The New York Jewsih Week - Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 30 January 2015

The Jewish Week Newsletter

Dear Reader,

It's that time of year again -- no, not, unpredictable weather, although that too -- we at the JW have opened nominations for our annual 36 Under 36 issue, in which we celebrate three dozen emerging Jewish leaders from all professions and backgrounds. Nominate folks you know and admire here.

The Jewish Week’s 2015 “36 Under 36” Official Nomination Form

Each year, The Jewish Week publishes a special section profiling a group of
36 emerging leaders from across denominations and professions.
We look for individuals who have demonstrated unique initiative,
creativity and ability to inspire others.
The 36ers are for themselves but not for themselves alone.
They are high achievers. They help others.
If you know people who qualify, use the form below to nominate them.
Nominees must be under age 36 by June 1 and they must have some
connection to New York.
You can nominate a maximum of five candidates.
Questions? Email Maya Klausner or call 212 997 2946

To have a look at last year's editionclickMore seasonal stuff. It snowed this week, and it might snow again on Sunday, but in Israel they are celebrating the new year of the trees: Tu B'Shvat. This kabbalistic festival was revived in the 1970s by a secular kibbutznik, and his daughter is now a food writer in New Jersey. She shares her family recipes with you.

A Tu B'Shvat Seder In Five Recipes
Toast to the trees' new year, and feast.

The daughter of the Tu B'Shvat Seder's creator shares her family recipe with you. Courtesy of Nirit Yadin
Among the many blessings of being forty-something are the insights we gain into our parents. For me, this included the realization that my father, a secular kibbutznik, brought to life a kabbalistic practice that has become a modern Jewish tradition — the Tu b’Shvat seder. It also made me realize the effect this had on my own life.
The original creator of the Tu B’Shvat seder was Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (Ha’Aree), a 16th-century kabbalist who lived in the Galilee. The Kabbalah famously attaches mystical significance to trees and fruit. In keeping with that, Rabbi Luria celebrated a seder on Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of the Tree. The seder was rooted in the kabbalistic concept of “tikkun olam,” or “healing of the world”: by sitting around the table, eating specific fruits, drinking four cups of wine, and reciting blessings, humans would bring the world closer to spiritual perfection.
In the centuries that followed, this practice was abandoned and almost forgotten until a little book called Pri Etz Hadar resurfaced. In it was a description of the kabbalistic Tu B’Shvat Seder. At the time, Tu B’Shvat had already acquired great significance in Israel, with a distinct secular-agricultural flair. In the kibbutz of my childhood we celebrated the New Year of the Tree by planting trees and eating dried fruits out of cabbage leaves “bowls.” Every time I go back to my kibbutz, I am slightly horrified by how tall and old these trees are now.
The kabbalistic concept of Tu B’Shvat as means of spiritual ascent, therefore, was very foreign to the secular Israel of the seventies. However, it captured the imagination of two men: Noga Hareuveni, a scholar and educator, and Amnon Yadin, my father.
They separately created Tu B’Shvat seders and ran them in their communities. My father, who was an associate director of a teachers’ seminary, conducted experimental seders with the teachers-to-be. The idea caught on and the Tu B’Shvat seder has now become a standard practice. It is celebrated, in many variations, by Jews both in Israel and abroad.
It is said that the spiritual-religious essence of the kabbalistic seder gave way to a secular-agricultural spirit of Israeli kibbutzim. But I think my father tried to do the opposite.
He was a first-generation kibbutznik, raised in a decidedly secular world. But he was fascinated by the spiritual significance of the world around him.
When I was a child he used to take me from one Arab village to another in a kind of “tree hopping.” In each of those villages there was an ancient, sacred olive tree. Next to it sat an old man who looked a little like the tree: silvery and time-ragged. The man would tell my father fables and traditions associated with that tree, and I remember my father listening to these old Palestinian men with bright eyes, just like a child.
In creating the Haggadah, my father drew from traditional sources as well as modern Israeli ones. Above all, it is a celebration of nature from the tangible to the symbolic. For example, it adapts the kabalistic custom of drinking four glasses of wine. While for the kabbalist the order of glasses symbolizes an ascendance from the earthly (red wine) to the divine (white wine), my father interprets it as the circle of life: the dead of winter (white) to the burst of life in spring (red).
Seder Tu B’Shvat lends itself to many interpretations and adaptations. It is “like a tree,” says the Hazon Haggadah. There are many variations stemming from the original practice like branches, from the mystical (and New Age), to the environmental to the feminist.
My father passed away 32 years ago on the week of Tu B’Shvat. Sometimes I wonder what I learned from him. I too live in a world where the fruits and vegetables that we eat are full life and tradition and wisdom; I actually make a living telling their stories. I also believe, a little like the kabbalists, that eating the right food at the right time can (at least in a practical, environmentally-conscious sense) save the world.
On Tu B’Shvat my kids and friends will gather for a Tu B’shvat seder. We will be using an English haggadah because it speaks to my American teens. But we will eat the holiday foods of my mother and grandmother, because food expresses its spirit much better than words.
The seder consists of four cups of wine that move from red to white (yes, you mix red and white wine. Try to fetch a good rosé or two, if this bothers you). The wine is accompanied by specific fruits, and wheat or barley. I designed the menu around fruits and wheat. I used my mother’s recipes with small adjustments (Not small enough for my mom. I will tell you where I digressed and suggest the original, too). The main course dish is on this page. Click here for theparsley salad; here for the orange-olive salad; here for the stuffing and here for Grandma's fruitcake.
Many thanks for Rabbi Kerry Olitzky of the Jewish Outreach Institute for his help.
Nirit Yadin is a cooking teacher and food writer based in the New York City metro area. She owns a food marketing company.
Slideshow





