinced that relinquishing hard-won territory would benefit Israel strategically.   

Sharon’s admirers remember him as a legendary commander who, despite being a leader in the settlement-building movement, nonetheless dismantled settlements in Sinai and Gaza, and quit the right-wing Likud to create the centrist Kadima party. 

His detractors say Sharon abandoned the settlements and that the vacuum he left in Gaza paved the way for a Hamas takeover and years of rocket attacks. They also blame him, at least indirectly, for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps during the Lebanon war in 1982.

Michael Feige, a professor of sociology at Ben-Gurion University, said Sharon “worked according to his own instincts and understanding. He was a bulldozer in the sense that he was seen as someone who can move mountains and build settlements and bypass bureaucracy.”

At the same time, Feige said, “he was known as a destructive bulldozer, and not only due to the destruction of the Yamit and Gush Katif settlements, but also for the Lebanon War,” when an independent investigation concluded Sharon could have done much more to prevent the Sabra and Shatilla massacre. He was forced to step down as defense minister soon afterward.

Feige believes that had Sharon continued to lead the country, he would not have continued to dismantle settlements, at least not on a large scale.

“People grow nostalgic and think the disengagement was a peace initiative, but it was not. Sharon left Gaza in the context of the Second Intifada,” when deadly attacks against settlers and soldiers were frequent.

Feige said Sharon pulled out of Gush Katif “because he didn’t want the army to be inside Gaza, and to protect small settlements. It was a tactical move, not a peace initiative. I don’t think he would have acted much differently from [Prime Minister] Netanyahu. Sharon was very suspicious of the Palestinians.”

Ghassan Khatib, a professor at Bir Zeit University and former Palestinian government spokesman, agrees that Sharon was no peacenik.

“I don’t think he ever intended pulling out from the West Bank,” Khatib told The Media Line. “He was clear in saying that he is pulling out of Gaza in order to consolidate Israeli control and settlement presence in the West Bank.”

Nor does Khatib believe Sharon would have brokered a peace deal with the Palestinians.

“He was always right wing and always supportive of the continued Israeli control over historical Palestine including the West Bank and especially Jerusalem,” Khatib asserted.

While no one can say what Sharon might have accomplished had his health not deteriorated, even those who differed with him recognize the many contributions he made to the country and its security. 

“I vehemently disagreed with the decisions that Ariel Sharon made towards the end of his career, but I will forever respect the daring and innovative military leader who spared no effort in defending his people, Deputy Minister of Defense Danny Danon told The Jewish Week.  “Arik fought valiantly on behalf of the nation of Israel in all our wars since 1948.  The contributions that he made towards the safety and security of the country he loved will never be forgotten.”

Sharon was also on the minds of many ordinary Israelis this week.

“I think his story has two parts,” said Shachar, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Efrat who works in a hat store. She declined to provide her last name.

“On the one hand he weakened the country by uprooting settlements, which created a vacuum and increased terrorism from Gaza,” she said. “But on the other hand he did a lot of good things in the years before the disengagement and they shouldn’t be forgotten.”

Chantal Cohen, who works in a store in a Jerusalem industrial area, said she appreciates Sharon’s heroism, and also his personality.

“I really liked Ariel Sharon, the man, even when I didn’t agree with his politics. He had a great deal of charisma and exuded happiness, and he was a great leader, not an extremist.”

Cohen, who described herself as a diehard Likud supporter, said she admired Sharon’s ability to act on his principles “even though I’m not in favor of territorial compromise. Israel needs to remain whole,” she insisted.

Had Sharon lived, Cohen said, “he might have regretted leaving Gaza, but we’ll never know.”

Mili Chaim-Dayan, who is employed in a nearby furniture store, thinks that, had he not fallen ill, Sharon would have taken a harder line than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against Palestinian terrorism, and would have resisted U.S. demands for Israeli concessions.

“Netanyahu is much more influenced by the U.S.,” Chayim-Dayan asserted. “ I’m pretty sure Sharon wouldn’t have released 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, and that he would have fought back sooner against the rockets the Palestinians are shooting from Gaza. If Sharon were in charge I think the Palestinians would think twice before attacking us.”

The bottom line, she said, “Is that Sharon made us feel safe. I miss that.” 

editor@jewishweek.org

-------

ISRAEL NEWS

Why Sharon Matters

Looking back on a great Israeli life.

Jonathan Mark, Associate Editor

Ariel Sharon, one of those great Israeli lives that was “present at the creation,” somehow has outlived himself, broken but breathing long after predictions otherwise, not unlike his years in the army and in politics.

Mystically, a soul – his soul, Ariel ben-Shmuel and Dvora – is never comatose, never in “a vegetative state,” to use that odd, cold phrase. One hopes that someone sang the old Zionist songs to him, one last time, as his father did in the 1920s, sitting on young Ariel’s bed in Kfar Malal agricultural moshav. He’d sing the lullaby “Me’al Pisgat Har HaTzofim,” “From Atop Mount Scopus,” in Jerusalem, “from your ruins I’ll rebuild you… Yerushalayim, I won’t move from here.”

He grew up during the British Mandate, during the Arab revolt that saw Jews massacred around the country, and while only 14, still a schoolboy, he joined the Haganah.

Years later, Michael Oren (before becoming ambassador) said having Sharon as prime minister was like “having Thomas Jefferson in the White House. He’s a founding father,” though others, such as journalist Zev Chafetz, thought Luca Brasi was a better analogy, referring to Don Corleone’s favorite enforcer in “The Godfather.”

Either way, Sharon was only 20 in 1948, a wounded soldier, perhaps too young to be a founding father, but surely a favorite son. David Ben-Gurion was the one who changed his surname from Scheinerman to Sharon, the region of the land where the young man grew up. And Menachem Begin (for whom Sharon later served as defense minister) took pride in the young Sabra since the Scheinerman family and the Begin family were old friends from the same Belarus shtetel. It was Sharon’s grandmother who midwifed Menachem Begin into the world.

Ben Gurion had Sharon lead a commando unit that would do quick retaliatory raids into Jordanian and Egyptian territory (what is today the West Bank and Gaza) chasing down terrorist units that had been plaguing the new state. Israeli cabinet member Naftali Bennett says via Facebook that “Arik Sharon is the one who shaped the IDF values that we are all familiar with today…. In the 1950’s, after the Independence War, many commanders from the dismantled Hagana and Palmach forces left the army for the great Zionist mission of settling the Land of Israel. The IDF was weakened and suffered a series of operational failures against Arab terrorism. The army had lost its confidence. Then Ariel Sharon, who was then a college student, was recruited to set up Unit 101. The idea was to establish a small elite unit,” specializing in quick, surgical attacks. They operated by Sharon’s code: The commander (Sharon) goes in front. The mission is accomplished or the same team goes out again the next night until it is. And no wounded soldier is ever left behind.

Each time Sharon was promoted, says Bennett, he “left a legacy” of these values throughout his battalions and brigades.

Uri Dan, an Israeli soldier and journalist who later became Sharon’s confidante, wrote that Sharon went first not only to inspire but for his intuition. He “had the natural gift of being able to make [his] way across an unknown terrain in complete darkness.” Moshe Dayan said, Sharon looks at a map “like a conductor studies a concert score.”

Dan recalled in his book “Ariel Sharon,” that when Sharon, “full of life, humor and energy, climbed into his jeep with his soldiers headed for the battlefield, I saw historical figures: the Jews fighting for their freedom against the Greeks, Romans… David confronting Goliath; the Judges of Israel; Gideon and Samson. Sharon came right out of one of those stories.”

Sharon loved those stories, himself. After the Six-Day War he introduced his son Gur, 11, to the newly liberated biblical landscape, to Jerusalem’s Old City and the Wall. It was father-son time that was all too brief: Four months after the Six-Day War, young Gur was killed, accidentally shot in the head by a friend who was playing with a loaded gun. (Sharon’s private life was laced with sadness; his first wife Margalit died in a car crash, and his second wife, Lily, Margalit’s sister, died of cancer.)

Sharon was driven by a Jewish sensibility, using expressions that are now almost quaint, “Is it good for the Jews?” Begin appointed him minister of agriculture, “minister of tomatoes,” joked his rivals, but as minister he helped launch more than 150 settlements, and some grew tomatoes.

After initially championing the settlements for their security value, Sharon changed his mind; the Jewish historical claim was more important than the security one, and considering how unconvincing the security claim is proving to be, maybe he was right.

After all, he said, “the security question is a temporary one and easy to debate, while the historical aspect, which is fundamental, is stronger than any other. The attraction of Eretz Yisrael [the classical Land of Israel, beyond modern boundaries] lies in Biblical stories, festivals, seasons and landscapes. Everything with us is history. The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, for example: no other people in the world possess such a monument, 4,000 years old… Jews nourished themselves on this love…. The historical argument was in fact the primordial question – of which the security argument was only a consequence.”

He loved finding old postcards that showed a map of Eretz Yisrael divided biblically among the tribes, or those pre-state postcards depicting “Judea-Samaria.” When Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said he would not give up a single grain of sand to Israel because Egyptian land is sacred, Sharon admitted to “a profound jealousy,” that Sadat could say what he couldn’t.

