Opinions for Wednesday, 10 September 2014
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Dear Reader,
With Rosh HaShanah right
around the corner, this week we offer our annual Taste of the New Year stories
- cool gifts, new wines and comfort food for the holidays.
 Rosh HaShanah 5775: Taste of the New Year
Cool Gifts, New Wines, Comfort Food For Rosh HaShanah.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
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In the news pages, we look at
the outpouring of Jewish donations during the Gaza war.
Staff writer Hannah Dreyfus
reports on fresh questions being asked about whether the money was spent wisely, and whether it put
other causes at risk. Staff writer Stewart Ain reports on a new $250 million
fund for child survivors
established by Germany and the Claims Conference. It is the first time such a
fund has been made available specifically for the medical and psychological
needs of child survivors.
ISRAEL NEWS
Questions Over Outpouring Of Gaza War Philanthropy
As U.S. donations to Israel soar, are other causes at risk?
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Israelis run for cover in the coastal city of Ashkelon during the recent Gaza war. Getty Images
The outpouring of money seemed extraordinary, even by Hamptons’ standards.
It was Shabbos morning, Aug. 9, the Gaza war was raging and Rabbi Marc Schneier, spiritual leader of The Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, took to the bima for an impromptu appeal.
Twenty minutes later, the rabbi had pledges of $1.1 million in hand for UJA-Federation of New York’s Israel Emergency Fund.
“There was a feeling of urgency in the congregation,” said Rabbi Schneier, who noted that his flock had already ponied up $10.5 million for Israel Bonds in July, and was in the midst of raising $500,000 for defibrillators for Israel’s embattled southern region.
“The feeling was, ‘If not now, when?’” said Rabbi Schneier, who made the pitch with Jerry Levin, UJA-Federation’s former board chairman.
The enthusiastic response at The Hampton Synagogue was repeated — though perhaps not as dramatically — at Jewish institutions across the country during the seven weeks of fighting between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Bankrolling everything from ambulances to automatic locks on bomb shelters to vacations for families living in Israel’s south, American philanthropic dollars poured in by the millions. Golf tournaments, mixers, rallies and impromptu synagogue solicitations tenaciously sought donations for weeks on end. UJA-Federation of New York alone raised $8.3 million in the last six weeks. Through its “Stop the Sirens” campaign, the Jewish Federation of North America, the umbrella group for federations nationwide, allocated more than $18 million over seven weeks.
But the outpouring of donations is raising questions in Jewish philanthropic circles. Was the response equal to the need? Was the money given with the heart and not the head? Should Israel be picking up the tab for some of what American money funded? And most importantly, did the rush to allocate funds compromise strategic and effective giving, and perhaps harm other causes?
Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, said that “just pouring in money at one moment in time” demonstrates a serious lack of foresight.
“There is a major disconnect between the emotional stress caused by a crisis and the calm reasoning needed for a wise philanthropic strategy,” said Solomon, who advised the organization to give gradually as needs in Israel arose.
“At times of crisis, the money starts coming forth, yet the needs of those in crisis are not immediately known,” he said, pointing out that the problem is not unique to Israel; after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Americans donated millions before the knowing where needs would emerge.
“There’s a difference between giving money quickly and allocating money quickly,” said Mark Charendoff, president of the Maimonides Fund, a foundation that assists those looking to donate to charities. “If a donor gives generously in the face of a crisis, the foundation has a responsibility to allocate those funds effectively, keeping long term needs in mind,” said Charendoff, who recently headed the Jewish Funders Network.
Another question raised by the war philanthropy is how it will affect donations to other charitable causes, including schools, services for the elderly and local aid to those in need?
“That’s the real question that needs to be asked,” said Dan Brown, founder of eJewish Philanthropy, an online resource for Jewish philanthropies and activists. “How will the focus on giving to Israel affect federation campaigns four or five months from now?” He noted that after previous conflicts, large expenditures on aid to Israel didn’t have an overall negative effect on other causes. Still, the true impact of the war on American philanthropies will only become apparent after several months, he said. “When it’s a war, you can’t sit around and strategize in advance, but the true impact will become apparent down the line.”
As donations poured in during Operation Protective Edge, the name Israel gave to the war in Gaza, grant-makers struggled with the same question: Where to give?
