New York, New York, United States - The New York Jewish Week . . .Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 19 March 2014

New York, New York, United States - The New York Jewish Week . . .Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Dear Reader,
Since the shocking arrest of Met Council exec Willie Rapfogel last summer, his successor has been quietly working to restore the Jewish poverty organization's reputation and good works. Assistant Managing Editor Adam Dickter talks to CEO David Frankel about the challenges.
NEW YORK
New Met Council Head Steering Group Away From Politics
In first interview since crippling scandal, David Frankel stressing efficiency as poverty agency gears up for fundraising.
Adam Dickter
Assistant Managing Editor
The new CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty says he is placing less emphasis on building cozy relationships with politicians, and more on running efficient programs, as he works to right the ship at the scandal-plagued agency.
In his first interview since taking the helm last summer, David Frankel told The Jewish Week he knows from his experience in government that doing programs well is the best way to gain support from the city and state.
“I’m not naïve enough to think relationships aren’t important,” said Frankel, who was the New York City finance commissioner when he took the Met Council job. “However I just came from government, so I know that it is much more focused on quality and efficiency of the services that you deliver than whose name is on the [office] door.”
“If we see that 10 people can be fed for a thousand dollars a year, I want to know why we’re not feeding 12 people,” he said. “We want to provide all our services in an efficient yet compassionate way.”
Frankel’s predecessor, William Rapfogel, was fired last August after an internal probe turned up overpayments to an insurance company, which investigators and prosecutors said were used, in part, to bundle donations to city and state elected officials. Met Council relies heavily on social service grants from legislators to fund its programs for the city’s poor. (While founded to address Jewish poverty, all programs are nonsectarian.)
Rapfogel, who faces charges of money laundering, grand larceny and tax fraud as one of four people charged in the scheme, vastly expanded the scope and scale of Met Council’s programs during his 20-year tenure, increasing housing from 75 to 2,000 units as well as crisis intervention and food distribution capabilities, while building a $9 million endowment from scratch.
Positioning himself as a top political player who doled out public recognition to candidates and elected officials, private and commercial donors for their help to Met Council was a large component of his success.
A key ally to Met Council is Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who employs Rapfogel’s wife, Judy, as chief of staff, and successive City Council speakers have also been on Willie Rapfogel’s speed dial.
Frankel spoke to The Jewish Week in his Lower Manhattan office, where, other than family photos, his most prominent personal effect is a yellow metal boot for obstructing cars, a memento from his time at the finance department, which collects the city’s parking fines. The sparse decoration was in stark contrast to the dozens of photos of Rapfogel with elected officials, from city councilmen to U.S. presidents, that hung there until August.
Different Styles
‘David is not as political as Willie,” said George Arzt, a New York-based political and public relations consultant who knows Met Council well. “Willie was much more of a networker than David is, but ... people will want to meet him and help the organization. It’s important to have a person there who has the reputation of watching the buck.”
Frankel said he never met Rapfogel, before or after the scandal, but “heard his name.”
In contrast to Rapfogel (who declined to comment for this article) Frankel — who has worked in both the public and private sector — was anything but a Jewish organizational insider when he was hired weeks after the scandal in August.
In fact, Frankel said he had been unaware of the extent of Jewish poverty in the city, estimated at about one quarter of people living within 250 percent of the federal poverty line, or $22,000 a year for a family of four. That’s about 500,000 people.
“It was astonishing what I have discovered since I got here,” said Frankel, referring to the extent of programs and level of need. “It’s been a terrific privilege, frankly, to try and serve that community.”
As part of an agreement reached in December, Met Council is committed to paying about $1.2 million in restitution to the city and state for the misappropriated funds tied to Rapfogel and three others implicated in the scheme.
Cooperating with investigators and publicly apologizing for unspecified “mistakes,” Rapfogel has paid back around $800,000 to Met Council from a retirement fund, and more money may be coming from the office of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who have collected funds from Rapfogel and the other defendants.
Civil action by Met Council related to the fraud in the future is under consideration, Frankel said, though he would not specify details.
A first step toward regaining Met Council’s political luster will be its annual Legislative Breakfast, drawing officials from all levels of government. The first post-scandal breakfast is slated for June 1, as always preceding the Celebrate Israel Parade in Manhattan. Extensive participation would be a strong step forward after last year, when some candidates returned funds linked to Century Coverage, Met Council’s insurer and, according to investigators, facilitator of the overpayment scheme.
Taking the helm on Aug. 18, Frankel’s first priority was to regain the confidence of City Hall.
But he also had to reassure the agency’s 253 employees.
“People were fearful about the future of the organization, our ability to deliver services and their jobs,” Frankel recalled.
After funds were unfrozen by the state comptroller, state attorney general and the mayor’s Office of Contracts, “I could give people assurances that we would be around for a long time. But before that, I was honest with them about our challenges.”
While staff struggled to keep programs operational, Frankel’s focus was to “understand the financial picture, the cash flow. We were determined we were going to keep all our services despite the fact that much of our funding had stopped.” Thanks to emergency donations, most programs were maintained but in the first four months some staff in career services had to be dismissed.
The Fun Begins
For now, Frankel said he is beginning to pull back from his work negotiating with the city and state to focus more fully on day-to-day operations. “Now we begin the fun part,” he said. “How we can help people.”
That means resuming wide-scale fundraising, which was suspended after the scandal.
“Until we resolved our issues with the city and state we could not do our own fundraising, other than to talk to our board and a very few select donors,” as well as UJA-Federation, said Frankel.
The first post-scandal fundraiser will be the third annual $500-a-ticket Food for Life reception April 3 at the Pierre Hotel, raising money to expand food pantries and similar services as Passover approaches. The fundraising is important because even with taxpayer funds authorized it still takes weeks or even months for checks to clear the vast bureaucracy.
Asked if he anticipated Met Council being able to soon attain the same funding levels for emergency food relief, crisis intervention, senior housing and other programs as before the scandal, Frankel said, “I anticipate being able to do much more. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. ... People recognize the good work we have done but also need to regain confidence in the organization. We are taking all those steps [required by the city and state] and frankly, more than anybody [else] would take to do that. The board has been tremendous in this and every other regard. … I don’t know how five or six of them ever did their day jobs in the first two or three months I was here.”
Arzt said that as a victim of fraud rather than perpetrator, Met Council could easily move past the scandal since it has severed ties with anyone connected to the misappropriation of funds. “They just have to run a good operation and make sure the practices of the past have been erased completely,” he said. “It’s important that [the Legislative Breakfast] be well attended, and it will be.”
