Dear Reader,
Concern about the spread of the BDS movement of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel is an increasing concern, here and abroad. Staff Writer Stew Ain reports on a major Supreme Court ruling in Israel this week in response to this form of political warfare, and Staff Writer Hannah Dreyfus looks at how Jewish college students in the U.S. are caught in the crossfire.
ISRAEL NEWS
BDS Roiling Israel, U.S. College Campuses
High Court ruling sparking fresh debate over democracy.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
The ruling of Israel’s top court last week upholding the country’s so-called anti-boycott law has touched off a fresh debate about the nature of Israel’s democracy, with some saying it ends freedom of speech and others saying it affirms the destructive nature of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.
In the ruling, Israel’s High Court of Justice upheld the constitutionality of the 2011 law that permits the finance minister to fine or remove tax breaks from any organization that participates in a boycott of Israel proper and its territories. The decision was lauded by NGO (non-governmental organization) Monitor as an “important milestone in the response to political warfare.”
Its founder, Gerald Steinberg, said its importance is the “recognition that the BDS movement needs to be taken seriously, that it is a form of warfare and discrimination, and that there are costs” to such activity.
“It makes fighting BDS a legitimate issue and no longer a far right issue,” he added.
But an official of the New Israel Fund, an American nonprofit that describes itself as advancing equality, human rights and democracy in Israel, said it believes Israel’s High Court of Justice “got it wrong” and that attempts will be made to convince the court to soon revisit the issue.
“To exclude calls for a boycott from the category of free speech is incorrect,” said Rabbi David Rosenn, NIF’s executive vice president. “There is not a separate category for speech that is political. The most important speech is political, and people should have the ability to express their opinions without fear of government sanctions.”
He said NIF is “on record as opposing the global BDS movement and thinks it is a bad strategy to support calls for BDS. But even though we disagree with this view, we still say people ought to be able to express it in a free society.”
He stressed that NIF has never provided support for BDS activities, and in the last four or five years has refused to fund groups that support BDS in any manner -- even if that support was peripheral to their mission and done with funds from other sources.
The anti-boycott law is just one of several laws or bills that some argue impact the soul of the country. In 2011, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, then the leader of the Reform movement in the United States, was quoted as saying that “the anti-democratic laws that have passed, or that are expected to pass, in the Knesset are not bad only for Israel — these laws could have a catastrophic impact on relations between Israel and the Jews of the diaspora — especially American Jews. Commitment to shared moral values and to democracy is what binds Jews to Israel.”
He was referring to one bill that would have put a cap on the amount of money Israeli NGOs could receive from overseas, and another that would have required all organizations not funded by the Israeli government to pay a 45 percent tax on all donations from foreign states. And another would establish a Basic Law in which Israel would be defined as an inherently Jewish state that has “a democratic regime,” in which Arabic would be a language with “special standing” instead of one of two official languages of the state.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has warned of “intensifying infringements on democratic freedoms in Israel” coming from both the Knesset and the cabinet.
“As a result,” it said, “the basic principles of the Israeli democratic system are being undermined.”
Steinberg of NGO Monitor, who is also a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, pointed out, however, the Israeli High Court “has a reputation as being a judicial body, not a political body.” And he said its decision last week “was nuanced, carefully weighed and given in great detail.”
For instance, he noted that there were different parts to the High Court’s decision and that the nine-member court ruled differently on each — suggesting that they “carefully weighed the evidence.”
In last week’s decision, the court voted 9-0 to preserve the heart of the law that authorized the finance minister to impose fines or withhold state funding from Israeli NGOs that call for boycotts of businesses in all or parts of Israel; by an 8-1 vote, the court upheld the ability to file suits against those NGOs that call for a boycott; by a 9-0 vote it struck down as unconstitutional a provision of the law that permitted punitive damages against those calling for a boycott, and by a 5-4 vote it said the anti-boycott law applied to both Israel proper and the Israeli territories.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli attorney known for her legal activism and as founder of the Shurat HaDin Israeli Law Center, said she believes the court in effect gutted the law by declaring as unconstitutional the section that permitted punitive damages. As a result, a business seeking to sue an individual or group boycotting its establishment must now prove it sustained monetary damage directly as a result of that boycott. And damages would be limited to the amount of damage proven.
“The law was intended to deter people from calling for a boycott against Israel by imposing civil penalties on them without having the need to prove that any damages occurred,” she said. “Now that the court deleted that part, it is almost impossible for someone to prove damages as a result of a call for a boycott.”
However, she added that should the Knesset put a limit on the punitive damages that could be collected, she believes it would pass constitutional muster.
Daniel Sokatch, CEO of NIF, said nevertheless that the court did uphold the constitutionality of the law itself.
“What kind of statement was the court making?” he said. “If it was only symbolic, it was a hell of a symbolic statement to make … The court has restricted freedom of expression when no lives are in danger. The court is saying that Israelis do not have the right to freedom of expression when they disagree with popular opinion.”
But Professor Barak Medina, a professor of human rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that by removing the punitive damages provision of the law the court was upholding the right to freedom of expression. He, too, said it would be “quite complicated” to prove that a call for a boycott caused provable damages. And he noted that the law permits only civil — not criminal — liability.
“The concern is that prohibiting this kind of speech curtails public discourse in Israel — and there is concern,” Medina observed. “But I am not calling it the end of democracy or an end to freedom of speech — it is just not favorable for democracy. … The real concern is the chilling effect of this [decision].”
Uri Avnery, founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement in Israel and one of the named petitioners in the appeal, said he sees the decision more starkly.
In an email, he told The Jewish Week that the decision is part of the “slow — but gathering in speed — destruction of Israeli democracy.”
Rabbi Rosenn said that despite the court ruling, the NIF does not believe the issue is dead.
“We understand the court ruled and upheld it as the law of the land, but citizens have a right to criticize,” he said. “Our groups are not saying the court should be scaled back or reigned in. We think the court is an essential institution for Israeli democracy. However, courts sometimes change their minds and overrule themselves. We hope and expect that in the fullness of time, the Israeli legal system will realize that this was an ill-considered restriction on and suppression of free expression and will overturn the ruling.”
Sokatch said he is also disturbed that the court found no difference “between criticizing the settlements and Israel proper.” That ruling, he argued, “hands a huge victory to the global BDS movement, which sees no difference between Tel Aviv and Ariel [in the West Bank]. First the prime minister said there would be no two-state solution on my watch, and now the High Court says it sees no difference between Tel Aviv and Ariel. But most of us believe there is a tremendous difference.”
On the other hand, the Zionist Organization of America issued a statement “strongly praising” the court decision and saying it properly refused “to exempt from Israel’s anti-boycott law those boycotts that ‘only’ target Jews and Israelis in Judea and Samaria [West Bank]. The high court properly recognized that these so-called ‘targeted’ boycotts in fact delegitimize and damage all of Israel.”
stewart@jewishweek.org NEW YORK
Jewish Students Caught In Identity Politics Crossfire
Molly Horwitz isn't alone. After the incident at Stanford, experts and student leaders here weigh in. Was this case different?
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Naomi Kadish, a student leader atNYU, sent Molly Horwitz a Facebook message in solidarity after reading about her in The New York Times.
“I wanted her to know she had support,” said Kadish, legislative committee-member of TorchPAC, the pro-Israel group at NYU. “What happens to one Jewish student leader affects us all.”
Horwitz, a candidate running for student government at Stanford University, made headlines last week after claiming she was asked how her Judaism affects her view of divestment from Israel, changing a campus election into a fierce discussion about identity politics.
According to Horwitz, a member of the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) asked her how she would vote on divestment, given her “Jewish identity.” Taken aback, Horwitz responded that she opposed divestment; she did not receive the group’s endorsement. Members of SOCC have since called Horwitz’s charge “baseless.”
