The New York Jewish Week...Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 2 May 2014

The New York Jewish Week...Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 2 May 2014

Dear Reader,
Here at The Jewish Week, we try to keep things interesting, to remind you and ourselves that things are not always what they seem. 
Take bagels. (You know you want to!) We all think of them as treats we buy; like sushi or croissants. But our longtime food writer Amy Spiro says no: You can make them at home, and they're incredibly delicious. Who would have thought? Only Amy.
Food & Wine | Recipes
Bakery Fresh, From Your Kitchen

There are some foods you might think just aren't worth making at home. Croissants, for one. Sushi, for another. Until recently I thought bagels - the ultimate Jewish New York food - were on that list. But when I decided to experiment and make them at home, I was pretty surprised by how easy they were, and how incredibly delicious.
Bubby Ida Malnick’s Sweet and Sour Tongue

Florence Tabrys’ Sweet and Creamy Cheese Blintzes

A Lemony Passover Treat

There's nothing worse than finishing up your seder with a cake that tastes like... matzah. But when it comes to Passover baking, that's often the case: Matzah meal replaces the flour, leaving desserts that are heavy and dense, with that unappealing flavor. No more! This delicious gluten-free dessert forgets all about matzah, using only natural ingredients for the perfect light, sweet end to your seder.
Potatoes for Passover, Upgraded

Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. They're pretty much a staple of every Passover meal: Without bread or pasta, potatoes are the go-to carb. Now, I love potatoes, so I'm happy to see them over and over again, but sometimes even I get bored of the classic roasted or mashed. These lacy little shredded potato cups, which you can fill with just about anything, are a great way to add a little wow factor to the taste and presentation of your next potato dish. 
The Remix: Tackling Matzah

Matzah + chocolate = yum. Photo courtesy of Amy Kritzer
This is the second installment of our new series "The Remix" in which we seek to gently tweak the more challenging dishes in the Jewish culinary cannon. With a little bit of love, we’re convinced we can make even these dishes delicious, even the ones that seem bizarre to the modern palate.
A New, Improved Sponge Cake For Passover

Sponge cake with zabaglione and oranges. Ronnie Fein/JW
Sponge cake is the new flourless chocolate cake.
Kosher And Chinese, And Leftovers

Jews love Chinese food. It's well-documented, and even the subject of a paper I wrote in college (I got an A-). But here's another thing we love: leftovers. And the two often go hand in hand: who hasn't ended up with a cardboard carton of white rice in the fridge after indulging in some beef lo mein or General Tso's chicken?
A Cornucopia Of Hamantaschen

These days, the biggest trend in the classic Purim treats is wild and wacky flavors - in both the dough and the filling - like these red velvet variety from What Jew Wanna Eat, or rum-raisin from Trini Gourmet or this pear and goat cheese offering from Joy of Kosher.
Hey, Readers: We Want Your Family Recipes!


Similarly, but on a heavier note, Rabbi Gerald Skolnik takes on the subject of J Street's apparent loss this week when it's application to the Conference of Presidents was rejected. In truth, the rabbi says, J Street won support that it deserves, and the Conference lost its integrity as an organization that truly represents the broad swath of American Jews.
A RABBI'S WORLD
Actually, J Street Won
The Conference of Presidents has compromised its integrity as a group that truly represents American Jewry.
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Jewish Week Online Columnist

Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.  Sometimes you win, but really lose. And then other times you lose, but really win.
On the face of it, J Street lost this week in its effort to gain membership in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. After an application process that lasted almost a year, the organization that calls itself “pro peace, pro Israel” failed to garner the requisite votes to meet the constitutionally mandated membership threshold of the Conference. Those who opposed J Street’s candidacy will no doubt see this as a victory. I’m not at all so sure…
As President of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis, I have been a member of the Conference for the past two years. In fact, I served on the Membership Committee that shepherded J Street’s application from its inception to this week’s vote. The Rabbinical Assembly voted to admit J Street. I supported that vote.
Though I sit in the Conference as the President of the Rabbinical Assembly, what I write in this article is not to be construed as an official comment of the RA. And the Rabbinical Assembly’s vote was not an endorsement of J Street. We have members who support it and members who oppose it. What we wanted to do with our vote was affirm the reality and the importance of pluralism in the Zionist community – and in the Conference of Presidents.
Truth to tell, I am not a big fan of J Street. My personal inclination in matters relating to pro-Israel activism are much closer to the AIPAC view of how Israel is best helped and protected in these perilous and uncertain times. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and President of J Street, has always seemed to me unnecessarily provocative in his advocacy efforts. Of the Palestinians, Abba Eban once famously said that they “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Mr. Ben-Ami, in the name of providing an alternative, left-of-center advocacy voice for Israel, has never shied away from taking a stance on a controversial issue that went beyond an alternative advocacy voice, and veered into something dangerously close (some would say over the line) to obscuring J Street’s fundamentally pro-Israel posture. He rarely, if ever, missed a chance to critique the more mainstream Jewish leadership.
But my personal feelings, and those of the other members of the Conference, were not what was being voted on this week.  What was at stake was the integrity of the Conference of Presidents as an umbrella group that truly represents the broad swath of American Jewry. 
J Street would not have been the first left-leaning organization to sit in the Conference. There are others, including Ameinu and APN, the American branch of Peace Now, but their views are largely overwhelmed by the consensus-driven nature of the Conference and its leadership, which tend to be far more conservative as Israel goes. J Street is much larger, better organized, and far more influential than either of them, or any other left-of-center organizations in the Conference. Its reach, particularly on college campuses, is something that most mainstream Jewish organizations can only covet.
Despite my own personal misgivings about J Street, I advocated for its admission to the Conference precisely because I don’t share its views. There are other members of the Conference whose views are not consonant with my own on matters that are of the greatest concern to me, including my legitimacy as a rabbi and as a Jew, and religious pluralism in Israel. But in the years that I have participated in its meetings and programs, the Conference has afforded me – and those with whom I differ – a crucial opportunity to move beyond the instinctive demonization of “ the other” to a healthier, more reality-based appreciation of the areas of commonality that we share.
That is exactly what should have happened with J Street. Membership in the Conference would have afforded its leadership a crucial opportunity to see the world though the Conference’s eyes, and for the Conference to see the world of Israel advocacy through J Street’s eyes. It would also have sent a much-needed message to the many college students who have found their voice on Israel through J Street that the leadership of the American Jewish community hears them, and values what they have to say, even if it sometimes disagrees. But the Conference of Presidents did not do that, and that was, in my view, most unfortunate.
I continue to believe that the Conference of Presidents plays a vital role in advocating for Israel’s cause and security, and for the security of the Jewish community as a whole, both here in America and around the world. When the Conference talks, governments listen. I think, however, that the Conference’s voice would have been strengthened, and made more authentically representative of the community that it serves, had more of its members transcended their fears and voted to include J Street. Now that it has not, Jeremy Ben-Ami, who has never missed an opportunity to accuse the mainstream Jewish leadership of being out of step with reality, has been handed his next op-ed piece for the New York Times on a silver platter.
On the surface, it looks like the mainstream leadership won, and J Street lost. But like I said, some times you lose but you really win, and that’s exactly what J Street accomplished. It didn’t have to be that way. And the Jewish community as a whole will wind up paying the price.
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik is the spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens.
And then there's that Jewish nun. "Ida" is a new film by a Polish director who tells the story of a novice about to take vows in the 1960s when she learns that she's actually Jewish, and that her parents died in the Holocaust. This film is fast becoming a critical darling and of course the Jewish Week has a review. Check the upper right-hand corner of our homepage for that piece and other arts criticism.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/

Best,
Helen Chernikoff, Web Director  

The Arts

Four top-notch singers pay tribute to Fanny Brice in "Ziegfeld Girl" at 92nd Street Y.  Wikimedia Commons