HideServings & Times
Yield:
Serves six peopleActive Time:
45 minTotal Time:
1 hr 30 minHideIngredients
For the chicken:
1 medium roasting chicken
Olive oil
Lemon
Sweet paprika
Salt and pepper
1 lemon, cut into quarters and mixed with olive oil and paprika
For the stuffing:
1 onion, diced
Olive oil
2 cups oysters, shitake or maitack musroons, choppped
4 cups cooked farro, wheat berries, or barley
1 cup chopped dried apricots
1 cup prunes, pitted and chopped
1/2 tablespoon raisins or currants
2 cups chopped blanched almonds, lightly toasted
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 cup chopped parsley
Additional 1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup chicken broth (or as needed)
HideSteps
Preheat the oven to 475°F. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels. Coat with olive oil, drizzle with lemon juice, and sprinkle with salt, paprika, and pepper inside and out. Set aside.
Heat up some olive oil in a large sauté pan and cook the onion over a medium flame until soft. Increase the flame, add the mushrooms, and stir-fry until they are golden-brown and slightly crispy. Set aside.
Add one tablespoon of oil to the same pan and quickly sauté the dried fruits (be careful, they burn easily). Add the sautéed mushrooms.
Add the toasted almonds, parsley, and garlic. Taste and correct seasoning. Add the cooked farro and 1/2 cup of olive oil.
After the chicken has been roasting for 45 minutes take it out and carefully remove from the pan (leave the oven on). Place it on a platter. Add stuffing to the pan and mix it with the pan juices. Pour the stock over the stuffing. Add the chicken to the pan with any juices that accumulated in the platter. Place on top of the stuffing. Return to the oven and cook for another 30 minutes or until golden and the stuffing has soaked some juices.
To check your chicken is cooked, slide a paring knife into the fattest part of the thigh – if the juices run clear, chicken is done.Let rest for 10 to 15 minutes, covered loosely with foil. Serve with the parsley salad.

Our breaking news comes to us from Washington, D.C., where the alleged "peeping tom" Rabbi Freundel, who is accused of spying on women in the mikveh, is refusing to leave his synagogue-owned home. Chutzpah, huh?

• NATIONAL

Peeping Rabbi Won't Leave
Washington D.C. synagogue opens case against Rabbi Barry Freundel after he refuses to vacate synagogue-owned residence.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer

Rabbi Barry Freundel, former spiritual leader of Kesher Israel via youtube.com
Rabbi Barry Freundel, accused of peeping at congregants attending the mikvah, is refusing to leave his synagogue-owned rabbinical residence, the Washington Postreports.
Freundel, arrested in October and fired by the synagogue board in late November, had been told he must acate the property by the synagogue’s board of directors on Nov. 24.
“Kesher’s position is clear: Rabbi Freundel’s contract with Kesher has been terminated, for cause, and he must vacate the residence and return all shul property immediately,” wrote synagogue President Elanit Jakabovics that was sent to Kesher Israel’s members Thursday.
In response to Freundel's refusal to leave, Kesher Israel formally opened a case with the Beit Din of America in New York against Freundel on Wednesday. The Beit Din of America declined to comment.
The synagogue also is asking for monetary compensation “for his illegal occupancy of the house since January 1 and compensation to cover the costs of this unnecessary arbitration.”
Kesher Israel is holding a town hall meeting Feb. 2 to discuss this and other synagogue matters.
The Washington, D.C. rabbi pled not guilty to criminal charges of voyeurism after videotapes of women showering and changing in the ritual bathing house attached to his synagogue, Kesher Israel, were found in his possession in Oct. 2014.
hannah@jewishweek.org

Enjoy the snowy trees, everybody,

Best,

Helen Chernikoff
JWMG Web Director

Yael Reuveny, director of "Farewell Herr Schwarz." Kino Lorber

The Arts
'Family Is Not Only Blood'
Yael Reuveny's roots journey in her debut documentary 'Farewell, Herr Schwarz.'
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week

Yael Reuveny is at her parents’ home in Israel, visiting family and friends and escaping from the relentlessly Christmas-y atmosphere of her current residence in Berlin.

