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Dear Reader,
Anti-Semitism in Hungary has grown to the point that Holocaust survivors claim they can't win restitution cases there. So as Staff Writer Stewart Ain reports, a federal appeals court in Chicago is now hearing what appears to be the only Holocaust restitution case pending in the U.S.
INTERNATIONAL
Survivors Can’t Get Justice In Hungary: Lawyers
In Chicago court, growing anti-Semitism cited in restitution cases.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Far-right Jobbik party leader Gabor Vona after winning 20 percent of the country's parliamentary election. Getty Images
In April, Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party — described by the president of the European Jewish Congress as an “unabashedly neo-Nazi party” — won more than 20 percent of the vote in Hungary’s parliamentary election.
A poll by the Anti-Defamation League in 2012 found that 63 percent of Hungarians agreed with three out of four anti-Semitic statements. That same year, Jobbik’s deputy parliamentary leader called for the registration of all Jews in Hungary as well as an evaluation of all Jews in the government to determine the “potential danger they pose to Hungary.”
And in August, as a protest to the Gaza conflict, the far right-wing mayor of the Hungarian city of Erpatak called Israel a “Jewish terror state” and ordered the hanging in effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Shimon Peres.
Now, the anti-Semitism rampant across Hungary is emerging as the central argument in a federal appeals court in Chicago that is hearing what is believed to be the only Holocaust restitution case pending in the U.S.
On Tuesday, that court heard lawyers for Hungarian survivors say that increasing anti-Semitism in Hungary makes it impossible for their clients to win their Holocaust restitution case there.
“A virulent strain of anti-Semitism has been spreading at an alarming rate within Hungary … and these dangerous sentiments have found increased acceptance among mainstream Hungarian politicians and parliamentarians,” lawyers for nearly 100 Hungarian survivors said in court papers filed ahead of their arguments to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
U.S. federal courts have jurisdiction in this case because it is against agencies of a foreign government, in addition to which there are alleged violations of international law. The citizenship of those bringing such cases is irrelevant as long as one of the plaintiffs is an American.
The lawyers were appealing a ruling of a lower court — the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois — that dismissed their suits against the Hungarian National Railroad and the Hungarian National Bank on the grounds that they had failed to exhaust their legal remedies in Hungary.
In their court papers, the lawyers said the “threats against the Jewish population continue to grow, creating a situation in which it would be completely unreasonable to require the plaintiffs in this case to pursue their remedies against the Hungarian state in Hungary.”
The suits were filed in 2010 on behalf of Hungarian survivors who allege that both the bank and railroad “were indispensable participants in, and aiders and abettors of, the execution of the Hungarian genocide of the Jews.” It said Hungarian authorities made the Jews pay for their train ride to the death camps.
“These funds were seized either from illegally confiscated private Jewish bank accounts or from the conversion of Jewish personal and real property … as well as from individual Jews as they boarded the trains,” the suit said.
One of the plaintiffs, Edith Eva Eger of San Diego, Calif., told The Jewish Week that she was 16 in 1944 when she was ordered onto a train to Auschwitz with her parents, grandparents and a sister.
“They herded us onto the train and I think my mother had things sewn into her clothes and stuffed into a bag, like expensive jewelry,” she recalled. “They were taken by railroad employees. We had to leave it behind before we were put on the cattle car. My parents and grandparents died in the gas chamber the first day they were in Auschwitz. My sister and I survived.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers contend that the “continued retention of these assets without restitution by the present day bank is itself a perpetuation of the act of genocide as the Hungarian Jewish community is being denied the means to fully reconstitute itself to this day.”
Lawyers for the bank and railroad insisted that the plaintiffs did not have to bring a suit in the U.S. because they are free to file suit in Hungarian courts. They argued in their court papers that to “determine whether the decades-long chain of successorship alleged by plaintiffs has any validity whatsoever, a court will need to examine complex issues of Hungarian law” and the impact of “Communist expropriation and reprivatization. …
“The Hungarian courts are patently more capable of deciding these issues than U.S. courts, and … . The risk of adversely affecting U.S./Hungary foreign relations by determining these issues is clear,” they argued.
But the survivors’ lawyers argued that pursuing their claims in Hungary would be fruitless. They cited:
n Growing anti-Semitism.
n The fact that Hungary denaturalized and disenfranchised Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, stripping them of any rights accorded Hungarian citizens.
n Compensatory laws defendants said would redress survivors’ injuries expired more than 15 years ago, were available only briefly and were inadequate.
n The statute of limitations on these claims expired.
In addition, the lawyers pointed out, the new Hungarian Constitution exempts Hungary from responsibility for actions committed during the Holocaust.
“Plaintiffs here could even face prosecution in Hungary for daring to ‘denigrate the state’ by accusing the government of being complicit in the Holocaust when the Hungarian Constitution disclaims such responsibility,” they said.
But in its ruling dismissing the suit, the lower court wrote: “Plaintiffs offer mere speculation and unsupported fears that they may not be treated fairly in the Hungarian court system, contending that the ‘Hungarian judicial system is not fair or independent.’”
James Lowy, a Tampa, Fla., lawyer who represents other Hungarian Holocaust survivors who are considering filing a similar suit against the Hungarian railroad and bank, told The Jewish Week that his clients “are afraid that if they openly join the claims in Chicago — without some form of protection — then the Hungarian government will retaliate against them individually, their organization and the broader organized Hungarian Jewish community. … All of them are afraid of the rise in anti-Semitism in Hungary.”
He said they complained to him that the “the idea of having to first make the claims in Hungary before being able to come back to make the claims in the United States is crazy. … Holocaust survivors will never be able to make and prosecute claims in Hungary and they will never get a chance of a fair hearing before a judge who is not prejudiced against Jews.”
But attorneys for the bank said the lower court had considered the plaintiffs’ claims that they feared for their safety in Hungary and “explicitly considered and then disregarded this argument” as having “ insufficient evidence as to their safety concerns.”
Lowy said he believes that once the Court of Appeals rules, survivors from such countries as Romania and Ukraine may file similar restitution claims.
But what may be unique about the Hungarian suits is the claim that virulent anti-Semitism in Hungary makes pursuit of claims there impossible. The plaintiffs contend that although anti-Semitism “continues to be a scourge throughout Europe and the world, what seems different in Hungary is the growing acceptance, tolerance and, in fact, integration of these sentiments into the mainstream.”
They cited a February 2012 survey by the Anti-Defamation League that found that 73 percent of Hungarians believe Jews have too much power in the business world, 75 percent believe Jews have too much power in international financial markets, and 55 percent believe Jew are more loyal to Israel than to Hungary.
And the suit quoted Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, as saying that Hungary is experiencing the most worrying anti-Semitic trends in Europe in which “barely a week passes without an attack on minorities or outrageous comments from far-right politicians.”
Ken McCallion, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, told The Jewish Week that the president of Hungary fired the chief judge for objecting to judicial reforms that caused Jewish judges to resign. He said those and other political changes in Hungary have prompted the European Union to consider expelling Hungary as a member.
He added that he is unable to “find a lawyer in Hungary to work with because they are all afraid of their lives.” He noted that there have been numerous attempts by survivors over the years to sue the national bank and railroad for restitution but they have “gotten nowhere.”