Once, at the airport, after greeting an honor guard, Begin stopped at the Israeli flag and bowed. Watching it on the news, said Sharon, “I felt that the tone of the reporter describing the scene betrayed a note of mockery.” But later, at the return of part of Sinai, said Sharon, Sadat bowed before the Egyptian flag and kissed it while “the voice of the Israeli reporter covering the ceremony… was almost shaking with emotion. Where did we get this habit of deriding everything sacred in our 4,000 year history – the flag, our anthem, and even our land?”

Of course, few did more to ensure that Sinai would be Israeli than Sharon, who fought there in 1956, 1967, and 1973, each time with daring, each time barely skirting charges of insubordination for being too independently daring. His charge across the canal in 1973, circling the Egyptian Third Army, is still studied in West Point. During the Yom Kippur War a blood-soaked bandage was famously wrapped around his head, the commander putting himself on the line. Sharon was just about the only hero Israel had. The crowds sang “Arik, Melech Yisrael,” Ariel, king of Israel,” as in the peppy song about King David, “He lives and will rise again!” They crowds sang, even as Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan resigned in near-disgrace, held responsible for the lack of preparation before the war. Before the war, Sharon was almost drummed out of the army because of his warnings about the fallibility of the Bar-Lev line, Israel’s ostensible fortification at the Suez Canal.

In 1982, he was castigated as the “Butcher of Beirut” for the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, of Palestinians by Christian Philangists, though Sharon never ordered it, nor did any Israeli participate in it. At worst, he had “indirect responsibility,” said Israel’s Kahan Commission. Arab cartoons depicted him with blood dripping from his teeth. Signs in Israel called him a “murderer,” a “child killer.” He was forced to step down as defense minister, staying on as Begin’s minster without portfolio.

The attacks inspired his supporters to only love him more, as he seemed to absorb the hate otherwise intended for the rest of Israel. Sharon could take the blame and bounce back. Wise guys said, if you don’t like him as a general, you’ll get him as defense minister. If you don’t like him as defense minister, you’ll get him as prime minister, and so it was.

His defiance delighted his people, even as he infuriated just about everyone else. As foreign minister, he swore he’d never shake Yasir Arafat’s hand, and he never did, not even during the 1998 Wye peace talks.

When in 2000, the Temple Mount became a chip in the peace talks, he took a walk on the Temple Mount, something he’d done before. “This is the only gesture in my power,” he said. He responded as a Jew. “I was just visiting the Temple Mount, the holiest place for Jews,” same as what he told his son Gur in 1967.

He wrote, “Freedom of access and religious worship would never be denied to Americans, Europeans, or Arabs in their own respective capitals and countries. It should never be denied to Jews in their one, eternal capital.”

His walk was accused of instigating the second intifada, though the George Mitchell Report on the intifada absolved him of responsibility. Commissions of investigation seemed to follow him around.

Soon after, in 2001, devastated by the intifada, Israel turned to him, electing him prime minister.

History will tell you the rest. How he ended the intifada, how the disengagement from Gaza left even his supporters calling it an emotional and political disaster, leading to thousands of rockets, a war with Hamas and many of the 8,000 settlers still not re-settled.

Four months after the disengagement, he suffered his first stroke. A few days after that, in January, came the second stroke.

He used to like to sing the old Breslov song, “The World is a Narrow Bridge,” with its chorus, “the important thing is not to be afraid.” It’s hard to imagine that his soul is afraid, even now.

Somewhere, Israelis will be singing, “Arik, Melech Yisrael,” king of Israel, he lives and will rise again.

It’s hard to believe that he won’t.

jonathan@jewishweek.org

-------

EDITORIAL

Remembering Sharon

“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

That line from an old ballad, cited by U.S. military hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur in his farewell address to Congress in 1951, could well be applied to Ariel Sharon. The larger-than-life Israeli general, statesman and prime minister, who began his long, slow fade from the public conscience eight years ago, will be remembered as a man who made history, both in war and in politics. Praised or reviled, he was a commanding presence, a leader who usually got his way.

On the eve of the massive stroke that left him in a coma, he was a powerful prime minister expected to soon win re-election. Once revered by the settler movement for his unstinting support, he was reviled when he withdrew Israel’s troops and thousands of citizens from Gaza in 2005, believing that was the price to pay for maintaining Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state. The Likud party that he had led turned against him for the Gaza withdrawal, so he formed a new party, Kadima, determined to continue on his path. That’s what Sharon was like – bulldozer, visionary or both.

His biography reads like the history of the State of Israel. A war hero at 20 in the War of Independence, he was then chosen to lead the famous, or infamous, Unit 101, which was brutally successful in combatting Arab terrorists. He built his reputation as Israel’s greatest commander for his success in the Sinai desert, first in the Six Day War, and six years later during the Yom Kippur War, when he defied his military superiors and led an end-around attack that encircled the Egyptian Third Army and effectively saved Israel from a disastrous defeat.

Military experts around the world still teach the lessons of that typically bold, defiant and brilliant move by Sharon. But another of his rebellious military actions, in 1982 – to extend the invasion against Yasir Arafat and seek to finish him and the PLO off – proved disastrous and left Israeli troops in Lebanon for many years. Sharon was accused of deceiving Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and for his indirect role in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, he was forced to step down as defense minister. His military and political career appeared over.

But Sharon came back and was elected prime minister in 2001, defeating incumbent Ehud Barak after being blamed by some for setting off the second intifada by touring the Temple Mount complex.

It was Sharon who struck back forcefully against Palestinian strongholds at the low point of the suicide bombing campaign, who built the security fence, and who planned and carried out the evacuation of Jews from Gaza. To those who would argue that he wavered in his actions -- now using force, now pulling back – he would insist that he was being consistent: defending the Jewish people, whatever that required.

However he is judged by history, he was a man of his convictions, dedicated to his mission, gruff at times, tender at others – a native sabra and the personification of a proud, brave Israeli.

editor@jewishweek.org

-------

My column focuses on the latest power grab by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate to limit the autonomy of North American Orthodox rabbis - and the acquiescence of the Rabbinical Council of America.

GARY ROSENBLATT

Time To Stand Up To The Rabbinate

Rabbi Avi Weiss not only diaspora rabbi Israel rejected; why isn't the RCA speaking out?

Gary Rosenblatt

Until now, admirers and critics of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the high-profile spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale who has made a career out of rabbinic activism, from Soviet Jewry to championing the cause of women’s participation in Jewish ritual life, have agreed that he enjoys being singled out in the spotlight.

But in recent days, since his rabbinic credentials were called into question by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Rabbi Weiss has insisted that the issue is really not about him. Few, it seems, were listening.

The fact is that though his name was the only one made public several months ago, a number of other American Orthodox rabbis, including Yeshiva University graduates, congregational rabbis of Orthodox Union (OU) synagogues and members of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), have had letters attesting to the Jewishness of couples seeking to be married in Israel rejected by the Chief Rabbinate. In effect, the rabbis were told they were not qualified to determine who among their congregants and constituents was indeed Jewish.

Rabbi Weiss’s name is the only one made public — the others preferred anonymity — and that complicated the situation. That’s because Rabbi Weiss is a lightning rod of sorts. His outspoken views and actions in regard to women’s ordination and his brand of Open Orthodoxy at the yeshiva he founded, have made him a controversial figure within the RCA, where some colleagues are urging the leadership to come to his defense and others call for his dismissal.

Now another North American Orthodox rabbi with none of controversial baggage of Rabbi Weiss has come forward and expressed indignation that he, too, was found to be unacceptable to the Chief Rabbinate for the purpose of verifying that a young couple he knows well is indeed Jewish.

“I’m outraged that I would be disqualified,” Rabbi Scot Berman told me this week. He received his ordination from the Hebrew Theological College (known as “Skokie yeshiva”) in Chicago and has had a three-decade history as a Jewish educator in Orthodox schools.

Rabbi Berman has been a principal and administrator at several Orthodox day schools, including the Rabbi David Silver Academy in Harrisburg, PA, the Ida Crown Academy in Chicago, the Kushner Academy in Livingston, NJ, and the Yeshivat Ohr Chaim Bnei Akiva school in Toronto, where he now lives.

The Chief Rabbinate said he lacked the tools and skills of a congregational rabbi.

Their decision “is indicative of the Chief Rabbinate’s lack of understanding of the Jewish community in North America,” said Rabbi Berman. “What tools do shul rabbis have more than school principals who are embedded [in the community] and keenly aware of the constituents with whom they work?”

Rabbi Berman, a member of the RCA, said he shared the news of the Chief Rabbinate’s decision about him with the group’s leaders and colleagues during a meeting in Toronto last month. “No one responded verbally,” he said.

He chose to step up now, in part, so that the community could understand that the issue is about far more than Rabbi Weiss, who is initiating a lawsuit against the Chief Rabbinate for questioning his credibility as an Orthodox rabbi. (Rabbi Berman does not plan to take such action at this time.)

