Missionary Renegade: The New York Jewish Week.... Connection the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The New York Jewish Week.... Connection the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Dear Reader,

A proposal to step up funding for legalizing civil marriages in Israel is expected to be passed by the Jewish Federations of North America soon. My column explores the rationale for it and why it may upset a vocal minority.

GARY ROSENBLATT

JFNA To Promote Civil Marriage

In Israel, federations walk a fine line to support religious freedom without opposing Chief Rabbinate.

Gary Rosenblatt

The Jewish Federations of North America, or JFNA, may soon launch an effort that would include supporting groups in Israel working to limit or end Orthodox control of personal-status issues such as marriage, divorce, conversion and burial, The Jewish Week has learned.

Clearly this is a key, often emotional, issue in this country, where about 85 percent of the American Jewish community is non-Orthodox; some feel they are looked upon as second-class Jews by Jerusalem. But the proposed project, known as iRep — Israel Religious Expressions Platform — while presented as advancing freedom of religious expression, may stir controversy among many observant Jews and those uncomfortable with the notion of diaspora Jewry stepping up its support for critics of Israeli policy, especially through the vehicle of JFNA, its primary consensus organization.

On June 9, iRep is likely to pass a preliminary vote of the board of trustees of JFNA, the umbrella group of North American federations, along with two other proposed projects. The initiative will not be described as an attempt to bring down the Chief Rabbinate, which has become increasingly haredi, and insular, in the last several decades in overseeing issues of personal status. Rather it will be cast in positive terms as promoting individual rights and freedom of choice, with an initial focus on support for civil marriage in Israel.

(At present all marriages in the Jewish state must be religious ceremonies conducted by an Orthodox rabbi. Many Israelis, resentful of that requirement, choose other options, and more than 25 percent of marriages are believed to take place out of the country, primarily in Cyprus. The current Knesset is weighing several pieces of legislation to allow for civil marriage.)

Acceptance of civil marriage is considered “low hanging fruit” on the political-religious vine of personal status issues. Even some Orthodox leaders have spoken positively of it as an alternative for those who cannot marry under traditional halachic requirements. A common example would be a Kohen who is forbidden from marrying a divorced woman.

“Our goal is to build community and connection to the State of Israel,” explained Jerry Silverman, CEO of JFNA, in an interview this week. He said the intention of the iRep project “is not to delegitimize the rabbinate but to create more educational awareness of the different types of religious expression in Israel. We want to have a stronger educational and informational platform there, for Israelis to drive the discussion.”

He noted that JFNA has a long history of involvement in freedom of expression issues in Israel. The most recent was over conversion legislation and efforts to provide equitable space for non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall. The iRep project is seen as particularly important as an educational tool at a time when JFNA and others, through the free Birthright Israel trip, are helping to bring tens of thousands of young people on visits to Israel. The great majority of them have little knowledge of the rabbinate and its responsibilities.

Promoting Collective Giving

The proposal to the trustees will come from the Global Planning Table (GPT), a JFNA committee created several years ago to promote the Jewish federations’ “collective global work and drive collective solutions to important issues within the global Jewish community,” according to its website. In recent years local federations have become increasingly autonomous in deciding how to spend their charitable donations. The GPT is an attempt to reinvigorate the concept of collective giving, especially overseas. Progress to date has been slow, with the committee working against the trend of increased emphasis on local needs and wariness over funneling funds through a central agency.

David Butler, a Washington attorney and chair of the GPT, is upbeat about the group’s recent efforts to “identify and excite the donor base, expand the campaign, increase dollars to support JFNA activities, and work with foundations who share similar interests.”

He said that two “signature initiatives,” defined as involving at least 10 federations pledging to spend, collectively, a minimum of $500,000 annually for three years on them, will be up for an initial vote at the June 9 JFNA meeting.

One is called JQuest and is designed to create an immersive experience for Jews in their 20s and 30s from around the world for a period of two weeks to five months. Modeled in some ways after an American Jewish World Service program, it would take groups out of their locale and have them do social service somewhere else, anywhere where they are needed — the U.S., Israel or another country. It would include a Jewish learning component as well as pre-training and a post-program.

The second project, the Israel Children’s Zone, is based on the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone, and would seek to break the cycle of poverty in specific Israeli communities through a holistic system of education, from early childhood through high school, as well as social service and counseling for families and community-building programs.

Butler said there is much enthusiasm among donors and professionals for both JQuest and the Israel Children’s Zone; the two would start with pilot programs at a cost of under $5 million a year, with the hope that they will grow and expand based on their success.

He acknowledged that iRep, the plan to fund a coalition of Israeli groups working to liberalize personal-status issues under the control of the Chief Rabbinate, is “not a simple matter.” Some advocates are deeply supportive, insisting this is a vital issue in terms of strengthening Jewish identity in the diaspora. Others, including some who agree with its goals, feel it would be a tough sell. The initiative would likely be viewed, according to critics, as inappropriate for JFNA since it would be funding programs seen as attempting to counter Israel’s status quo on matters of religion and personal status.

In practical terms, though, Orthodox Jews, who are most likely to take exception to the initiative, represent a relatively small percentage of major donors to federations.

The Israeli partners in the “freedom-to-marry” coalition include Hiddush (“For Religious Freedom and Equality”), Yisrael Hofshit (“Be Free Israel”), the Masorti (Conservative) movement, the Reform movement, Mavoi Satum (which deals with agunot and divorce issues), and New Israel Fund’s operating arm, Shatil, which advocates social change. A number of additional groups are expected to join in the next few months.

‘A Coalition Of The Willing’

Sensitive to the issues at hand, the GTP has designated iRep a “voluntary project, not a signature project initiative — it’s a coalition of the willing,” according to Butler. He added, though, that a significant number of communities are interested in supporting its modest budget of $2 million a year.

UJA-Federation of New York will support iRep as a means of “helping to strengthen Israel and solidify the essential bonds between world Jewry and Israel,” according to an official there who spoke off the record.

Recognizing the need for a nuanced approach, Butler noted: “We have to be careful not to poke anyone in the eye, but rather to emphasize that this is meant to broaden religious expression in Israel.”

Similarly, JFNA CEO Silverman explained: “We are trying to build bridges of understanding, to create something that is not challenging halachic standards of Orthodox Jewry but at the same time creates opportunities for the non-Orthodox.”

It won’t be easy. In part because the project could put federation professionals in a tight spot, between donors who want to either change — or preserve — a controversial Israeli policy. And on a deeper level the issue exposes the often discussed but little acted-on conundrum of maintaining both a Jewish and democratic state, played out through the lives of Israeli citizens and, by ripple effect, Jews everywhere. In this case the issue is who and how they marry.

Preserving Jewish identity is at the core of our religion and the Zionist cause; equal rights and freedoms are at the heart of our sense of justice. Finding ways to avoid choosing between them is the challenge at hand.

Gary@jewishweek.org

Gary Rosenblatt has been the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week for 20 years and has written more than 1,000 "Between The Lines" columns since 1993. Now a collection of 80 of those columns, ranging from Mideast analysis to childhood remembrances as "the Jewish rabbi's son" in Annapolis, Md., is available. Click here for details.

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How do Russian-speaking Jews here feel about the crisis in Ukraine? It depends who you ask, with outspoken advocates on both sides. Walter Ruby reports.