“In the last 50 years, no family has received more than $200 in reparations,” he said.
stewart@jewishweek.org
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David Blatt, former basketball coach of Israel's Maccabi Tel Aviv team and now the new coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, will see the two teams meet next week in an exhibition game. And the Israelis, champions of European basketball, will be playing the Nets here as well. Israel Correspondent Josh Mitnick profiles Coach Blatt.
ISRAEL NEWS
Blatt In Spotlight As His Old Team Tours U.S.
Maccabi Tel Aviv plays Cleveland, then Brooklyn, as all eyes are on Cavs coach.
Joshua Mitnick
Israel Correspondent
Cavs Coach David Blatt: Great expectations. Getty Images
Tel Aviv — Maccabi Tel Aviv’s fan-appreciation night was packed with kids, dunks, chants and breakdancing cheerleaders — a feel-good send-off before a pair of exhibition games next week in Cleveland and then Brooklyn.
The swing will be a belated American victory lap for the reigning champions of European basketball. But thanks to a series of off-season moves by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Maccabi’s exhibition in Ohio has become part of the coming-out party for NBA great LeBron James and David Blatt, the coach that the Cavs hired after he led Maccabi to an unlikely Euroleague basketball title.
“It’s going to be a celebration for them, and we’re going to be part of it,” said Maccabi Tel Aviv coach Guy Goodes, a protégé of Blatt who took over his job.
The serendipitous turn of events has put Blatt — an oleh (immigrant) from Massachusetts and the first European coach to transition directly into the NBA — into arguably the hottest seat in all of professional basketball. For Blatt, James and Cleveland the stakes are enormous: Can a coach with successes with teams from Russia, Italy and Tel Aviv — but no NBA experience at any coaching level — adjust to the NBA? And can he handle the glare of the LeBron spotlight?
Goodes said he expected Blatt to make a fast adjustment — a skill that he’s honed over the last 10 years moving between so many teams in Europe.
“There’s lots of expectations in Cleveland because of all the superstars they’ve brought to the team — there’s pressure,” said Goodes. “From my knowledge of David, he’s dealt with tons of NBA players. He’s worked with players in Russia who have returned to the NBA. David’s interpersonal relations with the players are really good. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”
At the Cavaliers media day, James acknowledged hard work would be required of himself and his teammates to learn the new offensive and defensive schemes Blatt is putting in place.
“We have a new coaching staff; it’s a new system for all of us,” James said. “It’s not going to be easy at all. If we are patient, and everyone buys into coach’s system, and the staff system, it will help us out a lot.”
All eyes will be on Blatt not only in the U.S, but in Israel as well, where his celebrity status has already surged after making the jump to Cleveland. He’s featured in a men’s soap commercial as a paradigm of success. After an Israeli beachhead was established in the NBA several years ago with the arrival of Omri Casspi — now a forward for the Sacramento Kings — and expanded last year with the guard Gal Mekel, Blatt becomes the third “Israeli” to reach the elite league. Israeli sports news reports will no doubt follow the Cavs now steadily throughout the season.
“We’ve got two representatives who are playing, and now a coach,” said Goodes. “It’s a badge of honor for Israeli basketball. [Blatt] is someone who made aliyah to Israel at a young age, and gotten to where he is with a lot of hard work and motivation. He represents everyone.
“He can understand the mentality of U.S. players, European players and Israeli players,” Goodes continued. “That’s the whole package for success.”
Blatt reached the pinnacle of a two-decade-long coaching career last May when he successfully guided Maccabi Tel Aviv — an underdog on paper — to consecutive victories in the Euroleague final four. The first of those victories saw the team engineer a Hollywood-like miracle comeback against Ceska Moscow, claiming its sole lead of the second half with just five seconds left in the game. In a post-game press conference, Blatt acknowledged that Ceska and Real Madrid, the team Macccabi defeated in the finals, had better individual talent, but that Tel Aviv proved it was the best team of the tournament.
Blatt was also an assistant coach at Maccabi during two Euroleauge championship runs. He led professional teams in Russia and Italy, and led the Russian national team to a bronze medal in the 2012 Olympics. He was also tapped to lead the Israel National Team.
Alongside Blatt’s European successes, his resume is enhanced by his pedigree as a former player for the great Princeton University basketball coach Pete Carril.
Blatt was hired by the Cavs at the end of June within weeks of winning the Euroleague title. A few weeks later, James, who had won two NBA titles in his four years with the Miami Heat, announced he had decided to return to Cleveland, where he started his career. The spotlight now shone on Blatt.
A Sports Illustrated profile of Blatt noted that his sabra spouse — a veteran of the Israeli women’s basketball league — and their kids reside in a Tel Aviv suburb. The story also suggested that one of the reasons why he got the Cavaliers job was because his experience coaching in the pressure cooker that is Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball — which has a fan following with the zealotry of a college program.
Zvi Sherf, who did several stints as coach of Maccabi, concurred.
“The pressure that is put on the coach is very big,” he said. ‘It’s pressure from the management, from the fans, from the media, from the entire country. If you learn to work under this pressure, you can deal with almost anything.”
Blatt will have to adjust to a much quicker game in the NBA, and a league in which the coach must struggle to establish his authority with very handsomely paid NBA stars. On the other hand, there’s more margin for error during the 82-game regular season as opposed to the Euroleague, where pressure is much higher because there are fewer games, Sherf said.
For Maccabi’s American-born players, the swing through Cleveland and New York (the game against the Nets at the Barclay Center is on Oct. 7) will offer something of a homecoming and a chance to play in front of NBA scouts. Several of them are Jewish and have even become Israeli citizens during their professional careers.
Sylven Landesberg, an African-American Jew from Queens who made aliyah and joined the Israeli army, says he’s expecting friends and family to show up for the game in Brooklyn. Landesberg, a former Mr. Basketball of New York state, and a forward at the University of Virginia, has a tattoo in Hebrew on his arm — “Nivhar” — meaning chosen.
He says he expects to have to defend LeBron James in the exhibition but said he plans to talk some trash as he usually does during games. “I don’t care what your name is, I’m a competitor,” he said.
With a broad smile, Landesberg said he’s looking forward to playing against his old coach, but said that Maccabi will be seeking a win despite the fact the game is only an exhibition. Landesberg said Blatt’s genius lies in his defensive schemes tailored to each opponent.
“Coach Blatt has one of the best defensive minds. Every game is different, and he just comes up with a way to hold them and stop them. That’s what he’s big at,” said Landesberg. “Bringing that mentality, especially with the athleticism the team has, I think he can help change the game.”
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My column explores a thoughtful new book by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen with the provocative title, "Israel: Is It Good For The Jews?" His answer may be surprising.
GARY ROSENBLATT
From ‘Mistake’ To Qualified ‘Miracle’
In a new book, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen asks if Israel is good for the Jews?
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Of course Newman, who played Ari Ben Canaan, a Haganah fighter, in the 1960 Zionist epic film of the Jewish state’s creation, died six years ago. But Cohen’s point is well taken. Once viewed as David to the Arab world’s Goliath, Israel has seen those biblical roles reversed as it still struggles for acceptance more than five decades after becoming a modern state. Hollywood wouldn’t dare produce a major film today that fully justified Israel’s struggle for statehood. And even Cohen, a product of New York yeshiva schooling as a child, has written that Israel’s creation was “a mistake.”