To be clear, this issue is not just about Rabbi Weiss and it’s not just about Orthodox politics. It’s about how Israel’s two new chief rabbis, Ashkenazi David Lau and Sephardic Yitzchak Yosef, elected to 10-year terms this summer amidst hope they would present a more benign face to Jews in Israel and the diaspora, are instead continuing their predecessors’ deeply disturbing trend to monopolize and centralize rabbinic authority, limiting the autonomy of Orthodox rabbis in the diaspora. And that is bad for Jews everywhere, splitting us further apart as a people.

It is high time to speak out against this power grab on the part of the Chief Rabbinate — and the passive response of the RCA, which has more than 1,000 members in the U.S. and Canada. Despite its size, the RCA seems to be cooperating in diminishing its own influence for fear of losing status with a Chief Rabbinate few here or in Israel respect. And with good reason.

Over the last several decades the Chief Rabbinate has become increasingly haredi in practice and narrow in scope, more eager to protect its authority than to take a welcoming attitude toward an Israeli society increasingly distanced from Judaism.

The rabbinate controls personal status in the state — marriage, divorce, burial and conversion. Increasing numbers of Israelis have opted to marry outside the country, often in Cyprus, to avoid an Orthodox ceremony. And while there are hundreds of thousands of Russians with Jewish relatives living in Israel, many of whom may want to become Jewish, the rabbinate has made the process increasingly difficult, insisting on observance of all of the mitzvot to qualify.

Several years ago the previous chief rabbis, Sephardi Shlomo Amar and Ashkenazi Yona Metzger (who was arrested in November for fraud and taking bribes), took control of Orthodox conversions in the U.S. Until then the RCA had its own policy guidelines; its conversions, conducted by rabbis who knew well the men and women with whom they studied and guided during the process, were recognized in Israel. But the Chief Rabbinate moved to limit the role of congregational rabbis and established a policy where only a select number of bet dins could conduct conversions.

The RCA acquiesced rather than insist that its congregational rabbis were best qualified to see the procedure to its fruition.

Some observers say the rabbinical group here lacked confidence to stand up to the Israeli chief rabbis, who could have cut them out of the process altogether. Others say a few RCA insiders enjoyed being the exclusive North American conduits to the Israeli rabbinate.

Last October, Israel Correspondent Michele Chabin broke the story in The Jewish Week about Rabbi Weiss’s letter for a young couple being rejected by the Chief Rabbinate. But weeks earlier, such groups as ITIM, an Israeli organization that helps people navigate the bureaucracy of the Chief Rabbinate and government agencies dealing with marriage, divorce, conversion and burial, and Tzohar, a group of religious Zionist rabbis in Israel dedicated to making weddings and other Jewish rituals more appealing to society, pressed the Chief Rabbinate on its decision-making methods. They wanted the chief rabbis to explain how they determine which of the thousands of Orthodox rabbis in the diaspora are approved for ritual participation and which are not.

The Chief Rabbinate acknowledged that it has no systematic means of determining the credentials of diaspora rabbis so it relies on the advice of a few trusted colleagues, some of whom are members of the RCA. It’s hard to believe that this primitive method, prone to rumor, gossip and personal bias — and administered by only one, mid-level, non-English-speaking official in the Chief Rabbinate office — is employed by an agency of the government of Israel in dealing with thousands of diaspora rabbis for official matters of personal status.

“It’s completely arbitrary,” says Rabbi Seth Farber, the director of ITIM, which has proposed to the Chief Rabbinate that it recognize all members in good standing of Orthodox rabbinic institutions in the diaspora that are at least 10 years old and have at least 50 members.

In that way, he points out, the decision of who is Jewish would be decentralized and made within the various diaspora communities who know their constituents best. “It’s a matter of trust” between the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and the qualified local rabbis, Rabbi Farber says.

“If there is no mutual trust…” He left the sentence unfinished but the message was clear.

Meanwhile, the RCA is trying to tamp down the public attention and work out an agreement that would recognize its members as legitimate in the eyes of the Chief Rabbinate.

But along with other major Orthodox institutions, such as Yeshiva University and the OU, whose rabbinic constituents have been snubbed by the Chief Rabbinate, the RCA has left Rabbi Weiss — and Rabbi Berman — out to dry. Only this week did the organization come out with a brief, painstakingly neutral statement on the controversy. It notes the group’s “cherished” relationship with the Chief Rabbinate and expresses the hope of resolving matters “in ways that will avoid the problems and embarrassments of these past few weeks.”

The real embarrassment, though, is that the RCA cherishes a relationship with a religious body that has veered from its sacred mission, choosing to detach itself from, rather than embrace, the majority of the Jewish people.

Gary@jewishweek.org

-------

Brooklyn native Carol Klein is considered the most successful female pop songwriter in American history. You know her as Carol King, and our theater critic Ted Merwin has the story behind the new Broadway show, "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical."

NATIONAL NEWS

She Moved The Pop Music Earth

How a Brooklyn girl named Carol Klein bridged cultures in the ’60s and rewrote American popular song.

Ted Merwin, Special To The Jewish Week

She took an unconventional route to superstardom, but it was a soulful road that Carole King traveled.

Born Carol Klein in Brooklyn in 1942, she did not set out to become a performer. In “Beautiful,” the new musical about King that opens this Sunday on Broadway, King’s career as a budding songwriter comes to the fore. Starring Jessie Mueller (“On a Clear Day You Can See Forever”) as King, the musical opens a window on a pivotal 1960s era in pop music in which a group of mostly Jewish composers and lyricists wrote for mostly black performers, changing the face of American culture in the process.

Directed by Marc Bruni (“Old Jews Telling Jokes”), the new show traces King’s trajectory from the first tunes that she wrote while attending James Madison High School in Brooklyn. At Queens College, she met her future husband, Gerry Goffin (Jake Epstein), who turned out to be a perfect lyricist for her melodies; their big break came in 1960 with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,” recorded by The Shirelles, which was the first No. 1 hit by a black girl group, and which led to recordings of King’s songs by The Drifters, The Chiffons, and many others.

While King and Goffin’s marriage ultimately foundered, King went on to work with many of the other artists, including Barry Mann (Jarrod Spector) and Cynthia Weil (Anika Larsen), at 1650 Broadway, the companion building to the more famous Brill Building at 1619 Broadway, the pop music factory run by impresario Don Kirshner (Jeb Brown); it was Kirshner who first had the idea to hire teenagers to write songs for other teenagers. The musical follows King through her crowning success with her solo album “Tapestry” — including such hits as “You’ve Got a Friend,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” — which she performed in a legendary concert at Carnegie Hall in 1971.

Douglas McGrath, who was nominated for an Oscar in 1994 for his screenplay for Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway,” wrote the book for “Beautiful.” In an interview, he told The Jewish Week that the show is a “jukebox” musical in the same vein as “Jersey Boys,” in which the songs are used to tell the true story of the creators of the music, rather than the “Mama Mia” or “Movin’ Out” approach, in which the songs are used in the service of a fictional narrative, and the characters sing about their feelings.

“The audience gets caught up in her personal story,” McGrath said, “and realizes where a song like ‘Natural Woman’ came from.” He called the musical a “story of female empowerment, about a woman who conquers her world through diligence and hard work.” While King started out wanting to be a Jewish wife and mother playing mah jongg and canasta in the New Jersey suburbs, she ultimately found that she was the best person to sing many of her own songs.

The tunes written by King and her collaborators are tailor-made for a musical, McGrath added. “Her songs have such emotional complexity. They have the intelligence and vulnerability of great theater songs.” He pointed out that the four songwriters in the show — King, Goffin, Mann and Weill — broke with the Tin Pan Alley style of American music exemplified by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and George Gershwin. “The melodies in their songs have the formal structure and melodic appeal that Great American Songbook tunes do, but are orchestrated differently to be recorded by black performers.”

As Carol Weller pointed out in her 2008 book “Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation” (Atria Books, 2008), this sympathy with black America was a major part of King’s appeal. While the Jewish songwriters of Tin Pan Alley had “romanticized high-society top hatters and New England white Christmases,” Weller wrote, “Carole and her peers — with their opposite sense of romance — would soon be extolling the humanity found within the very kinds of tenements those earlier songwriters had struggled to escape.”

Jonathan Karp, who teaches history and Judaic studies at Binghamton University, said in an interview that King’s importance cannot be underestimated. “She was probably the most successful female popular songwriter in American history,” he said. “She exquisitely conveyed the sensibility of a young generation increasingly comfortable with the idea of America as an integrated society.” The Brill hit-makers, he explained, “showed a recognition that black artists and musicians should be recording these songs, that the songs had to be plausibly black in orientation, outlook, and performance — in order to appeal to a mostly white teen audience.”

Bruni, the director, compared “Beautiful” to “Old Jews Telling Jokes.” He dubbed “Old Jews” a “jokebox” musical that, like “Beautiful,” tapped into people’s memories in a way that was “unpredictable to the creative team, who wouldn’t know that Uncle Morty told that joke at a seder six years ago.” Similarly, “Beautiful” taps into people’s relationships to their own youth. “People remember where they were when they first heard these songs,” he said. “Baby boomers had them on in their dorm rooms. The show brings back that era in people’s lives.” When the audience hears the first notes of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” and realizes what song it is, he said, a kind of collective moan goes up from the auditorium.