Met Council’s political stamina will also be tested in the current city budget process. City Council members have traditionally channeled large sums to Met Council and its subsidiary agencies in Jewish neighborhoods through discretionary funds, a process known as member-item funding that is under fire because of recent unrelated corruption cases.
Keeping Tabs On Funding
Early indications are that City Council members are sympathetic, and members elected last year are aware of the agency’s work because many worked as staff to previous Council members, Frankel said, though he says he has no inside information about the future of member items. “I read what you read,” he said.
In reforming the discretionary funding process the City Council could choose to apportion money based on the needs of the district, or through a participatory process in which district residents vote on the neediest causes.
But Frankel said basing funds only on census demographics could result in mistakes because numbers don’t always give a full picture.
The Columbia Law School and Tufts University graduate came to Met Council with extensive management experience, having served as managing director at Morgan Stanley, head of global operations for AIG Trading Group, deputy commissioner of New York’s Department of Housing and Preservation and as special counsel to the Commissioner for the Department of Correction But he said fundraising is something he has to learn on the job.
“I’ve never had a job where fundraising was a big part,” he said. “I’ve been on the other side of talking to government, so now I’m on the side [of looking for money] as opposed to people coming to us.”
But he cautioned against putting too much focus on the management struggles rather than on Met Council’s clientele.
“I was at our Brooklyn food warehouse [for a press event] and a reporter asked me how do I feel about all this,” he said. “It’s not about us, but allowing [clients] to have dignity and feel their lives are their own. A poverty organization’s greatest achievement would be not being needed anymore.”

adam@jewishweek.org
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Even before the opening of the blockbuster film about the Biblical Noah story, there has been a flood of controversy about its interpretation. Associate Editor Jonathan Mark has the story.
NATIONAL
Noah Comes To The Big Screen With Help From A Dallas Rabbi
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
When his baby was born, some friends came by with Noah’s ark decorations — animals two-by-two, nice man with fluffy beard, a rounded boat, not too big, seemingly as jolly as Yellow Submarine. And the father, Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis, said thanks, but “I’m thinking, this is a horrible, horrible story!”
An apocalyptic deluge killing everything but the fish and eight people; rampant sexual exploitation; widespread robbery; the descent of Nefillim (fallen angels, wild giants); distortions of nature; strange animals behaving strangely; the Sons of Elokim (sons of God, princes or judges) “who would take for themselves wives from whomever they chose,” whether married women, other men, even animals, says Rashi; 10 generations after Adam and, once again, the waters and darkness were over the face of the deep.
That is the story of Noah, even before Noah and his family and hundreds of beasts, birds and reptiles shared an ark for more than a year (long after the 40 days and nights of rain), with the one surviving giant, the famous Og, king of the Bashan, hanging on to ark’s roof, fed by Noah. And then there was the unfortunate episode of Noah getting drunk and humiliated after the flood. “Hardly a cute children’s story, is it?” asks Rabbi Dennis.
About the only serene moment in the story is when the dove returns to the ark with an olive branch, a symbol of peace even thousands of years later.
Around two years ago, Rabbi Dennis, 54, who leads a Reform synagogue in the Dallas suburbs and teaches Jewish studies at the University of North Texas, received a call from Ari Handel, the executive producer of such films as “Pi,” “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler.” Handel was, along with director Darren Aronofsky, co-writing and producing “Noah,” the film coming to theaters next week. As a Manhattan Beach seventh grader, young Aronofsky wrote a poem about Noah, “The rain continued through the night and the cries of screaming men filled the air.”
Now, Paramount was giving him $130 million to tell the story, with Russell Crowe and Emma Watson (and Aronofsky was giving his seventh-grade teacher a walk-on in the movie). Aronofsky has admitted that “Noah” was being written by “two not very religious Jewish guys,” so Handel was calling Rabbi Dennis, author of the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism” (Llewellyn Publications), and a 2007 National Book Award finalist, to give a Jewish sense of the story.
“If you look at the trailer,” says the rabbi, “there’s a moment when Noah strikes the ground with a flaming sword. I spoke to them about Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather, who had a sword inscribed with God’s name. He used that sword to tame demonic spirits that were tormenting humanity.” This was not the angel’s flaming sword that guarded the Garden of Eden, “but they may have fused the two” because the sword in the trailer is flaming.
Rabbi Meir Fund, an Orthodox biblical scholar and spiritual leader of the Flatbush Minyan, said what he would like to see in a film about Noah was less the supernatural but an exploration of the debate regarding Noah being “righteous in his generation.” In other words, whether he was the best of the worst, or all the better for being righteous in such a negative atmosphere?
As for the antediluvian mysteries, Rabbi Fund says, “The further we go back in time, the less we can expect things to be the way they are today.” How does Rabbi Fund understand the Nefillim, the idea of giants or fallen angels? “I really don’t, and I’m prepared to not understand.” After all, before the flood, a snake could talk to Eve and nature was so different that rainbows didn’t exist. Rabbi Fund concludes that humility is the only response. “As Shlomo [Carlebach] would always say, ‘What do we really know?’”
Aronofsky had other interests. He told The New Yorker, “There is a huge statement in the film, a strong message about the coming flood from global warming.” Aronofsky told other entertainment reporters: “It’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now, for what’s going on on this planet. ... Noah was the first environmentalist.”
The movie has run into heavy opposition from religious focus groups for straying too far from the text. Several Islamic countries are banning the film. Egypt’s Sunni institute Al-Azhar announced “the prohibition of the upcoming film about Allah’s messenger Noah,” a film that will antagonize the “feelings of the faithful.”
After seeing an undated script, Brian Godawa, a screenwriter and the author of a novel, “Noah Primeval,” articulated the Christian critique on Breitbart.com. The film, he writes, presents us with “an anachronistic doomsday scenario of ancient global warming. How Neolithic man was able to” destroy the environment “without the ‘evil’ carbon emissions of modern industrial revolution is not explained.” Postmodernists “changing the meaning of texts to suit their agenda … is manipulative narcissistic nonsense. ... Was Noah the first environmentalist and animal rights activist? Was the moral failure of man in Genesis, disrespect for the environment? Was that why God completely destroyed the environment and killed all of the animals of the land except those on the ark? Of course not.”