NEW YORK

Russian-Speaking Jews Here Split On Ukraine

‘Civil War in Little Odessa:’ The community divides over crisis; communal leaders are trying to remain neutral.

Walter Ruby

Special To The Jewish Week

For one day earlier this month, it was as if leafy Asher Lev Park in Brighton Beach had morphed into the still-barricaded and tire-laden Maidan Square in Kiev, ground zero of the Ukrainian independence movement.

A group of about 10 émigrés from Odessa — nearly all of them Jewish — came together in the park to discuss the fraught events back home. They were meeting on May 6, just a few days after 43 people were killed in Odessa in armed clashes between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian demonstrators.

Not surprisingly, things quickly got very heated, and this was even before Ukraine elected a Western-leaning chocolate tycoon as its president.

“The majority in the group, who supported Odessa staying in Ukraine, and the minority, who advocated joining Russia, were cursing each other,” said Alexander Lakhman, a journalist in the Russian-language media here, who had brought the group together.

“They were using terms like ‘traitor,’ ‘spy’ and ‘prostitute.’ It was a little civil war in Little Odessa,” Lakhman said, using the popular nickname for the heavily Russian-speaking neighborhood of Brighton Beach.

Passions are indeed running high in the Russian-speaking Jewish community these days over the interlocking issues of Ukraine’s so-called Maidan Revolution, Russia’s seizure and annexation of Crimea and subsequent efforts of pro-Russian separatists in eastern and southern Ukraine to break away from control of the Kiev government.

On the Brighton Beach boardwalk recently, two friends sharing the same bench, Naum, 77, from Kiev, and Vassily, in his mid-40s, seemed to suggest the fault lines in the community.

“I’m for Ukraine with all my heart and soul,” Naum said. “There was always anti-Semitism in Ukraine and still is, but don’t forget that there are now a number of important Jews in the Ukrainian government, and Right Sector [a Ukrainian nationalist party] is protecting the synagogues in Kiev. Meanwhile, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is behaving like Hitler did in the 1930s, asserting his right to intervene in any country where ethnic Russians live.”

For his part, Vassily countered: “I am frankly afraid of what the Ukrainian nationalists may eventually do to the Jews and am glad Putin has the Jews’ back. I believe that most Russian speakers in New York are pro-Russian, but we also understand that is an unpopular position in America, so we aren’t going to go and march up Fifth Avenue carrying Putin posters.”

Close observers of the Russian-speaking community offer conflicting estimates about where people stand. Most experts say that a solid majority of 60 percent or more favor Ukraine over Russia, while a few report nearly the opposite: that as many as 75 percent of the community favors Russia. Yet everyone agrees that the roiling conflict in the FSU — in which charges of anti-Semitism have played a pronounced role — has deeply engaged and sharply split the city’s Russian-speaking community, which is estimated to be about 65-70 percent Jewish (down from over 80 percent 20 years ago).

In the face of the passionate debate in the Russian-émigré “street,” mirrored and amplified in the Russian-language media, Russian-Jewish community organizations and leaders have tended to try to stay above the fray; they have avoided taking direct positions on the conflict, emphasizing the need for communal unity. How much longer that semblance of unity can hold amid the passions being expressed in Lakhman’s “civil war in Little Odessa” is an open question.

Certainly, political loyalties are scrambled on these issues, with arguments breaking out between old friends and even within married couples. The term “strange bedfellows” has rarely seemed so apt.

For example, Leonid Bard, formerly head of World Without Nazism, a body focused on fighting international anti-Semitism started by Russian billionaire Boris Shpiegel and derided by many as a Kremlin front, now leads the Assembly of World Diasporas; that group is largely supportive of Ukraine in the present crisis, even though Bard says he remains troubled after anti-Semitism flared among some factions in the new Ukrainian regime.

On the other hand, there is Moish Soloway. The media-savvy Russian-Jewish public relations dynamo and venture capitalist infuriated many in the politically conservative Russian-Jewish community by ardently endorsing Barack Obama for president and taking dovish positions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Now, he is one of Moscow’s most outspoken defenders in the Russian-Jewish community here; he has castigated the Obama administration for “meddling in Russia’s backyard” and endorsed the position, being pressed hard by the Russian government, that “Nazis” are playing a key role in the new Ukrainian government.

Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish community affairs at the American Jewish Committee, and the Russian community’s most prominent pollster, has not yet polled attitudes on the Ukraine-Russia crisis. But he says he is convinced that the overall Russian-Jewish community here is 60-70 percent supportive of the Ukrainian position.

According to Kliger, “I start from the fact that the plurality of former Soviet Jews living in New York come from Ukraine, with significant numbers as well from anti-Russian countries like the Baltic States and Georgia. Also, I see much stronger support on Russian-language social media for Ukraine than for Russia.”

But Valery Weinberg, the former publisher of the longtime Russian daily newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo, which closed several years ago, believes that the true split in the community is around “75 percent for Putin.”

Weinberg, who notes that he himself strongly favors the Ukrainian position, said, “The position that so many Russian-speakers are taking disturbs me greatly because it is not what I would call a patriotic American position at a time when Putin is blaming America for everything that has happened in Ukraine.”

Weinberg added, “The people supporting Putin are not the ‘Let My People Go’ crowd of the 1970s and 1980s who came here to escape Soviet anti-Semitism. Rather, these are people who came here after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, many from Moscow and St. Petersburg, where they travel frequently, own apartments or manage businesses. They are savvy professionals; doctors and lawyers and businessmen. They may have lived here 20 years or more, but they still get the bulk of their news straight from Moscow via Russian Channel 1.

“And yes, they prefer Putin to Obama, whom they despise as insufficiently pro-Israel.”

Asked about his position on the conflict, State Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny, who has represented South Brooklyn since 2007, said, “Russian people are proud of Putin’s taking over Crimea, but it is not sustainable economically and against international law.”

Still, Brook-Krasny, acknowledged, “I haven’t really spoken about it in the district.” He added, “I’m still optimistic on U.S.-Russian relations in the long term. The two countries have to work together on a lot of issues, including fighting terrorism. I am hopeful that Putin and his team will ultimately ‘get it’ and choose to be part of the Western world.”

COJECO (the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations), the umbrella body of Russian-Jewish community organizations here, has said nothing publicly on the crisis; the group has chosen instead to focus on upbeat events like sending volunteers to visit aging veterans of World War II in their homes to congratulate them on Victory Day (May 9, marking the military victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany).

Lenny Gusel, founder of RJeneration, a Russian-Jewish young leadership network, said that RJeneration has not scheduled a specific event focused on the Russia-Ukraine issue, but the issue inevitably comes up anyway. “You can’t get Russian-speaking folks together these days without it coming up. What I hear consistently from many people I am close to in our community is that Putin is a totalitarian thug. But the next question is, ‘OK, so what should we do about it? Should we meddle in the struggle between Russia and Ukraine?’”

Gusel said that given the high stakes involved in the conflict for millions, including Jews, in both countries, “It feels almost inappropriate for those of us here to sit around discussing it.”