Sherry Goffin Kondor, the second of King and Goffin’s two daughters, is now her mother’s manager. She said that while Mueller’s voice is “not so much like Carole’s, her energy felt the most like hers. She melds perfectly into the role. My mother is so pleased with having Jessie play her.”

What is King’s response to the musical as a whole? As the New York Post reported, the 71-year-old star came to a workshop performance of the show last year, but left at the intermission. She has, she has said, no intention of sitting through an entire performance. “It’s too painful for her,” Bruni said. “She doesn’t want to be there and have to endure people watching her watch it. She lived it once. She doesn’t need to live it again.”

“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” opens this Sunday at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, 124 W. 43rd St. Beginning next Tuesday, performances are Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. For tickets, $75-$142, call Telecharge at (212) 239-6200 or visit www.telecharge.com

-------

Also this issue, an Israeli actor in New York chastened by his work with terror victims; a new CEO for the Hebrew Charter School Center here; Culture Editor Sandee Brawarsky on the very short fiction of Ukrainian émigré Marina Rubin; and Elicia Brown on motivating her daughter to take on a bat mitzvah project.

NEW YORK NEWS

After Years of Nightmares, Chasing His Dreams

Hearing the stories of thousands of terrorism victims taught one Israeli to live life to its fullest.

Orli Santo, Special To The Jewish Week

In his 20s, for the customary post-army stint, Ran Levy came to New York. He tried his hand at acting, participated in a few musical productions, but after six months with no remarkable achievements acknowledged that “it was time to start acting like a responsible adult” and, as his parents advised, “go home, study something practical, and get a real job.” He returned to Israel and enrolled for a bachelor’s in behavioral studies in Tel Aviv University.

Besides acting, clinical psychology had been Levy’s longtime passion. He had always felt drawn to intense emotions. An empathic listener, people naturally wanted to confide in him, and he in turn felt “honored and touched — that they would trust me like that, that they would open up and let me into their lives.”

As part of his studies, Levy interned at a suicide hotline. “In the beginning it was rough,” he admits. “I took it personally every time I felt I wasn’t making a big enough difference in a caller’s life. But with time I understood that in the limited capacity of a phone call, all I can expect to do was little things. … I could listen, provide a 20-minute window of relief.”

His hotline experience led him to his next position as a paralegal.  In 2005, Motley Rice, a large American law firm, opened a branch in Tel Aviv for a class action against a Saudi bank suspected of funneling funds to terrorist organizations. The plaintiffs were 6,000 Israelis who had lost family members or were injured in terrorist attacks in Israel between 1995 and 2005.

Levy was hired to listen to the bereaved families’ testimonies, find and collect documents supporting them, and prep the plaintiffs for depositions. In the beginning, this put him on the receiving end of a lot of pent-up grief and anger. “To them I was a stranger, an outsider, who barges into their lives and forces them to relive their hardest moments,” he explains.

People wept, yelled and hung up on him, but being conciliatory and attentive — the kind of guy people naturally want to confide in — Levy eventually convinced even the most embittered clients to cooperate. Within two years he was promoted from being case manager to a dozen or so families to case manager of the entire clientele, with a team of 30 paralegals at his disposal. It was the most important position he had filled in his life.

“Out of the 6,000 terror victims we represented, I spoke personally to about 4,500,” he notes. “I knew their names, their stories, the injuries they sustained. I knew the names of the children or spouses they lost.”

Obviously, the testimonies he collected were haunting. Some victims recounted becoming mere shells of themselves, surviving on a cocktail of meds and despair. Others couldn’t sleep, were afraid to leave the house, were crippled by frequent panic attacks.

There was one woman, Levy recalls, who had lost both her son and her husband in consecutive terror attacks over two years. He would call periodically and she would tell him, with heart-rending optimism, how she was trying to build back her life. There was a young man, about his age, whom a terror attack had left blind and deaf. The last face he would see, the man wrote to him, was that of the suicide bomber, at the moment in which he was blown apart.

Levy would sometimes picture that image when he closed his own eyes.

As a paralegal, Levy was well aware that his job was not to get involved. He knew he had to put aside any aspirations to help people: the goal was to get in, get the necessary information, and get out. Perhaps it was the nature of the information they shared, or the nature of Israeli relationships in general, but things did indeed get personal. Clients would call him on his cell phone (which was also his work number) all day long, before, during or after work hours.

They called to wish him happy holidays or invite him to a wedding or a memorial, or get upset that the money hadn’t materialized yet, or to cry. Levy would always answer. “It was immensely rewarding that the same people who slammed the phone in my face were now calling just to chat,” he explains.  “I had to justify the trust they put in me.”

His team of paralegals needed his attention as well. “Each paralegal would come back from their meetings with the bereaved families flooded with charged information,” he recalled. “They all needed to tell me about it, to get it off their chests. So I listened to them all, the clients, the workers. ...  All this pain, it was my job to channel it.”

The rougher the job got, the more devoted Levy became to it. As the trial drew near, it eclipsed everything else in his life:  girlfriends, friends, movies — all that seemed increasingly remote. He lost all patience with social trifles. The faces of the dead, looking up from his desk, seemed far more relevant than those of the living.

One day, driving by a group of armed soldiers by a roadblock in Jerusalem, Levy’s heart began racing. Even when he was already blocks away, it was hard for him to breathe. It hit him for the first time that this could really happen to him, just like it happened to his clients — right then, right there, there could be a terrorist attack, and he could die. The possibility of death had never felt so real before: it was as if a blindfold had been removed from his eyes.

After that, death was ever-present. Three years into the job Levy was experiencing a second-hand version of the post-traumatic symptoms his clients complained about: he became nervous, impatient with anything but work. He was uncomfortable in crowded places, easily startled. If his parents didn’t answer the phone, or if they called at an unusual hour, he’d panic.

“I’ve memorized so many terror scenes, had thousands of scenarios of how things can go wrong in my head, and I imagine them happening to the people I loved,” he describes. “I’m ashamed to admit this, but sometimes I wished something terrible would happen to them already so I could stop being afraid of it.” By then, he had been seeing a psychologist for some time.

In 2012, the case went to trial, and Levy’s work was finally completed. For the first time in a long while he took a good look at his life, and decided to start over. He returned to New York, and enrolled to study method acting in the Lee Strasberg Institute.

“This experience made me realize, truly, that something could happen to me at any given moment,” he remarks. “So as long as I’m young and physically capable I should chase my dreams, practical or not.”

New York and acting have revived him, he says; they have given him a new zest for life. But it is clear to him that if anything, his experience with Israel’s bereaved has cemented his ties to the country. He feels more than ever that Israel is an inseparable part of who he is, part of his psychological makeup.

“I always think of Israel as a country in post-trauma, and I believe this shaped all of us who grew up in it. Israel has imprinted us,” he says. “After all it put me through, I don’t feel I could belong anywhere else.”

Orli Santo is a correspondent for the New York-based weekly Yediot America. Her column appears monthly.

-------

NEW YORK NEWS

Civil Rights Lawyer Tapped To Promote Hebrew Charter Schools

In ‘dream job,’ New Yorker Jonathan Rosenberg will seek out new partnerships, raise center’s profile.

Amy Sara Clark, Staff Writer

Jonathan Rosenberg does not have an extensive background in charter schools or in Hebrew language instruction. But the 46-year-old civil rights attorney’s resume nevertheless convinced the Hebrew Charter School Center he’s a perfect fit to be its new CEO and president.

“We could not dream of a better leader than Jon Rosenberg,” said Sara Berman, board chair of the center, which develops and supports Hebrew charter schools across the country. “His life’s work — which has been dedicated to promoting educational excellence, equal opportunity, and American pluralism — perfectly personifies the values that animate our movement.”

The Montclair, N.J., father of two spent much of his career practicing law, including as senior attorney in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights under President Clinton, but he’s also been at the helm of a several nonprofits — Roads to Success, a career and college readiness program; Repair the World, which supports Jewish service-learning programs across the country, and, most recently, a six-month stint as executive director of ROADS Charter High Schools, a pair of academic institutions in New York City serving non-traditional students.

“This job brings together so many things that I care so deeply about,” he told the Jewish Week in his first public comments since the announcement was made Tuesday . “It’s a dream job in so many ways.”

Rosenberg grew up in Queens as well as on Long Island in Woodmere and Port Washington. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for his undergraduate work and earned his J.D. from Columbia Law School.

He’s a fan of charter schools — as one of many options — because of the opportunities they provide for innovation and the additional choices they offer to students and parents beyond their zoned school.

“There’s an ability for new models to be developed that are difficult to develop in traditional school systems,” he said in a phone interview. “In charters you can move beyond traditional lines, traditional boundaries, between principal and teacher, advisor and advisee, coach and mentor, etc. You can structure staff roles to the benefit of the particular needs of the student body … construct career models for teachers that allow them to move beyond the classroom.”

Rosenberg replaces Aaron Listhaus, former chief academic officer for the New York City’s Department of Education’s charter school office. Listhaus is taking on the role of executive director for education for the center and will focus on academic, program, and organizational support for the center’s schools as well as on developing new school planning groups and charter school applications.