Further critiques from the National Religious Broadcasters led Paramount to add an advisory to the film, that was only “inspired” by Noah, and “artistic license has been taken. ... The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”
Ironically, the Noah story contains the Bible’s most explicit biblical promise against climate change: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” Which is not to say that man could now be callous to nature. The Talmud notes that Noah did not throw the ark’s waste into the water outside the ark but managed it within the lowest of the ark’s three decks.
Artistic license is unavoidable when it comes to telling Noah’s story. There is not a single biblical quote attributed to Noah about the flood, nothing about his feelings about saying goodbye to anyone. The Bible does say that the flood was delayed seven days, a mourning period for Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather. It is said, God decides to “blot out man,” though Noah “found grace” in God’s eyes.
If you want to see Aronofsky’s original vision, says Rabbi Dennis, “You need to see his French comic book of Noah [available on Amazon]. It’s a storyboard for a movie.” There is a reference, said the rabbi, to six-winged angels in Isaiah. The film refers to the Tzohar, the gemstone given by an angel to Adam, and used by Noah for illumination in the ark. Watchers (thought to be the Fallen Angels), is found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, written by Noah’s great-grandfather.
Rabbi Dennis adds, “In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there’s a version of a book called the Book of Giants. In each one of these books there is more elaborate narrative about who the Fallen Angels were, what they did, and how they corrupted the earth. It’s so dualistic that it became problematic for the rabbis. Judaism developed a theology of angels in which angels have no free will. If angels have no free will, angels can’t rebel.”
The tradition, says Rabbi Dennis, negatively compares Noah to Abraham and to Moses. However, the kabbalistic text “Shaar HaGilgulim” teaches that Moses is the “gilgul” and “tikkun,” the “reincarnation” and “fixing,” of Noah. Both were given a covenant. Both were saved by floating on water. (In Hebrew, the word for “ark” and Moses’ “basket” are the same, “teva.”) The time of the flood is echoed at Sinai where it was raining at the time of the Revelation, among another half-dozen similarities.
Noah lived long enough to share a world with Abraham for 58 years. In the film, Noah is asked by his daughter-in-law, “Is this end of everything?” “The beginning,” says Noah. “The beginning of everything.”

Jonathan@jewishweek.org
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And my column questions the wisdom of concentrating so much communal funding on engaging Jewish Millennials at the expense of the rest of us.
GARY ROSENBLATT
Move Over, Millennials
Engaging young adults is important, but what about everyone else?
Gary Rosenblatt
Financial advisers agree that we should diversify our investments. “Spread the money around,” we’re told, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Yet when it comes to investing in the Jewish future, our largest sources of wealth are doing the opposite of what they preach.
Philanthropists, foundations and federations are so focused on engaging young Jews, fearful that we’ll lose them in terms of Jewish affiliation, marriage and identity, that it is rare to find support for any project geared toward reaching Jews over 40.
Several years ago a Jewish Funders Network study asked nearly 200 funders and foundations to describe the primary target of their giving. Of the 21 categories listed on the survey, only one — social services for the elderly — referred to a specific age cohort older than young adults.
Isn’t it possible that in our zeal to attract one significant group, we’re making a mistake by overlooking the others?
At conferences and meetings in the Jewish community, locally and around the country, I find that whatever the political viewpoint or religious denomination of the sponsors, the most urgent question posed about sustaining American Jewish life in the 21st century is: How can we reach, connect to, captivate and hold our youth — particularly the Millennials (defined as those reaching young adulthood around the year 2000) — before it’s too late?
It’s a vital question, and believe me, I understand the concern. It shouldn’t have taken the recent Pew study on American Jewish identity to alert us to the problem. Any number of surveys of American Jewry of late, consistent with the results of studies of American society in general, reflect a move away from religious observance (while those who keep the faith increasingly are drawn to fundamentalism). There is also a move away from a sense of the community and the collective, and a strong shift toward individualism. In addition, Millennials are marrying later and having fewer children.
For the country as a whole, it’s a trend. For the Jewish community, it’s a potential disaster.
Judaism is all about Clal Yisrael, Jewish peoplehood. We need 10 to pray and we need a sense of collective responsibility to connect us as a people around the world. For thousands of years it has been our religion and our love of Israel — the land, the people, the history and the aspiration of a messianic future — that united us. Now those threads that bind us together are fraying, and many in this generation are averse to joining — whether it’s a synagogue or organization. And they’re finding Israel more confusing, if not embarrassing, than inspiring.
So yes, I praise the efforts to double down and explore creative ways to reach young Jews where they’re at, and I have seen the success of our boldest experiment, Birthright Israel, in bringing hundreds of thousands of 18- to 26-year-olds to experience Israel first-hand.
But too little creative funding is aimed at the interests and needs of the rest of us.
Learning From The Mormons
Consider for a moment the approach and success of the Mormon Church. On the surface, American Mormons and Jews have much in common. Each has about the same small percentage of the American population, with higher levels of education and income than most other religious groups. And we have many shared values, especially in terms of family and education. But while the Jewish birthrate is declining, the Mormons’ rate is growing rapidly, with a strong emphasis on service to the church (its leadership is lay, not professional), strong intergenerational bonds, early marriage and large families.
What’s more, they have a remarkable 85 percent in-marriage rate, and their young adults have the highest participation in church life of any group.
So what are the Mormons doing that we can learn from?
Michelle Shain, a research associate in modern Jewish studies at Brandeis University who is working on a doctoral dissertation on fertility and American Jews, asked herself that question. One observation she offered is that Mormon leaders put special emphasis on engaging their teens, starting in junior high school, in serious conversations about church beliefs and goals, including sexual ethics and family values. Many of their youth aspire to serve for two years, without pay, at age 18 (for men) and 19 (for women), missionizing around the world and doing service projects for the poor.
Surely part of the Mormons’ success in creating high-level, engaging opportunities for education, humanitarian service and social interaction for young men and women in their 20s stems from the groundwork laid in engaging them in their early and mid-teens. That’s precisely the age — after bar and bat mitzvah — when Jewish boys and girls disappear from the communal map.
Starting Jewish engagement programs during the millennial years “is getting a late start,” observes Yossi Prager, executive director for North America of the Avi Chai Foundation, which focuses its efforts on Jewish day school and summer camp experiences.
Neglecting The Boomers
While early to mid-teen years is one age range we should be focusing on, another, at the upper end, is pre- and post-retirement. Many of those are the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), our biggest cohort.