“I’m too Jewish for the holiday season there,” the 34-year-old filmmaker says, laughing. “I brought a few fugitives from Germany with me, and they can’t believe that people in Israel don’t acknowledge the year is changing.”

A humorous pleasantry, but the contradiction at its heart goes to one of the central themes of Reuveny’s elegant debut feature documentary, “Farewell, Herr Schwarz,” which opens on Friday, Jan. 9.

“Farewell” focuses on Reuveny’s own family, specifically her maternal grandmother Michla and a grand-uncle she never knew. Michla survived the camps and after the war tried desperately to find her favorite brother, Feivush, who had also disappeared into the inferno of occupied Poland. They almost found one another in the Lodz railroad station, today an abandoned Victorian hulk, but for unknown reasons they missed one another that day. After the war, Feivush, who had been a prisoner in Buchenwald, returned to the town of Schlieben, where the camp had been located, settled down there, married a non-Jewish German woman and raised a family. Living as Peter Schwarz he was a modestly successful businessman and Communist Party member who played on the local soccer team and fit into his new life in East Germany with dismaying ease.

“I was finishing film school in 2005 and I went to Germany as a tourist on vacation,” Reuveny recalls. “I was really surprised by what I found there, and I knew that I wanted to make my first film in Germany, examining how the past is present in the present.”

But it would take some time for her to understand that her grandmother’s story was the one she needed to tell.

“Berlin is a very contemporary city, very young and hip, but haunted,” she says. “You feel you’re walking in history constantly. As a young person who is somehow haunted [by that history], I could identify with that; I knew it would be the general topic, but it took me a year to realize that I had to deal with my family story.”

Michla was dead, but her daughter, Reuveny’s mom, was very much alive, and that meant extensive interviews between mother and daughter. Reuveny also had to meet and interview inhabitants of Schlieben, most importantly, Peter Schwarz’s family, her seemingly mysterious cousins.

The first result was a half-hour film about her own family story, “Tales of the Defeated” (2009), which won several awards and attracted some attention. The short film made it possible for her to explore the German side of the story, essential to making a feature-length film.

“The people in the film are not actors,” Reuveny says. “I’m asking a lot of them. It was harder for the German family than for my family, because they discovered a lot of their own story from someone who was a stranger. But they saw the short film, so they trusted me and knew what I wanted to do. They reached out to me.”

Reuveny divides her film into three sections, one for each of the generations since the Shoah. She interviews Peter’s German in-laws, particularly the endlessly affable Helga. (“Call me Aunt Helga,” she insists.) At one point the pair are looking through a family photo album in which some of Helga’s brothers are depicted in German uniforms. Reuveny shudders and explains to Helga, “In my family album we don’t have pictures of the Wehrmacht.”

The second generation juxtaposes the filmmaker’s mother, a woman who has heretofore refused for five years to visit her Berlin-based daughter, and Uwe, Peter’s son, who has sought out the Reuvenys, seeking to forge a family link across the historical schism.

Finally, Reuveny herself meets up with Stefan, Uwe’s son, who is a curator at the Great Synagogue of Berlin and a dedicated Judeophile. He tells his cousin, “I want to live in the center of the world.” She replies, “New York?” and he disarmingly responds, “No, Jerusalem.”

Not surprisingly, Stefan “is very happy with the film,” Reuveny says. He is the relative from the German family with whom she enjoys an ongoing friendship.

But is he family?

The answer to that question is really as much the heart of the film as the complexities of Jewish-German history.

“We’re relatives, but to me ‘family’ is something else,” she says. “I was very impressed by my mother’s answer to that question: ‘Family is not only blood.’ I think there’s great wisdom in that. Growing up is about creating that family circle, the most important people in your life. The third generation are still looking for that.”

“Farewell, Herr Schwarz,” directed by Yael Reuveny, opens Friday, Jan. 9 at the Quad Cinema (34 W. 13th St.); for information call (212) 255-2243 or go to www.quadcinema.com.