“During the recent conflict, the fundraising process was different than in the past,” said Rebecca Dinar, spokeswoman for the Jewish Federations of North America. “In the past, Jewish communal entities would set a fundraising goal, and try and meet that goal. This time, fundraising efforts changed as the needs in Israel evolved. An allocations committee met weekly to discuss what was needed that week,” she said.
Allocations were divided between aiding vulnerable Israelis, including families in the south, where rocket fire from Hamas was the fiercest, hospital workers and lone soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces, those without family in Israel, and stimulating economic recovery. “Now, more than ever, Israel needs us,” reads the campaign’s informational pamphlet.
As the American Jewish community ramped up fundraising efforts, Israeli organizations ramped up solicitations. One example: the Foundation for Homefront Security in Israel mailed out personal solicitations, asking for donations to support “The Gatekeeper Project,” described in its pamphlet as a “cutting-edge command and control system for immediate access to public shelters.” After a rocket is fired, a warning is transferred to the Gatekeepers “beeper” hub and the shelter is opened automatically. Previously, the Foundation explained, people would run to a shelter after hearing a siren only to find it locked. Each Gatekeeper system costs $5,500.
A source within the Jewish philanthropic world, who asked for anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen criticizing Israel, questioned why American philanthropic dollars were funding projects seemingly under the Israeli government’s domain.
“It’s one thing for philanthropy to deal with the nuances of need,” the source said, citing an initiative to donate games to shelters so children wouldn’t be bored, “but it’s another thing for American dollars to fix up shelters and bankroll rescue efforts. There are government provisions set aside for these needs.”
Rob Rosenthal, chief marketing officer of American Friends of Magen David Adom, the largest supporter the Israeli disaster-relief organization Magen David Adom, said that 80 percent of discretionary money received by the organization comes from the U.S. From June 19 through the end of August, American Friends of Magen David Adom raised $8.4 million from American donations plus an additional $2.9 million in pledges.
“The response we received from the American Jewish community during Operation Protective Edge has been exceptionally strong,” said Rosenthal, saying the magnitude of the response compared only to the 2006 Lebanon War. The past two conflicts in Gaza — in 2008-2009 and 2012 — paled in comparison.
“This time, there was a sense that Israel had been infiltrated and was a lot more vulnerable,” said Rosenthal. “Israel was also so harshly beleaguered in world opinion that Americans felt they had to compensate in terms of support,” he said.
Aside from basic needs (needles, blood bags), American dollars funded mobile intensive care units ($125,000 each), basic life support ambulances ($100,000 each) and combined ECG-defibrillators ($30,000 each).
“We had so many mobile ICUs that we had to tell donors we needed more basic ambulances instead,” said Rosenthal.
All Magen David Adom ambulances were purchased with donation dollars. “We haven’t had to resort to a plan B because that money hasn’t dried up,” he added.
The vast amount of money sent to Israel over the past seven weeks and the diverse purposes for which it’s been used begs the question: what is the role of the philanthropic dollar?
“It is the funder’s role to identify gaps in the state’s systemic response, and fill those gaps,” said Andrés Spokoiny, CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, which advises Jewish foundations on their grant-making strategy. Though he wasn’t able to give an exact figure, Spokoiny said “several millions of dollars” have been given to Israel through JFN over the course of Operation Protective Edge.
“Who does the system overlook? That’s the question we should ask.” He gave the example of trauma counselors. “Yes, there’s a strong system in place for dealing with trauma victims, but who’s counseling the counselors?” he said.
Though progress has been made in this area, the line between basic essentials and supplementary needs remains blurred.
“To the credit of the federations, a lot has been learned about giving more strategically,” said Solomon. “Back in the day, American charities would be putting air conditioners in shelters, and three weeks later, those air conditioners were gone. But there is still a lot of progress to be made.”
Hannah@jewishweek.org
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NEW YORK
In A First, Child Survivors Get Payout
$250 million fund seen as merely ‘symbolic’; anger over perceived small amount.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Claims Conference’s Greg Schneider: Child survivors’ “suffering had a cumulative effect.”
In their later years, Jews who survived the Holocaust as children — whether in concentration camps, ghettos or in hiding — have experienced psychological problems such as nightmares and health issues related to malnutrition as children.
Now, for the first time, a $250 million fund has been established by Germany and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany for the approximately 70,000 to 75,000 Jewish child survivors worldwide. Each child survivor born after Jan. 1, 1928 will receive a one-time payment of about $3,280 to help pay for those war-related medical needs. About 15 percent of those survivors live in the United States. All are eligible, regardless of wealth, and despite the fact that Germany has already paid them other compensation.
Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference, said the special medical needs of child survivors have been discussed with Germany for several years. He said the talks intensified last year and that an agreement was finally hammered out in negotiations two weeks ago in Germany.
“Our argument is that people may have been receiving German pensions for many years because they were in camps or ghettos, but that Germany should acknowledge the special needs of child survivors,” he said. “During their formative years they were in camps, ghettos or in hiding and they suffered psychological trauma. …
“The suffering endured by these young Nazi victims, including devastating separation from parents at a critical time in a child’s development, as well as witnessing unimaginable atrocities, deprivation from proper nutrition, and a range of injurious experiences has had a cumulative effect.
“They are having night terrors for the first time because of that trauma,” he said. “In addition, they have had medical issues that have occurred only later in life. If they did not have proper dental care as a child, they are experiencing dental problems now like the need for dentures. And if they did not have milk as a child, they have a calcium deficiency and there is a greater likelihood of osteoporosis and other skeletal diseases. … For everyone, Germany’s recognition of the deprivation they experienced as children is essential.”
Child survivors interviewed expressed shock at the small amount being offered, but Schneider suggested to The Jewish Week that the amount should be seen as no more than a token recognition of their suffering.
“No amount of money can compensate for what they suffered, but for a very poor person who needs dentures, $3,300 makes a big difference.”
Stefanie Seltzer, president of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants, said of the amount, “Of course more [money] would be better, but we have had to be realistic.”
In an email, Seltzer said her organization is “keenly aware of the great needs of the survivors; of the effects of the trauma on their (our) continuing lives. Yes, we have all continued to live in the shadow of these experiences, living with the daily pain of our losses, our memories, our lives without parents, without families. The effects do not diminish with the passage of time.”
In the email, sent from Poland, where she traveled after attending her organization’s 26th annual conference in Berlin in the days leading up to the reparations negotiation, Seltzer pointed out that child survivors “do experience physical effects of the suffering; there are many manifestations as shown in various studies of the long term effects on the lives of survivors.”
“Yes, as we have aged, the losses are felt even more keenly,” she wrote. “There is an absolute void in our lives that has also been part of the lives of our children, now also adults. The physical deprivations and circumstances of survival have led to serious health issues.”
All members of the German negotiating team, as well as some members of the German legislature, attended portions of the conference. Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, the Claims Conference’s special negotiator, said he believes that was a key reason the negotiations succeeded.
“It drove home to the German government and the public the special suffering of the children, and that it left lasting scars – no one was exempt,” he said. “Also, with the upcoming 70th anniversary of the end of the war, they wanted to do a special gesture.”
Eva Fogelman, a licensed psychologist and co-director of the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children, which has interviewed 1,500 child survivors since 1981, said many child survivors only began “confronting” their losses in their later years.
“They had no time to mourn after the war,” she said. “They were busy raising a family and working. But retirement often brings on a mourning period. [The feeling of loss] becomes more prevalent as they get older because of their own imminent death. They think more about the parents they knew or did not know, and what life might have been like if they had a father or mother. They are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder that might have been dormant all these years and has now been triggered by such things as a reunion of people from a DP [displaced persons] camp.”
Colette Avital, a former Israeli consul general in New York who was part of the negotiating team in Germany as chair of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, an umbrella group of 54 organizations, told The Jewish Week: “I know the anguish and how those people suffer today, especially when they are getting older and everything comes back to them. And I know that no money in the world could give back their childhood or make amends for what they went through. But this is a gesture of recognition.”
Eizenstat told The Jewish Week that the special suffering of child survivors was why Germany made an exception to its “iron-clad rule” about not making a second type of payment to survivors.
“We convinced [Germany] that they had a unique form of suffering,” he said.
The agreement was also special because, like the homecare agreement reached a year ago, Germany agreed to the extra payments on the condition that it was done as a joint partnership with the Claims Conference.
The Claims Conference, using money it obtained by selling heirless Jewish property in East Germany, is to pay about $70 million of the $250 fund. The German government is to pay the other $180 million, according to Eizenstat.
The Germans initially wanted all child survivors to submit letters from medical doctors or psychologists attesting to the Holocaust-related problems they are now experiencing. But Eizenstat said Claims Conference negotiators said many countries have national health insurance programs that would pay all or most all of their medical expenses.