Indeed, that statement, made in the “lede” (journalistic jargon for opening sentence) of a 2006 column Cohen wrote during a clash between Israel and Hezbollah — and the revealing reactions to his assertion — led the syndicated columnist to write a thoughtful new book with the provocative title, “Israel: Is It Good For The Jews?” (Simon and Schuster)
Under deadline pressure, he notes at the outset, he wrote in that 2006 column: Israel was “an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now.”
He explained in an interview with me this week that he tried in that column to convey the idea that founding “a state for Jews in the midst of 100 million antagonistic Arabs will get you in trouble. But using the word ‘mistake’ was itself a mistake,” he acknowledged. “It sounds querulous.”
The response to the column eight years ago was “instant,” Cohen noted, and many angry people felt he had “gone nuts.” But “infinitely more troubling,” he wrote, “were the congratulations I received from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances” who Cohen would have thought “were either supportive of Israel or, at the least, not hostile to it.” Not so, it turned out. The sense among these people was that “Israel had been acting so Jewish,” which is to say that it had gone from being a place of heroic “underdogs to a place of arrogant, pushy, smart and duplicitous people,” mistreating Palestinians: “the victim had become the bully.”
Cohen goes on to write that he “agreed with much of this criticism,” noting that in “countless columns over the years” he had condemned the Israeli occupation and “had written over and over again that by becoming an occupying power, Israel had lost its moral monopoly.”
So he set out to write a book explaining what he meant by “mistake” and to “tell the story of where Israel went wrong and how Israel went wrong.”
That’s where things get interesting, and complicated. Because in his extensive research, and in a narrative that blends the author’s personal family story with the modern history of the Jewish people, Cohen kept running into the depth and breadth of anti-Semitism Jews faced in Europe, the Mideast and the U.S.
‘The Power Of Anti-Semitism’
“I was astounded at the power of anti-Semitism,” he told me. Not just during the Holocaust but also before and after the war, and not just from “toothless peasants” but also from the highest levels of sophisticated world leaders. Too often the notion that Jews were extremely wealthy, brilliant and politically powerful resulted in hostility, and worse, against them. But sometimes it worked in their favor. Winston Churchill, for example, an outspoken champion of the Zionist cause, may have been motivated in part by fear of “Jewish power.” And Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was received by the pope and other world leaders because they believed he had the wealth and power of world Jewry to back him up.
Cohen also suggests that attempts at democracy in pre-World War II Central and Eastern Europe worked against the Jews because numerous governments the “lacked the necessary institutions or traditions to make democracy work, especially respect for minority rights.” As a result the leaders exploited or tolerated anti-Semitism. He said this sense of “catering to the mob” applies today, with free elections in Gaza and Egypt resulting in Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power.
All of the early 20th-century prejudice helped create a climate of sympathy for the creation of a state of Israel after the tragedy of the Holocaust, Cohen argues, but Jerusalem is still held to moral standards applied to no other country. In our interview, while pointing out the difficulties in presenting fair coverage of the Mideast conflict, he chastised the mainstream media, including The New York Times, for what he considers “naïve and unbalanced” coverage of this summer’s war, from the persistent visual images of Gaza devastation to siding with the perceived underdogs, Hamas, to the “macabre” notion that if more Israelis had been killed it would somehow have evened the score.
‘The Future Is Not Bright’
In the end, after 250 pages, Cohen answers the question posed by his book title by asserting that “yes,” the Jewish state has benefited not only the Jewish people but also the world at large through its smarts, creativity and democratic impulse. But looking ahead he offers bleak observations about American Jewry and Israel.
Citing Pew and other polls finding a steady increase in assimilation, Cohen writes that “sooner or later, there’s a falling away from Judaism.”
In our interview, he added: “The facts are incontrovertible — the Jewish population has shrunk in absolute and relative terms. I don’t see a counter-trend.”
As for Israel, he writes that its “promise is great, but the future is not bright.” Why? He explained to me that “Israel was created because it had enormous goodwill and a desire [by many nations] to make up for the Holocaust. But all of that has been dissipated,” he believes, in large part because the occupation has “tarnished Israel’s image.” And because Arab anti-Semitism runs so deep, countering the efforts for acceptance of a Jewish state in the region.
Still, he resisted the suggestion that he feels Israel is doomed.
Sounding more like a rabbi than a journalist, he responded by asking who could have thought that Herzl, perceived as delusional, would be right in predicting a Zionist state within 50 years of his 1898 declaration?
“People came out of the extermination camps and helped create a state. If you want to ask about Israel’s future, look to its past,” he said. “That’s its future. It was and is a miracle.”
Gary@jewishweek.org
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Also this week, New York's gay and lesbian synagogue plans to host 4,000 people on Yom Kippur, celebrating its 40th anniversary year; Staff Writer Steve Lipman on the controversial new Martin Amis novel, an attempt at Holocaust humor; food and wine ideas for Sukkot; and Erica Brown proposes the Yid Bit, a Jewish response to the Fit Bit that would measure our daily mitzvot.
NEW YORK
Forty Years Of ‘Making History’ At CBST
Manhattan’s gay and lesbian synagogue marks a milestone with new illustrated book.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
In what may be the largest Kol Nidrei service in New York City, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah is expected to host about 4,000 people at the Javits Center on Friday night. These services are free of charge, open to all.
“It’s actually very intimate,” says Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, spiritual leader of CBST, known in shorthand as the city’s gay synagogue. “I feel very connected. It’s very spiritually nourishing, a deep experience. It’s what our services are usually like, just a lot more people in the room.”
The Crystal Pavilion space has a soaring glass ceiling and three walls of glass, so that for Neilah, the final service, congregants can watch the sun setting over the Hudson as the gates of heaven are said to be closing.
“These are 4,000 Jews in synagogue who want to be there,” William Hibsher, the immediate past president of the congregation says. Attendees include synagogue members and their families and friends, along with others, including many straight people. The synagogue describes itself as an LGBTQS synagogue, inclusive of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
“Our mission has always been to serve a congregation that’s bigger than our congregation,” longtime member Regina Linder says. “Ingathering is a way to describe what we do.”
This season, CBST is celebrating its history, with the publication of an illustrated volume, “Changing Lives, Making History: Congregation Beit Simchat Torah – The First Forty Years” written by Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen, who served for a decade at CBST as a rabbinic intern and associate rabbi. The congregation’s roots go back to February 1973, when a small group of gay Jews, just about a minyan, met to celebrate Shabbat together, in the annex of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Chelsea. That the book’s publication is closer to the 41st anniversary is a matter of publishing deadlines, and doesn’t diminish the community’s proud moment.
The handsomely designed book traces the synagogue’s history, drawing on archival materials, photographs, first-person accounts, recorded interviews, early newsletters (which were mailed in unmarked envelopes to protect members’ identities) and newspaper accounts and includes profiles of its lay and rabbinic leaders. It is also a larger story of what was going on in New York City over these years and the evolution of the LGBT movement — and an important contribution to American Jewish history. Now, LGBT Jews may feel comfortable attending many synagogues of various denominations, and that’s a testament in part to CBST’s pioneering efforts.
Soon after the first meeting in 1973 — launched with a tiny ad in the Village Voice — the numbers began to grow. As Rabbi Cohen explains, the idea of being deeply Jewish and openly gay was radical at the time. In those early days, members would chip in a dollar or two to cover costs. One event that solidified the new congregation was the Yom Kippur War, when many Jews sought community. News of the congregation was spread through flyers at bars and Village shops, advertisements and, in December 1973, an article in The New York Times, in which those interviewed used either their first name only or a fictitious name.