____________________________

via kadma-wine.co.il
Food & Wine
What's A Kvevri?
Georgia's winemakers use egg-shaped, earthenware vessels.
Joshua E. London &
Lou Marmon
Jewish Week Online Columnists

Among the many programs established by the United Nations is the “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” The purpose of the catalog is to ensure the continued viability of specific folk practices and encourage dialog to reflect “cultural diversity.” This list (available at www.unesco.org/culture) is a fascinating collection of obscure and eclectic customs and traditions.

Among the 314 elements currently on the list are two wine related items; a method of pruning grapevines called “alberello pantesco” employed on a small Italian island off the coast of Sicily to produce sweet wines from the Zibbibo grape and a Georgian winemaking technique that utilizes large earthenware vessels called “kvevri.”

Records suggest that Georgia (the country, not the U.S. state) has the oldest winemaking tradition in the world, dating from at least 6000 B.C. Traditionally, the insides of the semi-egg-shaped kvevri are coated with beeswax. Winemakers filled the kvevri with crushed grapes and then partially buried them to maintain a constant temperature during fermentation.

There is evidence that suggests that ancient Israeli winemakers utilized a similar technique, which is one of the reasons that the Slutzkin family imported 21 of the huge, handmade jugs to use at their family-owned boutique kosher winery, Kadma, located in Kfar Uriah. Winemaker Lina Slutzkin emigrated from Georgia at age 8, eventually working as a software engineer at Intel for 20 years. When her family decided to make wine it seemed natural to include the enormous jugs that she saw during her early childhood in Tbilisi.

Opened in 2011, the family-run Kadma Winery combines the ancient with the contemporary. Since the Israeli soil temperatures get too high to permit burial, the enormous clay jugs (they weigh nearly a ton when filled), are kept upright on a narrow base in the winery. The initial fermentations occur in these “tuns” then, like modern wineries, the wines are transferred into wooden barrels for aging. Their award-winning Kadma Syrah 2011displays the typical fruit and spice of the varietal, though it must be said that it is difficult at this stage to determine the influence, if any, of the Georgian fermentation vessels. Perhaps as the winery itself matures the effect of this Georgian technique will become more apparent in the wines. Both as an experiment and an affirmation of heritage, Kadma bears watching.

____________________________

Dublin's Temple Bar, in the city's cobblestoned nightlife district.Wikimedia Commons
Travel
Irish Pluralism
On Display
Hilary Larson
Travel Writer

Tucked into the Gothic arches and dank, mossy halls of Trinity College Dublin is the Weingreen Biblical Antiquities Museum. It’s a small collection of artifacts from around the eastern Mediterranean, spanning the ninth millennium B.C.E. to the late Middle Ages, and it was renamed in the 1970s to honor one Professor Weingreen, a Hebrew scholar who taught at Trinity for 40 years.

The Weingreen Museum is as good a metaphor as any for contemporary Dublin — a city that is at once quintessentially Irish and also increasingly cosmopolitan, with a small but well-integrated Jewish community.

What always surprises me about Dublin, city of shamrocks and Molly and Leopold Bloom, is its intimate scale. Dublin feels much more like a friendly small town that just happens to have a few crowded squares and busy boulevards.

That friendliness extends, in large part, to relations between the many national, ethnic and cultural groups who now call Dublin home — everyone from the workers to shop clerks is likely to hail from Poland, India, China or Nigeria. With religious tensions running high in Europe these days, Dublin’s pluralism feels relatively comfortable.

And while Ireland, like every country in Europe, has its own history of anti-Semitism, Irish Jews I have spoken with say they find Dublin to be a friendlier place for Jews than many parts of the Continent.

Indeed, according to local Jewish organizations, the Irish-Jewish community — which dates back a thousand years, but has never been particularly large — is actually growing, thanks to an influx of Jewish professionals drawn to Ireland’s recent economic boom and the proliferation of technology corporations.

Dublin’s Jewish population is now estimated at around 1,300, more than half the Irish total, supporting a well-established network of synagogues, schools and services. Many visitors call before stopping by the Dublin Hebrew Congregation, a major landmark in the city center; formed by the merger of two synagogues a decade ago, it is Dublin’s central Jewish institution.

For a comprehensive look at Irish Jewry — whose modern community coalesced with waves of European immigration between the late 19th and early 20th centuries — head to the Irish Jewish Museum, a modest but lovingly preserved collection of pictures and artifacts documenting Irish-Jewish history. The museum is housed in what used to be the Walworth Synagogue, which closed down in the 1970s as the once-Jewish Portobello neighborhood saw an exodus to the suburbs. After years of neglect, the temple was refurbished as a centrally located museum, proudly inaugurated by Irish-born Israeli President Chaim Herzog in the mid-1980s.