Rosenberg will concentrate on “expanding the center’s public profile, partnerships and funding,” as well as “ensuring that its staff and resources are deployed effectively to support the creation and quality of Hebrew language charter schools,” according to a news release from the center.

The Hebrew Charter School Center was founded in 2009 by a group of Jewish philanthropists led by Michael Steinhardt, of Birthright Israel fame, with the goal of creating 20 charter schools across the country. The schools do not teach religion, but rather emphasize global awareness, academic rigor and a commitment to racial and economic diversity.

So far it has founded five, including two in New York City — Brooklyn’s Hebrew Language Academy Charter School and the fledgling Harlem Hebrew Language Academy, which opened this fall. It has also opened schools in East Brunswick, N.J., San Diego, and Washington, D.C.

It is not the only player on the national Hebrew charter school scene: a separate network —the National Ben Gamla Charter School Foundation — has opened several Hebrew charter schools in Florida.

Rosenberg, who “grew up in a family that was not denominationally affiliated” but who “had a very culturally Jewish upbringing,” now affiliates with Humanistic Judaism, he said.

He sees great value in bringing Hebrew language and Jewish culture not only to the next generation of Jews, but also to the wider population.

“Jewish communities around the world do not live in isolation and they never have,” he said.  “In this country we have a history of successful integration of people of other backgrounds — my own family is multiracial, my wife is African American and Jewish and my children are biracial. … The notion that thousands of schoolchildren a year, both Jewish and non-Jewish alike, while receiving an excellent academic education, will also learn Hebrew and about Israel, is to me of obvious benefit not only to those students, but to Jewish communities around the world,” he said.

Not only will the non-Jewish students likely develop more of an affinity for Jews and Israel, there will also be “more opportunities for economic and educational partnerships and for shared understanding,” he said.

Rosenberg moves into his position just as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña settle into theirs. But he’s not concerned about their history of being less-than-supportive of charter schools. De Blasio was a sharp critic of charters in his campaign.

“I have tremendous respect both for Mayor de Blasio and Carmen Fariña — Carmen and I actually used to live in the same building on the Brooklyn waterfront. … So personally and professionally I think very highly of her and her skills as an educator, as a leader of educators, and as someone who cares deeply about the success of all children,” he said.

He points out that the center’s mission is to develop schools nationally, not just in New York City.

“Our work as a national center is to support the growth and development of the Hebrew charter school movement around the country,” he said. He has a strong belief that these schools will be embraced.

“I think there’s a tremendously powerful narrative and appeal around dual language instruction for students where they become fluent not only in two languages but also become culturally fluent,” he said, adding that Hebrew, in particular, should appeal to a wide range of students and parents.

“Hebrew is both an ancient language and a modern language, it’s spoken by millions of people around the globe,” he said. “Israel is a thriving democracy and a thriving partner of the U.S., as well as a growing economic force. The opportunity for students of all backgrounds to learn Hebrew and about Israel, its immigrant communities and its culture, is a benefit to everyone.”

amy.jewishweek@gmail.com

-------

BOOKS

Short Fiction

The funny and bittersweet stories of Ukrainian emigre writer and miniaturist Marina Rubin.

Sandee Brawarsky, Culture Editor

Marina Rubin’s very short stories are shorter than most articles in this newspaper.

But she would never leave a sentence dangling like that. Each one of the 74 stories in “Stealing Cherries” (Manic D Press) unfolds into 14 to 18 lines — no paragraph breaks, few capital letters — that form a block of text on the page (the last word always ends at the right margin). Her writing is sparse and precise, yet also lush, with long sentences packed full of life, drama and artistry.

In an interview, she says she’s a huge fan of the saying, “Talk less. Say more.” The stories are often funny, although the humor can be bittersweet.

Rubin was born in Ukraine and left with her family in 1989. An ingenious storyteller, she’s a recipient of a 2013 Blueprint Fellowship from COJECO, the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations.

Like Russian-born novelists Gary Shteyngart, Lara Vapnyar and David Bezmozgis, she mines her immigrant experience for her fiction, uncovering the universal. All of them layer their work with a distinctive humor and shades of melancholy, not typically American. Rubin, though, has invented her own genre.

Some of the stories in “Stealing Cherries” deal with her life in the former Soviet Union as well as immigrant life in America; others relate to later adventures in New York City and around the world. In “Zelenka,” she writes of first learning she is Jewish, while still in Ukraine, when a doctor visited their home to attend to her 15-year-old brother who was moaning on the couch after painful surgery, his skin covered in zelenka, an antiseptic drug used to prevent infection. She was “just as blonde and blue-eyed as the other Ukrainian girls who wore little brass Jesuses on their necks” and was shocked when the doctor pronounced, “congratulations, young man, you are now a real Jew.”

For Rubin, the compact story is a new form. She has previously published three volumes of poetry, “Ode to Hotels” (2002), “Once” (2004) and “Logic” (2007). She says, “When I wrote this, I was so done with poetry. Poetry didn’t work for what I wanted to say. Maybe it’s my Russian arrogance, but the form needs to be working for me.”

Sometimes the punctuation is correct, and sometimes it’s purposely not, she explains. She doesn’t capitalize the letter I, and says that only in English is the first person singular a capital letter. “Something about American culture,” she says.

Rubin was born in Vinnitsia (“sounds like Venice,” she says), Ukraine. Her father was a successful dentist and they lived in a private home, which she says was very unusual. He was 48 when they came here, and became a dental assistant. Her mother, who was an engineer, now works as a bookkeeper. She says that they are very happy here — “they love America” — and don’t spend time lamenting how their professional lives have changed. They live in Coney Island, near the New York Aquarium, and she lives nearby, on Ocean Parkway.

When the family left Ukraine in 1989, seeking asylum, they went first to Italy and Austria. They arrived in New York City in April 1990 when Marina was 13. She attended yeshiva in Brooklyn for two months and, as she explains, the principal and teachers didn’t quite know what to do with her there. The following fall, she started New Utrecht High School in Bensonhurst and quickly became editor of the school’s literary magazine. She graduated among the top in her class and won a scholarship from the United Federation of Teachers to attend Pace University, where she majored in psychology and women’s studies.

In “Welcome to America: Day Two,” she writes of the family’s embarrassment when the Salvation Army came to their Brooklyn hotel handing them food and clothing “as if we were survivors of some natural disaster.” They had, in fact, had furs hanging in the closet; they tried to explain that they came “not because we were poor but because we were Jewish, that we were persecuted, that my brother — physics wunderkind — could never study at the russian Harvard. … still we took all the books, dishes, and blankets, and put on sweat suits and t-shirts and smiled our grateful all-American smiles because here you just never know how things might turn out.”

In the next story, “Welcome to America: The Weekend,” she tells of being invited to celebrate Passover “with a community of hasidic jews in crown heights. we could have been murderers, robbers, imposters. Nevertheless, these god’s chosen people” opened their doors to them. In every doorway, women put skirts for every occasion in her arms. “we sat at their tables, watched them pray, sing, soak apples in honey, toast to meeting next year in Jerusalem; without any misgivings, we were finally free to be jewish and yet, even among our own people, we didn’t belong.”

“Stealing Cherries” is a phrase from a story set in Vinnitsa during the summer before they left. That story’s title, “Confessions of Love,” she explains, loses something in translation — in Russian, it means first kiss. She likes how the book title captures her former city with its many cherry trees, as well as its connotations of innocence and romance, along with a nod to a great work of Russian literature, Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.”

“As a child,” Rubin explains, in the cadence of one of her stories, “I never thought of myself as a writer. I knew I wasn’t like everyone else — I was always reading poetry, always scribbling in my journal, very introspective, I thought that I should have lived more frivolously, or a different kind of life. Only when I matured, I realized not only that there was not something wrong with me, but I was blessed.”

Rubin became a U.S. citizen in 1997. She works in the financial world and serves as associate editor of the literary and art magazine Mudfish. After Hurricane Sandy, she volunteered with the Shorefront Y, carrying groceries to grandmothers stuck in their Brighton Beach apartments. She says that her father recently became involved in a synagogue and attends weekly. Her parents — she says again that they love America — marched in the Celebrate Israel parade.

Rubin returned to Vinnitsa on the 20th anniversary of her departure, and in the following year as well — her parents have not gone back. She loves to travel and observe, and lives with enthusiasm and determination. For years, she told these stories to friends and then cut and crafted them into this format. To find a publisher for this collection, she sent out many query letters until she got a positive response. Now, she has been invited by the Writer’s Union to talk about getting stories published.

“I love being Jewish,” she says. “I love being a woman. I love being in New York. I feel like I’m the luckiest, most blessed person in the world. I live in United States. My parents are healthy. I have friends. I have traveled the world. I get to do what I love.”

Marina Rubin will discuss her work next month at the JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave., at 76th Street. The talk is set against the backdrop of Alina and Jeff Bliumis’ interactive exhibition, “Casual Conversations” (featuring photos taken in Brighton Beach, inviting personal responses to begin a dialogue about identity). The event, in the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery, takes place on Thursday, Feb. 20, from 6 to 8 p.m.