The synagogue was incorporated in November 1973 and, interestingly, the name was supposed to be Congregation Beth Torah V’Simchah, or Congregation of Learning and Joy. But Rabbi Cohen points out that the member filing the papers didn’t know Hebrew well and mixed up that name with the name of the holiday, Simchat Torah. Over the years there were efforts to change the name, but none of the alternatives galvanized the congregation. So, as the newsletter reported, “BST to stay BST.”
In the early days, a lapsed and charismatic chasid known as Reb Pinchas emerged as the volunteer spiritual leader of the fledgling group. His partner at the time was the son of a black Baptist minister. In 1974, Reb Pinchas said, “There is a chasidic belief that each man has a unique task to perform in life. Perhaps this is mine — to help the straight world understand us and to help gays feel better about themselves.” Reb Pinchas has since left his non-Jewish partner and CBST and returned to an orthodox life and chooses not to be identified in the book. But many of his teachings live on in the synagogue’s traditions.
It was Reb Pinchas who came up with the line from Psalms — “The stone the builders refused has become the cornerstone” (118:22) — to describe the gay message to the Jewish world. That line is the epitaph to this book, and also hangs prominently in the synagogue’s temporary sanctuary, at the Church of the Apostle.
The most traumatic period was the 1980s, when members began to get very sick and die of AIDS. The numbers are impossible to verify, but it is thought that between100 and 130 members died of AIDS — that is, nearly half of the men at CBST.
“It was loss and loss, a numbness after a while,” Linder recalls.
Rabbi Kleinbaum was installed as the first full-time rabbi in 1992, when the need for pastoral care was urgent. “I came in the middle of the epidemic,” she says, “and buried several people during my first month, including the president who hired me.”
Most sensitively, Rabbi Cohen documents the devastation and honors the memory of those who died, telling their stories. She also demonstrates the cultural changes, through language and layers of hiddeness, as to how the disease was discussed and faced. Now, the names of the dead are listed at the front of the sanctuary. Their absence is very much a presence in the synagogue. Members say that Yizkor services at CBST are particularly poignant, when all the names are read aloud.
On a happier note, she describes another huge shift in the community: the increase in children. With changing cultural sensibilities and advanced reproductive technology, the community includes about 150 children, with a Hebrew school to serve them, children’s services on Shabbat and holidays and educational programming. On the first day of Rosh HaShanah, Rabbi Kleinbaum invited all of the children up to the bimah for a blessing.
Rabbi Cohen, who now serves as director of the Center for Jewish Living and of the Center for Israel at the JCC in Manhattan, also documents CBST’s purchase of a home of its own in the Garment Center. They are beginning the reconstruction of the ground floor of a building on West 30th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues.
The author doesn’t gloss over rifts in the congregation’s history — when some members were upset about a change of location, or change in the service, or the synagogue’s full commitment to egalitarianism.
She speaks of the congregation’s strong and deep love and connection to Israel, “while at the same time conveying the complexities of the political and social reality.” Several weeks ago, Rabbi Kleinbaum was criticized by some for saying a prayer for peace, mentioning the names of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian children who had been killed.
“I don’t understand how anyone would fault a rabbi for recognizing that war is horrific,” Hibsher, the former president, said, affirming the board’s support of her, and that support of Israel is a core value of CBST. “Not to say that every member of the congregation agrees with that particular drash [sermon], but an overwhelming majority agree with her position on Israel, which is to foster intelligent conversation. “
Rabbi Kleinbaum visited Israel before the holidays. Over the summer, she organized conference calls with members of the congregation and Israelis from the left and the right including a journalist, a gay member of Knesset, the Israeli conservative movement’s first openly gay congregational rabbi, a reservist who served in Operation Protective Edge and a CBST member who made aliyah.
On Yom Kippur, they are hosting Yael Karrie, an Israeli rabbinical student who served on the Gaza border for the seven weeks of the war, leading Shabbat services for soldiers coming in and out of Gaza. She’ll lead a discussion during the afternoon break.
At a recent Friday night service, the order of prayers was like that of a traditional synagogue, with beautiful music by cantorial soloist Re’ut Ben-Ze’ev and Joyce Rosenzweig, the synagogue’s music director. Visitors were struck by the friendliness of the place. Johanna Sanders, a 22-year-old new member who first attended Shabbat service in June “and never stopped coming back” says, “You walk in and you are immediately embraced and celebrated for who you are.”
The rabbi announced an upcoming program to discuss the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “The Death of Klinghoffer.” This seemed to be signature CBST style and content: While some other synagogues and Jewish organizations around the city urged members to protest the Met’s production, CBST members were urged to see the opera and only then, after seeing it — unlike the protesters who haven’t seen any of it — talk about whether it is anti-Semitic, or “inappropriate to make an opera that gives emotional voice to a murderer.” The Opera Shmooze, after services on Nov. 7 is to be led by Rabbi David Dunn Bauer, CBST’s director of social justice, who is a former NYC Opera director and Metropolitan Opera stage manager.
On Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 7 p.m., Rabbi Ayelet Cohen will speak, along with Andy Cohen of Bravo, about “Changing Lives, Making History,” with a book signing and reception to follow, at the JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. (at 76th Street), $12 members, $18 non-members.
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BOOKS
Amis Moves Needle On Holocaust Humor
New novel, set in a concentration camp, is latest in cultural trend to probe Shoah with satire.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Amis
In a German concentration camp, the commandant and an officer of the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the Nazis’ SS paramilitary unit, are discussing the “selection” of Jewish prisoners to live or die. “There was no selection. They were all certainties for the gas,” one Nazi tells the other.
Rapes?
“We do something much nastier than that,” comes the answer. We get the pretty ones and we do medical experiments on them … We turn them into little old ladies. Then hunger turns them into little old men.”
“Would you agree that we couldn’t treat them any worse?”
“Oh, come on. We don’t eat them.”
This dialogue takes place early in “The Zone of Interest” (Knopf), British writer Martin Amis’ new, and already controversial, novel set in the fictional Kat Zet I camp, which is a fictional branch of Auschwitz. (Kat and Zet are the letters by which a Konzentrationlager, or concentration camp, is known in German.)
Most of the action in the book’s 295 pages takes place through the eyes of, and in the words of, the camp commandant and a Nazi civil servant; a Jewish prisoner is a secondary character. As in a real concentration camp, there is death and torture, but it is largely implied rather than depicted.
Instead, Amis, one of England’s most prominent writers (twice a finalist for the country’s prestigious Booker Prize for fiction), largely centers his novel around such everyday stuff as petty romances and office politics.
Amis’ book, which goes on sale this week, is a departure from standard fictional books about the Holocaust. His perpetrators, instead of the victims, tell the story. They are shown to be neither bloodthirsty monsters nor sympathetic figures, but as regular people with regular foibles — clueless, morally deaf people. They see their lives, in venues of bureaucracy-regulated cruelty, through a lens of detached irony.
The novel contains many examples of sarcasm, of comic hyperbole, of humor, even on such serious topics as murder and anti-Semitism. Even the cover is untraditional: a drawing of red roses on barbed wire.
