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Dear Reader,
The body of a missing yeshiva
student has been found in the Jerusalem forest where he'd been hiking.
Details about his death are slow to emerge but we'll be updating our story as we
have them. Z''l.
Body of Missing Yeshiva Student Found
The body of Aharon Sofer, 23-year-old yeshiva student from Lakewood, N.J., found in Jerusalem near the West Bank.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Aharon Sofer, the 23-year-old yeshiva student from Lakewood, N.J. yeshivaworldnews.com
Volunteer searchers have found the body of Aharon Sofer, the 23-year-old yeshiva student from Lakewood, N.J., who disappeared last Friday while hiking through the West Bank with a friend, according to WABC television.
WABC quoted Israeli Police spokesman Micki Rosenfeld as saying that Mr. Sofer’s body was discovered in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood, near the Jerusalem Forest, where Mr. Sofer was last seen.
Rosenfeld did not announce a suspected cause of death. The vosizneias.com website, which serves the haredi community, quoted Eli Beer, founder of the United Hatzolah organization, as saying, “one of our volunteers found him near a tree … Other volunteers came and they saw he wasn’t alive, hadn’t been alive for a while.”
“Initial reports say that Sofer’s body shows no signs of violence,” the website reported.
Mr. Sofer’s parents, who had flown to Israel to join in a massive search through the hilly area, had offered a $28,000 reward for information leading to his return, and had posted a video on social media begging for his release.
Police and the United Hatzolah emergency response organization coordinated the search.
Mr. Sofer’s disappearance came a month after Palestinian terrorists on the West Bank kidnapped and murdered three hitchhiking teenage yeshiva students, and a Palestinian teen was kidnapped and killed in the Jerusalem Forest in an apparent act of revenge by Jewish extremists.
editor@jewishweek.org
Check our homepage for the latest
Israel news. Today we carry an analysis about the strange bedfellows that
Islamic extremism is creating as Israel's interests align increasingly with
those of some former enemies.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
And if you'd like a light moment, read and watch our story
about "Friday Night Dinner," a British television comedy about a
Jewish family that is headed for a CBS remake. It has the ring of truth, but
sounds a bit better in their accents. We've got the video right in the story
for you.
The Goodman family, featured in the British sitcom "Friday Night Dinner." channel4.com
Popular British Sitcom Comes to U.S., Maybe Minus Jews
CBS wants to bring "Friday Night Dinner" to America, but the Goodman family may no longer be Jewish.
Makena Owens
What’s Friday Night Dinner without Jews?
It's CBS that's asking the question. Friday Night Dinner, the British sitcom featuring the wacky Jewish Goodman family, might be moving to American TV. The show was so popular in Britain it was renewed for a third season. The catch: CBS might cut the show’s Jewish flavor.
Beyond the show's ethnicity, always a sticky wicket, the show has other challenges to contend with. NBC, in conjunction with producer Greg Daniels, attempted its own adaptation in 2011. Praised for his success with The Office — also originally a British program — and Parks and Recreation, Daniels seemed to have the touch NBC needed for a hit adaptation.
But American critics had a pareve response to his effort, which didn't air past the first pilot. According to thefutoncritic.com, it was deemed “bizarre,” then condemned because it was “Just. Not. Funny.”
Across the pond, the Jewish eccentricity of the original clearly works: the third season premiered to an audience of almost three million viewers.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/S94fX9Z4iVQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Will our Friday Night Dinner feature a weekly challah? Stay tuned ...
editor@jewishweek.org
Editorial Intern
Happy Shabbat and Labor Day
weekend!
Best,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
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The Arts
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Two Takes On The Shoah
And Its Aftermath
'Le Grand Cahier (The Notebook)'
and 'Shadows from My Past' at the Quad.
George Robinson - Special To The
Jewish Week
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The
identical twins at the center of "Le Grand Cahier (The
Notebook"). Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
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The end of the First World War brought about the dismantling of both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires as well as the peace settlement that made possible both the rise of the Nazis and the chaotic creation of the modern Middle East. With the rather ironic conjunction of the latest outbreaks of violence in the Middle East and the centenary of the First World War, it is impossible not to note that two vastly different films about the Shoah and its aftermath are opening on Aug. 29 at the same multiplex. Each film came from one of the First World War’s biggest losers. A drama released in its home country in 2013, “Le Grand Cahier (The Notebook),” directed by János Szász from the novel by Agota Kristof, was made in Hungary; the new documentary “Shadows from My Past” is the work of Gita Kaufman, an Austrian Jew who escaped the Nazis as a child, and her husband and co-director Curt Kaufman, and focuses specifically on the Jewish-Austrian experience.