One venerable New York Russian community organization that is carrying on with business as usual is the Russian American Foundation. It is poised to hold its 12th Annual Russian Heritage Month, a month-long series of cultural events to celebrate the rich diversity of cultural traditions brought here from the various regions of the former Soviet Union. In past years, the Russian Ministry of Culture has cooperated with RAF on many Russian Heritage Month events and exhibits, and the RAF website features a 2012 blurb from the Russian Federation’s consul general in New York, Igor Golubovskiy, praising RAF for making a large contribution “to the preservation and expansion of Russian culture in the United States.”

RAF’s founder and president, Marina Kovalyov, a Jewish Week board member, did not respond to questions asking whether she is cooperating with the Russian Consulate again this year, or if it is appropriate to hold the festival this year at all, given Russia’s attack on Ukraine and strident criticism of the U.S.

According to Lakhman, “There are quite a few people in the Russian-speaking community who question whether holding the festival is appropriate this year, but I don’t expect any boycotts or protests since most people believe that culture is separate from politics.”

Whether it is politically sustainable for the Russian-speaking community to give even the appearance of even-handedness in the present situation, when U.S.-Russian relations have reached their lowest ebb since the Cold War, remains an open question. According to Igor Branovan, co-owner of the weeklies Forum and Yevreski Mir, “The Russian-speaking Jewish community is not neutral between America and Russia. Yes, Russia has spent billions on media to influence the opinion of Russian-speakers here, but it is wrong to question our community’s loyalty to America.”

While most would agree with that assessment, a sharp debate continues about the propriety of the expression of pro-Russia sentiment in the community.

Ari Kagan, a prominent Russian-Jewish journalist and political activist, is outspoken in his contempt of Putin, whom he says is “anti-democratic, anti-American.” He added, “It is particularly offensive to me that Putin has completely taken over Victory Day, which is sacred to all of us.”

Yet Moish Soloway, a 36-year-old international consultant who travels frequently to Moscow on business, said, “The Russian position makes more sense than the Western one. It looks to me like the U.S. tried to meddle in Ukraine and it backfired badly. Russia is not ready to have a hostile neighbor in its backyard that happens to be in a state of anarchy and has a nasty history of ultra-nationalism.”

Back on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, interviews with a number of Russian speakers turned up a preponderance of pro-Ukraine sentiment, but also plenty of people championing Russia, even if they often asked that their full names not be used.

Anna Solovyov, a pensioner in her 70s, who came here 35 years ago from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, remarked, “Putin is a tyrant and a problem not only for Ukraine, but the entire world. I am disgusted by his pretending to be pro-Jewish, when he is just cynically using the Jewish issue to his advantage.”

Sitting comfortably shirtless on a park bench in the warm sun, Leonid, a 39-year-old Jew who moved to the U.S. from Odessa as a child but now does business with Russia, had a very different take. “Odessa may be physically in Ukraine,” he said “but it was never a Ukrainian city. I spoke today with my uncle in Kiev, who is scared for his life from Ukrainian anti-Semites. For my part, I am worried about how the conflict may affect my business, which depends on money transfers between the U.S., and Russia. So far, U.S. sanctions on Russia have been minimal, but if they are strengthened, it very well could destroy my livelihood.”

Sergei Abramov, a music teacher from Kiev who is in his 40s, has made two trips back to his hometown in recent months and spent considerable time on Maidan Square.

“It is amazing to see the level of self-sacrifice, kindness and cooperation of the everyday people there, many of them peasants and working-class people,” said Abramov. “Meeting people who are willing to do anything — even give their lives — to turn Ukraine into a normal country based on democracy, justice and the rule of law has been a deeply spiritual experience for me.”

editor@jewishweek.org

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And Jewish camps are keeping pace with the new technology. Staff Writer Amy Sara Clark has the story on the next cohort of boutique summer experiences for teens.

NEW YORK

Camps Build Robots And Ruach

Next cohort of boutique camps luring new generation of sophisticated Jewish teens.

Amy Sara Clark

Staff Writer

When Josh Steinharter was growing up in mid-’80s Dayton, Ohio, he split his summers between baseball camp and Jewish camp.

In July he would spend a week or two working on hitting and fielding. In August he would engage in “marathon” Shabbat song sessions, swimming and listening to baseball games with his bunkmates on the radio.

Steinharter went on to run the youth sports and summer camp programs at the JCC of San Francisco, and in a few weeks, he will open JCC Maccabi Sports Camp, which combines intensive sports training with the traditional Jewish camp experience that so profoundly affected him.

“When I look back at my summers and I think about the camp experiences I had, my Jewish camp experience is all about my counselors — whom I’m still in touch with today — and my friends whom I still go and visit,” he said.

JCC Maccabi Sports Camp, together with three others opening their doors this summer, is part of a growing specialty camp trend that is picking up steam around the country. Since the first set of specialty camps launched four years ago — an arts camp in Manhattan, an environmental-themed camp in the Poconos, two wilderness camps, one based out of Atlanta, the other in the Rockies, and a sports camp in North Carolina — nearly 3,000 Jewish tweens and teens have enrolled. For more than a third, according to one report, it was their first Jewish camping experience.

“Jewish camp is probably one of the most powerful educational experiences a young person can have” said Sandy Edwards, associate director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which has put more than $17 million into the creation of Jewish specialty camps in the past six years through a camp incubator project run by the Foundation for Jewish Camp. The foundation is choosing to focus on specialty camps with the hope they will attract a new segment of teens and tweens. “We know a lot of Jewish kids are going to specialty camps but not Jewish ones,” she said.

As the new camps get set to open next month — besides Steinharter’s sports camp, there is one for young entrepreneurs in Boulder, Colo., one focusing on science and technology near Boston and a health and wellness camp in the Poconos — the boutique camping trend has picked up financial backers. Two years ago, the Avi Chai Foundation contributed $1.4 million to the effort.

“The Specialty Camps Incubator has proved to be a successful method for launching new Jewish camps,” said Yossi Prager, the Avi Chai Foundation’s executive director, North America, in a written statement announcing the contribution. “We are thrilled to be a part of this next phase of the program.”

So is Isaac Mamaysky, who was a fifth-year law associate when he and his wife, Lisa Mamaysky, decided to open Camp Zeke, which focuses on healthy living.

“The incubator was this gift — it just fell out of the sky,” he said.

While he wanted his camp to promote exercise and good nutrition (along with yoga and Krav Maga), to him, it was vital that it also provided the sense of community he had at Camp Jori, the Rhode Island Jewish camp he went to as a camper and staff member every summer until his second year of law school.

“To this day my warmest memories and closest friendships were all the result of camp,” he said. “Half of the groomsmen at my wedding were my friends who I met when I was 10 years old at Camp Jori.”

Though Mamaysky, like the other incubator participants, has plenty of summer camp experience, he found the training and mentorship offered by FJC invaluable.

“We would hear from the top minds in camping about every aspect of our camps,” he said. “Every adviser is just a phone call away.”

The Specialty Camp Incubator provides each camp with $1.16 million to cover start-up and operating costs for the first three years, along with three years of intensive training and mentoring, which Edwards said was key to the program’s success.

“This model, of having a staff of people that are really experts support the start-up of a camp,” says Edwards, combined with “providing a community of practice … has become an attractive model in building the field of Jewish education.”

While secular specialty camps in such areas as sports and the arts have been around for decades, this year’s incubator crop offers two camps that are unique both inside and outside the Jewish Camping world.

Greg Kellner, who will open URJ Six Points Sci-Tech Academy in July, says it’s the first camp he knows of that puts as much focus on building community and lifelong friendships as it does on building robots and video games.