“The Zone of Interest” is the latest example — a major one, given Amis’ stature in the world of literary fiction — of the increasing convergence of two phenomena once considered inherently contradictory: the Holocaust and humor.
“We’re living in an age of irony … an age of [late-night comic commentators] Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart,” observed Thane Rosenbaum, a son of Holocaust survivors whose own novels frequently touch on Holocaust themes.
Rosenbaum cited the 1949 statement by German sociologist-philosopher Theodor Adorno that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” In other words, no form of art could accurately deal with unprecedented genocide. “You don’t write novels inside concentration camps,” Rosenbaum said. “You don’t make art of atrocity.”
For years, writers inspired by the messages of the Holocaust would write about the aftermath — postwar Germany, or the camps’ psychological effect on survivors. Or, in the case of “Sophie’s Choice,” the experiences of a non-Jew in a concentration camp.
“It was very rare to violate the rule,” Rosenbaum said. Then, various writers and filmmakers and other creative individuals “chipped away at it. The further we got away from Auschwitz, the less sacred it became.”
The most famous example was “The Producers,” Mel Brooks’ 1968 movie about a pair of Broadway charlatans whose doomed-to-failure show about the Third Reich featured the memorable “Springtime for Hitler” song-and-dance extravaganza; and the 2001 Broadway version of “The Producers.”
In this spirit was Roberto Benigni’s 1997 Oscar-winning “Life is Beautiful,” comedy-drama set in a concentration camp.
“You can laugh at Hitler because you can cut him down to normal size,” Brooks said in an interview with Germany’s Spiegel magazine. “By using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths.”
Lawrence L. Langer, emeritus professor of English at Simmons College in Boston and the author of several books about Holocaust literature, disagreed about the place of “Holocaust humor” in a post-Holocaust setting. “I don’t think farce works with the Holocaust,” he said. Humor, by definition, diffuses the true atrocity of an event being depicted. “I don’t think it’s a good phenomenon.”
A novel by a writer of Amis’ stature raises the place of humor in a Holocaust context to a higher level of acceptability. “It signifies that Adorno’s admonition is off the table,” Rosenbaum said. “The Holocaust is open for business in any art form.”
“It’s fair game for anyone,” said Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar and author.
Amis, who had set his 1991 novel “Time’s Arrow” in the same fictional concentration camp and has conducted extensive Holocaust research and has condemned anti-Semitism in the contemporary United Kingdom, follows other recent examples of boundary-testing Holocaust humor. “Er ist Wieder Da” (“He’s Back,” a German novel about a Rip Van Winkle-ish Hitler who awakens in modern-day Germany. A Brazilian play, “Holoclownsto,” about clowns in a concentration camp. An American play, “The Timekeepers,” about a Jewish watchmaker and a homosexual German man who bond in a concentration camp through their mutual love of opera and their sense of humor.
All are sympathetic to the Third Reich’s victims.
While humor in the context of the Shoah has lost much of its shock value, some publishers are apparently still uncomfortable with this oil-and-water mixture.
Amis’ longtime publishers in France and Germany rejected the manuscript for “The Zone of Interest,” according to The New York Times; Amis told the Times that his German publisher cited “inconsistencies in the plot” and found one Nazi officer too sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Other, smaller, publishers in those countries, and in other parts of Europe, and in Canada and Brazil, will bring out the book in the next year.
In recent years, Holocaust humor has come under study in university courses; a growing number of college students are writing theses on various aspects of how the survivors, and victims, used humor as a form of psychological catharsis and spiritual resistance. And it will be the subject of a forthcoming documentary, “The Last Laugh,” by New York filmmakers Ferne Pearlstein and Robert Edwards.
But as the legacy of the Shoah passes from the generation of the survivors and their children to the survivors’ grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as the immediacy of the Final Solution fades, as popular culture wears nothing-is-sacred irony as a badge, the focus changes. It has gone from the humor created by the people who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, to humor interpreted by those who grew up years, or decades, afterwards. And sometimes the interpreters, like Amis, are not even Jewish.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Amis dismisses the view that the subject is off-limits for novelists. “‘It makes absolutely no philosophical sense’ not to write about the Holocaust,” he is quoted as saying. “And it’s slightly sanctimonious, I think. Slightly as if ‘I care more than you do about it.’ You can care a very great deal and still write a novel.”
It’s the author’s intent that governs whether a satiric work about the Holocaust crosses some imaginary line of literary taste, said Menachem Rosensaft, son of survivors and senior vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. “Society has changed” in the nearly 70 years since World War II and the Holocaust ended. “There is a much lighter feel to contemporary culture than there was 20 years ago or 50 years ago” – the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of survivors
“It depends on the work,” and on the intent of the creator, Rosensaft said. If humor is employed for “constructive” reasons, “if you have respect for the topic … there is nothing wrong with it. “If the purpose is to make light of the [Holocaust] experience, that’s different.”
Rosensaft said he “didn’t see any problem with the timing” of Amis’ novel coming out in the wake of this summer’s Israeli war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, which fanned anti-Semitism in many European countries, but Daniel Levine, owner of J. Levine Books & Judaica in Midtown, criticized the timing. “The world is ready to exterminate the Jews again,” Levine said. Anti-Semites, he said, may find ammunition in a book that apparently downplays the severity of the Final Solution. n
Martin Amis will speak about “The Zone of Interest” at the Book Court in downtown Brooklyn on Oct. 1, at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square on Oct. 6, at the New York Public Library on Nov. 5, and at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Nov. 16.
Staff writer Steve Lipman is the author of “Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor During the Holocaust” (Jason Aronson, 1991), a study of the role humor played among victims of the Third Reich.
steve@jewishweek.org
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High Holiday Honey: Not What You Think
This biblically accurate date honey chicken dish is easily schlepped from kitchen to sukkah.
Date honey, the basis for this baked chicken recipe, is as this as molasses but more fluid than bee honey. Ronnie Fein/JW
When the High Holiday season approaches I remember my children, like two human shofars, blasting out a song about apples and honey. I can still picture how gleeful they would look, even now when they are grown women with children of their own, who have taken over the pleasure of chanting, “tapuchim u’d’vash l’Rosh HaShanah.”
The image of an apple dipped in golden, viscous bee honey is the archetypal High Holiday image from bubbe to baby, but according to scholars, the sweet stuff the Bible is talking about, in all but two instances, means date honey.
Date honey is the honey of “the land of milk and honey” [Exodus 3:8]. Date honey is among the seven species of the holy land mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:8.
What a fortunate find for my kitchen. This syrup, prepared from mashed dates, is beyond flavorful and is also incredibly useful after Rosh HaShanah.
Date honey is as thick as molasses but more fluid than bee honey. It’s darker than maple syrup, about the color of cola. It’s sweet but not cloying, tasting like liquid dried fruit. The rich, velvety texture feels luxurious on your tongue. There are several kosher brands too, and although I couldn’t find any at my local supermarket, it’s easy to order date syrup on line: Check Date Lady, Emek Hefer Natural Silan Date Honey or Lin’s Farm Natural Date Honey.