David Elcott and Stuart Himmelfarb direct a nonprofit project called B3, “dedicated to engaging — or re-engaging —baby boomers in Jewish life,” according to their website. But they have had a difficult time raising interest or support for their work, with funders saying the effort is of value, and even ahead of the curve, but not as important as “saving” the Millennials.
“That response leaves me perplexed,” says Elcott, who is Taub professor of public service and leadership at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. He believes boomers should be cultivated not only for their financial support in sustaining Jewish causes but because, as role models for their children and grandchildren, their affiliation with the community is vital. Focusing on boomers is “such an obvious investment,” he says.
B3’s findings indicate that Jews contemplating retirement or already retired would prefer doing volunteer work in the Jewish community. But two-thirds say they will help where they are most needed and where the efforts are most meaningful. They are finding programs at the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps that meet their interests.
The relative lack of communal interest in these boomers “takes us down a negative path,” Elcott said, asserting that if Jewish retirees don’t feel wanted, they will do their volunteer service outside our community. He and Himmelfarb, who is the president of The Jewish Week’s board of directors, are completing a survey that indicates boomers are as episodic in their Jewish paths and affiliations as Millennials. If funders are committed to reaching people exploring their options about Jewish identity and personal life, “that exact rationale applies to boomers,” said Himmelfarb. Boomers are staying healthy and living longer, and when considering retirement, “they’re thinking, ‘What am I going to do for the next 20 years?’” he noted. “That’s why we started B3, to engage these people, connect generations and strengthen Jewish community.”
In this society of endless options, there is no one stage of life when Jews make the decisions that generations ago were practically made for them — from career pursuits to marriage choices to being part of the Jewish community.
Let’s keep on reaching out out to the Millennials. But let’s do the same for Jews younger and older than that celebrated cohort.  There are just too few of us to discount the majority of American Jews.
Gary@jewishweek.org
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Also this week, Israel Correspondent Josh Mitnick on the newest obstacle to Mideast peace; Culture Editor on the new novel by Tov Mirvis, centered on New York City; and Israel as a foodie destination.
ISRAEL NEWS
In Mideast Peace Talks, A New Obstacle
Netanyahu’s requirement that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state draws controversy in Israel and U.S.
Joshua Mitnick
Israel Correspondent
Tel Aviv — Israeli-Palestinian peace talks appeared at the edge of a breakdown after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House this week, but this time, the deal-breaking disputes don’t seem to be the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees, or recognition of the 1967 Green Line as in the past.
Instead, a new obstacle has emerged: Israel’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state — something that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said lies at the foundation of any Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. But Abbas remains a stubborn holdout on the demand, saying on Monday that the Palestinians have already recognized Israel and that’s sufficient.
Even the U.S. has struggled to strike a consistent message on the issue: several weeks ago peace envoy Martin Indyk told U.S. Jewish leaders that Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state would be part of the “framework” peace document that the U.S. is trying to get both sides to go along with. But last week it seemed that the U.S. might be shifting its position on the Jewish state demand, with Secretary of State John Kerry telling the House Foreign Relations Committee that Mr. Netanyahu’s repeated focus on the issue is a “mistake” and that the Palestinians had conferred recognition already, annoying many in Israel.
Kerry was referring to remarks made by former Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat, who was documented saying on camera that the PLO in a 1988 resolution passed by its legislative body recognized a Jewish state already.
On Tuesday, Alan Baker, the director of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative think tank, assailed Kerry’s recent remarks, saying that the U.S. at the time rejected Arafat’s remarks as insufficient to constitute recognition of Israel. He said Kerry gave legitimacy to the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
“The Palestinians are simply trying to mislead the international community,” said Baker, a former Israeli ambassador and a former peace negotiator. “What they claim they said was rejected by the American administration. The fact that the Kerry has the gall to say this is a mistake by Israel is the ultimate insult that someone who pretends to be an honest broker [can] give to one side. The fact that Kerry is buying into this manipulation, this is what disturbs me.”
Though mutual recognition has always been a sticking point in the talks, Netanyahu is the first to seemingly front-load the negotiations with the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s Jewish character — saying that will prove once and for all the sincerity of the Arab world’s acceptance of Israel’s existence.
What’s more, Netanyahu has been criticized at home as well for insisting on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Political leaders on the left have said that Israel had never made this a point of contention in the talks before, and that Israel doesn’t need the Palestinians to recognize its character. They also argue that Israel’s character is enshrined in the 1947 UN Partition plan calling for a Jewish state. 
Abbas several weeks ago told Israeli students and youth leaders in a meeting at his headquarters in Ramallah that he doesn’t plan to drown Israel with refugees, but he refused to budge on questions of the Jewish state or even recognition of a Jewish people. He said that defining Israel’s character was not for him to do.
On Tuesday Nabil Shaath, a senior negotiator, signaled some possible Palestinian concessions on Jewish state recognition — at the end of the process.
“This idea, which comes as a surprise to us, has never been brought up before,” Shaath told Israel Radio. “It comes at a time when none of the issues have been resolved — the issue of refugees, the issue of Jerusalem. Had this come at the end, after having resolved all of these issues, it would have become an issue we could have resolved by simply asking the practical question: What does it mean? If we get the right answers, it could have been resolved then.”
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the Palestinians are being disingenuous on the issue. “There should be this recognition,” he said. “The question is not why Bibi is demanding it, but why Abbas is refusing to say the words. They have elevated the issue by their refusal to simply say it now or before.”
Amid the sense of crisis in the talks, Israel Radio quoted senior Israeli officials threatening to cancel the release of a final batch of Palestinian prisoners. The four-phased release of some 106 convicts — many of them imprisoned for murdering Israelis in acts of terrorism — was part of a goodwill gesture by Israel to give a boost to the talks.
“I don’t think it is for outsiders to tell Israel when to release prisoners in this context,” said David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. “It is up to Israel to say the peace process is moving along and it will honor its commitment or, sadly, that it is not and the Palestinians are not upholding their obligations and we have to think twice.”
“The Palestinian demand for Israel to release Israeli Arabs opens a whole other kettle of fish. If the Palestinians can successfully assert their jurisdictional authority over Israeli citizens who happen to be Arab, to us it opens a Pandora’s box.”
Yossi Alpher, a former peace adviser under Ehud Barak, said that the stumbling block of recognition is symptomatic of negotiations that have been mishandled by the U.S. administration.