Herzog is just one of many historically prominent Irish Jews, and he is fondly remembered not only at the museum, but also at the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religion and Culture at Trinity College. Given that Herzog’s own father was Ireland’s chief rabbi in the early 1900s, it is fitting that Trinity chose the Herzog name to honor when dedicating Ireland’s first — and still only — university center devoted to Jewish scholarship. In addition to courses and Holocaust education, the Herzog Centre also hosts lectures and other public events.

The broader diversity of modern Europe is celebrated at the annual Silk Road Film Festival in March, an opportunity to view films from across the region that encompassed the ancient Silk Road, from Southern Europe through the Middle East to Central and East Asia. The Silk Road Festival is held from March 18-22, just after Ireland’s biggest party: St. Patrick’s Festival — yes, they need four days, not one.

From March 14-17, Dublin goes wild with an open-air celebration all over town. Girls wear short skirts and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” antennae, boys travel in packs from pub to pub, and everyone wears green. The action centers around Temple Bar, the cobblestoned central nightlife district that remains distinctly local despite all the tourism.

The same could be said of Dublin overall. A decade after the so-called Celtic Tiger economic boom burned and then crashed, Dublin still has plenty of dusty, wooden-floor bookshops, cafés and pubs where you feel right at home the first time you enter.

And every day of the year, it’s St. Patrick’s favorite hue in St. Stephen’s Green, the lovely, landscaped park at the heart of the city. If it starts to rain, you can duck into one of Dublin’s newest — and most delightful — attractions: the Little Museum, a free collection devoted to events of Ireland’s 20th century. Housed in a Georgian mansion just off the park, the Little Museum offers a look at James Joyce, U2 and plenty more of what gives this city its enduring appeal. 

editor@Jewishweek.org

____________________________

FIRST PERSON

How Green Was My Wadi
Sura Jeselsohn
Special To The Jewish Week

We will soon be celebrating Tu b’Shvat, the day that marks the new year for trees, and while it is cold and grim in New York, the plant world is awakening in Israel and the agricultural year is coming to life. Think of it as the beginning of the magic that leads to the harvest festival of Sukkot.

Last Sukkot, which fell in October, I was again in Israel; I will always associate the harvest festival with olives. In Hebrew there is a special term reserved just for harvesting olives — masik — which suggests just how important olives were to the ancient economy.

Last October I found myself on a hillside overlooking Wadi Zarka — adjacent to Neve Tzuf /Halamish in the Samarian hills — contemplating the expanding number of olive trees belonging to Amy and Michael Rosenbluh, and where I have enjoyed being part of the actual process of yishuv ha’aretz — reclaiming the land for its original agricultural purposes — for several years.

Since I come only once a year, the maturation I see is palpable. It’s almost like visiting with a seldom-seen child whose growth and change is staggering. The trees are growing upward to the point that they require pruning to ease harvesting. There are better and poorer years, and they seem to alternate.

This year the boughs were laden with fruit in various stages of ripening. They ranged from light green to reddish to purple. As you reach upward to grasp a branch and remove the fruit by “milking” downward, you expect resistance. However, the olives just seem to pop off in your hand and you throw them onto the tarpaulin spread around the base of the tree. This tarpaulin is later scrunched up to concentrate the olives into the center; they are then poured into burlap bags. The younger workers use ladders to reach the upper branches. The work is steady but not exhausting, and lunch is a welcome break, compliments of the Rosenbluhs.

In their professional lives, the M.I.T.-trained Michael is chairman of the physics department at Bar Ilan University; his specialty is light and its interaction with matter. Amy works as both laboratory and production director for Izun Pharma, Ltd., a research company that develops medical devices and pharmaceuticals to treat inflammatory and chronic wound conditions.

Growing olives is neither simple nor easy. Despite the perfect climatic conditions, olives are subject to diseases and pests just like other crops. Those include the olive fly, Peacock spot fungus and the olive moth. Since the Rosenbluhs are growing their olives according to organic standards, there are limited ways available to control these pests. As if that were not enough, feral pigs are also a terrible problem. They enter the orchard at night, uproot new saplings, chew up young trees and destroy the irrigation system.

The Rosenbluhs began this project in 2000 at the inspiration of their neighbor, Rafi Ben Basat, who also raises olives as a way to reconnect to the land. Their orchard is planted with two species of olive trees, the Barnea, developed at the Volcani Institute in Israel, and the Tzouri. The Barnea was chosen because it has a high oil yield, and its milder taste appeals more to Western palates. Its disadvantage is that it requires irrigation. The Tzouri has a larger, rounder fruit, yielding a more pungent oil that does not require additional irrigation. The combination of the two varieties allows the Rosenbluhs a more reliable harvest and a unique blend of oil bouquets.