-------

ALL SHE WROTE

Mitzvah Impossible?

Elicia Brown, Special To The Jewish Week

‘What about an Israeli pen pal?” my daughter Talia asks. She waits expectantly, smiling a wary smile, hoping that this time I won’t wince.  In a quest to fulfill a bat mitzvah requirement, she’s floated idea after idea in recent weeks — from eliminating illegal smoking in Central Park to purchasing projectors for underfunded schools — and I’ve torpedoed them all. Later, I suggest minor adjustments to her proposals, but she’s no longer interested. Not even a bit. 

This is the delicate, awkward dance of mom-tween relationships, I know. Even as I celebrate Talia’s ongoing steps toward independence, I can’t help but wonder at my own role. It is approaching the eve of Talia’s 13th year, and our discussions revolve around a new ritual that is rapidly becoming standard practice for Jewish children entering religious “adulthood.” We are in the midst of trying to design a “mitzvah project” that will underscore the values (and value) of Talia’s Jewish roots.

“There is an old custom of the bar mitzvah boy doing a learning project,” says Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University. “Nowadays, the social justice project essentially replaces that learning project.  In all cases, the bar/bat mitzvah reflects the old anthropologically-familiar idea that one undergoes various ‘ordeals’ prior to being accepted into the clan as an adult.”

The ideal project joins an adolescent’s passion, whether it’s playing violin or soccer, together with one of society’s problems, as in “what issues drive you bananas?”  says Daniel Rothner, who is the founder and director of Areyvut.  Areyvut will help families craft suitable projects in exchange for a small donation. The possibilities are endless, ranging from tutoring children to conducting concerts at hospitals.

I’m thinking that Talia, a baker of growing proficiency, might want to make and deliver hot, homemade challahs to apartment-bound seniors in our Manhattan neighborhood. I’m thinking that my shy child would benefit from volunteer work of any kind. But Talia doesn’t look happy.

“I kind of want to come up with the idea myself,” she tells me politely. Her gentle manner surprises me. She seems concerned about my feelings. “I don’t want it to come from the Internet. I don’t want it to come from you.”

Some synagogues, like ours, welcome almost any initiative, while others provide detailed guidelines.  I like the structure offered by my friend Naomi Wilensky, who is the religious school director of a Reform synagogue in Ithaca, N.Y., and encourages students to devote at least 15-20 hours to their projects.  She says that these endeavors often metamorphose in shape and size. Her oldest daughter, for example, volunteered at an assisted living facility, putting up bulletin boards and the like, but shifted course when she met an elderly lady in search of a young Scrabble partner.

Some projects live on long after the bar or bat mitzvah party’s final hora. Noa Mintz, the daughter of our friends, for example, created an ongoing project, “Do Knitzvah,” with the aid of UJA-Federation’s “Do A Mitzvah, Give A Mitzvah” program. Noa organized a virtual knitting club, using Skype chats to stitch together a community of Manhattan girls with Israeli girls living under the constant threat of terrorist attacks.

I summon Talia to view a YouTtube video of Eric Greenberg Goldy, a student at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, who hosted a bowlathon for his bar mitzvah a few years back and raised thousands of dollars. The sixth annual Strike Out Pediatric Cancer event was held this past December.  “OK, I get the idea,” says Talia. She’s already walking away from the screen.

After all, Talia is the type of girl who at the age of 8 held her first of several lemonade sales. She never considers keeping any portion of the proceeds for herself. This year, after three years of growth and 20 minutes of sheering, without a moment’s reservation, Talia donated her thick blond curls to Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for cancer patients.

Last night, as we dragged ourselves through slushy dark streets after a friend’s bat mitzvah, Talia grew excited. “How about I organize a big fundraiser? We could do tie-dye!” She takes a moment to think, and I hold my breath. I’m getting an idea too. Trust in Talia.

Elicia Brown’s column appears the second week of the month. E-mail her at eliciabrown@hotmail.com.

-------

Enjoy the read, keep warm and Shabbat shalom,

Gary Rosenblatt

P.S. Our website is always there with the latest in breaking news and exclusive videos, blogs, opinion essays, advice columns, and more. Check it out.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/

-------

Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt

Time To Stand Up To Israel's Chief Rabbis

Rabbi Avi Weiss not only diaspora rabbi rejected; second rabbi speaks out - but RCA does not.

Until now, admirers and critics of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the high-profile spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale who has made a career out of rabbinic activism, from Soviet Jewry to championing the cause of women’s participation in Jewish ritual life, have agreed that he enjoys being singled out in the spotlight.

But in recent days, since his rabbinic credentials were called into question by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Rabbi Weiss has insisted that the issue is really not about him. Few, it seems, were listening.

The fact is that though his name was the only one made public several months ago, a number of other American Orthodox rabbis, including Yeshiva University graduates, congregational rabbis of Orthodox Union (OU) synagogues and members of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), have had letters attesting to the Jewishness of couples seeking to be married in Israel rejected by the Chief Rabbinate. In effect, the rabbis were told they were not qualified to determine who among their congregants and constituents was indeed Jewish.

Rabbi Weiss’s name is the only one made public — the others preferred anonymity — and that complicated the situation. That’s because Rabbi Weiss is a lightning rod of sorts. His outspoken views and actions in regard to women’s ordination and his brand of Open Orthodoxy at the yeshiva he founded, have made him a controversial figure within the RCA, where some colleagues are urging the leadership to come to his defense and others call for his dismissal.

Now another North American Orthodox rabbi with none of controversial baggage of Rabbi Weiss has come forward and expressed indignation that he, too, was found to be unacceptable to the Chief Rabbinate for the purpose of verifying that a young couple he knows well is indeed Jewish.

“I’m outraged that I would be disqualified,” Rabbi Scot Berman told me this week. He received his ordination from the Hebrew Theological College (known as “Skokie yeshiva”) in Chicago and has had a three-decade history as a Jewish educator in Orthodox schools.

Rabbi Berman has been a principal and administrator at several Orthodox day schools, including the Rabbi David Silver Academy in Harrisburg, PA, the Ida Crown Academy in Chicago, the Kushner Academy in Livingston, NJ, and the Yeshivat Ohr Chaim Bnei Akiva school in Toronto, where he now lives.

The Chief Rabbinate said he lacked the tools and skills of a congregational rabbi.

Their decision “is indicative of the Chief Rabbinate’s lack of understanding of the Jewish community in North America,” said Rabbi Berman. “What tools do shul rabbis have more than school principals who are embedded [in the community] and keenly aware of the constituents with whom they work?”

Rabbi Berman, a member of the RCA, said he shared the news of the Chief Rabbinate’s decision about him with the group’s leaders and colleagues during a meeting in Toronto last month. “No one responded verbally,” he said.

He chose to step up now, in part, so that the community could understand that the issue is about far more than Rabbi Weiss, who is initiating a lawsuit against the Chief Rabbinate for questioning his credibility as an Orthodox rabbi. (Rabbi Berman does not plan to take such action at this time.)

To be clear, this issue is not just about Rabbi Weiss and it’s not just about Orthodox politics. It’s about how Israel’s two new chief rabbis, Ashkenazi David Lau and Sephardic Yitzchak Yosef, elected to 10-year terms this summer amidst hope they would present a more benign face to Jews in Israel and the diaspora, are instead continuing their predecessors’ deeply disturbing trend to monopolize and centralize rabbinic authority, limiting the autonomy of Orthodox rabbis in the diaspora. And that is bad for Jews everywhere, splitting us further apart as a people.

It is high time to speak out against this power grab on the part of the Chief Rabbinate — and the passive response of the RCA, which has more than 1,000 members in the U.S. and Canada. Despite its size, the RCA seems to be cooperating in diminishing its own influence for fear of losing status with a Chief Rabbinate few here or in Israel respect. And with good reason.

Over the last several decades the Chief Rabbinate has become increasingly haredi in practice and narrow in scope, more eager to protect its authority than to take a welcoming attitude toward an Israeli society increasingly distanced from Judaism.

The rabbinate controls personal status in the state — marriage, divorce, burial and conversion. Increasing numbers of Israelis have opted to marry outside the country, often in Cyprus, to avoid an Orthodox ceremony. And while there are hundreds of thousands of Russians with Jewish relatives living in Israel, many of whom may want to become Jewish, the rabbinate has made the process increasingly difficult, insisting on observance of all of the mitzvot to qualify.

Several years ago the previous chief rabbis, Sephardi Shlomo Amar and Ashkenazi Yona Metzger (who was arrested in November for fraud and taking bribes), took control of Orthodox conversions in the U.S. Until then the RCA had its own policy guidelines; its conversions, conducted by rabbis who knew well the men and women with whom they studied and guided during the process, were recognized in Israel. But the Chief Rabbinate moved to limit the role of congregational rabbis and established a policy where only a select number of bet dins could conduct conversions.

The RCA acquiesced rather than insist that its congregational rabbis were best qualified to see the procedure to its fruition.

Some observers say the rabbinical group here lacked confidence to stand up to the Israeli chief rabbis, who could have cut them out of the process altogether. Others say a few RCA insiders enjoyed being the exclusive North American conduits to the Israeli rabbinate.