In a student survey released this week, the Jewish Student Association at Stanford found that the incident is not isolated. According to an open letter published in the Stanford Daily, many Jewish students no longer feel accepted on campus because of their Jewish identity.
“Our survey indicated that many Jewish students, even those not engaged in the debate over divestment, have felt excluded solely due to their Jewish identities,” the open letter reads. “For instance, some reported being silenced in conversations due to their peers’ perception that their Jewish identity relegates them to a place of naïve bias. Others expressed pain because they feel the need to hide their connection to the larger Jewish community.”
Similar to Horwitz, who scrubbed her Facebook page of any reference to Israel before running in the election, Jewish students at Stanford said they do not feel comfortable expressing their love of Israel, an integral aspect of their Jewish identity.
This is not the first time the debate on college campuses over divestment from Israel has led to discussions about anti-Semitism. Earlier this year, students at the University of California, Los Angeles, asked a Jewish student who was a candidate for a campus judicial committee whether her religion would influence her decision-making. Unlike at Stanford, where Horwitz’s claims are still being investigated, the incident was caught on tape.
“The intensity and volume of these incidents has increased,” said Michael Salberg, director of international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League. Though these cases took place on the West Coast, they are not “geographically isolated,” he said; a similar “environment of hostility” is at play in campuses across New York.
“Debates on campus must be limited to what you think, not who you are,” said Salberg, explaining why he believes the incident, if true as alleged, was anti-Semitic. “When others start looking at immutable characteristics, like race and ethnicity, and extrapolating political positions, a line has been crossed.”
Melanie Goldberg, a graduate of Brooklyn College, recalled the atmosphere of hostility she faced as a pro-Israel student on campus, especially concerning divestment. At the time, she and three other pro-Israel students were ousted from a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions event for handing out fliers.
“Student groups claim that they’re not anti-Semitic, they just oppose Israeli policies,” said Goldberg, currently a law student at Cardozo Law School. “But if they’re only going to ask Jewish students about Israeli policy, that’s contradictory. Incidents like this reveal internal inconsistences at the root of the problem.”
Though Goldberg never ran for office, she said it was commonplace for student body representatives to hide their Jewish identity in order to solicit votes.
“If you were openly Jewish, it could work against you,” she recalled.
Sydney Levy, the advocacy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, a nonprofit group that supports divestment from Israel, agreed that “disentangling” Jewish identity from Israeli policy is an imperative.
“Mainstream pro-Israel groups repeatedly claim to represent all Jews, and explicitly state that all Jews are against divestment,” he said, speaking on the phone from his office in Oakland, Calif. “This is not true, and it confuses others.”
What happened at Stanford is symptomatic of what’s happening on campuses across the country, he said. “Jewish students are being told by mainstream organizations that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. As a community, we need to be a better job of un-meshing the two.”
Hindy Poupko, managing director of Israel and international affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, reinforced that what happened at UCLA and Stanford are not “isolated incidents.”
“On campus, we are seeing a deliberate attempt by BDS-supporters to cast Jewish activists as somehow suspect,” said Poupko, who serves as a campus consultant in New York. She likened the incident to BDS-activist Josh Ruebner’s recent comments referring to New York Sen. Charles Schumer as an “Israel-firster,” a derogatory term used to deride supporters of Israel.
“Comments like these are reminiscent of old-time anti-Semitic stereotypes, portraying Jews as unable to remain loyal to their home country,” she said. “The allegations leveled by the BDS movement against Senator Schumer are the same allegations being leveled against some of our students in the context of student government elections.”
Poupko also pointed out that overt anti-Semitism, like swastikas painted on campus, have frequently appeared shortly after campus debates regarding Israel.
“Jewish students are singled out in the Israel debate, so what often follows is not surprising,” she said.
Linda Maizels, director of Israel and international concerns at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, stressed the importance of placing incidents like this in ahistorical context.
“This is not something new — the conversation around Israel crests and troughs based on what’s going in the Middle East,” she said.
Still, the BDS-movement on campus right now is different in certain ways, she said.
“Firstly, BDS is seen as the right choice on campus, and those who oppose divestment are seen as oppressive and threatening,” she said. The second problem is that Jewish students are “presupposed to all feel the same way,” based on their identity affiliations.
“Jewish students are being silenced because they are assumed to be biased, and therefore unfit to participate in the debate,” she said.
Though both are concerning, jumping to accusations of anti-Semitism has risks, said Maizels. While “highly sensitive antenna” is understandable, if overused, the cry of anti-Semitism might eventually desensitize others. Determining when “that line is crossed” is increasingly difficult, she said.
NYU’s Kadish, a freshman studying economics and politics, is considering running for student senators council next year. Though what allegedly happened to Horwitz is “disturbing and scary,” Kadish won’t let it dissuade her from entering the race.
“I’m not ashamed to have a pro-Israel group on my resume,” she said. Though she doesn’t judge Horwitz for hiding her connections to Israel, Kadish hopes a defiant approach will boost her platform. “I support Israel,” she said. “Let people ask.”
editor@jewishweek.org
Associate Editor Jonathan Mark visits the Lower East Side, exploring the nasty real estate controversy over the sale of a small shtiebel (makeshift synagogue).NEW YORK
LES Shtiebel Wins Round In Court Fight
As real estate turns ‘toxic,’ AG reverses course on sale to developer.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Some people like to hear concerts in football stadiums, and some like to pray in vast cathedrals. However, aficionados are often minimalists, preferring jazz in clubs, or hockey on frozen ponds. Lower East Side tourists follow guidebooks to the Eldridge Street Synagogue, now a museum, or the Bialystoker Synagogue, still in daily use, but the shtiebel — a vest-pocket shul, not much larger than a living room or a two-car garage — was once the shul of choice on the Lower East Side.
One block, East Broadway between Montgomery and Clinton streets, once housed more than a dozen shtiebels; “Shtiebel Row,” they called it. One shtiebel, at the Home of the Sages of Israel on Willett Street, is known for sending out thousands of calendars of elderly Jews every Rosh HaShanah, a fundraiser that regularly pulls in $800,000, such is the sentimental appeal.
That’s a lot of money for a shul that is fighting for its life, not from a lack of money but from too much of it.
The streets are paved with gold, after all. Real estate developers are waving $13 million at the shtiebel, to sell. But who was getting the money? Who was authorized to sell? The shtiebel’s congregants won an unlikely victory in court this week, stopping the sale, when the attorney general’s office, whose approval is required for the sale of nonprofit charitable institutions, suddenly revoked its approval.
A spokesman for the AG’s office told us, “Some of the new information from people objecting to the sale conflicts with the statements in the petition” to sell the building. “So we are withdrawing our ‘no objection’ pending our review of the new information.” That led the judge to issue an adjournment until May 7. Will the sale be stopped? No one is claiming victory. The story is hardly over. In some ways, it’s hardly begun.
A Jew in the neighborhood said, “The people who daven [in the Sages] are sweet, down to earth, ehrlicher Yidden,” meaning they are “refined,” with integrity and dignity. Yidden who came to daven, not to care about shul business. Did the shul have a board of directors? No one quite knew. Did the shul have members, bylaws or elections of officers? Well, maybe, once upon a time, but when?
The shtiebel, founded in 1939, is housed in a room belonging to an old-age residence originally intended for elderly rabbis, teachers and scholars, but most died long ago. There may be an elderly Jew in the four-story building, but no sages remain. David Jaraslowicz, a lawyer for the congregants, said, the residents of the home “are a mixed population, African Americans, Hispanics; there are no ‘sages of Israel.’ If I walked in there,” said Jaraslowicz, “I’d be the sage.”
When the nursing facility was sub-leased to a non-Jewish operator, it was promised at a court hearing that the shtiebel would remain fully operative for the full duration of its lease, until 2025.