In addition, he said they argued that such a requirement would be “extremely difficult to administer and that many survivors don’t want it known they have had such problems — it’s an embarrassment issue. We said just give them the cash and if they wanted to use it for medical or dental payments, that would be fine.”
Eizenstat said he found Germany’s decision to make this payment “inspirational and a demonstration that even the second and third generations in Germany feel an obligation to survivors, especially at a time when there is a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe.”
The German government estimates the number of child survivors at 70,000; the Claims Conference puts the figure at 75,000. Germany has agreed to pay the entire $3,300 stipend for all child survivors above 70,000.
The entire deal is subject to approval of the German Bundestag or legislature, as well as the board of the Claims Conference. The fund is expected to become operational next Jan. 1; application details will be announced after the fund is approved.
To be eligible, a child survivor must have been born after Jan. 1, 1928, and been in a concentration camp, ghetto (or similar place of incarceration in accordance with the German Slave Labor Program), or in hiding or under false identity for a period of at least six months under Nazi occupied territory or 12 months in Axis countries.
stewart@jewishweek.org
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Also, editor Gary Rosenblatt
questions both the timing and the politics of the move by the Netanyahu
administration to declare part of the Gush Etzion bloc as state land. This
week we inaugurate a twice-monthly "Letter From Israel"
column by Nathan Jeffay. His focus is the danger looming on Israel's northern
border. And we remember Joan Rivers, the brilliant
comic and lover of Israel, who died last week.
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ISRAEL NEWS
Storm Clouds On The ‘Al Qaeda Border’
Pivoting from Gaza to Syria, a looming hotspot.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
There is an ongoing exodus of UN peacekeepers along the Israeli-Syrian border. Getty Images
As calm has returned after seven weeks of fighting in Gaza, thousands of people from southern Israel have said goodbye to families in the north of the country who gave them a temporary home during the violence. Many left their hosts with a very real offer — to return the favor.
The border between Israel and Gaza has stayed quiet since the Aug. 26 cease-fire, but dark clouds are gathering over Israel’s northern borders. It may not be long before residents of the Galilee and the Golan are on the front lines — and looking to redeem their invites.
Revelations during the Gaza operation regarding the advanced nature of Hamas’ tunnel network into Israel have rung alarm bells about the kind of tunnels that Hezbollah may have prepared from Lebanon into Israel. And and there are serious concerns about the militant group’s huge rocket arsenal, which is many times larger than that of Hamas.
Meanwhile, the biggest development is on the border between Israel and Syria — or as it has now become in part, Israel’s border with al Qaeda. The day after the Gaza cease-fire, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the al Nusra Front, took control of the only crossing between Syria and Israel — and it has since taken hilltops and villages nearby.
As soon as it conquered the crossing from the Syrian army, al Nusra further flexed its muscles, by entrapping 85 United Nations peacekeepers — 40 Filipinos and 45 Fijians. The Filipinos escaped but, as of press time the Fijians — described by the militants as protectors of the “Zionist entity” — are in captivity.
Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, is no friend of Israel. However, for four decades he has mostly kept his border with Israel quiet — preferring to spill Israeli blood using his proxy Hezbollah.
Now, Assad is engaged in a bloody civil war — which has fire straying into Israel with increasing regularity — and both sides simultaneously pose major threats towards Israel. Al Nusra, part of the Syrian opposition, suddenly has the power to wreck the calm that he has chosen to maintain on his Israel border. And his own pet terrorists in Hezbollah — who have doubled as mercenaries for him in his civil war — are well prepared to unleash attacks against Israel. It highlights the blatant error of the proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
The entrenchment of al Qaeda radicals next to Israel’s border has come as President Barack Obama is recruiting allies to combat the Islamic State. Presumably, echoing this initiative, the international community is sending reinforcements for the peacekeeping force on the Israel-Syria border — to protect peacekeepers and increase their power? Wrong. In fact, there is an ongoing exodus of peacekeeping forces from the region.
In the UN Golan mission, UNDOF (the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force), there is a growing belief that when the going gets tough, the tough get going — hardly the ethos expected from intrepid peacekeepers.
The Philippines is pulling out all of its 331 troops. Manila made this announcement a week before its people were captured, saying that this group is due to return home but it won’t be sending replacements “unless the situation improves.”
Irish peacekeepers were the heroes in the escape of the Filipino troops, but Dublin too looks likely to back out of UNDOF. It is due to send new troops to replace its 130 men next month. But Irish Defense Minister Simon Coveney has suggested that this change in rotation will be frozen unless the UN conducts a “full review” of how the mission works and gives Ireland “assurances” on how it will “adapt to the new realities.”