It is a pity that politics intrudes on so much normal activity in Israel, so that even picking olives receives scrutiny. Yet, it is inspiring to see people working steadily, following a tradition that goes back to ancient times when the Land of Israel was renowned for its high-quality olive oil; the oil is considered one of the special Seven Fruits with which Israel is blessed.

Many volunteers at Israeli kibbutzim have talked about the satisfaction that comes from harvesting — the final act of that season’s farming and the culmination of all their labor.

Every year I arrive to find tarpaulins stretched beneath the trees, young people standing on ladders to both reach the higher fruit and prune down the lengthening tree limbs that are reaching for the sky, the children trying to help with the low-hanging fruit, and the effort that comes from work well done.

Sura Jeselson is a long-time resident of Riverdale involved in community matters. She has a deep interest in gardening and botany and volunteers at the New York Botanical Garden.

agriculture, Tu b’Shvat

____________________________
LENS

Anniversary Of Budapest
Ghetto's Liberation
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer

For more than two months near the end of World War II, several blocks in the Jewish area on Budapest, on the Pest side of the Danube, became a site of death and suffering. Surrounded by barbed wire and a stonewall, Budapest’s Jewish ghetto became the home of some 200,000 Jews, who died there of disease and starvation, or were shipped to Auschwitz from a nearby train platform.

About 70,000 Hungarian Jews remained in the ghetto when the Red Army liberated it in January 1945; some 20,000 had died there.

Several hundred people gathered there one recent day, in the courtyard of the Dohany Street Synagogue, the largest in Europe, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the day Budapest’s Jews were freed.

“We celebrate our lives we got back,” said Robert Frolich, spiritual leader of the synagogue. “Many would not be sitting here today if the Red Army had not arrived that day.”

Holocaust leaders and Red Army veterans took part in the ceremony, at which Russia’s Alexandrov Ensemble performed.

The sign honoring mothers, above, stands the entrance to the synagogue’s cemetery.

Many of the Hungarian Jews who survived the war owed their lives to diplomats from Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the Vatican, who risked their lives to establish “safe houses” where Jews found refuge.

Thousands of Jews who died in the ghetto are buried in the cemetery.

The Nazi army occupied the country in March 1944. Before the ghetto was created, some 450,000 Hungarian Jews, almost 90 percent of the country’s Jewish population, were sent to death camps.

____________________________
THE JW Q&A

Pulpit Rabbi To Lead Interfaith Group
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Rabbi Jack Moline, who served as spiritual leader of Agudas Achim Rabbi Jack Moline, who served as spiritual leader of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Va., for more than two decades, was recently named executive director of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, a progressive, ecumenical organization that “celebrates religious freedom by championing individual rights.” His appointment follows his short-lived stint as director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

In recent years Rabbi Moline has made Newsweek magazine’s list of the 50 most influential rabbis in the country. The Jewish Week interviewed the rabbi by email; this is an edited transcript.

Q: The focus of the Interfaith Alliance is the separation of church — or in your case, synagogue — and state. As a member of the clergy, what do you consider the proper place of religion in political life? 

A: Interfaith Alliance tends to use the phrase “protecting the boundaries between religion and government.” Churches are not the only institutions of religion, and the word “separation” does not always express the reality of what we are trying to achieve.

Faith leaders have helped to change Americans’ perceptions of civil rights, war and peace, economic justice and other critical issues. But faith-based activism should bring ideas to the public square, not practices or, especially, dogma.

What will your first priorities be as the new leader of the Alliance?

I was at the White House last week as President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address, and I listened as he articulated so many of the challenges that are central to our work at Interfaith Alliance, among them discrimination against religious minorities including Muslims and Jews, and securing equality for the LGBT community. It’s a good place to start.

Many Jews are wary of dealing with Evangelical Christians — because of what is seen as a hidden conversion/end-days agenda. How do you answer Jews’ questions about this? 

Just Evangelicals? Not Muslims or Hindus or atheists? I have been interacting with people of all faiths since I was a kid attending Hebrew school in a welcoming Congregational church. A person of firm conviction has no reason to be wary of honest interactions with other people.  

With the rise in international terrorism, “radical Islam” is coming under increasing fire in this country. What role do “moderate” Muslims play in the work of the Alliance?