Last October, Israel Correspondent Michele Chabin broke the story in The Jewish Week about Rabbi Weiss’s letter for a young couple being rejected by the Chief Rabbinate. But weeks earlier, such groups as ITIM, an Israeli organization that helps people navigate the bureaucracy of the Chief Rabbinate and government agencies dealing with marriage, divorce, conversion and burial, and Tzohar, a group of religious Zionist rabbis in Israel dedicated to making weddings and other Jewish rituals more appealing to society, pressed the Chief Rabbinate on its decision-making methods. They wanted the chief rabbis to explain how they determine which of the thousands of Orthodox rabbis in the diaspora are approved for ritual participation and which are not.

The Chief Rabbinate acknowledged that it has no systematic means of determining the credentials of diaspora rabbis so it relies on the advice of a few trusted colleagues, some of whom are members of the RCA. It’s hard to believe that this primitive method, prone to rumor, gossip and personal bias — and administered by only one, mid-level, non-English-speaking official in the Chief Rabbinate office — is employed by an agency of the government of Israel in dealing with thousands of diaspora rabbis for official matters of personal status.

“It’s completely arbitrary,” says Rabbi Seth Farber, the director of ITIM, which has proposed to the Chief Rabbinate that it recognize all members in good standing of Orthodox rabbinic institutions in the diaspora that are at least 10 years old and have at least 50 members.

In that way, he points out, the decision of who is Jewish would be decentralized and made within the various diaspora communities who know their constituents best. “It’s a matter of trust” between the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and the qualified local rabbis, Rabbi Farber says.

“If there is no mutual trust…” He left the sentence unfinished but the message was clear.

Meanwhile, the RCA is trying to tamp down the public attention and work out an agreement that would recognize its members as legitimate in the eyes of the Chief Rabbinate.

But along with other major Orthodox institutions, such as Yeshiva University and the OU, whose rabbinic constituents have been snubbed by the Chief Rabbinate, the RCA has left Rabbi Weiss — and Rabbi Berman — out to dry. Only this week did the organization come out with a brief, painstakingly neutral statement on the controversy. It notes the group’s “cherished” relationship with the Chief Rabbinate and expresses the hope of resolving matters “in ways that will avoid the problems and embarrassments of these past few weeks.”

The real embarrassment, though, is that the RCA cherishes a relationship with a religious body that has veered from its sacred mission, choosing to detach itself from, rather than embrace, the majority of the Jewish people.

Gary@jewishweek.org

-------

International News

The Max Kaiser hat factory showroom in East Berlin owned by Eva Lipman's grandfather shows women modeling hats while her grandfa

Survivors Call On Merkel In Reparations Fight

Chancellor should intercede in East German claims, lawyers say.

Stewart Ain - Staff Writer

Eva Lipman is asking for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s help in getting compensation for her grandfather’s Berlin hat factory that had been seized by the Nazis.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also known as the Claims Conference, was given the compensation – more than $450,000 -- in its capacity as the legal owner of all unclaimed East German property/assets (without which the money would have reverted to Germany). But Lipman said that because she did not know of the factory’s existence until a lawyer told her a few years ago, she should have a right to claim it all. The Claims Conference says that deadline has passed but that she can share in a $68 million Late Applicants Fund that expires Dec. 31.

Lipman’s lawyer, Manhattan attorney David Rowland, said he wrote to Merkel last month asking her to intercede on behalf of a majority of the heirs of Nazi victims who have yet to be compensated for East German property lost to the Nazis.

“We are not sure if you aware that currently Germany has disinherited most of the heirs of Nazi victims from their eastern German property,” he wrote. “The refusal of the Claims Conference to fairly and adequately return this property to the heirs of the victims who lost it is a scandal of the highest level and needs to be remedied immediately.”

Another Manhattan lawyer is also seeking Merkel’s help – this time for the heirs of a Jewish art collector, Max Emden, whose paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. In his Jan. 2 letter, attorney Mel Urbach wrote that the Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated art that were drafted in 1998 by 44 participating countries – including Germany — were not being followed by Germany.

“Recently, the Ministry of Finance has obstructed the claim on ‘technical grounds’ and will not agree to go to [arbitration] to resolve the matter,” Urbach wrote in a letter signed also by his co-counsel, Markus Stoetzel.

The lawyers suggested that the reason for the ministry’s refusal is that it lost an identical case filed by the heirs of another Jewish art collector.

“The result is that Germany now has an inconsistent restitution policy for identical claims,” the men wrote. “We respectfully request your intercession to remedy this discriminatory miscarriage of justice by simply permitting the Limbach Commission [the arbitration panel] to hear the matter and issue a recommendation. Germany has become the moral compass of Europe, and we ask you to intervene to recalibrate the system and allow a consistent practice to be applied through the Limbach Commission.”

In an interview, Urbach said that as many as 20 million works of art were reportedly stolen by the Nazis. In the 15 years since the Washington Principles, the Limbach Commission has been asked to decide only seven cases -- “and two were mine” – while in Austria 300 cases have gone to arbitration.

“The bulk [of the stolen paintings] are in Germany, that is why those figures are so alarming,” Urbach said. “It ought to shock everybody.”

He noted that of the seven cases heard by Limbach, the arbitrators ruled in favor of the claimants six times; the seventh won later in court.

“The Washington Principles have failed,” Urbach insisted. “There is no clarity in Germany. Its museums, the government and private collectors can use the grey area to escape liability.”

Wesley Fisher, director of research for the Claims Conference, said in an e-mail that his organization is “exploring the matter with the German government.”

“Some aspects require changes in German law, and the Bundestag [German parliament] has begun examining in the question,” he added.

In an e-mail interview, Rowland said his appeal to Merkel stems from the refusal of the Claims Conference to “fairly and adequately return” family assets that had been seized by the Nazis. He noted that he has also written to President Barack Obama to ask that he raise the issue in his discussions with Merkel because Germany’s actions violate treaties and are an “unconstitutional taking of property.”

“The German government gave this property to the Claims Conference but should have required them to return it to the families who lost it,” Rowland said. “ In effect, Germany disinherited the heirs of Nazi victims by giving this property to a third party which refuses to return it to the families who lost it. That is doubly outrageous because governments are not supposed to disinherit their citizens from their property, even more so when they are Nazi victims.”

In his letter to Merkel, Rowland pointed out that the Claims Conference received approximately 2.3 billion euros of unclaimed Jewish property and returned about 700 million euros to the victims or their heirs.

“That means that the Claims Conference is keeping approximately 1.6 billion euros of Nazi victims’ property, which it refuses to return to the heirs of Nazi victims who lost this property,” he argued.

The Claims Conference points out that it has spent more than $1.4 billion on lifesaving assistance to Holocaust survivors in need in more than 40 countries. In addition, about $18 million has gone annually for Holocaust-related education, documentation and research. 

“For the past 20 years we have been the primary -- and in many locations the only --provider of vital aid and care for needy Holocaust victims,” said a spokeswoman for the Claims Conference.

This is not the first time Holocaust survivors or their heirs have appealed to Merkel for help. Two years after she assumed office in 2005, David Schaecter, president of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation-USA, wrote asking that she “take a personal responsibility in addressing the pressing challenges” facing tens of thousands of survivors who were living in poverty worldwide. He asked that she create a fund to provide a “dignified level of care and basic services for all Holocaust survivors” and to assign someone to “coordinate” the distribution of those funds.

The request was rejected in a letter signed by Barbara Busch, the person who handled Holocaust compensation. She noted that both the government of Israel and the Claims Conference had long requested such a fund. But she said survivors’ increasing need for care was “not caused by persecution, but by age.” And she noted that Germany gives money to the Claims Conference to care for survivors.

Lipman pointed out that after the war, her father filed a claim with Germany but was told it could not be honored because his father’s property was in what was then Communist East Germany. Germany then gave him a pension. But after German reunification in 1990, Germany failed to notify her father that it had more than $450,000 in compensation waiting for him to claim, she said.

Lipman added that her father died in 1990 and that both of parents had suffered for years from dementia.

“The Claims Conference as far as I am aware made no effort to seek out the whereabouts of genuine claimants who were easily traceable and whose money it was holding,” Lipman said. “I feel that we have been robbed for a second time, but this time by a Jewish charitable organization.”

Judi Hannes of Boynton Beach, Fla., is also seeking to get her inheritance from the Claims Conference. She too said she did not know that her grandmother had been forced by the Nazis in 1938 to sell her multistory apartment building in Berlin.

“I was contacted by a lawyer six years ago and neither my brother nor I knew anything about it,” she said. “It is beyond my wildest imagination that he could find me and the Claims Conference never made an attempt to try.”

The Claims Conference in 1992 announced that the German government had passed legislation to restitute property that had been nationalized by the former East German Communist regime and that real estate claims had to be filed with Germany by the end of the year. The Claims Conference also filed claims with Germany for any and all possible Jewish property to ensure that no Jewish property would revert to Germany. In 1994, it created a Goodwill Fund for those who missed the deadline, giving late claimants 80 percent of the value of their property.