Last year, with no notice to the congregation and without an announced election, the board of the shtiebel suddenly became entirely comprised of nine Gerer chasidim, none of whom daven there or even live in Manhattan. Dr. Aaron From, who told The Jewish Week that he’d been davening at the Sages for more than 25 years, said, “I didn’t know anyone on the board, not one.”
Also at the top of the shtiebel leadership was Shmuel Aschkenazi, the Sages president for many years, who lives in Queens, and is connected to Ger, as well. According to New York State law, when a nonprofit, such as a synagogue, is sold, the money must go to similar nonprofits. But when Aschkenazi sold the shtiebel to Peter Fine, the developer, the Gerer board designated $10 million from the sale to build a new Gerer shul in Israel, even though the Third Temple itself would likely cost less than $10 million to build.
Another $3 million was designated for Congregation Tifereth Shmuel, a synagogue whose address just happens to be Aschkenazi’s private home in Queens. Then, Aschkenazi signed a lease to pay at least $4,000 a month, or $240,000 over five years, for the shtiebel to sublet space from Tifereth Shmuel, the shul in Aschkenazi’s home.
In the court papers, Aschkenazi said he was simply moving the shtiebel to Queens “for the use and benefit of the current congregants of the Home of the Sages.” Of course, none of the shtiebel’s congregants would be able to walk from the Lower East Side to Kew Gardens on Shabbos, nor could they reasonably commute there for daily services.
The $240,000 lease was signed by Aschkenazi, on behalf of the shtiebel, and by his wife on behalf of Tifereth Shmuel in his home. Aschkenazi did not return phone calls to either his personal residence or to the Home of the Sages.
Fine, the developer, also purchased the air rights of the neighboring Bialystoker shul and adjacent lots. Fine was a friend of William Rapfogel for more than 30 years. Rapfogel, who had been executive director of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, is now in prison for embezzling several hundred thousand dollars in an insurance scam. Although he was, before prison, a leading member of the Bialystoker Synagogue whose air rights were sold to his friend, Fine, Rapfogel was appointed by the attorney general’s office to serve on the AG’s advisory panel overseeing the sale.
There was speculation in the neighborhood that Rapfogel’s appointment by the attorney general was engineered by then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was arrested in January for taking more than $4 million in bribes and kickbacks. (Silver denies the charges.) In the small world of Lower East Side politics, Rapfogel and Silver were seen as joined at the hip. If Silver was famously known as the second-most important Democrat in the state (after the governor), he was certainly the most powerful man on the Lower East Side, with influence in the attorney general’s office, and with two state judges sitting with him in the Bialystoker pews.
Said one Jewish professional this week, “The [Jewish] Lower East Side has become just toxic politically.” That Rapfogel was conveniently appointed by the attorney general’s office to oversee and approve the Sages sale, according to the New York Observer, which first reported the mess at Home of the Sages, was “a wolf-guarding-the-henhouse situation.” One lawyer told the Observer, “Two years ago, [Rapfogel] was the prince. Whatever he said was golden. No one looked, no one checked. When he went to jail, a lot of things he did began to blow up, and this is one of them.”
In a curious development for what started out as a routine charitable transaction, Aschkenazi is being represented by the powerhouse law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, raising eyebrows. The firm did not return phone calls about the case.
Jaraslowicz, working pro-bono for the shtiebel’s congregants, told us, “I think [Aschkenazi] and the Gerer chasidim got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. One guy, according to tax returns, is the head of Friends of Ger. Suddenly he shows up on the board and votes to give Ger $10 million.”
The Home of the Sages, said Jaraslowicz, “still sends out a calendar with a mailing soliciting money. My sister says she has the calendar on her refrigerator. One of the old rabbis [supposedly from the Sages] on the calendar reminds her of our grandfather, so every year she sends them a check. They ask for money for Passover for the old rabbis,” and offer to say Kaddish for people. “The whole thing was a sham.”
Jaraslowicz is continuing to discover further curiosities, if not illegalities, in the Home of Sages portfolio. For example, he said, Aschkenazi is president of a second facility using the Home of the Sages name, the Belle Harbor Home of the Sages, Inc., which does business as Belle Harbor Manor. They also have a board that was not properly elected, said Jaraslowicz. “According to my calculations, Belle Harbor [Sages] has donated over $2 million to charities operated by [Gerer chasidim].” And another half-million to some of the “196 Jewish charities that share the same address in Brooklyn.”
editor@jewishweek.org
Also this week, a major gift to help WNET fight anti-Semitism; the Jewish Book Council has a new executive director; helping Israeli Arabs join the high-tech revolution; a remembrance of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, mourned as a towering Talmudic and moral leader; Tribeca documentary on complex Nazi family legacies; and our Healthcare supplement, which focuses on genetics.
SHORT TAKESWNET To Fight Anti-Semitism In Big Way
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Dr. Simon and Sylvia Poyta leave record estate to WNET. Courtesy of WNET
During an event sponsored several years ago by WNET, New York City’s public television station, Sylvia Poyta, a longtime supporter of the station, took Neal Shapiro, WNET’s president, aside for a short, quiet conversation.
She told Shapiro that she and her late husband Simon, a dentist, had included some funds in their estate for WNET, Channel 13, to establish an unspecified initiative to combat anti-Semitism.
Poyta mentioned that her husband had made some good investments, and the money they were leaving to the station “could be worth as much as $1 million.”
Shapiro thanked Poyta, a comptroller, telling her “A million dollars is a lot of money.”
“I promise you we’ll spend it responsibly,” he told Poyta.
She died in 2012.
It turned out that the gift that the philanthropists from Forest Hills, Queens, had left to WNET was $20 million, the largest bequest in the station’s 53-year history.
“We were shocked,” Shapiro said.
WNET announced last week, after the couple’s estate had passed probate and the station received the funds, that it has established The Sylvia and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Anti-Semitism.
The station is considering a wide range of uses for the money — including documentaries about anti-Semitism, expanded news coverage of the subject, and “community-focused efforts against anti-Semitism” in the Greater New York area — but will not announce specific details until the endowment begins to yield interest in about a year, Shapiro said this week. “We have many projects [in mind]”, Shapiro said.
In recent years, anti-Semitism has grown both in parts of Europe and in the United States, he pointed out. “Issues like this have not gone away.”
He said Simon Poyta’s interest in fighting anti-Semitism stemmed from his service in the U.S. Army during World War II, when other soldiers in his unit, assuming from his name that he was Italian, would freely say anti-Semitic things in his presence. These consisted of stereotypes and “anti-Semitic jokes,” Shapiro said, based on what he heard from Sylvia Poyta.
Simon Poyta, who died in 2006, “was shocked by how pervasive it was, and how openly soldiers talked about it,” Shapiro said. Dr. Poyta served in the European Theater during the war, but Shapiro said he could not speculate on what aftermath of the Holocaust Dr. Poyta saw.
The couple “really liked public television … its ability to literally transmit a message,” Shapiro said. “They wanted to do something that has lasting good [for] people they never met and will never meet. It’s highest level of tzedakah.”
editor@jewishweek.org
NEW YORK
Helping Israeli Arabs Join The High-Tech Revolution
Takwin Labs offers seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
New start-up incubator in Israel “can make a big difference” in the Arab population in the next decade.Courtesy of Takwin Labs
The Start-Up Nation is starting to include more of its citizens.
Israel, which has earned the title of Start-Up Nation for its disproportionate international role in high-technology advancements, most launched by Jewish Israelis and Army veterans, is slowly bringing Israeli Arabs into the high-tech fold.
In recent years, such initiatives as Nazareth-based New Generation Technology, an entrepreneur-training program that supports 20 start-up companies in the northern Galilee region, and similar programs named Al Bawader and Tsofen, also from Nazareth, all of which support Arab-founded high-tech companies, have reached out to Israel’s Arab population, which has been underrepresented in the country’s high-tech revolution.