I’ve used up two bottles of the stuff in the last two weeks. I’ve poured it over yogurt for breakfast and served it instead of maple syrup for French toast and matzah brei. It goes great with tahini for a sandwich on multigrain bread or slathered it on carrots (with coconut oil) for roasting. I made my Aunt Belle’s famous Rosh HaShanah Honey Cake using it instead of bee honey. And I used it to create a flavorful basting sauce for chicken for a most perfect dish to serve during Sukkot. It’s easily made ahead and transported to your sukkah.
Ronnie Fein is a cookbook author, food writer and cooking teacher in Stamford, Conn. Her newest cookbook, “The Modern Kosher Kitchen, will be published next month. Visit her food blog, Kitchen Vignettes, at www.ronniefein.com.
Hide Servings & Times
Yield:
4 servings
Active Time:
15 min
Total Time:
45 min
Hide Ingredients
Baked Chicken with Date Honey
1 large chicken, cut up (about 4 pounds)
Vegetable oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup date honey
3 scallions, chopped
1 tsp. crushed red pepper (or to taste)
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
Hide Steps
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Rub the chicken pieces with vegetable oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper if desired.
Place the chicken in a roasting or baking pan.
Mix the chicken stock, date honey, scallions, red pepper, cumin and ginger in a small bowl and mix to combine them.
Pour the sauce over the chicken. Bake the chicken for another 35-40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through, basting occasionally with the pan juices.
Serve the chicken with the pan juices.
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New Wines, Outside
Toast the harvest holiday of Sukkot with flair by laying in a stock of these new kosher wines.
Twin Suns Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 ($16): This is the inaugural release of a new label of value-priced, mevushal wines from Ami and Larissa Nahari of The River, made by Gabriel and Shimon Weiss of Shirah Wines from 100 percent Cab Sauv grapes from Lodi, Calif. This light-bodied, floral and fruit-forward wine makes for very easy drinking with a toasted-fruit nose leading straightforwardly to aromas and flavors of red fruits and a little spice amidst a lightly or softly tannic frame; a little time and air is needed to open it up more fully. Good quality for the price. (Mevushal)
Recanati Diamond Chardonnay 2013 ($17): This lovely, delicious Chardonnay is creamy without being buttery, exhibiting delicate yet bright apple, pear and tropical fruit notes and nice complexity, a light mineral note and enough acidity to keep it food friendly.
Goose Bay Blanc de Pinot Noir 2013 ($25): A lovely, fun, refreshing, slightly off dry rosé wine that is uncomplicated but not simplistic and nicely balanced, with soft but present acidity, sweet ripe strawberry, raspberry and subtle watermelon notes, and some lovely, vibrant aromatics of berries, peach, plum, and flowers. Delightful to sip and savor, or even to gulp. (Mevushal)
Herzog, Variations, Five, Cabernet Sauvignon, California, 2012 ($26): This beefy, youthful, firm but well-structured wine exhibits lovely aromas and flavors of red currants, blackberries, blueberries, cassis, cherries and distinct but not over the top oak, with a little spice on the absorbing finish. Opens beautifully with a bit of aeration. Ready to drink now, but should develop nicely over the next four to five years. (Mevushal)
Shiloh Legend II 2010 ($35): A rich, hefty yet elegant, full-bodied, fresh, balanced blend of 70 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 25 percent Carignan and 5 percent Sangiovese, exhibiting aromas and flavors of black fruits, tobacco, eucalyptus and lovely spices, all structured with enough acidity and smooth tannins to provide a little longevity. Lovely on its own, but food friendly. (Mevushal)
Shirah Wines, White Hawk Syrah, 2012 ($55): Made of 98 percent Syrah and 2 percent Viognier sourced from Santa Barbara’s vaunted White Hawk Vineyard, a 60-acre vineyard planted on sand dunes on the south facing slope of Cat Canyon of the Los Alamos Valley about 20 miles west of the Pacific, and farmed using sustainable and primarily organic methods, with typically minuscule yields. This brilliant, absorbing, meaty wine is intense with nice acidity and booming notes of blackberries, blueberries, and mild black pepper with perhaps a touch of cassia or nutmeg, some leafy tobacco notes, distinct notes of oak and a long, hearty, drying tannic finish. Craves a bit of flesh.
Recanati, Kerem Ba’al, Reserve, Wild Carignan, 2012 ($56): This outstanding full-bodied, wonderfully balanced wine exhibits flavors and aromas of cherries, cassis, blackberries, raspberries, black plums and spicy, smoky oak, with notes of aniseed, cardamom, thyme, black pepper, chocolate and freshly ground roast coffee beans. Immense, complex, tannic, absorbing and delicious. A real masterpiece.
Tulip, Black Tulip, 2011 ($80): A stunning, full-bodied, powerful, complex, concentrated and oaky but well-balanced Bordeaux style blend, with potent fruit aromas and flavors of black currants, cassis, black cherries, and tart blackberries, amidst dollops of vanilla and with hints of dark chocolate, Mediterranean herbs, and spices. There is a lingering off-dry note on the lengthy finish. A bit of bruiser at present, but hugely enjoyable (with plenty of aeration) and showing great potential, with still integrating tannins and vibrant acidity; at its best in another eight to 10 months, and then should continue to develop well for a few years.
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JEW BY VOICE
The Yid Bit
Erica Brown
Special To The Jewish Week
Erica Brown
Jewish life is dependent on accurate weights and measures. We have minimum and maximum sizes that determine the height of a sukkah, the appropriate amount of matzah to constitute the mitzvah and the length of a Shabbat enclosure that ensures it’s kosher. We believe that articulating and being honest about weights and measures helps us have a life that is more rewarding and satisfying because it is quantifiable and, we hope, more honest. This is straight from Deuteronomy: “You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (25:15).
I’m all about measurements right now. I don’t know how many of you reading this are wearing a Fit Bit right now. It’s a small device that attaches to pockets, waistbands or socks or comes as a bracelet and measures steps, water intake and sleep patterns. It also sends progress reports and reward messages to your computer. As of this writing, I’m on 3,645 steps and I’m hoping to get to 10,000 by tonight, the recommended daily number of steps to keep us fit. I have been known on occasion to walk around my dining room table many times in the attempt to get in another 800 or so steps to reach my daily fitness goal. And I am not alone.
I bought the Fit Bit about 13 months ago, inspired by a woman I met who told me it changed her life. She now takes the stairs regularly to get her steps in and parks further away in store parking lots to increase her steps. I bought the cheapest Fit Bit on Amazon Prime, not sure I was ready to convert but also knowing that I wasn’t exactly honest about my fitness regime.
The first week I wore it, I learned the horrible truth about myself. I told my high-energy self that I was getting enough exercise. But by noon on one of the first days I wore it, my Fit Bit registered 352 steps, approximately the number of steps between my desk and my refrigerator. Here’s the terrible thing about numbers: They don’t lie. Here’s the greatest thing about numbers: They don’t lie. I was trying to pay more attention to my health, but in order to get the results I sought, I needed to amplify my intensity and do more than I had planned. The numbers told the truth I was denying.
What we measure, we get done. It’s true in our personal lives. It’s true in our professional lives. It’s true in our spiritual lives. Money is the easiest thing to measure, so we tend to focus on it — what we make, what we give, what other give. But it’s an incomplete dashboard. How many people does our work touch and how deeply? Which target populations are we missing? What does significant transformation look like? It’s not easy to measure things that seem intangible, but it’s not as hard as you think. It requires robust conversation around what you want to know and experimenting with different methods to glean information.