In the bigger picture, it points to the flaws of the failed Oslo-era paradigm under which Israelis and Palestinians negotiate all issues at once on a comprehensive agreement, Alpher said. Issues of mutual recognition that have to do with each sides “narrative” should be tabled for now, he said, and negotiators should focus on nuts-and-bolts challenges like a West Bank security regime.
“A serious analysis of the successes and failures of Oslo should have prompted Kerry to try for a different model,” Alpher said. “But he just said, ‘I’m going to try harder.’”

Staff writer Stewart Ain contributed to this report.
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BOOKS
Tova Mirvis’ New York Novel
A sense of place — the Upper West Side, that is — runs through ‘Visible City.’
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Mirvis’ new novel offers a window on New York’s “anonymous intimacy,” as the author puts it.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 
Tova Mirvis’ new novel is full of Manhattan moments — when you learn that your neighbor is your best friend’s therapist, or that you can’t help but eavesdrop on a conversation behind you about people you know. It may be a combination of coincidence and close quarters, but lives in this city seem to overlap and intersect repeatedly.
Born in Memphis, Mirvis has the soul of a Southerner, and now, the life of a New Englander with a home in the suburbs of Boston. But she believes that Manhattan’s Upper West Side is really central to who she is. Every time she returns to Manhattan, where she lived for many years in college and the early years of her marriage, she feels most alive.
“When I get out of the train on the Upper West Side, I always have the feeling that this is where I really am meant to be,” she tells The Jewish Week.
Mirvis has that Southern sense that place matters, and “Visible City” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), her new novel, masterfully renders life along upper Broadway and Riverside Park, and inside cafés, pre-war buildings, apartment windows, subways, Central Park and parked cars. She conveys both what is seen and what is just underneath the façade.
In conversation, Mirvis speaks of the “anonymous intimacy” of New York City, when apartment dwellers can look across the way right into other people’s windows and peer into their lives, yet remain strangers on the sidewalks below. The novel opens with the image of a lone woman in the window of an apartment house, pressed against the glass, as though she wants to be seen. And indeed she is noticed by Nina, a young mother, who left her career as a lawyer to care for her children, and who spends many hours looking into that very window while her husband is working late at his law firm. Usually, she sees a middle-aged couple sitting on the couch in silence, but she once caught them in the twirl of a dance. 
“At nine in the evening the windows across the street were like the rows of televisions in an electronics store, all visible at once,” Mirvis writes. As for Nina’s own windows, she never got around to getting shades, and is convinced that no one, in turn, is watching her.
The well-crafted story reveals a tangle of connections between three couples, with all of the characters coming to question choices they’ve made, and realizing how little they know about the people who are thought to be closest to them. Mirvis writes tenderly of love and loneliness, chance encounters and tough decisions. She captures the competitive edge of mothers so devoted to their kids’ enrichment and, also, their own buried feelings of desperation.  With humor, she gets the details right, about shushing between parents and those who prefer quiet in public spaces, and how, as mothers try out the newest theories of parenting, it’s really the kids who are in charge.
“So much of my desire to write fiction stems from an urge to see into other people’s experiences,” she says. Her characters imagine the lives of others, but often don’t see beyond the surface. And looking at others proves to be a way to avoid looking truthfully within.
Nina’s husband the lawyer becomes very interested in the architecture of the city, particularly its hidden treasures. In one scene, he secretly travels to an abandoned subway station, and finds vaulted ceilings and beautiful historic tile, and in that space has the closest thing to a religious epiphany he’s ever had. Mirvis explains that these buried underground spaces become a metaphor in the novel for how, above ground, people also have their own closed-off spaces that are rarely seen by others.
Mirvis plays with light and shadow throughout. Claudia, the former stranger across the street, is a professor whose specialty is stained glass. The windows she loves reflect light and color “as in a continual state of creation,” depending on the time of day. For their full beauty to be evident, stained glass windows need sufficient light cast upon them. In the course of the story, an unknown stained glass window, of New York historical import, is rediscovered.
In Mirvis’ previous novels, “The Ladies Auxiliary” and “The Outside World,” her characters were grappling with issues of Jewish identity, faith, doubt and community. In “Visible City,” one character has left the Orthodoxy of his childhood, but there’s little discussion of religious matters. Yet, this band of Upper West Side therapists, lawyers, academic and activists seems unmistakably Jewish.
“Questions of Jewish belief are not so central to this novel,” Mirvis explains. “But it’s still my Jewish eyes looking out.”
When she was writing her earlier books, she identified as Orthodox, something she no longer does. She remains very involved in the Boston Jewish community and feels connected to the wider Jewish community — and says that she doesn’t have a name yet for her identity.
“Visible City” took about 10 years to complete, much longer than she anticipated. She began writing in the first months that she moved from the Upper West Side to the Boston area, in part out of homesickness for the city, especially the street life. Over those ten years, the mother of three says that she went through a lot in her life, including the breakup of her marriage, and with the novel, “getting lost, getting found.”
“What took so long was really getting inside of the characters,” she says, “so that I could feel sympathetic to all of them. It takes years, like getting to know people. I had to let them go in a certain way, to be who they were going to be. In an earlier draft, I was holding them back.”
When asked whether the novel is autobiographical in any way, she says that while she resembles the young mother biographically, she likes to have her identity sprinkled among several of the characters. There’s also a piece of her in the professor who’s always trying to finish her book.
“I identify with all of them,” she says.
“These last few years have been a time of pain and growth and transformation. My own experience, of grappling with painfulness, made its way into the book. I was trying to articulate what I felt like in those moments and how change is terrifying,” she says. “Everything bleeds into a novel when you are working on it. It’s not the story of my marriage, but a sense of the pain spills over.”
Even before she began this novel, she thought about writing a Southern Jewish family novel, spanning several generations. A sixth-generation Memphian, she’s particularly interested in how stories are passed from one generation to the next. Eventually, she hopes to return to that project, but may write something else first.
Lately, she has also been writing non-fiction essays, including a recent piece about her divorce in The New York Times. She writes to make sense of things, but finds writing non-fiction can be nerve-wracking.
“The freedom of fiction is thrilling. You tell the story you want to tell.”
Tova Mirvis will be reading from “Visible City” on Monday, March 24 at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 2289 Broadway (82nd St.), Manhattan and on Monday, March 31at 7:30 p.m. at Greenlight Bookstores, along with Lana Vapnyar, 686 Fulton St., Brooklyn.
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THE WANDERING JEW
Lauren Rothman
Food and Wine Editor
A Foodie Mission to Israel
JFNA to offer food-centric spring tour.