Like all the incubator camps, it also incorporates Jewish thought into every aspect of the program: If a group is building a robotic arm for someone with a disability, campers will discuss how the act is “the highest level of the Maimonides tzedakah ladder, helping someone to be self sufficient,” Kellner said. Game designers will consider the ethical implications of video game violence and the environmental science group will learn about the Jewish obligation to guard the earth.

At Maccabi Sports Camp, campers will discuss how to bring Jewish values onto the field. At Camp Inc., the entrepreneur-centered camp in Boulder, campers will discuss how to structure a company so it’s fair to the community, and teens at Camp Zeke will learn about the Jewish concept of shmirat ha’guf, care of the body.

“I think it’s the specialty that draws the interest of the child. I think it’s the connection to the Jewish community that draws the parents,” said Kellner.

For Val Weisler, an 11th grader in New City, N.Y., it was the focus on entrepreneurship that attracted her notice.

Already a leader in the Conservative Movement’s United Synagogue Youth and a counselor at her local JCC’s day camp, she was well connected to her Jewish peers. She had never thought about going to sleep away camp until she learned about Camp Inc., where campers develop their own business proposals and then pitch them to a panel of real angel investors, “Shark Tank”-style.

A leader in the Conservative Movement's United Synagogue Youth, Weisler also founded The Validation Project, an online volunteering network for teens that has more than 5,000 participants in all 50 states and on every continent, Weisler was thrilled at the idea of going to a camp full of teen leaders.

“The thought of being in the same place for a couple of weeks with people who are like me — today for example, I have a call with you [The Jewish Week] and I have a video chat with Pepsi, but I also got my braces off — it’s literally my definition of heaven.”

Camp Zeke was right for 10-year-old Stratton Stave, of Tuckahoe, N.Y., who cooks so often with his father, that he was shocked when he learned that his grandmother used to cook for her family, his mother, Sara, said. When she told him his grandmother has done the cooking for her family ever since she was first married, he said, "Wait a minute, women used to cook?"

Camp Zeke also turned out to be a perfect match for 11-year-old Ariel Gurland, of West Caldwell, N.J., who has passions for lacrosse, football and making a good stir fry for his family, said his mother, Leslie.

“For a kid that loves cooking and a kid that loves sports,” she said, “what are the odds are finding both?”

amy.jewishweek@gmail.com

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Also this week, looking back on how the Celebrate Israel parade took root 50 years ago; Ari Goldman remembers New York Times editor Arthur Gelb; Michael Bloomberg talks about his Jewish values; a new play puts Ayn Rand to a rock beat; and our special Israel Now section gauges the impact of the BDS movement, from rock performances to the campus.

SHORT TAKES

Looking Back 50 Years, Parade Was Always A Challenge

Gary Rosenblatt

Editor and Publisher

It’s only fitting that Ted Comet, the veteran Jewish professional who turned 90 this week, will be a marshall at the Celebrate Israel parade this Sunday. He is credited with founding the event, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. And he can attest to the fact that it has always had its share of controversy; this year it has been over the participation of three left-wing Jewish groups.

“It was very difficult at the beginning,” Comet recalled this week. “Committed Jews said, ‘a parade? It’s not our culture.’” And others were less than interested in coming out to march for Israel.

But Comet prevailed. At the time he was director of the American Zionist Youth Federation (now defunct) and seeking ways to express support for the Jewish state “in a big way,” proportional to New York, with its major Jewish population. His work involved dealing with Zionist youth movements and Jewish schools, “so I had the troops,” he said. But he needed a venue and support for his idea of expanding what had been until then modest Yom Ha’Atzmaut festivities in Central Park.

Comet, who later was a key official of the Council of Jewish Federations (the precursor of the Jewish Federations of North America) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and is still active, realized, “You can’t have a parade without marching bands.”

But there weren’t any among Jewish schools — there still aren’t — so he recruited several Catholic schools and managed to raise the money to pay their bands’ expenses. A fuss was raised, though, by some Jewish groups when they learned that the bands had the sign of the cross on their big bass drums. Comet, who chaired the first three annual parades, raised enough money to buy new skins for the drums, and the bands were in.

The first Israel Day parade was small-scale, only five blocks long, he recalled. The turning point came in 1967; the event happened to take place at a dramatic moment when it seemed certain that Arab forces were about to attack Israel. Comet and others decided to make it a solidarity demonstration rather than a parade, and an estimated 250,000 people turned out for the march up Riverside Drive. (The Six-Day War began a week later.)

“The feeling in the crowd was electric,” said Comet. “That was the turning point [for the parade],” which became a fixture in the Jewish calendar and attracted wide, enthusiastic support.

A few years later Rabbi Meir Kahane insisted that he and his militant Jewish Defense League supporters be allowed to march in the parade. “They were contentious, they threatened,” said Comet. After the group agreed not to march with rifles, he allowed them to take part. But he was upset when they broke ranks and attacked a group of about 40 pro-Arab protesters; the melee received major attention in The New York Times the next day.

Comet has been to almost every one of the annual Israel Day programs, missing only when he was out of the country on assignment. “It’s moving to see that something you started has staying power,” he said.

Look for him at the head of this year’s 50th anniversary parade.

editor@jewishweek.org

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NEW YORK

The Times’ High Priest

Remembering Arthur Gelb, the Aaron to A.M. Rosenthal’s Moses.

Ari L. Goldman

Special To The Jewish Week

In tributes in recent days to Arthur Gelb, the former managing editor of The New York Times who died last week at the age of 90, several of his disciples, both Jewish and gentile, called him their “rabbi.” In this context rabbi means one’s mentor or enabler, as in “everyone needs a rabbi.”

Gelb was a great man to be sure, one who transformed the paper in the second half of the 20th century working hand-in-hand with the man who was almost always his boss, A. M. (Abe) Rosenthal. But he wasn’t a rabbi. That title was better suited to Rosenthal. He was the rabbi of The New York Times. Gelb was the high priest, the Aaron to Rosenthal’s Moses.

Rosenthal was two years older than Gelb and always, it seemed, one step ahead of him in the Times hierarchy. Rosenthal was metropolitan editor and managing editor and finally executive editor, the highest job in the newsroom. Gelb held the first two of those jobs but never managed to be top banana at the paper. He retired in 1989.

For Gelb, it wasn’t about the title. As Sam Roberts wrote his obituary, which ran on the front page of the Times, Gelb transformed the paper “by sheer force of personality,” brilliant journalistic instinct and abundant talent.

Both Gelb and Rosenthal were secular Jews. But while Rosenthal had a connection — and even a longing — for the religion, Gelb was more tied to Jewish culture. The one anecdote about Jewish practice in Gelb’s 2003 memoir “City Room,” is about Gelb going to the Actor’s Temple on West 47th Street to say Kaddish in 1960 after the death of his father. “There,” he writes, “I befriended Louis Malamud, the cheery, rotund sexton, who sometimes entertained such members of his congregation as George Jessel, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Fisher and Red Buttons in a small side room, offering them whiskey and theater gossip.”

Rosenthal’s connection was much deeper than Jewish celebrities. One of his most famous articles, written in 1958 when he was the Times correspondent in post-war Poland, was headlined “There is No News From Auschwitz” and was about the imperative to bear witness to the Shoah. During his years as an editor at the Times his views on Israel were often inscrutable, but after his retirement as executive editor in 1988, he became a fierce advocate for the Jewish state in columns in the Times and later in the Daily News. He was feted at synagogue and Jewish organizational dinners.