Fanny Brice, Times Four

Ted Merwin -Special To The Jewish Week

One of the first Jewish women to break — or crash — into vaudeville, Fanny Brice paved the way for female comics from Lucille Ball to Gilda Radner. Fans of Brice will have a rare opportunity this weekend to hear four top-notch singers pay tribute to her in a mixture of solos and duets, backed by a six-piece band. “Ziegfeld Girl: The Many Faces of Fanny Brice” runs for just five performances at the 92nd Street Y, with such standards as “Second Hand Rose” and “My Man” on the program.
Ted Sperling, who organized the program and who will provide commentary between the numbers, served as music director for the 2008 Broadway revival of “South Pacific” and won a Tony Award for his orchestrations for “The Light in the Piazza” in 2005. All four of the performers — Carpathia Jenkins, Leslie Kritzer, Faith Prince and Clarke Thorell — are Broadway veterans, and Kritzer played Brice in a 2001 revival of “Funny Girl,” the musical based on Brice, at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.
By dint of her “talent and chutzpah,” Sperling told The Jewish Week, Brice became one of the highest paid entertainers of her day, even though she rarely starred in a play or musical. “She created a comic persona that could flip on a dime — and tear your heart out with a torch song.”
Brice, who started out by doing routines in an African-American dialect, soon gravitated toward Yiddish dialect comedy, even though she had not grown up speaking the immigrant Jewish language. In her songs and sketches, she redefined the stereotypical image of the Jewish mother, investing her portrayals with pathos and emotional truth despite a trademark gawkiness and self-deprecating style.
In an era in which the culture of celebrity was getting under way, Brice also had a knack for self-promotion. Her nose job, Sperling noted, was covered extensively in the press, and she timed her singing of “My Man” to coincide with her very public divorce from swindler Nicky Arnstein.
The 1968 film version of “Funny Girl,” starring Barbra Streisand, along with its 1975 sequel, “Funny Lady,” brought Brice to a new generation of audiences; more recently, an episode of “Glee” showed Lea Michele’s character, Rachel Berry, opening on Broadway in “Funny Girl.” The cabaret evening, Sperling hopes, will still bring the audience to a “new appreciation” of this Jewish comedy pioneer, whose talent was “singular” and who combined, in his words, “eccentricity with heart.”
“Ziegfeld Girl: The Many Faces of Fanny Brice” runs this Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Monday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the 92nd Street Y. For tickets, $52, call the Y at (212) 415-5500 or visit www. 92Y.org/lyrics.

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WELL VERSED

Painting On The Walls

anInstallation at the New Museum by Pawel Althamer. Courtesy of Susan Hoffman Fishm

It’s not often that an artist would invite members of the public to participate in his exhibit or that a respected museum would allow visitors to draw and paint on its walls.
However, this is exactly what Pawel Althamer arranged for the “Draftsmen's Congress,” which was part of his solo exhibit, “The Neighbors,” at Manhattan’s New Museum.
Members of Art Kibbutz, an international Jewish artist colony, assembled on March 23 to draw and paint Jewish responses to Althamer’s exhibit.
Throughout “The Neighbors,” the New Museum’s fourth floor was open to the public to draw and paint at will, with materials provided by the museum. Following the show’s closing last week, the museum distributed portions of the collectively made artwork to visitors for free.
Art Kibbutz NY was founded in 2010 by Patricia Eszter Margit. They are currently recruiting artists to participate in FIGMENT, a project on Governor’s Island that will take place in June.
Althamer, a contemporary artist from Poland, combines sculpture and social collaboration in his artistic practice. In addition to his sculptures, videos, and the “Draftsmen's Congress,” Althamer arranged for street musicians to play in front of the museum over the course of the show with the music broadcast throughout his exhibit. Althamer also initiated a coat drive for the Bowery Mission, an organization near the museum that has helped the homeless for over 100 years.
He invited Art Kibbutz to provide “Jewish responses” to the question of how art can create dialogue and community.
To prepare its team of participants, Art Kibbutz invited Michael Somoroff, an artist and kabbalah teacher as well as Rabbi Naftali Citron of the Carlebach Shul to help the artists “create a common language that would enable our group to give ‘Jewish responses’ to Pawel Althamer's call,” said Margit. The group discussed how they could artistically explore a sentiment that they feel is reflected in Althamer's work, "Loving your fellow as yourself," and use it as a springboard for their “Jewish response.”
Caroline Lagnado is an arts writer in New York.