A new start-up incubator, which is supporting fledgling Israeli Arab companies in order to help both the minority population and the wider economy, recently brought its message of inter-ethnic cooperation here.
Itzik Frid, an Israeli Jew who had served as vice president of the world’s leading provider of content adaptation and browsing solutions for online carriers, and Imad Telhami, an Israeli Arab who had served as a senior executive with the Delta Galil Industries textiles firm and founded a successful call center and software development company, attended the Israel DealMakers Summit last month in Manhattan; the two held separate meetings with other potential investors to promote Takwin Labs (Takwin is Arabic for “genesis” or “start”), which will offer seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
“We will also invest in promising candidates in the West Bank,” Frid said.
Takwin’s model of Arab-Jewish cooperation serves as a tacit rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks in the closing days of his successful re-election campaign last month that warned of a growing Arab vote and threatened to worsen Arab-Jewish relations.
Takwin, whose initial goal is $20 million, found a high level of interest here but no investments yet; Frid said he is optimistic that financial support from U.S. investors will come. He had lined up some $5 million in investment funding from Jews and Arabs in Israel before coming to the United States. Such entrepreneurial investments typically take several months to arrange, he said. “It is still in process.”
“I see excitement for what we are doing in Israel,” Frid told The Jewish Week; he said he has found some interest among Palestinians who live across the Green Line, but was reluctant to discuss details.
Frid said the Israeli government has offered moral support to Takwin, but no financial support. All the funding is private, from Jews and Arabs in Israel. “On both sides” of the ethnic divide — “we see the excitement,” he said.
“The vast majority of initiatives for Arab economic development in Israel are focused on access and integration into employment,” Frid said. In other words, finding jobs. Takwin’s emphasis is on helping companies that will create jobs. “Takwin Labs is the first private venture capital fund and incubator investing solely in Arab high-tech start-ups.
“We believe that this will inspire a high-tech entrepreneurial culture in Israel’s Arab society that will be vital to economic development in Arab society,” Frid said.
He and Telhami established Takwin in partnership with Chemi Peres, a veteran of the venture capital field and son of former president Shimon Peres, and Erel Margalit, founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, who served as a Knesset member.
Tawkin has already provided funding to one Israeli Arab start-up (Frid and Telhami decline to reveal the recipient’s identity, or the exact size of the financial investment), and expects to provide money to several other firms in the next several months. Each investment will be “a few hundred thousand dollars,” Frid said.
Once fully underway, Takwin will fund four to six Israeli Arab firms a year, he said. About 100 potential recipients have taken part in the initial interview process. Most of the firms are located in northern Israel, where most Israeli Arabs live. Takwin will also offer mentoring advice, Frid said.
While the participation of Israeli Jews, many of them one-time members of Army intelligence units, in the country’s high-tech entrepreneur activities has accelerated in recent years and achieved legendary status around the world, Israeli Arabs have remained largely outsiders.
Several factors have discouraged Israeli Arabs’ high-tech role: they largely do not serve in the Army, and lack that inside track; some Israeli firms are reluctant to hire Arabs who have an engineering or similar high-tech background; many ambitious Israeli Arabs opt for traditional career paths like physician or teacher; few Israeli Arabs who have achieved financial success have a tradition of making entrepreneurial investments.
“There is a huge gap,” Telhami said. “Arabs are not part of Israeli high-tech, not part of Israel’s start-up [ethos].”
Takwin is starting to change this culture, Telhami said. “We have received a lot of cooperation from Arab businessmen. For the first time in their life, they invest. We believe that in 10 years we can make a big difference.”
Overall, Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s population, have a higher unemployment rate than Israeli Jews.
“For those who overcome barriers to attaining the necessary education and experience, the two biggest obstacles to launching a start-up are access to early-stage capital and connections to the rich high-tech ecosystem that has developed in Israel over the last 15-plus years,” Frid said.
He and Telhami stressed that the success of programs like Takwin is likely to improve interethnic relations within Israel, and serve as an example for Arabs in the Middle East.
“Whenever people spend time together at work, create companies together, invest together, develop relationships, stereotypes do not hold,” Frid said. “When people feel they have good jobs, opportunity, hope, and a sense of inclusion, they are more likely to seek stability and cooperation.”
Arab-Jewish relations in Israel are part of Takwin’s short-term goals, Frid said. An influence on the region’s majority Arab population is long-term, he said.
“The Israeli Arab can be a real bridge to peace in the Middle East,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
Staff Writer
During an event sponsored several years ago by WNET, New York City’s public television station, Sylvia Poyta, a longtime supporter of the station, took Neal Shapiro, WNET’s president, aside for a short, quiet conversation.
She told Shapiro that she and her late husband Simon, a dentist, had included some funds in their estate for WNET, Channel 13, to establish an unspecified initiative to combat anti-Semitism.
Poyta mentioned that her husband had made some good investments, and the money they were leaving to the station “could be worth as much as $1 million.”
Shapiro thanked Poyta, a comptroller, telling her “A million dollars is a lot of money.”
“I promise you we’ll spend it responsibly,” he told Poyta.
She died in 2012.
It turned out that the gift that the philanthropists from Forest Hills, Queens, had left to WNET was $20 million, the largest bequest in the station’s 53-year history.
“We were shocked,” Shapiro said.
WNET announced last week, after the couple’s estate had passed probate and the station received the funds, that it has established The Sylvia and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Anti-Semitism.
The station is considering a wide range of uses for the money — including documentaries about anti-Semitism, expanded news coverage of the subject, and “community-focused efforts against anti-Semitism” in the Greater New York area — but will not announce specific details until the endowment begins to yield interest in about a year, Shapiro said this week. “We have many projects [in mind]”, Shapiro said.
In recent years, anti-Semitism has grown both in parts of Europe and in the United States, he pointed out. “Issues like this have not gone away.”
He said Simon Poyta’s interest in fighting anti-Semitism stemmed from his service in the U.S. Army during World War II, when other soldiers in his unit, assuming from his name that he was Italian, would freely say anti-Semitic things in his presence. These consisted of stereotypes and “anti-Semitic jokes,” Shapiro said, based on what he heard from Sylvia Poyta.
Simon Poyta, who died in 2006, “was shocked by how pervasive it was, and how openly soldiers talked about it,” Shapiro said. Dr. Poyta served in the European Theater during the war, but Shapiro said he could not speculate on what aftermath of the Holocaust Dr. Poyta saw.
The couple “really liked public television … its ability to literally transmit a message,” Shapiro said. “They wanted to do something that has lasting good [for] people they never met and will never meet. It’s highest level of tzedakah.”
editor@jewishweek.org
NEW YORK
Helping Israeli Arabs Join The High-Tech Revolution
Takwin Labs offers seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
The Start-Up Nation is starting to include more of its citizens.
Israel, which has earned the title of Start-Up Nation for its disproportionate international role in high-technology advancements, most launched by Jewish Israelis and Army veterans, is slowly bringing Israeli Arabs into the high-tech fold.
In recent years, such initiatives as Nazareth-based New Generation Technology, an entrepreneur-training program that supports 20 start-up companies in the northern Galilee region, and similar programs named Al Bawader and Tsofen, also from Nazareth, all of which support Arab-founded high-tech companies, have reached out to Israel’s Arab population, which has been underrepresented in the country’s high-tech revolution.
A new start-up incubator, which is supporting fledgling Israeli Arab companies in order to help both the minority population and the wider economy, recently brought its message of inter-ethnic cooperation here.
Itzik Frid, an Israeli Jew who had served as vice president of the world’s leading provider of content adaptation and browsing solutions for online carriers, and Imad Telhami, an Israeli Arab who had served as a senior executive with the Delta Galil Industries textiles firm and founded a successful call center and software development company, attended the Israel DealMakers Summit last month in Manhattan; the two held separate meetings with other potential investors to promote Takwin Labs (Takwin is Arabic for “genesis” or “start”), which will offer seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
“We will also invest in promising candidates in the West Bank,” Frid said.