Rosenthal’s funeral in 2006 was held to an overflow crowd at Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue. Among the speakers was Elie Wiesel who said that Rosenthal demonstrated that it is possible to love Israel “every bit as much as to love our own country.”

I am sure that Gelb’s many admirers could have easily filled Central Synagogue as well and that Elie Wiesel would have been the first to volunteer to speak. But Gelb’s family decided on a private funeral service with promises that a public memorial for him would be held after Labor Day.

I knew both men, although I cannot remember the first time I met either. That is because I was a college stringer and later copy boy at the Times in the 1970s when they were at their peak of power. Copy boys, the lowest job in the newsroom, literally carried “copy” — unedited typewritten manuscripts and galleys — from editor to editor in the days before there were computers in the newsroom. I placed copy in front of these two men hundreds of times — and served them more than a few cups of coffee — before they ever acknowledged my existence.

When I was bold enough to introduce myself, Rosenthal’s eyes brightened and said, “Oh, you’re the one from Yeshiva. You won’t work on Saturdays.” He assured me that I should keep working at the paper and that we’d work around “the problem.” He hired me on the staff a few years later and told Gelb, then metropolitan editor, to do his best to accommodate my religious needs. I never got the sense that Gelb was happy about the arrangement, but he complied.

That is not to say that Gelb was not his own man. He was Rosenthal’s right arm, and Rosenthal gave him free reign over certain areas, such as the development of the stand-alone sections, like SportsMonday, ScienceTimes and Weekend. One of his projects was called The Long Island Weekly, one of a series of suburban sections that no longer exists. Gelb sent me to Long Island to be one of the section’s first reporters, the perfect job for a shomer Shabbos reporter.

Gelb was also the unmistakable cultural czar of the paper even when he didn’t have the title. As a young critic, he wrote about emerging talent, like Barbra Streisand, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Joseph Papp, the theater impresario. He also nurtured young talent at the Times, including the likes of Maureen Dowd, Anna Quindlen, Samuel G. Freedman and Paul Goldberger. He made (and broke) careers, both in the entertainment industry, and at the Times.

The Times gave Arthur Gelb a front-page obituary that was in many ways befitted one of the paper’s chief executives. It was an appropriate sendoff for a great man. He was a singular figure, not quite a rabbi, but certainly a high priest.

editor@jewishweek.org

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NEW YORK

Bloomberg Makes Push For Jewish Values

Accepts inaugural Genesis Prize, pays gift forward, urges future awardees to ‘think big.’

Michele Chabin

Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — On a grand stage in the capital of the Jewish state, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened up about what Judaism meant to him.

“It stands for helping others, respect for family and working hard,” he said in a video biography shown to several hundred of Israel’s upper crust, including the prime minister and a number of Knesset members, as well as dignitaries from the U.S. and around the world.

“Most important, is a moral compass … a roadmap for life of philanthropy, family and helping others,” he added.

The occasion was his receiving the Inaugural Genesis Prize at the Jerusalem Theater last Thursday, at a program that blended elegance, sophistication and a cosmopolitan air with sharp, sometimes biting, political humor from emcee Jay Leno. At times it seemed like a cross between “The Tonight Show” and an evening at the Bolshoi.

Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman who served as mayor of New York for 12 years, received the $1 million prize from the Genesis Philanthropy Group, created by several Russian-speaking billionaires. But the event was less about the money itself than about how it can be spent for the greater good, and how a group of secular donors and a secular awardee relate to Jewish values.

The Genesis Philanthropy Group, which supports activities that enhance Jewish identity among Russian-speaking Jews around the world, created the award event as a kind of “Jewish Nobel Prize,” to honor people who have distinguished themselves through “Jewish values.” And Bloomberg, who credited his parents for raising him to value public service, announced that the prize money will be used to identify and fund 10 highly innovative projects being developed by young people aged 20 to 36 intended to improve the world in accordance with “Jewish values.”

Although the recipients do not have to be Jewish, the organizers said, every reference to Jewish innovation at the event referred to someone Jewish.

The prize is administered by a partnership that includes the Office of the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, the Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG), and the Office of the Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Its $100 million endowment will fund the prize and related young-adult engagement activities.

“The Genesis Prize is awarded to an exceptional person who embodies the Jewish tradition and Jewish values,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as he handed the $1 million check to Bloomberg, who appeared to be deeply gratified by the recognition. Bloomberg said that his life, both private and public, has been largely shaped by the Jewish values imparted by his late parents.

“Freedom. Justice. Service. Ambition. Innovation. These values have guided me through life,” he said in his acceptance speech. “I think they’re the same values that have guided the Jewish people through adversity and exile, poverty and plagues — right up to the creation of Israel. They are the reason Israel has such a remarkable start-up spirit, and why it has become such a powerful driver of progress in tech, medicine, and communications.

“To the future awardees in the Genesis Generation, I offer a few words of advice: follow your convictions. Think big. Take chances. Believe that tomorrow can be better than today — and understand that it’s your responsibility to help make it so,” the former mayor said.

Mikhail Fridman, co-founder of the Genesis Philanthropy Group, said the aim of the prize “is to awaken the Jewish identity by recognizing that being Jewish is not just an accident of birth, but a huge gift. Our forbearers have left us something far more valuable than land, castles or titles. They left us the Word, the Book and a set of values and rules, which, if understood correctly and applied diligently, lead to the ultimate reward in life — a sense of fulfillment and self-actualization.”

One of the highlights of the evening was the five-minute video clip that focused on Bloomberg’s childhood, his capacity for innovative brilliance and his passion not only for charitable giving but helping people to help themselves. It featured his late mother and his sister as well as his two daughters, who spoke of his commitment to do well.

Over the course of the evening and a press conference earlier in the day, Bloomberg mentioned his parents several times. He noted that his mother and sister traveled to Jerusalem to dedicate the Mother and Child wing at Hadassah Hospital they funded. A few years later he flew to Israel to dedicate the Bloomberg Magen David Adom center he funded in memory of his father.

In the video, Bette Midler said Bloomberg’s “big heart overrides his checkbook,” noting that he helped her efforts to plant a million trees in New York. To date, 800,000 have been planted.

In his remarks about the prize money, Bloomberg said he “wanted to pay it forward, so to speak. To help others with the same sense of optimism and obligation, which is such an important part of Jewish tradition.

“After all, if the dream of Israel can be realized, what dream can’t be?” he added.

It was clear that the Genesis Philanthropy Group worked hard to make the evening hard to forget.

The foyer of the Jerusalem Theater was transformed into an elegant hall where clusters of white roses graced the tables. The event began with an hour-and-a-half-long buffet of international Jewish cuisine that featured everything from gefilte fish to falafel. Asked to wear “business attire,” the women wore stylish dresses — a rarity in conservative Jerusalem — while many of the men wore suits and neckties, another rare sight.

Grammy award winning pianist Evgeny Kissin performed on a grand piano and four ballet dancers danced completely on pointe. And the audience loved Leno’s comedy routine, which skewered the Obama administration and Israeli political corruption.