Let’s move to the metrics of Jewish life for a minute. Let’s make a Yid Bit. It can tell you how many times you went to synagogue or the duration of your stay. It offers a daily mitzvah count for the day: how many times you visited the sick, helped the needy or invited guests to your table. It might measure how many blessings you said in a day [the Talmud recommends 100] or how many hours you studied.
I tried a variation of this. With help from an accountant, I created a charity form that looked like a tax document to tithe income when tax season rolled around. Giving a tenth of one’s income is from our sacred texts but has been more successful with Mormons and evangelical Christians. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Utah is the most giving state in the U.S. I approached the leader of a Jewish organization about using my tzedakah tax form to move charity from a do-us-a-favor-approach to a this-is-my-responsibility-so-let’s-get-it-right stance. The response: nice idea. Too Jewish.
What we measure, we do. Or if we don’t do it, we at least know we’re falling short. We may even feel a little guilty when the numbers don’t match our best aspirations. We may realize what my Fit Bit taught me: If you really want to change something, be honest about what you’re doing and not doing. Ramp up the intensity. Stop thinking small. Ask yourself what it really takes to make a transformation now. Let the numbers speak.
Go ahead. I dare you. Make your own Yid Bit. Set your own metrics. What would your Yid Bit measure?
Erica Brown’s most recent book is “Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death” (Simon and Schuster). Subscribe to her weekly Internet essays at ericabrown.com.
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Enjoy the read, and may you and yours be sealed in the Book of Life this Yom Kippur.
Sincerely,
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/
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Between the Lines - Gary RosenblattFrom 'Mistake' To Qualified 'Miracle'
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Illustrating his assertion that Israel “is a tough sell” because of its policies toward the Palestinians and its negative image internationally, longtime Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, 73, observed the other day, “You couldn’t get Paul Newman to play [an Israeli war hero] in ‘Exodus’ today, people would laugh at it. It’s a pity.”
Of course Newman, who played Ari Ben Canaan, a Haganah fighter, in the 1960 Zionist epic film of the Jewish state’s creation, died six years ago. But Cohen’s point is well taken. Once viewed as David to the Arab world’s Goliath, Israel has seen those biblical roles reversed as it still struggles for acceptance more than five decades after becoming a modern state. Hollywood wouldn’t dare produce a major film today that fully justified Israel’s struggle for statehood. And even Cohen, a product of New York yeshiva schooling as a child, has written that Israel’s creation was “a mistake.”
Indeed, that statement, made in the “lede” (journalistic jargon for opening sentence) of a 2006 column Cohen wrote during a clash between Israel and Hezbollah — and the revealing reactions to his assertion — led the syndicated columnist to write a thoughtful new book with the provocative title, “Israel: Is It Good For The Jews?” (Simon and Schuster)
Under deadline pressure, he notes at the outset, he wrote in that 2006 column: Israel was “an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now.”
He explained in an interview with me this week that he tried in that column to convey the idea that founding “a state for Jews in the midst of 100 million antagonistic Arabs will get you in trouble. But using the word ‘mistake’ was itself a mistake,” he acknowledged. “It sounds querulous.”
The response to the column eight years ago was “instant,” Cohen noted, and many angry people felt he had “gone nuts.” But “infinitely more troubling,” he wrote, “were the congratulations I received from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances” who Cohen would have thought “were either supportive of Israel or, at the least, not hostile to it.” Not so, it turned out. The sense among these people was that “Israel had been acting so Jewish,” which is to say that it had gone from being a place of heroic “underdogs to a place of arrogant, pushy, smart and duplicitous people,” mistreating Palestinians: “the victim had become the bully.”
Cohen goes on to write that he “agreed with much of this criticism,” noting that in “countless columns over the years” he had condemned the Israeli occupation and “had written over and over again that by becoming an occupying power, Israel had lost its moral monopoly.”
So he set out to write a book explaining what he meant by “mistake” and to “tell the story of where Israel went wrong and how Israel went wrong.”
That’s where things get interesting, and complicated. Because in his extensive research, and in a narrative that blends the author’s personal family story with the modern history of the Jewish people, Cohen kept running into the depth and breadth of anti-Semitism Jews faced in Europe, the Mideast and the U.S.
‘The Power Of Anti-Semitism’
“I was astounded at the power of anti-Semitism,” he told me. Not just during the Holocaust but also before and after the war, and not just from “toothless peasants” but also from the highest levels of sophisticated world leaders. Too often the notion that Jews were extremely wealthy, brilliant and politically powerful resulted in hostility, and worse, against them. But sometimes it worked in their favor. Winston Churchill, for example, an outspoken champion of the Zionist cause, may have been motivated in part by fear of “Jewish power.” And Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was received by the pope and other world leaders because they believed he had the wealth and power of world Jewry to back him up.
Cohen also suggests that attempts at democracy in pre-World War II Central and Eastern Europe worked against the Jews because numerous governments the “lacked the necessary institutions or traditions to make democracy work, especially respect for minority rights.” As a result the leaders exploited or tolerated anti-Semitism. He said this sense of “catering to the mob” applies today, with free elections in Gaza and Egypt resulting in Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power.
All of the early 20th-century prejudice helped create a climate of sympathy for the creation of a state of Israel after the tragedy of the Holocaust, Cohen argues, but Jerusalem is still held to moral standards applied to no other country. In our interview, while pointing out the difficulties in presenting fair coverage of the Mideast conflict, he chastised the mainstream media, including The New York Times, for what he considers “naïve and unbalanced” coverage of this summer’s war, from the persistent visual images of Gaza devastation to siding with the perceived underdogs, Hamas, to the “macabre” notion that if more Israelis had been killed it would somehow have evened the score.
‘The Future Is Not Bright’
In the end, after 250 pages, Cohen answers the question posed by his book title by asserting that “yes,” the Jewish state has benefited not only the Jewish people but also the world at large through its smarts, creativity and democratic impulse. But looking ahead he offers bleak observations about American Jewry and Israel.
Citing Pew and other polls finding a steady increase in assimilation, Cohen writes that “sooner or later, there’s a falling away from Judaism.”
In our interview, he added: “The facts are incontrovertible — the Jewish population has shrunk in absolute and relative terms. I don’t see a counter-trend.”
As for Israel, he writes that its “promise is great, but the future is not bright.” Why? He explained to me that “Israel was created because it had enormous goodwill and a desire [by many nations] to make up for the Holocaust. But all of that has been dissipated,” he believes, in large part because the occupation has “tarnished Israel’s image.” And because Arab anti-Semitism runs so deep, countering the efforts for acceptance of a Jewish state in the region.
Still, he resisted the suggestion that he feels Israel is doomed.
Sounding more like a rabbi than a journalist, he responded by asking who could have thought that Herzl, perceived as delusional, would be right in predicting a Zionist state within 50 years of his 1898 declaration?
“People came out of the extermination camps and helped create a state. If you want to ask about Israel’s future, look to its past,” he said. “That’s its future. It was and is a miracle.”
Gary@jewishweek.org
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Food and Wine
Pour a glass to support medical aid in Israel. Courtesy of AFMDADrink Wine For Charity? Yes, Please.
Israeli wines save Israeli lives: Where philanthropy and oenophiles meet.
Maya Klausner - Food and Wine Editor
Israel is still reverberating after a summer of prolonged tumult. Operation Protective Edge left spirits deflated and resources depleted, rendering the country in dire need of support from lending hands.