Takwin’s model of Arab-Jewish cooperation serves as a tacit rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks in the closing days of his successful re-election campaign last month that warned of a growing Arab vote and threatened to worsen Arab-Jewish relations.
Takwin, whose initial goal is $20 million, found a high level of interest here but no investments yet; Frid said he is optimistic that financial support from U.S. investors will come. He had lined up some $5 million in investment funding from Jews and Arabs in Israel before coming to the United States. Such entrepreneurial investments typically take several months to arrange, he said. “It is still in process.”
“I see excitement for what we are doing in Israel,” Frid told The Jewish Week; he said he has found some interest among Palestinians who live across the Green Line, but was reluctant to discuss details.
Frid said the Israeli government has offered moral support to Takwin, but no financial support. All the funding is private, from Jews and Arabs in Israel. “On both sides” of the ethnic divide — “we see the excitement,” he said.
“The vast majority of initiatives for Arab economic development in Israel are focused on access and integration into employment,” Frid said. In other words, finding jobs. Takwin’s emphasis is on helping companies that will create jobs. “Takwin Labs is the first private venture capital fund and incubator investing solely in Arab high-tech start-ups.
“We believe that this will inspire a high-tech entrepreneurial culture in Israel’s Arab society that will be vital to economic development in Arab society,” Frid said.
He and Telhami established Takwin in partnership with Chemi Peres, a veteran of the venture capital field and son of former president Shimon Peres, and Erel Margalit, founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, who served as a Knesset member.
Tawkin has already provided funding to one Israeli Arab start-up (Frid and Telhami decline to reveal the recipient’s identity, or the exact size of the financial investment), and expects to provide money to several other firms in the next several months. Each investment will be “a few hundred thousand dollars,” Frid said.
Once fully underway, Takwin will fund four to six Israeli Arab firms a year, he said. About 100 potential recipients have taken part in the initial interview process. Most of the firms are located in northern Israel, where most Israeli Arabs live. Takwin will also offer mentoring advice, Frid said.
While the participation of Israeli Jews, many of them one-time members of Army intelligence units, in the country’s high-tech entrepreneur activities has accelerated in recent years and achieved legendary status around the world, Israeli Arabs have remained largely outsiders.
Several factors have discouraged Israeli Arabs’ high-tech role: they largely do not serve in the Army, and lack that inside track; some Israeli firms are reluctant to hire Arabs who have an engineering or similar high-tech background; many ambitious Israeli Arabs opt for traditional career paths like physician or teacher; few Israeli Arabs who have achieved financial success have a tradition of making entrepreneurial investments.
“There is a huge gap,” Telhami said. “Arabs are not part of Israeli high-tech, not part of Israel’s start-up [ethos].”
Takwin is starting to change this culture, Telhami said. “We have received a lot of cooperation from Arab businessmen. For the first time in their life, they invest. We believe that in 10 years we can make a big difference.”
Overall, Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s population, have a higher unemployment rate than Israeli Jews.
“For those who overcome barriers to attaining the necessary education and experience, the two biggest obstacles to launching a start-up are access to early-stage capital and connections to the rich high-tech ecosystem that has developed in Israel over the last 15-plus years,” Frid said.
He and Telhami stressed that the success of programs like Takwin is likely to improve interethnic relations within Israel, and serve as an example for Arabs in the Middle East.
“Whenever people spend time together at work, create companies together, invest together, develop relationships, stereotypes do not hold,” Frid said. “When people feel they have good jobs, opportunity, hope, and a sense of inclusion, they are more likely to seek stability and cooperation.”
Arab-Jewish relations in Israel are part of Takwin’s short-term goals, Frid said. An influence on the region’s majority Arab population is long-term, he said.
“The Israeli Arab can be a real bridge to peace in the Middle East,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
A Towering Talmudic And Moral Leader
Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, 81, was a model combination of Torah and secular scholarship.
Kalman Neuman
Special To The Jewish Week
Religious Zionists in Israel and the Modern Orthodox community in America this week are mourning a unique and inspiring figure, mentor to literally thousands and model to many more. The influence of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, who died Monday at 81, goes far beyond his formal title as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel.
Aharon Lichtenstein’s family, originally from Eastern Europe, fled, first to France, where he was born in 1933, and then to the U.S. in 1940. Ultimately he emerged as the outstanding student of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik of Yeshiva University, the towering Modern Orthodox Talmudist and philosopher, who later became his father-in-law. Rabbi Lichtenstein indeed saw himself as continuing the traditions of the Torah world of pre-Holocaust Europe, and felt great affinity to the charedi Torah world. However, his interests also led him to Harvard, where he received his Ph.D., in English literature. As he wrote numerous times, humanistic culture can be of value in molding spiritual personality and moral identity, and therefore the study of great literature, which grapples with the universal and eternal questions of human existence, is a worthy spiritual complement to Torah.
After Harvard, Rabbi Lichtenstein returned to Yeshiva University as Rosh Yeshiva. He taught both Talmud and English, but in 1971 he accepted an invitation by Rabbi Yehuda Amital to join him in leading a recently founded hesder yeshiva (which combines Torah study and military service) in the Etzion Bloc, south of Jerusalem. His aliyah reflected a deep commitment to Zionism — not the messianic utopianism then ascendant in Israeli Religious Zionism, but one based on a deep appreciation of the importance and potential of the State of Israel and of its establishment as an act of God. His support of the army-yeshiva program as a way of combining different Jewish commitments was later formulated in a programmatic essay, “The Ideology Of Hesder.” The joint leadership of the yeshiva (itself an unusual arrangement) and the synergy between the analytic, restrained (and clean-shaven) Lichtenstein and the mercurial and intuitive Amital (who had a somewhat more traditional appearance) created an electrified atmosphere and constituted an institution the likes of which, combining advanced Talmudics and traditional religious commitment with intellectual openness, had not been previously seen in Israel.
In his decades at Har Etzion, Rav Aharon (as his students referred to him) devoted himself totally to a demanding schedule of teaching Talmud at the highest level. His lectures combined his mastery of the totality of rabbinic literature, his systematic powers of organization and the analytical approach of the “Brisker school” he had learned from his mentor and father-in-law. The eight volumes of lecture notes, edited by his students, were part of the writings for which the rabbi received the Israel Prize for rabbinic literature last year. For him study of the entire span of the Talmud, including the laws of sacrifices and purity often absent from the yeshiva curriculum, was not only an intellectual challenge but also a rapturous confrontation with the divine, which transcended pragmatic questions of relevance; study was for him the quintessential service of God.
Together with his commitment to all-inclusive Torah study, he concerned himself with topics such as the interface of Torah and morality. In his personal life, he held himself to a strict level of observance in areas of ritual law as well as in moral obligations. His students — both Israelis and the many Americans who came to study under his guidance — were exposed in the intimacy of the yeshiva setting to a teacher with absolute integrity and profound humility, whose absolute devotion to study, his loving care of his father — for years blind as well as hard of hearing — and his function as a parent, provide a model for them to this day.
Some, especially outside of the yeshiva, were disappointed when they found that they could not compress his positions into sound bites and claim him for their camp. He had no respect for those who ignored the complexity of human reality, awareness of which was for him a necessary component of halachic thinking and of religious life. He refused to be inducted into “liberal Orthodoxy” and was wary of what he saw as deviant tendencies, from a famous exchange in the 1960s with his colleague at Yeshiva, Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, to criticism in recent years of what he saw as anarchistic trends in neo-chasidic Israeli youth.