Members of the mainstream American Muslim community are every bit as interested in our national security as I am. We need to stop assigning the radical views of the terrorist fringe as representative of all Muslims, and we need to pay attention to Muslims in our society who share our devotion to the Constitution.

You come to the Interfaith Alliance from less than a year at the NJDC, during which you came under fire for criticizing the American Jewish Committee and AIPAC for “strong-arm” tactics in pressuring Democrats in Congress to oppose President Obama’s Iran policies. What did you learn from your tenure at the NJDC?

I learned that you need to have a tough skin to work in Washington, and you can’t be afraid to take a bit of criticism from time to time. 

One maven in D.C. called you “one of the funniest rabbis around?” How does this help you in your high-pressure work?

Just “one of” the funniest rabbis?

In seeking consensus, tension is natural and often gets in the way of progress. That’s where my sense of humor helps most often. I once attended an interfaith conference on preventing AIDS in Africa led by Rick Warren. I sat silently through most of it while Pastor Warren explained to a very uncomfortable group a proposal to encourage male circumcision and to ask religious leaders to undergo the procedure first. Finally, I raised my hand for the first time and said, “On behalf of the Jewish community, we’re in.” It was all I said, but it probably moved the conversation forward better than any other contribution.

steve@jewishweek.org

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THE NEW NORMAL
Running To, Not From, A Synagogue: One Family's Connection at Stephen Wise

Dean Asofsky

Max and Dean Asofsky celebrating Max's success. Courtesy of Kulanu

The events of my son’s Bar Mitzvah day don't begin to tell the story of how Max arrived at this moment.  Nor do they tell the story of the special connection that he, and we, have developed with the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue congregation, and the gratitude we feel toward this place. 

Same as many young adult Jews, I hadn't felt the urgency to choose a synagogue until we knew that we were going to be parents. But once we did know, I diligently did the full tour of upper Manhattan's Reform synagogues and settled on Stephen Wise. 

Max was born on Erev Rosh Hashanah. Having arrived over five weeks premature, Max spent the first nine days of his life down at Roosevelt Hospital before we could bring him home. 

Yes, Max entered the world on Rosh Hashanah and came home for the first time on Yom Kippur. He was our high holy day boy. Having missed Rosh Hashanah services because of Max's decision to join us early, I felt the need to go to temple for some kind of solace. I remember vividly sitting in the sanctuary at Stephen Wise on Shabbat Shuvah that year. I remember saying his name aloud during the mi sheberach prayer for healing.

Time passed. After about four years, which included a short but fun tour of duty in Houston, we were back in NY and temple-less again. Autism was still new to us at that point and with all of our issues it didn't feel like there was room for another commitment. And we certainly weren't willing to step into a religious community that we weren't sure would accept us as a family: two faiths, autism and all. Not worth it, we thought. But then I got a call from my good buddy Alan, who was now on the religious school committee at Stephen Wise. Alan told me the board had encouraged the committee to start a religious school class for kids on the autism spectrum. 

We met with Rabbi Hirsch, then still new to Stephen Wise, who explained that he understood that there were many Jewish families in New York with kids with special needs, including autism, that had allowed their connections to their Jewish community and their Jewish heritage to lapse.

They did this, he thought, because they were afraid that the Jewish community would be unwilling to make the types of accommodations that their families needed in order to feel welcome. Or wanted. Or included. How many Jews are there out there that are not enjoying the richness of their people because of this? How many Jews are rejecting their community because they think that community won't accept them, as they are?  He said, in essence, we need to make Stephen Wise a refuge for these families. A place to run to, not from. So let's create a class in the religious school for kids with autism. We'll start there, see where it goes. 

You see, this was new. We didn't have any other places reaching out to us like that. We were always doing the chasing.

So all of a sudden we are back at Stephen Wise and I am on the religious school committee and helping to create a Hebrew school class for kids with autism. From indifferent Jew to super-involved Jew in the blink of an eye. 

We conceived of the Kulanu class as one that would be geared to kids even, and maybe especially, with the greatest challenges that autism can present. There were several classes out there available to higher-functioning kids on the spectrum. We needed one for the kids that had no appropriate options. After some starts and stops, we finally got Kulanu off the ground around seven years ago. The smartest thing we did was to hire Maya Blank to design and teach the class. Maya has been the most critical member of the team at Stephen Wise that got Max to this day. 

Under Maya's caring, creative eye, Max and the other Kulanu kids have learned about shabbat, about the major holidays, all of the key prayers and songs, about b'nai mitzvah and community service, about Israel. And Kulanu has not learned all these things in isolation from the rest of the religious school. Rather, every week, Kulanu has interacted with one or more of the other religious school classes: They have sung together and learned prayers and stories together. Kids from older classes have assisted in the classroom. I think they have learned a lot about our kids that way, about what it means to do your part to repair the world. 