The exodus began in January 2013. Five peacekeepers had been wounded in Damascus a few weeks previously, and Japan withdrew troops and support staff — around 45 people altogether. Shortly afterwards, Croatia, which provided almost 100 troops, withdrew them as the country’s prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, voiced concerns that they are “no longer safe.”
Then, in June 2013, the al Nusra Front captured the Israel-Syria crossing for the first time. Though it only held on to it for a short time, this prompted Austria, the biggest force in UNDOF at the time, to make its excuses and say its goodbyes a few days later. Vienna claimed that the “uncontrolled and immediate danger” to its troops had risen to an “unacceptable level.”
It isn’t only the peacekeeping countries backing down in the face of terror, but the UN itself. In March 2013, rebels held 21 Filipino peacekeepers for four days. Two weeks after their release, the UN announced that its Golan peacekeepers have “reduced their activities in response to the presence of armed groups from the Syrian conflict.” Hervé Ladsous, a senior peacekeeping official, said: “We have had to reduce somewhat the footprint of UNDOF in the Golan Heights in the area of operation.”
Until now, UNDOF has managed to cobble together the manpower to make up for quitters, but this is getting harder, and may simply become impossible. The force could soon become a shadow of its former self. Or worse, the next biannual renewal of its mandate coming up at the end of this year may simply not happen. UNDOF could vanish, and if it does, the implications for Israel’s security are troubling, including the prospect of al Nusra attempting cross-border attacks against Israel.
International forces along the Israel-Syria border need to grow and take a greater role, not shrink and hide. If jihadists succeed in driving them away, it isn’t only bad for Israeli security and, at a time when leaders of the international community are asking for Jerusalem’s trust in their negotiations with Tehran, Israeli psychology. It sends the worst possible message to the jihadists of the Islamic State about the power of terror as the world launches its offensive against them.
This is Nathan Jeffay’s inaugural “Letter From Israel” column; it will appear twice a month.
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NEW YORK
‘Yente-in-Chief’
Joan Rivers was a (sometimes off-color) voice for outsiders and women, and a fierce defender of Israel.
Joseph Dorinson
Special to The Jewish Week
A comedian and entertainer for five decades, Joan Rivers enjoyed a popularity that spanned generations. Getty Images
The “mouth that roared” is now silent.
Born in Brooklyn in 1933 to Russian immigrant parents, Dr. Meyer and Beatrice Molinsky, Joan Rivers, who died on Sept. 4 at 81 from complications during vocal cord surgery, grew up in the shadow of an older sister and with many complexes. “I was so fat; I was my own buddy in camp,” she would say.
Despite her carefully crafted comic persona, she actually was a brilliant student, a graduate of Barnard College with high honors in 1954.
Ignoring her parents’ pleas, Ms. Rivers pursued a career as an actress, dancer, and singer. But comedy provided a better fit. A long apprenticeship that included performing in the Catskill hotels (because she had a car and agreed to drive her male peers there and back), a stint with Chicago’s Second City ensemble, many night clubs, and some “toilets” ultimately led to success capped by a brilliant 10 minutes on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” in 1965.
Billed as a writer, Ms. Rivers, who changed her last name at her agent’s suggestion when she entered show business, was 32 when she vaulted into stardom. Her early shtick, with shades of traditional Jewish humor, featured self-deprecation, especially about her allegedly “ugly duckling” appearance. In fact, before multiple cosmetic surgeries, she was actually quite pretty if not drop-dead gorgeous. For example (from critic Sarah Blacher Cohen’s essay “Unkosher Comediennes”):
♦ “On our wedding night, my husband said: ‘Can I help with the buttons?’ I was naked at the time.”
♦ “You’ve heard of A Cup, B Cup, and C Cup. Well, you’re looking at demitasse.”
♦ “Dress by Oscar de la Rental; body by Oscar Meyer.”
Obviously, she posed no threat to the femmes fatales or macho males in the audience. As a Jewish comedienne, she evaded the lethal blows of anti-Semitism by mocking our tribe and herself:
♦ “I want a Jewish delivery — to be knocked out in the delivery room and wake up two weeks later at the hairdresser’s.”
♦ “A Jewish porno film is made up of one minute of sex and six minutes of guilt.”
♦ “Jews get orgasms in department stores.”