This principled but careful approach exemplified Rav Lichtenstein’s activities as a public intellectual in Israel. Following the ruling of his father-in-law, he was steadfast in his principled support for territorial compromise, unpopular as the position is in the Religious Zionist sector, but wary of publicly espousing specific dovish policies regarding the peace process. He claimed no special expertise in security matters.
The exception to this restraint was when public issues had a moral dimension. Two in particular elicited from him vehement response: His and Rav Amital’s demand for a commission of inquiry after the massacre in Sabra and Shatilla, during the 1982 war in Lebanon, comparing the sins of omission that may have been committed to the biblical law of the forsaken dead (Deut. 21:1-9), and his condemnation of a eulogy of Baruch Goldstein, delivered in the hesder yeshiva in Kiryat Arba by its rosh yeshiva, after Goldstein killed 29 Palestinian Muslims at prayer in Hebron in 1994.
Although he often found himself in the minority within Religious Zionism, Rav Lichtenstein’s stature in erudition and integrity accorded him a unique status as moral compass and a voice combining staunch traditionalism with religious humanism. Sadly, that unique voice has been silenced.
Kalman Neuman, a rabbi, is a researcher in the Israel Democracy Institute’s Religion and State Project, and a lecturer at Herzog College in Gush Etzion.
FILM
Sins Of The Fathers
Tribeca documentary looks at complicated Nazi family legacies; plus, riding the Empire Builder across the Great Plains with Albert Maysles.
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
Although Robert DeNiro, who was one of its founders, recently disclosed that he thought the Tribeca Film Festival would be a one-shot deal, the event has hung on and grown every year. This year’s festival, currently running all over lower Manhattan, is no exception, with several new sidebar events focusing on new media.
However, it’s the old media we’re concerned with and in the movie (and digital video) realm, one of the great strengths of Tribeca has always been its wide-ranging selection of documentary films. We have already considered the crisp economy of Ido Mizrahy’s “Gored,” in which the Israeli filmmaker looks at bullfighting. Here are two more excellent films boasting Jewish connections that are worth a trip downtown.
Philippe Sands is a writer and a human-rights lawyer who has argued cases before the International Criminal Court. He is also a Jew, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, and one of the three central figures in “A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did,” which he also wrote and co-produced. The film, originally made for the BBC’s “Storyville” series, is directed by David Evans, whose resume includes such unlikely entries as “Downton Abbey” and “Shameless.” (The BBC likes its directors to multi-task.)
Sands was working on a newspaper piece that brought him into contact with Niklas Frank who, in turn, introduced him to his friend from childhood, Horst von Wächter. If those names are vaguely familiar, it may be their fathers you are thinking of, Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of occupied Poland, and Otto von Wächter, his subordinate in charge of Galicia and organizer and commander of the Galician Waffen SS. Between the two of them, they were responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews and Poles.
Niklas Frank may also be familiar from the 2012 film “Hitler’s Children,” in which Frank discussed with great candor his loathing of his father and all his acts as a Nazi leader. He is no less candid with Sands, sardonically telling him, “I am — by chance — the son of Hans Frank.” Mind you, he is not more favorably disposed towards his mother, saying, “Everything that is human with me is from Hilde, my nurse, not my mother.” He recalls vividly a childhood trip to the Krakow ghetto where his mother “shopped” for dirt-cheap furs purchased from the starving Jewish women interned there.
He also has bitter memories of his parents’ fractured marriage and Hitler’s insistence that they not divorce until after the war. Why, Sands asks, did he agree to that? “[My father] loved Hitler more than his family,” Frank answers drily.
At first glance, von Wächter seems as ill-disposed towards Otto’s actions as Frank is towards those of Hans. He notes that he was named for the infamous pimp and SA organizer Horst Wessel, then snickers and adds, “My father was a complete Nazi.” He recounts the four-year period after the war in which Otto hid, first in the mountains, and then, courtesy of the “Rat Line” operation that protected Nazi war criminals, under the wing of the Vatican. He concludes, “I dropped out of normality because of my father.” He would go to work for the Jewish painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser for several years, a conscious reaction against his upbringing.
But as the film goes on, it becomes alarmingly clear that while von Wächter turned his back on the ideology in which he was raised, he categorically rejects the idea that his father was a war criminal. And this sticking point becomes the subject of the film, with Frank and Sands both hammering away at his denial, and Sands offering a revelation that explains his need to revisit this subject.
At the film’s premiere last week, Sands observed that it is a habit of documentary film to be polite to its subjects, a habit that “A Nazi Legacy” eschews. It is clear from early on that nothing will budge Horst, and his denial will lead the trio into some particularly sticky situations. The worst comes when they visit the 69th annual reunion of von Wächter’s Ukrainian SS unit and his son seems downright giddy at meeting men who tell him what a great guy Dad was. In the Q&A that followed the screening, Sands quickly pointed out that “this is a minority within the Ukrainian people,” but acknowledged that he, Frank and the camera crew were understandably nervous at the time.
It is hard not to walk away from “A Nazi Legacy” feeling depressed. Horst von Wächter’s amiable but stupid stubbornness, his utter refusal to accept, perhaps even to comprehend, the legal notion of command responsibility, is exhausting and more than bit dispiriting. Even Frank, who has known him since they were small boys, has clearly run out of patience. Frank’s own complete acceptance of the reality of Nazi criminality, of his father’s complete guilt, played off against Sands’s own quiet reasonableness and basic decency, make it possible to leave the theater thinking that there may be some hope for the future of the human race yet.
Interestingly, hope would seem to be the primary theme of “In Transit.” Like “Iris,” (covered on page 3 of this issue), “In Transit” is a posthumous work from Albert Maysles, directed by the elder statesman along with Nelson Walker, Lynn True, David Usui and Ben Wu. In a brisk yet expansive 76 minutes, Maysles and his co-directors follow the Empire Builder, American’s busiest long-distance train as it travels from Chicago to Portland, Ore., to Seattle and back again.
This part of the Northern Plains States is being transformed by the oil boom in the Dakotas, and the impact of that economic upturn is one of the central realities of the film. A pleasant 21-year-old says, “I figure seven years in the oilfield I’ll be set for life.” The oil workers seem, on the whole, a likable if bibulous bunch, and they blend in nicely with the train’s fascinating mix of working-class commuters, kids on college break and people seeking something more. There is a perky young woman, very pregnant and causing some worry for the train crew, who is heading home to Minneapolis, with the baby four days overdue; an older woman who has just been reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption nearly a half-century earlier; and a church elder who knew Martin Luther King, who has a wonderfully calm and earnest talk with a troubled younger man, telling him, “You’re having this conversation on a train with somebody so that you can have a conversation, perhaps on a train, with someone else who needs to talk.”
Superficially, with its intercutting of the bleak but beautiful winterscape of the Great Plains and the gentle procession of day-into-night-into-day, the film looks like a cousin of one of Frederick Wiseman’s epic examinations of democratic institutions. But Wiseman takes a long view, placing his subjects in an expansive chronological framework even in his films that are set over a single day, giving his attention to the big-picture interaction of these people in a larger sociopolitical context. By contrast, Maysles and his collaborators are actually distilling the essence of the passing of time, focusing on intimate moments between strangers in a celebration of our mutual humanity.
The Tribeca Film Festival continues through April 26 at venues all over Lower Manhattan. For information, go to https://tribecafilm.com/festival.
Battling genetic disease among the Bedouins. Silicon Valley BRCA testing kit making waves in market. Atlanta-based screening program expanding reach. Israeli app for ADHD gaining traction. The silence of infertility.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Fighting Genetic Disease Among The Bedouins
Giving The Overactive Mind A ‘Lift’
Bringing Genetic Screening Home
The Silence Of Infertility
When Vaccinations And Faith Collide
Mail-In Test Puts Genetic Screening Within Reach
Fighting Genetic Disease Among The Bedouins ›Enjoy the read, and be sure to visit our website, with exclusive videos, opinion essays, advice columns, blogs, and more.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
Gary Rosenblatt
GARY ROSENBLATT
BETWEEN THE LINES
A Woman’s Plight, A Community’s Shame
The situation of chained wives accounts for so much silent suffering.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Last Wednesday night my wife and I saw the gripping Israeli film “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem,” about the years-long effort of a woman to receive a religiousdivorce from a husband she no longer can abide. On leaving the theater we heard a woman at the end of our row say in an accusatory way to a woman seated nearby, “I’m not Jewish but I understand that Jewish men thank God every day for not making them a woman.”