This fall, American Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA) is partnering with the Israel Wine Producers Association (IWPA) to raise funds for Israeli medical aid while helping to grow Israel’s expanding wine industry.
The new partnership announced an initiative in which IWPA will donate $24 to MDA by way of the AFDMA, for every purchase of 12 bottles of Israeli wines through October 31, 2014.
The proceeds will go to MDA, Israel’s non-government funded national emergency medical response organization. Through these donations, MDA will be able to begin replenishing medical resources and supplies such as bandages, needles and blood transfusion kits, which were exhausted as a result of Operation Protective Edge.
AFMDA, which is the American affiliate of the MDA, raises more than 80 percent of the funding MDA receives annually. As MDA is without internal funding, the organization relies exclusively on the aid of outside donors from around the world.
Though the need is grave, the path to recovery does not have to be a somber one. With the recent uncorking of the High Holiday season, comes the opportune time to uncork delicious, festive Israeli wines. Of Israel’s 300 wineries, participating vineyards include Carmel, Shiloh, Flam, Binyamina, and Domaine du Castel, among others.
Those who wish drink and donate can mail their receipts for the purchased wine along with a rebate form to the designated offices. In order to qualify, rebates and receipts must be mailed by November 30, 2014.
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Travel
St-Viateur Bagels in Montreal is run by Joe Morena, who calls himself a "good Italian boy who speaks Yiddish." George Medovoy/JWThe Mile End, And Beyond
George Medovoy - Special To The Jewish Week
Note: This is the third of three articles on eastern Canada. The other two focused on Newfoundland and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Montreal —This is a city where hip neighborhoods become everyone’s common backyard. People spill into their leafy streets, sit on their iconic stairways, and sip espresso in cafes and taste wonderful pastries (my favorite being the almond croissants at Premiere Moisson, a bakery with numerous branches in town).
One of my favorite Montreal neighborhoods, Mile End, is where early 20th-century Jewish immigrants settled and today is home to a mix of Italians, Greeks, chasidic Jews and college students. The Mile End neighborhood is also home to some very interesting shops, including Drawn & Quarterly on Bernard Avenue West for contemporary comics and fine art books. (New Yorkers, of course, will recognize the Mile End name from Boerum Hill’s Mile End Deli, opened in 2010 by two Montrealers; a Noho location was added in the summer of 2012.)
If you crave bagels, Fairmount Bagels on Fairmount West or St-Viateur Bagels on St-Viateur West, two hole-in-the-wall places, hand roll their bagels and boil them in honey water to yield a truly intoxicating flavor. The bagels are baked in wood-burning ovens and have a crusty exterior and a chewy center that Montrealers line up to buy no matter what the weather. (The local Mile End folks have them trucked in from St-Viateur’s.)
At St-Viateur Bagels, owner Joe Morena once told me that making bagels requires “a lot of hard work,” and he jokingly referred to himself as a “good Italian boy that speaks Yiddish.”
Café Olimpico on St-Viateur West is known for café au lait, and if it’s too crowded inside, you can join the others outside in the sunny patio.
Then there’s Wilensky’s Light Lunch — in a category all its own. I walk into the small luncheonette filled with nine stools at the corner of Fairmount West and Clark, where the signature item is the grilled salami with bologna on a roll for $3.90. The dish comes with mustard, but if you insist on having it plain, that’ll be five cents extra, thank you.
Montreal writer Mordecai Richler, of “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” fame, lived nearby on St-Urbain Street; owner Sharon Wilensky, who grew up in the neighborhood, tells me that Richler would frequent the place to chat with her late father, Moe Wilensky, whose name is on the luncheonette’s window. Some of the scenes for the film version of the novel were filmed at the luncheonette.
Next June, a new “Duddy Kravitz” musical, with original score by Alan Menken and book and lyrics by David Spencer, debuts in English at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts, a popular gathering place for the arts and home to Montreal’s Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre, led today by Wasserman’s daughter, Bryna.
“You know,” says Bryna Wasserman, “Richler was probably not much different than Sholom Aleichem in his time. As a folklorist … he was writing about what he saw…”
During our visit to the Segal Centre, my wife and I attend the Yiddish production (with overhead English translations) of “Soul Doctor,” the story of friendship between counterculture troubadour Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and jazz singer Nina Simone. After the performance, cast members participate in the Centre’s “Monday Night Talkback,” where actors sit on stage and schmooze with the audience.
Wasserman, who is also the executive director of the National Yiddish Theatre–Folksbiene in New York, notes that Montreal once “housed incredible (Yiddish) writers and poets — it was really the enlightenment.”
As a matter of fact, between the two World Wars, Montreal had three main spoken languages — French, English and Yiddish. Today, of course, French, spoken with a distinct Quebecois singsong, is the official language of Quebec province. But you can get along quite well with English; indeed, it’s always striking how Montrealers can switch effortlessly from English to French, and vice versa.
Next August, the Segal Centre will stage a Yiddish production of “The Dybbuk,” and while, as Wasserman notes, “Yiddish won’t be spoken on the streets again,” its preservation at the Segal Centre allows “ownership of history and who you are and what brings you forward.”
While on the subject of the arts in Montreal, we also find time to attend performances at the city’s annual Jazz Festival not far from the stylish St-Martin Hotel Particulier, where Chef Jean-Francois Plante’s Bistro L’Aromate serves memorable meals from breakfast to dinner. Off crowded St-Catherine Street, thousands of fans come to hear the sultry jazz singer Diana Krall in a free outdoor concert.
There are other great performers, too, like the Shai Maestro Trio, whose leader, pianist Shai Maestro, discusses the Israeli jazz scene one morning in Montreal’s French-language daily, La Presse. Speaking of music, in the summertime Montreal has public pianos decorated by local artists for anyone musically inclined to play.
At the other end of the arts spectrum, Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts, located within walking distance of the fancy Hotel Omni Mont-Royal, is presenting “Fabulous Faberge, Jeweller to the Czars,” through Oct. 5.
Carl Faberge was the famous Russian jeweler who created exquisite items for the Russian czars, and his collection, on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, includes his amazing “Easter eggs” commissioned by the Russian Romanovs.
“This first major exhibition on Faberge to be shown in Canada,” says Nathalie Bondil, the museum’s director and chief curator, “is a unique opportunity to discover the splendor of the decorative arts of the House of Faberge, whose fate was tragically linked to the history and fall of the imperial house of Russia in 1917.”
The museum, with distinctive colonnades, overlooks Sherbrooke Street West, a neighborhood of fancy condos, boutiques under stately walk-ups, and streets leading up to Mount Royal, the city’s iconic mountain-park named by French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1535.
The museum is down the street from the very tweedy Westmount neighborhood, home to Orthodox Shaar Hashomayim Congregation and Reform Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom. Nearby on a Sunday afternoon we stop to watch a group of people lawn bowling in front of Westmount’s Neo-Tudor city hall.
It’s yet more of Montreal’s varied and cool neighborhoods.
When You Go…
For more information, visit www.tourisme-montreal.org; www.lestmartinmontreal.com; www.omnihotels.com/hotels/montreal-mont-royal; www.mbam.qc.ca (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts); www.segalcentre.org
Canada, Jewish immigrants, Montreal, Nova Scotia
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