Anyhow, here we are. Max did it. Such naches. He did the work, it is his accomplishment, but the occasion is made all the more special because of all of the acts of kindness and selflessness he and we encountered at Stephen Wise along the way. 

Max has become a part of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue over the course of his 13 years. He is as comfortable here as he is anywhere. It has been a refuge for Max and for us. We are glad we ran to it and not from it. 

Kulanu offers weekly religious school 90-minute classes for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and features a curriculum designed to enable children to participate in home and synagogue celebrations and to gain knowledge of and comfort with their Jewish identity. The class incorporates behavioral principles including visual supports and positive reinforcement and emphasizes community inclusion and experiential leaning through music, theater, art, cooking and games. The class is designed and led by Maya Blank, an educator with a Master’s degree in Special Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College and with years of experience in creative arts, Jewish education and as a therapist for children with ASD. The program caters to children across the spectrum and particularly to those with the most significant challenges autism can present. Email her at mayablank@gmail.com.
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WELL VERSED
Mendelssohn's Unifying Voices
Carnegie Hall on a Sunday afternoon. A young child sits next to an Emily Snyder

David Hayes conducts the New York Choral Society. Courtesy Dan Dutcher Public Relations

Carnegie Hall on a Sunday afternoon.  A young child sits next to an old man, while a young couple slides in next to a pair of stately aficionados. There are a few out of town visitors, but this afternoon’s presentation by the New York City Choral Society of Mendelssohn’s rarely performed “Saint Paul” is for us: the citizens of this great, and diverse city.

It may seem strange for a reporter from The Jewish Week to be listening to a seemingly-Christian oratorio—stranger still that Felix Mendelssohn wrote it at all.  Born to a prominent Jewish family, Mendelssohn’s parents bowed to societal German pressures and had their children baptized. The composer never seemed to lose his true roots, though, chiding his sister on one occasion for speaking ill of their proud heritage, and being the prime proponent for publishing the writings of his grandfather, the noted philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

Likely for political reasons, Felix Mendelssohn himself kept quiet about his own religious convictions—but the struggle of a man caught between two worlds is on display in his rarely performed masterpiece, “The Conversion of Saint Paul.”

Employing both baroque choruses, reminiscent of his beloved Bach, as well nods to the Lutheran church music of the day, Mendelssohn’s oratorio is a dramatic work, chronicling Saul’s journey (baritone Mark Delavan, fierce and powerful) from persecutor to persecuted. Tenor Vale Rideout, sensitively voiced and well-acted, reincarnates in several roles—acting as Saul’s counterpart in the martyred Stephen, healer Ananias, and companion Titus.  Standout soprano, Sarah Shafer, brings vivacious life to her role as narrator and commentator, with a fluid and melodic voice that conveys urgency and adulation by turns.  Rounding out the soloists was mezzo-soprano Haejung Shin, whose aria was lovely and heartfelt.

Conductor and Musical Director of the New York Choral Society, David Hayes, proved himself yet again with this work, delicately guiding orchestra and chorus through the intricate baroque harmonies before rousing all parties into musical ecstasies.  Clearly, the dramatic power of the piece was ever in his mind—and perhaps the most striking moment came when Saul, thrown from his horse, is addressed from above—in this case, quite literally by the Princeton Girlchoir hidden in the top right balcony whose haunting harmonies lifted the hearts of those listening, and seemed to tremble through to the respondent chorus who sang: “Look up!” immediately after.

A harmonic innovator, this reporter thrilled to hear Mendelssohn’s love for the deeper voices prominently on display: from the glorious cello counterpoint (who received his own well-deserved bow), to the potent men’s chorus. The women’s chorus was especially lovely in the pianissimo sections—a difficult feat—while the orchestra’s flautist danced musically about the melody.

Sunday afternoons in Carnegie Hall come all too rarely in this bustling city, and all too often our divisions keep us suspiciously apart.  But as Mendelssohn himself wrote:

“The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.”

Fortunately for a Sunday in Carnegie Hall, the New York Choral Society not only graced our city with something beautiful, but with something truly great.

The New York Choral Society performs regularly throughout the season.   For more about Mendelssohn and his religious struggles, listen to the NYCS-sponsored symposium.

Emily C. A. Snyder is an internationally published and produced playwright, as well as the Artistic Director of Turn to Flesh Productions.  Her original five-act iambic pentameter play, Cupid and Psyche, premiered at The Barrow Group Theatre for Valentine's 2014.

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