The woman she made the comment to — we couldn’t tell if they were friends or strangers — replied with a lingering, lilting “Well…” a kind of drawn out sigh, her voice suggesting an inner debate as to whether it was worth trying to offer a rationale or let it go. Their discussion may have continued, but my wife and I left, silently agreeing that the hour was late and this was not our battle, at least not one to barge into uninvited.
I am well aware, though, of a variety of explanations for why, as part of a group of 15 one-sentence declarations of thanks recited at the very outset of the morning service every day in Orthodox synagogues, men are commanded to say, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a woman.”
Most of those prayers resonate deeply with me as we start the day offering thanks to God for both universal blessings — the gift of sight, strength to the weary — and for being part of the Jewish people.
The most common defense offered for the “not a woman” blessing is that men express gratitude for having more mitzvot to fulfill than women, since women are exempt from a number of time-bound commandments.
Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, the former British chief rabbi whose eloquence in interpreting the liturgy is unsurpassed in the modern era, notes in The Koren Siddur that this prayer is one of three mentioned in the Talmud (Menachot 43 b) — along with praise for not being created a non-Jew or a slave — that bless God “for the particularities of our identity. We belong to the people of the covenant, we are free and we have differentiated responsibilities as men and women.
“The blessings have nothing to do with hierarchies of dignity,” he continues, “for we believe that every human being is equally formed in the image of God. Rather, they are expressions of acknowledgement of the special duties of Jewish life.”
The day before I saw “Gett,” I led the morning service at a traditional synagogue to commemorate a yahrtzeit in the family. I chose to recite the “not made me a woman” passage in a softer voice than for the other blessings. It was a compromise of sorts, given that in the last few years I’ve opted to recite in its stead the prayer Orthodox women say, thanking God “who has made me according to His will.”
Personally, I think we should all say that blessing, men and women alike (and we could substitute the neutral-gender word “God” for “His” in this and the other male-gender blessings). But I went along with reciting aloud the “not made me a woman” passage as the price to pay for leading the service.
That decision was symbolic of choices many Modern Orthodox Jews make in choosing to remain as loyal to halachic tradition as possible and remain part of the community while struggling with the logic or morality of a variety of practices associated with ancient times, from praying for the return of animal sacrifices in the Holy Temple to the prohibition against drinking from a bottle of wine opened by a non-Jew.
But the larger issue that affects lives every day and accounts for so much silent suffering is that of the agunah, the plight of chained wives, as characterized so powerfully in “Gett.” The film is fictional but all too real in depicting how women often are marginalized in religious courts, given little or no voice in a system where the husband and male rabbis determine her fate.
No sensitive soul could walk away from this film and not be upset with the rabbinic court. Our sympathy is with Viviane, who keeps coming back seeking justice, complying with the rulings of the three rabbis who urge her to return to the home of a husband who barely speaks to her.
The biggest flaw in this harrowing tale is that no explanation is given as to why Viviane, who is secular, cares enough about rabbinic rulings to continue this charade year after year.
One of the biggest flaws in traditional Jewish communities today is that the agunah dilemma has not been resolved. Rabbis are angered when Blu Greenberg, a founder of the Orthodox feminist movement, insists that “when there is a rabbinic will there is a halachic way.” Most insist their hands are tied by Jewish law and resist the attempts of colleagues and others who have worked long and hard to find creative solutions within Jewish law. In the end, as long as women are made to suffer in loveless, sometimes abusive marriages, the shame is on our community for the failure to release them, and we are all diminished by a lack of communal compassion and resolve.
gary@jewishweek.org
Last Wednesday night my wife and I saw the gripping Israeli film “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem,” about the years-long effort of a woman to receive a religiousdivorce from a husband she no longer can abide. On leaving the theater we heard a woman at the end of our row say in an accusatory way to a woman seated nearby, “I’m not Jewish but I understand that Jewish men thank God every day for not making them a woman.”
The woman she made the comment to — we couldn’t tell if they were friends or strangers — replied with a lingering, lilting “Well…” a kind of drawn out sigh, her voice suggesting an inner debate as to whether it was worth trying to offer a rationale or let it go. Their discussion may have continued, but my wife and I left, silently agreeing that the hour was late and this was not our battle, at least not one to barge into uninvited.
I am well aware, though, of a variety of explanations for why, as part of a group of 15 one-sentence declarations of thanks recited at the very outset of the morning service every day in Orthodox synagogues, men are commanded to say, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a woman.”
Most of those prayers resonate deeply with me as we start the day offering thanks to God for both universal blessings — the gift of sight, strength to the weary — and for being part of the Jewish people.
The most common defense offered for the “not a woman” blessing is that men express gratitude for having more mitzvot to fulfill than women, since women are exempt from a number of time-bound commandments.
Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, the former British chief rabbi whose eloquence in interpreting the liturgy is unsurpassed in the modern era, notes in The Koren Siddur that this prayer is one of three mentioned in the Talmud (Menachot 43 b) — along with praise for not being created a non-Jew or a slave — that bless God “for the particularities of our identity. We belong to the people of the covenant, we are free and we have differentiated responsibilities as men and women.
“The blessings have nothing to do with hierarchies of dignity,” he continues, “for we believe that every human being is equally formed in the image of God. Rather, they are expressions of acknowledgement of the special duties of Jewish life.”
The day before I saw “Gett,” I led the morning service at a traditional synagogue to commemorate a yahrtzeit in the family. I chose to recite the “not made me a woman” passage in a softer voice than for the other blessings. It was a compromise of sorts, given that in the last few years I’ve opted to recite in its stead the prayer Orthodox women say, thanking God “who has made me according to His will.”
Personally, I think we should all say that blessing, men and women alike (and we could substitute the neutral-gender word “God” for “His” in this and the other male-gender blessings). But I went along with reciting aloud the “not made me a woman” passage as the price to pay for leading the service.
That decision was symbolic of choices many Modern Orthodox Jews make in choosing to remain as loyal to halachic tradition as possible and remain part of the community while struggling with the logic or morality of a variety of practices associated with ancient times, from praying for the return of animal sacrifices in the Holy Temple to the prohibition against drinking from a bottle of wine opened by a non-Jew.
But the larger issue that affects lives every day and accounts for so much silent suffering is that of the agunah, the plight of chained wives, as characterized so powerfully in “Gett.” The film is fictional but all too real in depicting how women often are marginalized in religious courts, given little or no voice in a system where the husband and male rabbis determine her fate.
No sensitive soul could walk away from this film and not be upset with the rabbinic court. Our sympathy is with Viviane, who keeps coming back seeking justice, complying with the rulings of the three rabbis who urge her to return to the home of a husband who barely speaks to her.
The biggest flaw in this harrowing tale is that no explanation is given as to why Viviane, who is secular, cares enough about rabbinic rulings to continue this charade year after year.
One of the biggest flaws in traditional Jewish communities today is that the agunah dilemma has not been resolved. Rabbis are angered when Blu Greenberg, a founder of the Orthodox feminist movement, insists that “when there is a rabbinic will there is a halachic way.” Most insist their hands are tied by Jewish law and resist the attempts of colleagues and others who have worked long and hard to find creative solutions within Jewish law. In the end, as long as women are made to suffer in loveless, sometimes abusive marriages, the shame is on our community for the failure to release them, and we are all diminished by a lack of communal compassion and resolve.
gary@jewishweek.org
Rabbi David Wolpe
Special To The Jewish Week
Learning And Legacy
Readers of the Gilgamesh epic are often struck by its similarity to the Bible story. There is a man created from earth who loses paradise, who accepts food from a woman, who is clothed after nakedness, a massive flood, a perfidious snake and much more. Gilgamesh tells of a quest for immortality, and in that quest we see an important distinction.