“I’ve been doing my research. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, here in Israel the most popular boys name is Noam. The least popular boys name? John Kerry,” the comedian said.

Leno quipped that “President Obama has declared the month of May Jewish American Heritage Month. He is calling it an opportunity to renew our ‘unbreakable bond with the nation of Israel.’ And he knows it’s unbreakable because he’s been trying to break it for the last five years.”

Taking aim at Israeli politicians, Leno joked that when he first tried to get a friend tickets to the program, “they were sold out. But luckily, two tickets became available when former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he wouldn’t be using his.”

Olmert was recently sentenced to six years in prison for accepting bribes while in office.

“You guys are tough. You sentenced your former prime minister to six years in prison! Did you hear Olmert’s defense? Not the best strategy. He blamed the whole thing on the Jews,” Leno said.

Leno joked that he “was stunned by how many Israeli politicians are going to prison. When you ask an Israeli politician what his cell number is, it has a whole other meaning.”

editor@jewishweek.org

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THEATER

Ayn Rand, With A Rock Beat

Her post-apocalyptic novella ‘Anthem’ gets a high-tech, sci-fi reworking.

Ted Merwin

Special To The Jewish Week

If anyone believed in the power of freedom, it was Ayn Rand. In her best-selling novels, “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand, an atheist Jewish immigrant from Russia, articulated an ideology of individualism that still holds sway in American political and economic life, particularly among conservatives whose faith in the free market is absolute.

Now Rand’s novella, “Anthem,” about a band of rebels struggling to extricate themselves from the grip of a totalitarian state, comes to the stage in a rollicking rock musical version. With music by composer Jonnie Rockwell, lyrics by Erik Ransom and book by Gary Morgenstein, “The Anthem” is set to stir a new generation of New Yorkers with its vision of liberty — or libertarianism — in action.

First conceived in the 1920s as a four-act stage play, likely while Rand was a student at the University of Leningrad, “Anthem” was finally published as a novella/prose poem in 1938 in England. While working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, Rand tried to interest Walt Disney, Cecil B. DeMille and half a dozen other filmmakers in turning “Anthem” into a movie; she suggested to DeMille that it be filmed in much the same way as DeMille’s 1923 silent film version of “The Ten Commandments.”

While it was never filmed, and proposals for turning it into an opera or ballet also came to naught, “Anthem” did become the basis of a 1950 radio play by a church in Los Angeles. Now the work is finally being staged by multiple artists; in addition to the rock musical, two straight play versions of “Anthem” have appeared Off-Broadway in New York in the last year or so — one by Jennifer Sandella in January of 2013 (also with rock music, but only in the background) and one by Jeff Britting last fall.

Directed by Rachel Klein (“Around the World in 80 Days”), “The Anthem” — which Rand called a “hymn to man’s ego” — stars Randy Jones (the former lead singer of the Village People) as Tiberias, the evil leader of a dystopian, late-22nd-century State that presides over a country that has been ruined by an environmental apocalypse.

Prometheus (Jason Gotay) bucks the system by choosing his own mate, contrary to the forced coupling organized by the regime. But by selecting the blonde warrior princess Athena (Ashley Kate Adams) to help him lead the rebellion, Prometheus incites the wrath of his prescribed mate, Hera (Remy Zaken), who betrays him to the leaders of the State.

Morgenstein is a television executive and prolific playwright. His works often deal with Jewish life; they include the novel “Loving Rabbi Thalia Kleinman” and the plays “Ponzi Man,” which premiered three years before the Bernard Madoff scandal broke, “Right on Target,” about a conservative black talk show host married to a liberal Jewish woman and “A Tomato Can’t Grow in the Bronx,” about a dysfunctional blue-collar Jewish family ruled by an oppressive patriarch.

In an interview, Morgenstein told The Jewish Week that “The Anthem” is geared to entertain, not to preach. “I envisioned a hybrid of theater, performance and film,” he said, “with people flying.” The writer, who calls himself a “sci-fi fantasy geek,” pays homage in the script to “Hunger Games,” “Star Wars” and “Independence Day,” with a nod to “Robin Hood.”

Morgenstein took many liberties with Rand’s work, beginning with giving the characters the names of Greek gods rather than the identifiers used by Rand (such as Equality 7-2521). Then he “flipped it upside down and made it high-tech,” so that Athena rebels by pushing buttons and reprogramming the Grid, freeing the subjects from having their emotions constantly monitored. The annual mating ritual enforced by the State turns into both a heterosexual and homosexual orgy in hammocks. And three of the members of the rebel tribe fly on ropes and swings as they help to defeat the regime with the natural energy of the jungle.

“It’s about your sense of responsibility,” Morgenstein explained, “and how much you want to cede control to the government.” While Rand was strident in her ideology, he said that he has no desire to tell people what to think. “That would be heavy handed; it would defeat the premise of individuality.”

Rockwell wrote the score for “The Anthem” at the same time as she was working on a new musical adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Born in post-Communist Czechoslovakia (she is descended from the Czech composer and folklorist Leoš Janáček), Rockwell, who was born with perfect pitch, saved money from performing in four rock bands and went to medical school at Yale; she is now board certified in age management.

The composer perceives many connections between her medical work and the songs in “Anthem,” which include “The Grid,” “The Rebellion” and “Who Stands With Us.” In the latter, she noted, “people have to decide if they will come along into the new society or if they will stay with the Grid.” In the same way, in working with her patients, “I don’t want to be paternalistic. I can’t give the patient complete control, but I can guide him or her to make choices about taking medication, hormones and so on. Some patients can’t work under free will, while others can.”

Remy Zaken plays the jilted mate, Hera. While still a student in high school, she made her Broadway debut in “Spring Awakening.” Zaken grew up in a Conservative Jewish family in Connecticut and graduated two years ago from Columbia University with a degree in psychology. She described “The Anthem” as “very pop rock, very modern. We have a lot of neon lights, sci-fi sound effects, glitz, glamor, glitter and Spandex.”

While she has chasidic cousins in Brooklyn, Zaken defines her own Jewish identity as more cultural than religious. “I like the freedom to practice Judaism however it feels to me,” she said. “That’s kind of the message of this show as well — you need to figure out if the ends justify the means.” No matter how noble your goals may be, she asked, “Do you need to sacrifice your ethics and morality in order to achieve them?”

Did Rand’s Jewishness affect her work? Many have speculated that Rand’s upbringing in Czarist Russia, where anti-Semitism was rife, had a profound effect on her thinking. In Andrew Heinze’s “Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century” (Princeton, 2006), the historian lists Rand, Betty Friedan, Ann Landers and other prominent Jewish women as “public advisers of wide influence.” But only Canadian journalist Jeff Walker, in “The Ayn Rand Cult” (Carus Publishing, 1999), has sought to put Rand’s ideas in an explicitly Jewish context; he finds Jewish influences in many aspects of her Objectivist philosophy, including its “life on Earth” orientation and prizing of material success.

Britting, who penned one of the recent plays about Rand, is the curator of the Ayn Rand Archives in Irvine, Calif. He recalled that audience members spoke eloquently in talkbacks about how his play reminded them of their own experiences of suffering during the Holocaust or in Communist Russia. One female spectator complained, asking him why he brought this “awful world” to the stage in the midst of our flourishing democracy. “She didn’t realize that it was a warning,” Britting said. “If people don‘t affirm the value of the individual, then the world presented by Rand might come to pass.”