The Goodwill Fund was extended and reopened several times in response to public requests until finally closing in 2004. In 1998 it advertised in 100 newspapers that the fund had been reopened. In 2003, it published the names of 59,198 property owners and asked them to file claims. It published a 193-page list of unclaimed property in 2008, saying it would honor claims in exceptional cases. Last year, it published on its website, www.claimscon.org, both the list of properties and their owners in conjunction with a Late Applicants Fund that set aside $68 million to handle all legitimate outstanding claims. The deadline for applying is Dec. 31, 2014.

Hannes said she was aware of the Claims Conference’s efforts but simply did not believe it pertained to her family. After the lawyer notified her of her grandmother’s apartment building, she said they lost three court cases in Germany seeking compensation.

“I do think the Claims Conference has done some wonderful things, there is no doubt about it,” she said. “But in this particular instance I think they have a moral obligation to surviving children and grandchildren. As long as there are surviving heirs, I believe they have a right to claim their property.”

stewart@jewishweek.org

-------

Food and Wine

Shakshuka is a great comfort food on winter nights, mornings or afternoons. Ronnie Fein

Shakshuka: Always Spicy, And Sure To Be Hot, In 2014

The classic Middle Eastern poached egg stew is trending, say the culinary cognoscenti.

Ronnie Fein - Jewish Week Online Columnist

Shakshuka, the classic Middle Eastern stew of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, will be one of 2014's "hot" dishes. Yahoo says it's a culinary buzzword. Buzzfeed calls it the perfect food, for 26 reasons. And Food & Wine magazine recently offered an Italian version.

Of course, if it’s destined to be the best new thing in the United States, you can bet there will be a multitude of variations from the original, as in the Food & Wine recipe. That’s what we do in this country.

I’ve made this dish so many times I’ve lost count. Each time I try to cook the perfect recipe and each time I think I’ve got it! Until the next time when it’s even better.

Can shakshuka really be very different, one recipe from another? Of course! This is a very forgiving and flexible dish. I’ve made it with fresh tomatoes and canned. And although this Middle Eastern staple is usually pareve, I’ve cooked meat-packed shakshuka using chorizo and dairy versions with feta cheese, shredded Fontina and chunks of mozzarella.

So in that spirit, let’s consider some of the changes we could make. What about adding some cooked white beans or garbanzo beans? Of course. Grilled eggplant, zucchini, spinach or the ubiquitous kale? Yes. Suppose you don’t care for poached eggs? Well, then you could make shakshuka, scrambled. Naturally, the classic seasonings of cumin, zatar and coriander can be changed; tomatoes and peppers go with a wide range of herbs and spices, including basil, thyme, marjoram and oregano.

Shakshuka reminds me of ratatouille with eggs, but even more of the classic Mexican dish huevos rancheros, so recently I cooked "shakshuka rancheros:" use pita for the bread, because it soaks up the juicy vegetables so deliciously, and instead of poaching the eggs in the pan over the cooktop, bake them Huevos Rancheros-style under a layer of grated cheese. Add a shake of z'atar, the beloved Middle Eastern spice, at the end.

Sababa! (As they say in Israel) Impresionante! (In Spanish.)

Until the next version, anyway.

Ronnie Fein is a cookbook author and cooking teacher in Stamford. Her latest book is Hip Kosher. Visit her food blog, Kitchen Vignettes, at www.ronniefein.com and follow on Twitter at @RonnieVFein.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 large garlic clove, finely chopped

1 red bell pepper, deseeded and chopped

1 medium serrano pepper, deseeded and chopped

4 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

8 large eggs

2 tablespoons butter

2 pita breads

1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Recipe Steps:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, bell pepper, Anaheim chili peppers and jalapeño pepper and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the vegetables have softened.

Add the tomatoes, cilantro, cumin, salt and pepper. Turn the heat to low, cover the pan and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes or until the ingredients are soft and sauce-like.

While the sauce is cooking, spread the butter over one side of the pita and place the pita in a large baking pan. When the sauce is done, spoon it over the bread.

Crack the eggs into a small bowl one at a time then transfer each one next to the other on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle the cheese on top. Place the baking pan in the oven and cook for 15-18 minutes or until the eggs are cooked but with slightly runny yolks and the cheese is hot and bubbly.

For a crispier looking top, place the pan under the broiler for a minute or so. Makes 4 servings.

-------

Travel

As an upcoming European Capital of Culture, Riga, Latvia is a choice travel destination this year for those interested in Jewish

My Five Must-See Destinations For 2014

Hilary Larson - Travel Writer

Some years, given a world full of tempting travel choices, I have a tough time honing in on the top five or so destinations. Not this year. 2014 looks to be an exciting year of Jewish rebirth and rediscovery for places as far afield as Latvia, Jamaica and Poland. Meanwhile, as Jewish life continues to coalesce and flourish in the big New World cities, L.A. and Sao Paulo offer some clear advantages this year. These are the places I’m most excited to explore in 2014 – and here’s why:

1. Warsaw, Poland: Because seven decades after the Holocaust wiped out a thousand-year Jewish history, Poland has its first national Jewish Museum – and a tentative burgeoning of Polish-Jewish culture. The Museum of the History of Polish Jews opened in 2013 as a cultural center, with a program of concerts, films, lectures and temporary installations.

This coming fall, the core exhibition – supervised by a U.S.-led, international team of historians and showcasing the complex history of Poland’s Jews – will premiere in a 43,000-square-foot gallery. The award-winning building design is intended as a symbol of the new face of Warsaw, a city completely rebuilt after World War II that is working hard to shed its stodgy, less-than-tolerant image in favor of an inclusive cosmopolitanism. That spirit – and the renaissance of Warsaw Jewry – will be on display in May, when the Jewish Center on Twarda Street invites all of Warsaw to its annual “Open Twarda Street” festival. More than 10,000 attended for the fifth edition last year, celebrating Jewish culture and Warsaw’s new diversity.

2. Los Angeles: Because a crop of blockbuster exhibitions highlights this city’s ever-greater Jewish cultural presence. Few cities outside Israel can boast such a rich array of Jewish activity, testament not only to a dynamic community but also to L.A.’s status as entertainment capital of the world. Last week, for example, I could have chosen from Yiddish nostalgia cabaret, Israeli modern dance, Jewish stand-up comedy, Jewish-authored theater and a celebrated Hebrew choir.

But this winter offers the special opportunity to take in several monumental exhibitions, which I plan to do while I’m in L.A. this month. The venerable Skirball Cultural Center recently unveiled the retrospective, “Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie,” to coincide with the completion of its Safdie-designed campus. Having arrived from the National Gallery of Canada, another Safdie building, the show (through March) explores the evolution of the celebrated Israeli-Canadian architect’s career.

Nearby at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, “Anne” is a new permanent, multimedia exhibition about Anne Frank that is getting a lot of buzz; with a facsimile of her diary, a replica of her living space and an hour-long film, the exhibit is billed as the most comprehensive look at the teenager’s life and legacy outside of Amsterdam.

3. Sao Paulo later this year: Because once the World Cup is over, airfares and hotel rates will plummet across Brazil – but visitors will benefit from years of improvements in infrastructure, safety and tourist amenities. For Jewish life, Sao Paulo remains unequaled in Latin America: it is home to the continent’s largest synagogue (700 regularly come to Friday services), a massive Hebrew cultural center with more than 25,000 members and other hyperboles befitting its status as a global megacity. Sao Paulo may lack the seaside charm of Rio and the seductive, laid-back rhythms of more touristic cities – Recife, Florianopolis – but for 21st-century urbanity, humming Jewish life and advantageous timing, few places can match it during this year’s South American spring.

4. Riga, Latvia: Because while Lithuania is the ancestral home of so many Ashkenazim and Estonia has grabbed attention for its high-tech economy, it’s Latvia’s turn in the Baltic spotlight. This year, Latvia is the latest nation to join the euro zone, and its lovely waterfront capital, Riga, is a 2014 European Capital of Culture.

Riga has an 800-year Jewish heritage of its own – the modern community numbers 15,000 – as well as a past rich with Viking, Hanseatic and Russian influences, all of which are visible in the UNESCO-designated historic center. Latvians are eager to show off what makes their country unique; with the “Riga 2014” calendar of events, travelers will have plenty to enjoy, from an amber exhibit at the Natural History Museum to classical concerts, open-air parties, light shows and markets around town.

5. Jamaica: Because you can be part of the rediscovery of a unique Caribbean-Jewish heritage. I recently wrote about how the Jews of Jamaica are working to revive their centuries-old, multi-ethnic community with the first full-time rabbi in decades and the restoration of numerous Jewish historical sites, from Portuguese cemeteries to colonial merchants’ homes.

Most ambitious of all, an effort has been launched to promote Jewish tourism in Jamaica for the first time. Jewish visitors are invited to go beyond the sun-soaked hedonism of Montego Bay, touring Jewish sights in the colonial port of Falmouth and exploring the vibrant capital of Kingston – a little-visited city that is home to the synagogue and most of the island’s Jews. If you’re looking for a new Jewish twist on the Caribbean this winter, Jamaica is a solid bet. 

editor@jewishweek.org

-------

The Jewish Week

1501 Broadway, Suite 505

New York, NY 10036 United States

-------