Kristof herself is also an ex-pat, uprooted at age 11 by the catastrophic failure of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Since then she has lived and written in France. Interestingly, the novel from which the new film is drawn does not specify the country or period in which it is set; it just takes place in wartime, in a nation ruled by an occupying army of unspecified nationality. In their adaptation, however, Szász, Kristof and Andras Szekér have chosen to set the film emphatically in the latter stages of WWII, with the Nazis at long last invading Hungary to encourage the native Fascist government to step up compliance with the murder of European Jewry. By doing so, they have thrown down a gauntlet.
At the center of the film are a pair of 13-year-old identical twins, Egyik (László Gyémánt) and Masik (András Gyémánt). Their father is away in the Hungarian army, and as the war approaches Budapest, the boys’ mother decides to leave them in the care of her own mother (Piroska Molnár), a splendidly foul-mouthed elderly widow and farmer, whose neighbors refer to her as “the witch.” Reluctantly at first, then doggedly, the boys throw themselves into the difficult life of the impoverished family farm, and an awkward sort of mutual respect grows between the three. But it is the boys’ shared, mysterious rituals, recorded in detail in the notebook, that are the center of their lives and that give the film its deceptively bland title; they involve an often eerie blend of physical self-testing and punishment, as well as observation of the minutiae of the tiny village nearby. The two boys develop a wary friendship with Harelip, a facially deformed local girl, and are more or less adopted as mascots by the SS officer who runs a nearby concentration camp.
Szász depicts these events with a dry, detached tone that effectively undercuts any impulse towards sentimentality. When events bring the boys back together first with their mother, then with their father, the results are swift and brutal and the death of major characters are accompanied not by tears but with an air of resigned indifference. The violent testing rituals the twins impose on themselves have done their work in the most obvious sense.
Yet neither the boys nor the film have become morally hardened. When the only local who has shown them any compassion, a Jewish shoemaker, is murdered with the connivance of a local maid who is attracted to the twins as the nearest thing to sexually available men in the vicinity, the boys exact a swift and cruel vengeance. It is not dissimilar to the fate that the SS officer exacts on the local police chief who, in turn, tortures the boys afterwards. (Significantly, the shoemaker’s death is one of the few in the film to register any feeling of loss by the filmmakers or the twins.)
“Le Grand Cahier” is, by design, a fragmented narrative with characters drifting in and out of the film as the unpredictable violence of war dictates. Szász treats it as a sort of stationary picaresque. The fragmentation of the storyline impels him to throw a myriad of often-inventive devices into the film; they range from flipbook animation on the pages of the notebook to a bravura recreation of an aerial bombing. The latter is created from little more than shadows looming over an empty street.
The film is given a visual unity by the director’s insistence on the limitations of his characters’ vision, both literal and metaphorical, in a world full of bars, shadows and other obstructions. Szász’s direction never seems forced or unfocussed. Although the discontinuities of the narrative are occasionally unsatisfying, the final product is profoundly disturbing, and the film’s chilly emotional understatement renders it vastly more powerful than most efforts in the genre.
Finally, the decision to root the story in clearly delineated historical reality lifts it above the realm of generic allegory into something much more devastating.
One wishes the same could be said of “Shadows from My Past.” The film is deeply personal, drawing on Gita Kaufman’s family correspondence surrounding the Anschluss and what followed. But “Shadows,” while heartfelt and earnest, is marred by a consistent level of amateurishness encompassing everything from poor sound recording to factual errors and a total lack of structure. While Ms. Kaufman’s family story is certainly worth retelling, there is nothing here that we haven’t seen before in many, much more skillfully crafted documentary films.
Both “Le Grand Cahier (The Notebook)” directed by János Szász, and “Shadows from My Past,” directed by Curt Kaufman and Gita Kaufman, open Friday, Aug. 29 at Quad Cinema (34 W. 13th St.). For information, call (212) 255-2243 or go to http://www.quadcinema.com.
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Blogs
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WELL VERSED
A Novella Sparked By
Conflict
Gloria Kestenbaum
“The Jerusalem Lover," a novella by Shira Dicker, is a prescient and courageous look at the ongoing battle between Israel's staunch defenders and her harsh critics. The work was actually written seven years ago, as Dicker struggled with the “casual anti-Semitism (she)…confronted nearly daily” while living in England during 2004.
As she says in her thought-provoking foreword, “From my perch outside of Oxford, it seemed there was a national belief that Israel (i.e. the Jews) was… responsible for everything wrong in the world while simultaneously controlling the media, international banking, etc.” (Full disclosure: Dicker is the wife of Ari Goldman, a Jewish Week columnist.)
The recent fraught weeks of the war in Gaza, along with the concomitant undercurrent of anti-Israel rhetoric and inevitable world condemnation, convinced its author to bypass traditional publishing channels in order to make this timely work accessible to all readers in an open format.