Israel is hot these days. Over the past few years, the country’s status as a foodie destination has risen precipitously, thanks in no small part to Israeli-born British chef Yotam Ottolenghi and his best-selling cookbook “Jerusalem,” which has elevated the profile of Middle Eastern Jewish food. Last year, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism reported a record 3.5 million visitors, up .5 percent from 2012. No one can say for sure how many of those tourists visit the land of milk and honey for, well, its milk and honey, but Jewish organizations in the U.S. are betting on the strength of those numbers. This year, Israel Experts is offering a special “culinary” Birthright trip, and the Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella organization representing 153 local federations and 300 independent communities, is offering a springtime “Flavors of Israel” foodie mission to the Jewish homeland.
“We’re always trying to find new ways to engage communities,” said Aaron Herman, director of Missions and Development at JFNA. “Food is one of those things that can bond people of different backgrounds, and enhance their current community base. And Israel has so much to offer.”
The nine-day trip begins on April 29 and will make stops at such varied food and drink destinations as a kibbutz chocolate factory; a winery in the Golan Heights; an olive oil orchard; a Safed cheese factory; and a spice farm. And though the trip will certainly call upon many food experts to explain their wares, attendees will also participate in a range of interactive events, such as a “Chopped”-style cooking competition and a beer-drinking contest: talk about hard work.
“The idea of a mission is that participants become ambassadors, people who, when they return home, think about their trip and talk about their trip,” Herman explained. “On a special trip like a food trip, there’s that opportunity to really forge a deeper connection to the land and the people of Israel. Those are the kinds of experiences that create ambassadors,” he said.
Herman said he has noticed a definite increase in Israel’s food profile.
“People are discovering that this is not just a hummus country,” he said. “There’s this rich and high-end type of food experience that you can have if you know where to look.”
“Flavors of Israel” attendees will have ample opportunity to sample the high-end stuff, dining at establishments such as the Carlton Tel Aviv’s Catit restaurant and a spa resort in Rosh Pina. But they’ll also get to taste some of the home-style fare for which Israel is so well known, lunching with a Yemenite home cook and munching on falafel in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Along with an increased knowledge of Israel’s food has come an increased demand for its wines, Herman said.
“It’s not like it was 20 years ago, when no one paid any attention to Israeli wines,” he said. “Now it’s, ‘I want to have Israeli wines—that stuff’s unique.’”
The JFNA trip will allow its participants many sips of the fruit of the vine, with four wine-tasting events scheduled.
Herman said he hoped that through all the noshing and nipping, foodies will find a sense of belonging in the place that produces all the wonderful food and drink featured on the program.
“When you’re doing what you love, you feel something a little bit deeper,” he said. “We want people on the trip to think, ‘I’m really getting into the land of Israel.’”
For more information on JFNA’s “Flavors of Israel” trip and to view a sample itinerary, visit jewishfederations.org.
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Gary Rosenblatt
Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt
Move Over, Millennials
Engaging young adults is important, but what about everyone else?
Financial advisers agree that we should diversify our investments. “Spread the money around,” we’re told, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Yet when it comes to investing in the Jewish future, our largest sources of wealth are doing the opposite of what they preach.
Philanthropists, foundations and federations are so focused on engaging young Jews, fearful that we’ll lose them in terms of Jewish affiliation, marriage and identity, that it is rare to find support for any project geared toward reaching Jews over 40.
Several years ago a Jewish Funders Network study asked nearly 200 funders and foundations to describe the primary target of their giving. Of the 21 categories listed on the survey, only one — social services for the elderly — referred to a specific age cohort older than young adults.
Isn’t it possible that in our zeal to attract one significant group, we’re making a mistake by overlooking the others?
At conferences and meetings in the Jewish community, locally and around the country, I find that whatever the political viewpoint or religious denomination of the sponsors, the most urgent question posed about sustaining American Jewish life in the 21st century is: How can we reach, connect to, captivate and hold our youth — particularly the Millennials (defined as those reaching young adulthood around the year 2000) — before it’s too late?
It’s a vital question, and believe me, I understand the concern. It shouldn’t have taken the recent Pew study on American Jewish identity to alert us to the problem. Any number of surveys of American Jewry of late, consistent with the results of studies of American society in general, reflect a move away from religious observance (while those who keep the faith increasingly are drawn to fundamentalism). There is also a move away from a sense of the community and the collective, and a strong shift toward individualism. In addition, Millennials are marrying later and having fewer children.
For the country as a whole, it’s a trend. For the Jewish community, it’s a potential disaster.
Judaism is all about Clal Yisrael, Jewish peoplehood. We need 10 to pray and we need a sense of collective responsibility to connect us as a people around the world. For thousands of years it has been our religion and our love of Israel — the land, the people, the history and the aspiration of a messianic future — that united us. Now those threads that bind us together are fraying, and many in this generation are averse to joining — whether it’s a synagogue or organization. And they’re finding Israel more confusing, if not embarrassing, than inspiring.
So yes, I praise the efforts to double down and explore creative ways to reach young Jews where they’re at, and I have seen the success of our boldest experiment, Birthright Israel, in bringing hundreds of thousands of 18- to 26-year-olds to experience Israel first-hand.
But too little creative funding is aimed at the interests and needs of the rest of us.
Learning From The Mormons
Consider for a moment the approach and success of the Mormon Church. On the surface, American Mormons and Jews have much in common. Each has about the same small percentage of the American population, with higher levels of education and income than most other religious groups. And we have many shared values, especially in terms of family and education. But while the Jewish birthrate is declining, the Mormons’ rate is growing rapidly, with a strong emphasis on service to the church (its leadership is lay, not professional), strong intergenerational bonds, early marriage and large families.
What’s more, they have a remarkable 85 percent in-marriage rate, and their young adults have the highest participation in church life of any group.
So what are the Mormons doing that we can learn from?
Michelle Shain, a research associate in modern Jewish studies at Brandeis University who is working on a doctoral dissertation on fertility and American Jews, asked herself that question. One observation she offered is that Mormon leaders put special emphasis on engaging their teens, starting in junior high school, in serious conversations about church beliefs and goals, including sexual ethics and family values. Many of their youth aspire to serve for two years, without pay, at age 18 (for men) and 19 (for women), missionizing around the world and doing service projects for the poor.
Surely part of the Mormons’ success in creating high-level, engaging opportunities for education, humanitarian service and social interaction for young men and women in their 20s stems from the groundwork laid in engaging them in their early and mid-teens. That’s precisely the age — after bar and bat mitzvah — when Jewish boys and girls disappear from the communal map.