“The Anthem” runs through July 6 at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre, 45 Bleecker St. It runs Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. and Mondays and Tuesdays at 7 p.m., with weekend matinees at 3 p.m. For tickets, $33-$99, call OvationTix at (866) 811-4111 or visit www.ovationtix.com.

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Israel Now May 2014

Rock Steady: The Show Goes On For Concert Promoters; Still Start-Up Nation: Tech Sector Thriving Despite Boycott; In The BDS Trenches: From ‘Pinkwashing’ To The Park Slope Food Coop

INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION

Calm On The Israeli Campus

More ‘Noise’ Than Anything?

Rock Steady

Tech Sector Soaring Despite Boycott

A BDS Blueprint For The Green

The BDS Wars, Close Up

Fighting The Divestment Wars

‘Flyergate’ And Beyond

If I Had An (Anti-BDS) Hammer!

Israel NOW is a special issue of The Jewish Week. The information below was provided to The Jewish Week by many of the advertisers appearing in this issue as a readership service.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/special-sections/israel-now/israel-now-may-2014

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Enjoy the read and see you at the Celebrate Israel parade - this Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine, along Fifth Avenue, from 57th Street to 74th Street.

Gary Rosenblatt

P.S. Please check out the newest version of our website ¬ faster and easier to navigate and read ¬ for breaking stories, videos and exclusive blogs, op-eds and features.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/

Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt

JFNA To Promote Civil Marriage

Promoting Collective Giving

In practical terms, though, Orthodox Jews, who are most likely to take exception to the initiative, represent a relatively small percentage of major donors to federations.

‘A Coalition Of The Willing’

Gary@jewishweek.org

New York News

Pope Francis holds a note at the Western Wall. Like many visitors, he left it in a crevice between the site's huge rocks. Getty

Pope Francis' Israel Trip Merges Political, Spiritual

The symbolism stretches from wall to wall as pontiff visits Israel and and Palestinian territories.

Joshua Mitnick - Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — Though Pope Francis billed his trip to the Holy Land as a purely spiritual pilgrimage, it inevitably turned political within minutes of touching down on a seldom-used helipad in Bethlehem.

As his convoy ferried him from a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to a mass at Manger Square on Sunday, his car pulled next to Israel’s separation wall that cuts through Bethlehem — a surprise stop not part of the itinerary. The pope walked up to the wall bowed his head and touched the wall strewn with pro-Palestinian graffiti; it was the iconic image that Palestinian officials had surely been hoping for.

“It’s a great day for the Palestinian people par excellence,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian politician.

The move annoyed Israeli officials, one of whom complained that the stop had distorted the fact that the purpose of the wall was to stop suicide bombers from crossing over from Palestinian towns into Israel to carry out terrorist attacks. Ultimately, the Foreign Ministry came up with a quid pro quo: a visit to a memorial to Israeli victims of terrorism just steps from an already planned wreath-laying ceremony at Theodore Herzl’s grave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added a retort by defending the wall: “If the Palestinians stop incitement and terror, Israel won’t need to take steps like the separation fence, which has saved the lives of thousands.”

The solution allowed the pope to maintain a semblance of diplomatic balance as he carried out a whirlwind tour of symbolic Jewish sites. (His invitation to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres for a meeting to pray next month at the Vatican was also seen as more symbolic than substantive when it comes to the stalled peace talks.) The tribute to Herzl in particular symbolized the Vatican’s most emphatic endorsement of Israel’s role as a Jewish homeland — a key sticking point of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that Arab governments refuse to recognize.

“This was a good visit, the way we see it,” said former Israeli ambassador to the Vatican Oded Ben Hur. “This is putting another layer in the construction of good relations between Israel and the Vatican.”

However, despite the moment at the terror memorial, an Israeli Government Press Office chief, Nitzan Chen, acknowledged that that the image of the pope alongside the separation barrier had become “the picture of the visit.”

One analyst said that Israeli officials were mistaken in suggesting the stop at the terror victims’ memorial, because it came across as taking a page from the Palestinian playbook of overt politicization of the pope’s visit. Indeed, the pope’s route to Bethlehem was lined with political messages — there were images of refugees as well as one poster that likened a crucified Jesus to a Palestinian shot by an Israeli soldier.

“I understand why Netanyahu felt the need to honor terror victims, but it came across as a quid pro quo, while the pope at the separation wall came across as a profound moment of contemplation. The result was that we lost twice,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli-American author.

“We would have served Israel’s image better had we not played the game that the Palestinians were playing of trying to score points, and instead embraced the spirit with which the pope was coming here.”

Israel leveraged the visit as well: Israeli officials sought to play up the Jewish state as the most tolerant in the region in upholding freedom of religion, and as the only country in the region where the population of the Christian community is still growing. At the same time, tourism officials said they believed that the visit of Pope Francis would help spur more Christian pilgrims to visit.

But the visit also highlighted strong anti-Christian sentiment in parts of the Israeli Orthodox community, analysts said. The tension was stirred by the Israeli government’s decision to allow the pope to hold a mass in the room on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion believed to be the site of the Last Supper, triggering rumors about a conspiracy to hand over control of the complex where King David is believed to be buried.

Amid protests and violence, Israeli police deployed extra forces to secure the pope’s visit. Orthodox Jews who turned out by the hundreds at a demonstration days before the visit said they viewed it as an attempt by the Church to claim a new holy site and the legacy of King David. “Christianity is idolatry; when they are walking around with crosses, we won’t be able to pray,” said Ephraim Brus, who frequently reads Psalms on Mount Zion.

Rabbi Uri Regev, a leader of the Reform movement in Israel, told Israel Radio after the visit ended that it was a missed opportunity to promote spiritual understanding. “There was a great chance to advance brotherhood and dialogue by giving a chance for the Christian community to reach one of its holy sites, the room of the Last Supper and to pray there,” he said. “Instead, what we hear is that Christianity is impure.”

Though the visit had to compete for Israeli media attention with the killing of four Jews at a Jewish museum in Brussels and the race to succeed Shimon Peres as president, Israel’s media gave the visit prominent coverage. Israel Radio, which covered the events live, took care to note at every step along the visit the intense amount of international coverage. Dikla Aharon, a religion reporter for Israel Radio, said that world attention focusing on a positive story instead of conflict stokes Israelis’ sense of national pride.

And yet, for all of the media attention, many analysts believe that the Israeli public was only vaguely aware or interested in the visit.

“For most Israelis [the visit] is not on their minds; they live in an environment in which the Catholic Church is not a constant presence, and they don’t feel the significance of a papal visit,” said Shmuel Rosner an Israeli journalist.

Despite that, analysts say that there is significance about Pope Francis for Israelis, if only for the fact that it is establishing a precedent: Francis is the third consecutive pope to visit, making the Holy Land and Israel a must-stop for future popes.

Explained Rosner, “It is clear that in the current environment, that this pope and successors are likely to visit.”

editor@jewishweek.org

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Food and Wine

Go Beyond Plain Old VanillaFor this Shavuot, try an avant-garde ice cream flavor: fig with orange and rosemary.Ronnie Fein -Jewish Week Online Columnist

Can you guess America’s favorite ice cream flavor?

If you said vanilla, you’re right—by a large margin. Vanilla’s runner-ups, according to the International Ice Cream Association and the International Dairy Foods Association, are chocolate and butter pecan.