Unlike her female predecessors, Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Totie Fields, and Belle Barth, the attractive Joan Rivers wrote her own material and launched an arsenal of verbal missiles at sundry targets.
She was a staunch defender of Israel. During an appearance on an Israeli comedy show, she declared of critics of Israel, “If they don’t love [Israel], tell them to go f*** themselves. Then she read a list of “Top Ten Ways to Say I Love Israel,” including “I love Israel so much, at night I go to bed wearing only Chanel No. 5 and an Uzi.”
During this summer’s war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, she said, “You cannot throw rockets and expect people not to defend themselves. If New Jersey were firing rockets into New York we would wipe them out!”
Ms. Rivers peppered her routines with Yiddish words in order to proclaim, rather than hide, her Jewish identity.
In the late 1970s, she became more aggressive, dirtier like America’s fabled but polluted rivers. Average folks identified with her when she attacked celebrities, the rich and so-called beautiful people, namely, Elizabeth Taylor, Christine Onassis, Nancy Kissinger, and Bo Derek. Rivers declared that Derek, the putative “Ten,” “is so dumb that she has to study for her Pap Test.” Inspired by the late Lenny Bruce, who had encouraged her to expand her vocabulary, Ms. Rivers began a barrage of shmutz (dirty words) to engage audiences in the pursuit of truth as Yente-in-Chief.
As she titillated her fans with a new rallying cry — “Can we talk?” — Rivers defended this dramatic departure as a response to “tasteless times.” In a real sense, she spoke to the disaffected if not “silent majority” — for outsiders and women who lacked power but possessed other assets. Following the exhortation of Sophie Tucker, Rivers urged women to barter sex for rewards. “Marry rich. Buy him a pacemaker, then stand behind him and say BOOOOH!” Playing it safely, however, she was both a feminist rebel and, at same time, an advocate for feminine guile
Growing more conservative in the 1980s, Ms. Rivers lampooned the Democratic ticket of Mondale and Ferraro as “Fritz and Tits.” If elected in 1984, they would constitute “three boobs in the White House.” The strategy of offending feminists and befriending Nancy Reagan was tailored to a new Joan Rivers persona. On the subject of tailors, Elizabeth Taylor, a beauty who had gained weight in her later years, received no mercy from Rivers:
♦ “Her thighs are going condo.”
♦ “She wears stretch caftans.”
♦ “She has more chins than a Chinese phone book.”
Later, Ms. Rivers would explain, her barbs hurled at Taylor, a convert to Judaism, were based on envy not malice. Crossing boundaries, seeking acclaim, Ms. Rivers pushed the envelope with hubris. When she, in accord with her husband-manager Edgar Rosenberg, decided to compete with Johnny Carson on the Fox network at the same late-night time slot, things fell apart. A furious Carson permanently broke off relations with his former acolyte. The experiment failed. Fox executives fired Edgar. Depressed and separated from Joan, Edgar committed suicide.
Undaunted, resilient, a “cat” with many lives, she clawed back to fame with jokes about her marriage, “gigs” on the red carpet as a fashionista alongside daughter Melissa, night-club performances, guest appearances on television, moonlighting as a shopping network pitchwoman, and performances at college venues.
I attended one show at Brooklyn College. That memorable evening featured Rue Paul, a transgendered performer, who was compelled to leave the stage prompted by a chorus of boos. Ms. Rivers followed with a masterful comedic act, but not before gently chiding the audience for its intolerance and urging all to be more open-minded. She rivaled Judy Garland as a gay icon. More significantly, she gave voice to many Jews who had been fettered with that defensive sha-sha “don’t make waves” syndrome.
Not given to facile praise, the late critic Roger Ebert called Ms. Rivers in 2010, “as a woman who will not accept defeat, who will not slow down, who must prove herself over and again. A brave and stubborn woman, smart as a whip, superbly skilled. You want to see what it looks like to rage, rage against the dying of the light? Joan Rivers will not go gentle into that good night.”
An icon whose popularity spanned generations, she was feted on Sunday at a memorial service at Temple Emanu-El that attracted an A-list crowd of people inside the synagogue and thousands of mourners outside on the street.
Joan Rivers was still fighting when that brilliant light dimmed before it died. The talk has ended but the laughter, evoked by aggressive Jewish humor, lingers on.
Joseph Dorinson, a professor of history at Long Island University, writes and lectures frequently about humor.
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Have a good week.
The Editors.
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