Starting Jewish engagement programs during the millennial years “is getting a late start,” observes Yossi Prager, executive director for North America of the Avi Chai Foundation, which focuses its efforts on Jewish day school and summer camp experiences.
Neglecting The Boomers
While early to mid-teen years is one age range we should be focusing on, another, at the upper end, is pre- and post-retirement. Many of those are the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), our biggest cohort.
David Elcott and Stuart Himmelfarb direct a nonprofit project called B3, “dedicated to engaging — or re-engaging —baby boomers in Jewish life,” according to their website. But they have had a difficult time raising interest or support for their work, with funders saying the effort is of value, and even ahead of the curve, but not as important as “saving” the Millennials.
“That response leaves me perplexed,” says Elcott, who is Taub professor of public service and leadership at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. He believes boomers should be cultivated not only for their financial support in sustaining Jewish causes but because, as role models for their children and grandchildren, their affiliation with the community is vital. Focusing on boomers is “such an obvious investment,” he says.
B3’s findings indicate that Jews contemplating retirement or already retired would prefer doing volunteer work in the Jewish community. But two-thirds say they will help where they are most needed and where the efforts are most meaningful. They are finding programs at the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps that meet their interests.
The relative lack of communal interest in these boomers “takes us down a negative path,” Elcott said, asserting that if Jewish retirees don’t feel wanted, they will do their volunteer service outside our community. He and Himmelfarb, who is the president of The Jewish Week’s board of directors, are completing a survey that indicates boomers are as episodic in their Jewish paths and affiliations as Millennials. If funders are committed to reaching people exploring their options about Jewish identity and personal life, “that exact rationale applies to boomers,” said Himmelfarb. Boomers are staying healthy and living longer, and when considering retirement, “they’re thinking, ‘What am I going to do for the next 20 years?’” he noted. “That’s why we started B3, to engage these people, connect generations and strengthen Jewish community.”
In this society of endless options, there is no one stage of life when Jews make the decisions that generations ago were practically made for them — from career pursuits to marriage choices to being part of the Jewish community.
Let’s keep on reaching out out to the Millennials. But let’s do the same for Jews younger and older than that celebrated cohort.  There are just too few of us to discount the majority of American Jews.
Gary@jewishweek.org
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New York News
Early childhood director Alana Weinberg, explores a map of Israel with the 4-year-olds at Stein Yeshiva in Yonkers.
For Preschool Teachers, An Israel Immersion
Lesson from Israeli classrooms, where the stress is on 'interdependence.'
Amy Sara Clark - Staff Writer
When Alana Weinberg toured Israeli preschools recently with a group of early childhood educators, she was struck by how differently the classrooms were run.
First there was the student-teacher ratio — high, 12 to 15 kids for every instructor, compared to the 7- or 8-to-1 typical in the U.S.
Then there was the teaching style: community-oriented and student-led.
Take davening, for example: When it came time for prayers, the teacher sat in the circle-time area and waited. “She was just waiting patiently. She waited a good, two, three minutes before a child started singing,” said Weinberg, who directs the early childhood program at Stein Yeshiva in Yonkers.
“By that teacher just waiting for the children, she was being very intentional, so the students would lead,” she added.
The opportunity to exchange ideas with Israeli educators is a core component of the trip Weinberg was on, a 10-day trip organized by the fledgling Jewish Early Childhood Education Leadership Institute, known as JECELI. Part of a 15-month program, the goal of the Israel visit was to enable educators to explore the role of Israel in Jewish life, think about new ways incorporate Israel education into their curriculum and gain new perspectives on Jewish early childhood education.
JECELI participant Allison Steckley, director of Peninsula Temple Shalom, near San Francisco, said she definitely gained new perspectives during the visit. 
“There was such an awesome respect for the children and an unspoken sense of responsibility to take care of one another,” she said.
At one school, for example, one of the kids fell down. But instead of one of the teachers going over to help, they waited.
“Within a minute,” Steckley said, “two of the children came over to him and walked him over to a sink area and gave him a Band-Aid.”
To Lyndall Miller, JECELI’s director, the cooperative atmosphere in the classroom reflects more widespread cultural differences between a country founded by entrepreneurs and one started by kibbutzniks.
“In the U.S. we emphasize the culture of independence, in Israel it’s interdependence,” she said.
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Jewish Theological Seminary launched JECELI together in May 2012. The nondenominational program brings together new and aspiring preschool directors from across the U.S. for mentoring, professional development and community building. Weinberg’s group of 15 is JECELI’s second class of students. A third cohort will begin in May.
The goal of the Israel trip is to deepen participants’ connection to the Promised Land and discover new ways to bring Israel into the curriculum.
“Our view of Israel education is that it’s not something separate from Jewish education,” said Miller. “What we see embodied in Israel is an expression of Jewish life and culture.”
For Jenna Kalkman-Turner, director of Gam Ami in Whitefish Bay, Wis., the Israel Seminar was her first trip to the Jewish Homeland.
“Up to this point most of my experience [of Israel] had been through photographs or hearing stories. To experience it myself, it was overwhelming,” she said. 
Steckley had a similar experience. “Being someone who went to Israel the first time, the connection I was able to make with the history was my own personal Jewish journey,” she said.
Weinstein, on the other hand, came to the program with plenty of experience in Israel. She lived there for a while in high school and for the year before college and visited there many, many times in the summers. But even so, her trip with JECELI completely transformed how she now thinks about bringing Israel into the classroom.
“In our school and in a lot of Orthodox schools we talk about Israel a lot,” she said, “but it’s more about us yearning to be in Israel, and yearning for the Messiah to come, but we don’t really talk about the modern state of Israel.”
Now, she said, “We’re going to try to incorporate Israeli culture and Israeli daily life, so our children to know that there’s this homeland and there’s a really rich history but it’s also a place we can go to now.”
She and her staff have been brainstorming how to incorporate Israel more organically into the curriculum. One idea: place maps, pretend ancient pieces of pottery and other items around the classrooms to pique children’s curiosity.
“We believe that children are capable learners, so that if we provoke their interest they’re going to go deeper into it,” she said.
Another idea: take the unit the classes already do on different types of yarmulkes, but move the context to Israel, to discuss the country’s cultural diversity.
“It’s giving them a sense that Israel is a huge melting pot — that people come from all over with their own sense of history and then they move to Israel and they’re creating a culture there,” she said.