“The Jerusalem Lover” takes on the academic world, in the form of its central character and anti-hero, Elisha Rosensweig, a professor of Hebrew literature and language at Columbia University -- a rabid anti-Zionist and self-hating if self-aggrandizing, virulent anti-Semite. If Rosensweig conjures up shades of Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and the late Tony Judt, among others, he should -- since the author makes clear that they are indeed models for her character. Dicker never quite makes clear the impetus of this pivotal personality, whether he’s motivated by the acclaim he receives for his hateful rhetoric, or whether this is a more primal, paternal revenge.
The story interweaves the lives of an array of characters, all connected to its central persona. It's a compelling read and you'll want to keep scrolling through to reach the story's denouement. Dicker has spent many years as a close observer of the academic community and her description of that world is spot-on. If some of the characters feel a bit under-developed and less than convincing, such as Rachel, the professor's too-admirable wife or the anonymous narrator, that may have something to do with the novella format itself. The author does warn us in her foreword that this is a piece that "refused to stay short enough to be called a story and refused to grow long enough to be called a novel" and it may be that tension that prevents a more fleshed-out and deeper characterization.
Still, this is a must-read for anyone interested in and confused by the many views of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dicker is asking important questions and although she may not have the answers, her thoughtful and timely work at least tackles the issues.
"The Jerusalem Lover" is available online, for free.
Gloria Kestenbaum is corporate communications consultant and freelance writer.
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Food & Wine
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 New
Packaged Cookie Brand Takes The Cake
Cellophane is not a bad sign if you're eating a Nomoo cookie.
Ronnie Fein - Jewish Week Online columnist
Call me crazy, but I'm not a fan of packaged cookies.
There were slim pickings when I was a kid and besides, my Mom baked often, and to my young mind you couldn't get better than hers.
Every once in a while I'll try a brand someone recommends. I'm often disappointed, although a few goodies have come along over the years.
Last week I sampled several varieties from a new manufacturer called Nomoo Cookie Company. No “moo” as in dairy-free. Also, kosher (Orthodox Union). Best of all – fabulous.
I will confess that the company sent me free samples, but I never let that get in the way of the truth. When you're in the food writing business you have to be honest or you lose credibility. Besides, some of my regular "tasters," (including a couple of kids) tried them out and all the cookies were declared winners. Not everyone liked every flavor – I wasn’t enamored with “Almond Oy” although the name is cute – but there were no duds.
Nomoo cookies are large, but not steroidal. One is just right for dessert. There are several more or less classic flavors – oatmeal, chocolate chip, ginger and sugar cookie, among others – nothing too weird in an effort to be innovative without purpose. The company does plan to offer specialty cookies at times: apples-and-honey cookies for the High Holidays, pumpkin for Thanksgiving and so on.
At the helm at Nomoo is David Bader, architect-cum-baker, whose kosher friends and a colleague whose child is allergic to dairy products urged him to create great tasting, healthier pareve cookies. That’s not easy with traditional shortenings and margarine, which can taste waxy and feel greasy. He has succeeded in his task though, using Spectrum Organic Shortening and Earth Balance products.
Each cookie has a punny name (“Open Sesame,” “Oat-Rageous”). Of all the cookies we tasted, the favorites were the Choco-Lift (“crispy surface, fudgy insides”), Ginger Slap (“warm and not overly spiced”) and Flyin’ Hawaiian (“tastes like vacation”).
Nomoo is a new company, still trying to find its way around the market, so for now, unless you live near their factory (5118 Applebutter Road, Pipersville, PA, 18947), you have to buy the cookies online at www.nomoocookies.com. At the website you will find a variety of options and cookie combinations; they cost $19.95 a dozen, plus shipping.
Nomoo cookies have no preservatives but stay fresh for up to a week (longer if refrigerated or frozen). In case you have any leftover after that (doubtful), use them to make cookie crumb crusts for pies or for sundae toppings or streusel toppings for fruit crisps. Like this one, which is amazingly quick to put together:
Ronnie Fein is a cookbook author and cooking teacher in Stamford, author of Hip Kosher. Her newest book, The Modern Kosher Kitchen, will be published November 1, 2014. Visit her food blog, Kitchen Vignettes, at www.ronniefein.com and follow on Twitter at @RonnieVFein.
Hide Servings & Times
Yield:
6 servings
Active Time:
15 min
Total Time:
45 min
Hide Ingredients
Individual Apple Crisp with Cookie Crumbles
5 apples such as Granny Smiths or Golden Delicious
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 Oat-Rageous Oatmeal Cookies
3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter or Earth Balance Buttery Spread or coconut oil
Vanilla ice cream, optional
Hide Steps
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Peel the apples and remove the cores. Slice the apples into a bowl.
Add the brown sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon, mix to distribute ingredients thoroughly and place the apples in 6 individual baking dishes.
In a small bowl, crumble the cookies. Pour in the melted butter. Mix well to coat all the cookie crumbs.
Scatter the buttered crumbs on top of the apples.
Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the top is golden brown and crusty. Let cool slightly, but serve warm. Top with vanilla ice cream if desired.
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The New York Jewish Week: Connection the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 29 August 2014
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