POLITICAL INSIDER

Catch 22 With A Twist

The Kerry round of peace talks has come to a halt, at least for the time being and possibly until there is a new cast of leaders in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Washington. 
Success, it has been said, has many failures, but failure is an orphan.  Not this time.  There is abundant blame -- or responsibility -- to go around several times.
It starts with a new secretary of state who thought he knew how to do what no one else could.  From his perch of many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry was convinced he knew how to shape a peace agreement, and he might have had a chance with different players in Israel and Palestine.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas never trusted each other – and they weren't that happy with Barack Obama, either -- and the problem only got worse over time. They seemed to many to be more intent on avoiding blame for the collapse of the Kerry talks than in achieving peace.
Each man had formed a government that seemed guaranteed to prevent peace.  Netanyahu's own Likud party was and remains so deeply divided that while the PM says he supports the two-state approach, he has never asked his party much less his coalition to endorse that position.  He knows he'd probably lose if he tried.
Abbas knows that demanding full right of return for refugees is a non-starter, but he has never had the courage to tell that to the Palestinian people; instead he has continued to promise them the impossible.
And he was fully aware that creating a unity government with Hamas would be the ultimate poison pill.  Israel and the United States would not deal with a Palestinian Authority that included the terrorist group that refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and repeatedly calls for its destruction.
There's a classic Catch 22 surrounding the Palestinian reconciliation agreement.  It can be argued that if the Palestinians -- Fatah and Hamas -- can't make peace with each other, how can they make peace with Israel, while on the other hand, if they make peace with each other, they can't -- by virtue of Hama's rejectionist positions -- make peace with Israel.
Read more about it in my Washington Watch column.

Food & Wine

The Clarets Of Bordeaux

Red wines with a distinguished history.

Joshua E. London and Lou Marmon -Jewish Week Online Columnists

Thanks to the British, the world of fine wine is firmly anchored to the love of claret. A derivative of the Latin word for “clear,” the word “claret” used to refer to the pale, rosé-like color of the wines produced in Bordeaux back in the 14th and 15th centuries. Even though Bordeaux eventually evolved into a darker, deeper wine over the centuries, the British wine trade —and its highbrow clientele — adopted the term still refers to the wines of Bordeaux generally, as well as to wines styled after Bordeaux. It’s even a legally protected trade name within the European Union.
Bordeaux is France’s largest wine producing region, with over 8,500 producers — chateaux — releasing about 700 million bottles each year. It’s the home of some of the world’s most prestigious vineyards, including the legendary “First Growths” of Lafite Rothschild, Margaux, Latour, Haut-Brion and Mouton-Rothschild as well as the superlative dessert wine created at Chateau d’Yquem.
Bordeaux’s chief geographic features are the Garonne and Dordogne rivers that flow into the Gironde estuary. Over 50 appellations are found on either the “Right Bank” (north of the Dordogne), the “Left Bank” (west and south of the Garronne) or “Entre-deux-mers,” in the area between the two rivers. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petite Verdot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Carmenre are the only legally permitted red grapes in Bordeaux and are usually blended together to create a specific “house” style. As a general rule, Cabernet Sauvignon is the primary grape in the Left Bank, while Merlot is predominant in the Right.
The quality of Bordeaux wines can range from simple, cheap plonk to extraordinarily delicious—and extremely expensive—bottles. It’s easy to fall in love with quality Bordeaux wines. A great kosher example from the Medoc appellation is the Chateau de Rollan of 2010, which opens with black currant, earth and cedar aromas. A full-bodied, elegant effort, its soft tannin provide a smooth background for the layers of plum, coffee and spice that extend throughout the lengthy finish.
Chateau de Rollan of 2010 is available at Skyview Wine & Spirits. 
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