But as deeply moving as the Israel component of the program is, JECELI’s most profound effect could be the relationships that are formed.
“It’s not just the training, it’s also the network of educators that’s developed,” said Dawne Bear Novicoff, who oversees JECELI at the Jim Joseph Foundation, the program’s funder.
The idea that relationships are key to getting people invested in Judaism is on the rise. Last week a study on “JOFEE” programs (Jewish, Outdoors, Food and Environmental Education), which also received funding from the Jim Joseph Foundation, found that “immersive” programs are particularly successful at getting young Jews reengaged with Judaism, in large part because of the deep relationships and communities of peers that are formed.
Such was the case for Weinberg, the Yonkers preschool director. “I came in with blinders on, thinking I’m going to learn about best practices and how to incorporate Judaism in an age-appropriate way. But I didn’t think about the relationships that I would create, which would impact me the most,” she said.
Steckley agreed, saying the community began forming right at orientation.
“Everyone formed instant bonds, which I don’t think I have experienced since Jewish summer camp,” she said. “Now we are constantly calling each other and texting each other. The amount of support I have experienced with these other women — and one man — I think is vital.”
Once the cohorts are in place, JECELI provides a facilitator to keep the community connected, something Weinberg’s group is deeply grateful for.
“I came in thinking it was going to be two years and then it’s going to be over,” she said. “And we’ve all just been awakened in a kind of way and realize this just can’t be it. After the two years it’s not like we’re complete, there’s so much for us to grow and us to do.”
But for the most part, Miller expects the cohorts to be self-sustaining communities. The first class, for example, has a Facebook group, monthly webinars and is planning a retreat in the spring.
“I feel like they’re launched and they know what it feels like being a member of a learning community and the project has given them just enough scaffolding to bring it forward themselves,” Miller said. “That’s what this is about. It’s creating leaders in the field.”
amy.jewishweek@gmail.com 
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Food and Wine
The Galloping Gaul Of Kosher Wine, The Wine From A Little Town Called Hope plus The Top 18 Lists. For these and more, click here.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/special-sections/kosher-wine-guides/kosher-wine-guide
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Travel - Santa Monica, CA
A Jewish tableau decorates the Israel Levin Senior Center on the Venice boardwalk.  Hilary Larson/JW
Beyond Purim, The Party Continues 
Hilary Larson - Travel Writer 
When did Santa Monica, the laid-back hub of Los Angeles’ beach communities, turn into Bourbon Street?
I pondered this as Oggi and I spent an hour and a half inching our rented Nissan along jam-packed beachside lanes that reminded me less of California and more of Manhattan’s 14th Street at rush hour. Thousands of young people — many clad in green on St. Patrick’s Day, others draped in gaudy strings of beads — strolled in leisurely herds along Main Street and Broadway. In some spots, the sidewalks were as jammed with pedestrians as the roads were with cars.
Those spots were usually in the vicinity of bars, where emerald-hued throngs spilled onto the curb, laughter mingling with the foamy scent of Guinness. But the crowds were just as festive, if younger, along 17th and 18th streets, where a steady stream of tiny Esthers and Mordechais showed up for the Purim carnivals at the Santa Monica Synagogue and Chabad of Santa Monica.
St. Patrick’s Day, Purim and (it dawned on me) spring break: Whatever your holiday, Santa Monica is the place to party. And while I admit to feeling less-than-giddy about the traffic — and let’s not even get started on parking — there was no denying that Santa Monica, once the sleepy, staid province of well-to-do retirees, has an increasingly vibrant street life that is both rare and welcome in Los Angeles.
It is also unusually diverse for a city whose ethnic segregation is cemented by a lack of any kind of urban center. L.A. has no Midtown to bring together all walks of life. But on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the glorious Pacific beach — its boardwalk free to all comers — is a close approximation.
From Orthodox Jewish couples to Japanese tourists, Swedish bikers to Armenian hipsters, the boardwalk is a democratic cross-section of modern L.A. Oggi and I strolled under the towering palms, past glittering new hotels and luxury condos, and heard no fewer than a dozen languages. In a town with sparse opportunities for people watching, this is as good as it gets.
Of course, the beach has always been lively. But Santa Monica’s new vigor is most evident in the way its created public spaces have weathered. Over the years, the Third Street Promenade — a resolutely middlebrow collection of mall chains, punctuated by the odd yogurt or panini bar — has evolved from a plastic New Urbanist fantasy to a genuine urban hangout, a cheerful cacophony of street violinists, break-dancers, and flyer-wielding activists exhorting against capitalism.
The success of this corridor is visible in the way its periphery has expanded. Returning after several years’ absence, I noticed a crop of new salad-and-wine bistros on the avenues just off the Promenade, and a dressier, well-heeled evening crowd heading into hotel lounges.
At the Promenade’s southern terminus, the old Frank Gehry-designed mall was replaced several years back with one of those new semi-open-air shopping centers whose upscale offerings — Jonathan Adler, Bloomingdale’s — reflect the increasing affluence of the West Side.
I bought a coffee frozen yogurt at the Forty Carrots inside Bloomingdale’s and headed back down to the water’s edge — this time a little further south, to the bike shops and bungalows of Venice Beach.
Colorful, block-long murals are among the visual quirks that make Venice Beach distinctive, and I always stop to take in the artwork; one block-long mural features gondolas in a California landscape, an ironic tribute to Venice’s European namesake.
But along the oceanfront walk, a giant image of a dreidel on a wall gave me pause. Looking up, I saw more Hebrew letters, and then a folk-art rendering of Chagall’s Jewish violinist. It turned out that this Jewish tableau decorates the building of the Israel Levin Senior Center, where retirement comes with a Pacific sea view.
That’s not the only Jewish presence on the boardwalk. A bit further down, you can usher in Shabbat right on the beach at the Pacific Jewish Center, which holds Friday-night services at its Ocean Front Walk shul.
But on this particular St. Patrick’s Day afternoon, surrounded by crowds of revelers as the sun beat down, Oggi and I began to tire of the endless party. We craved shade and quiet, and we found it on Rose Avenue, just up from the Jewish Center, where a low-key but hip café scene has gradually taken root. Amid the leafy blocks hung with bougainvillea, these casual spots have wide front porches and a relaxed, family-friendly vibe.
They also have the ultimate West Side amenity: easy parking. In L.A., holiday or not, there is no more compelling argument. 
editor@jewishweek.org
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