I knew that. Always did, even as a kid when my cousin told me the tiny black speckles in my favorite ice cream were dirt and that everyone else in the world preferred chocolate. No, they didn’t. Not then, and not now.

There’s no denying vanilla ice cream’s clean, milky appeal. But for those who like to venture, gastronomically speaking, beyond the usual suspects, there is more. I’m not talking about the typical competitors. Not flavors such as rocky road or cookies and cream or even heath bar crunch, all of which are, at their core, variations on vanilla or chocolate.

I mean ice cream flavors that are truly unusual, that titillate the tongue and excite the palate, because they taste new and bold and fresh. And even if they aren’t the stuff of daily indulgence, they are the ones we yearn for when we want a treat that will wow our friends and family, or serve something special for a holiday such as Shavuot, which begins next week.

I’m here today to talk about roasted fig ice cream with orange and rosemary. You’ve never tasted a flavor quite like this one: bright orange peel and fragrant rosemary provide a lively, refreshing, faintly grassy contrast to the intense, concentrated natural fruit sugars of the roasted figs. It’s earthy and sweet, but not cloying.

Ice cream is easy to make at home and this recipe is very forgiving. I’ve made it several ways, with different types of dried figs—I like Mission figs the best—as well as with prunes. Half and half is a nice compromise as a base. It’s not as rich as heavy or whipping cream, but still produces a smoother texture than ice creams made lots of milk.

You needn’t do anything more with this dish than serve it in a bowl, maybe with some fresh orange chunks or rosemary sprigs to pretty up the plate. A blob of whipped cream never hurts. Toasted almonds would be fine but aren’t necessary. But please, stop there: this is an ice cream flavor that stands up all on its own.

Ingredients:

4 ounces chopped dried figs

1 tablespoon honey

2/3 cup orange juice

3 cups half and half or light cream

½ cup sugar

3 large egg yolks

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons orange zest

1 sprig fresh rosemary

Recipe Steps:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place the figs in a baking pan. Pour the honey on top stir to coat, then pour orange juice over. Roast the figs for about 25 minutes, turning them occasionally, until they have softened. Remove figs from oven and set aside.

Pour 2 cups cream into a medium saucepan, add rosemary, and heat over medium heat until bubbles appear around the edges of the pan, being careful not to scorch. Remove from heat, cover, and let steep for 5 minutes. Remove rosemary.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the sugar, egg yolks and salt at medium speed for 3-5 minutes or until light and thick. Gradually add the heated cream and mix. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 8-10 minutes or until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour in the remaining cream and blend thoroughly. Add the figs plus any liquid, the orange zest and rosemary. Pour into a plastic container and refrigerate until cold. Freeze in an ice cream freezer according to manufacturer’s directions. Yield: about one quart

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Travel

The boardwalk in L.A., where you can find a same-day rental on AirBnB. Hilary Larson/JW

Tips For That Summer Getaway

Hilary Larson - Travel Writer

Memorial Day is behind us, which means we can all rest assured that it probably won’t snow again for awhile. During the next few months at least, bitter cold and icy terrain are optional — for those planning travel to Patagonia, say, or Siberia.

For the rest of us, I have some recommendations for traveling safely and sanely in the summer of 2014. My suggestions fall into two categories: logistics and practicalities, and health and safety.

Following are my tips for getting out of town during the warm weather — and getting back again safely.

Air travel: Plan ahead.

It’s already a bit late to be planning a summer vacation that involves a plane ticket. But it’s not impossible.

A lot of ink is spilled these days about which hot app or site might yield the best airfare. The sad reality is that no matter what app you have, airfares have gone up substantially for most routes, planes continue to be irritatingly full, and the cheapest seats sell out early.

So I have three recommendations for people who want cheap fares: One, shop early and buy immediately. Hesitation will generally work against you these days. Two, and especially if you are a last-minute type, stick with major hubs and popular routes like New York to L.A., if possible; they’ve suffered the least inflation and have, numerically, the most cheap seats for sale.

And three, be flexible. It’s amazing how much prices fluctuate within a given week on a single route. Also, “low season” can be just days away from high season. The week after Orthodox Easter is dirt-cheap across Eastern Europe; the Italian coast is empty after school starts around Sept. 15; and I have a friend who took his kids out of school the first week of January to enjoy a cut-rate week at Disneyworld. I’m sure it was educational.

Feeling spontaneous?

I know I just said to plan ahead, but for those who do things last-minute, there are some new options. Many travel websites now have features allowing travelers to search for last-minute deals; these are particularly useful for people who want to get away and don’t care where. This weekend, for instance, I could book a four-star hotel in Orlando through Expedia for $79 a night, a third of the usual rate.

AirBnB, the popular home-accommodations website, has begun offering same-day rentals for those looking for a place to stay that night. The service is launching in West Coast cities at first — so if you find yourself in Los Angeles, you can land an $80 room in a beach bungalow or a $150 apartment with a pool, on just several hours’ notice. My personal experience is that AirBnB tends to be a better value in Europe than in the U.S., but if you want to skip a hotel and still book on a whim, it’s worth a go.

The changing dynamics of summer travel — basically, the rise of the last-minute weekend traveler — means greater flexibility for those who wait to book house rentals and ferry tickets. It used to be, for instance, that if you didn’t book your car months ahead on the Steamship Authority, the only car ferry between Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, you’d have to leave it behind. But last summer, several friends found reservations for their cars within a week of their midsummer travel.

Staying Healthy: New worries, old precautions

Changing weather and global migrations mean that when it comes to staying healthy, there’s a lot more to worry about besides Lyme Disease. (Sorry, you still have to worry about Lyme Disease: last year, the Center for Disease Control revised its estimate of the number of annual cases upward by a factor of 10. Yikes!)

Let’s start with ticks. Once largely a problem of the humid Northeast, they are now everywhere. And apart from Lyme Disease, ticks are increasingly known be to transmitters of several other, potentially horrifying illnesses — including tularemia, babesiosis, and two newly identified ones, Borrelia miyamotoi and Powassan disease. The latter, while still rare, appears to be quite deadly.

It’s more important than ever to avoid high grass and brush — including beach grass in the dunes — wear insect repellant, cover up when venturing into nature, and above all, report any symptoms promptly. The sooner you get treated, the better your odds of defeating these, er, bugs.

Moving on to mosquitos: A warming climate means some tropical diseases are turning up much farther north. Last winter, several Caribbean countries reported the first-known outbreaks of Chikungunya fever — a virus described as similar to dengue fever — in the Western Hemisphere. And dengue itself has been identified in Florida in the past several years. Meanwhile, malaria has popped up in places where you wouldn’t think to worry about it – places like Greece, Turkey, and Morocco, where an acquaintance of mine contracted it and ended up feverish in a Casablanca hospital. Millions of people travel to the Mediterranean rim safely each year, but it’s worth knowing malaria is a possibility in case you do develop symptoms.

Let’s not even start on MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). Given the speed of new developments, recommendations on both treatments and prevention have changed for many travel-related illnesses — so do your research and take appropriate precautions. The bottom line: If you come home from a trip with any symptoms, tell your doctor where you’ve been.

editor@jewishweek.org

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Missionary Renegade

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The New York Jewish Week.... Connection the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 28 May 2014

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