In the Bible, Adam and Eve do not lose the Garden of Eden because they seek eternal life, but rather because they seek knowledge. It is the hunger to understand that encourages them to reach toward the Divine. There were two trees in Eden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. The Torah teaches that humanity reached first for the tree of knowledge.
The desire to know stretches our influence beyond earthly limitations. What we pass on to others outlives us. Legacy is a truer test of immortality than the accumulation of years. Everyone benefits from those who devoted themselves to the tree of knowledge. Their existence is ensured by the thread of knowing winding through this life even after they are gone. Don’t only live and learn — also learn, and live.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.
SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
HEALTHCARE
Healthcare April 2015
Battling genetic disease among the Bedouins. Silicon Valley BRCA testing kit making waves in market. Atlanta-based screening program expanding reach. Israeli app for ADHD gaining traction. The silence of infertility.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Fighting Genetic Disease Among The Bedouins
Giving The Overactive Mind A ‘Lift’
Bringing Genetic Screening Home
The Silence Of Infertility
When Vaccinations And Faith Collide
Mail-In Test Puts Genetic Screening Within Reach
Fighting Genetic Disease Among The Bedouins ›
The arty, eclectic Little Five Points neighborhood. Hilary Larson/JW
TRAVEL
King, Carter And Beyond
Hilary Larson
Travel Writer
Many cities like to promote themselves as collections of neighborhoods — enclaves that are distinctive and yet still meld, harmoniously, into a cohesive metropolis.
New Orleans is a shining example of such a city. But Atlanta — where my husband, Oggi, and I were headed a few days later on our cross-country road trip — strikes me as a place best enjoyed as a series of memorable institutions. Many of its neighborhoods fall into the category of places you would love to live in, but wouldn’t necessarily want to visit: too residential, too sprawling, not much to do for the casual visitor.
But as we discovered, within a few minutes’ drive of each other lie the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library; the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and National Historic Site; several historic Jewish congregations — 104-year-old Anshi S’fard, the city’s oldest Orthodox shul, and Shearith Israel, which dates to 1904; and the Little Five Points neighborhood, home to numerous small, intriguing theaters. Oggi and I found that focusing on a small area with big attractions can make this vast city both digestible and fun.
We arrived in Atlanta on a rainy day as spring was just coming into bloom, but the Jewish cultural scene was already in full flower. March brings one of the country’s most exciting Jewish events, the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival, 10 days of concerts that run the gamut from reggae to Middle Eastern pop to cantorial song.
Jewish music remains vibrant throughout the year in a city that is also home to one of the nation’s top symphony orchestras and some of the most dynamic theater in the Southeast. When Oggi and I were exploring the Jewish Music Festival, we noticed listings for several upcoming concerts, including a Shabbat hoedown-theme potluck concert and the Maccabeats — the renowned Yeshiva University a cappella group — at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta.
Jimmy Carter is a polarizing figure among American Jews, not least for his assertive opinions about the Mideast peace process. He has expounded on this theme in several of his nearly 30 books, and from the crowds we saw arriving for an author talk and book signing at his Library — one of several held here each month — we saw the ex-president’s passion for the page reflected.
Whether or not you are a fan of his presidency, there’s no denying that Carter led the U.S. through a turbulent four years — and a visit here is a look into the most significant events of that period, including the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal treaties, the Israel-Egypt peace talks, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Communist China, and the Iranian hostage crisis, to name just a few.
Just a few minutes away is the massive campus of the King Center, which combines monuments and memorials with exhibitions, frequent performances and historic buildings preserved for posterity. You can join a tour of the mustard-yellow King Birth Home, the stately Queen Anne house where King was raised by his extended family in the core of black Atlanta. Then you can stroll five minutes to the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both King and his father served as pastor.
Тhe other face of the King Center is homage. The civil rights leader and his wife, Coretta, rest in a grand memorial crypt; nearby is the Eternal Flame, which burns brightly from a wide memorial urn. At the core of the site is an exhibition center displaying art from black perspectives both local (Georgia) and distant (Africa), as well as a gallery that sheds light on King’s civil rights movement.
Feeling enlightened about the achievements of notable Atlantans, Oggi and I drove through a cloud of cherry blossoms to Euclid Avenue, the countercultural heart ofLittle Five Points. Splashed with graffiti, studded with hookah lounges and tattoo parlors, the lively streets of Little Five Points offer a small-scale contrast to the institutional landscape nearby. We walked by skateboard shops, hole-in-the-wall ethnic eateries — no chains here — and hipster record stores where Atlantans of all races gathered to check out beats.
Little Five Points is also known for its arts scene — specifically, a cluster of theaters as intimate and distinctive as the ‘hood itself. There’s the Variety Playhouse, where the Psychedelic Furs and Ani DiFranco are appearing this month.
“Most of the places here, they’re owned by local residents, and we all know each other,” the security guard told me when I stopped for organic apples at the Sevananda Natural Foods Market. “People are proud of that. It’s a real neighborhood.” In a city that can feel both monumental and a little overwhelming, we were inclined to agree. editor@jewishweek.org
TOP STORIES
ISRAEL NEWS
BDS Roiling Israel, U.S. College Campuses
High Court ruling sparking fresh debate over democracy.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
The justices of Israel’s Supreme Court with President Rivlin and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Wikimedia Commons
The ruling of Israel’s top court last week upholding the country’s so-called anti-boycott law has touched off a fresh debate about the nature of Israel’s democracy, with some saying it ends freedom of speech and others saying it affirms the destructive nature of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.
In the ruling, Israel’s High Court of Justice upheld the constitutionality of the 2011 law that permits the finance minister to fine or remove tax breaks from any organization that participates in a boycott of Israel proper and its territories. The decision was lauded by NGO (non-governmental organization) Monitor as an “important milestone in the response to political warfare.”
Its founder, Gerald Steinberg, said its importance is the “recognition that the BDS movement needs to be taken seriously, that it is a form of warfare and discrimination, and that there are costs” to such activity.
“It makes fighting BDS a legitimate issue and no longer a far right issue,” he added.
But an official of the New Israel Fund, an American nonprofit that describes itself as advancing equality, human rights and democracy in Israel, said it believes Israel’s High Court of Justice “got it wrong” and that attempts will be made to convince the court to soon revisit the issue.
“To exclude calls for a boycott from the category of free speech is incorrect,” said Rabbi David Rosenn, NIF’s executive vice president. “There is not a separate category for speech that is political. The most important speech is political, and people should have the ability to express their opinions without fear of government sanctions.”
He said NIF is “on record as opposing the global BDS movement and thinks it is a bad strategy to support calls for BDS. But even though we disagree with this view, we still say people ought to be able to express it in a free society.”
He stressed that NIF has never provided support for BDS activities, and in the last four or five years has refused to fund groups that support BDS in any manner -- even if that support was peripheral to their mission and done with funds from other sources.
The anti-boycott law is just one of several laws or bills that some argue impact the soul of the country. In 2011, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, then the leader of the Reform movement in the United States, was quoted as saying that “the anti-democratic laws that have passed, or that are expected to pass, in the Knesset are not bad only for Israel — these laws could have a catastrophic impact on relations between Israel and the Jews of the diaspora — especially American Jews. Commitment to shared moral values and to democracy is what binds Jews to Israel.”
He was referring to one bill that would have put a cap on the amount of money Israeli NGOs could receive from overseas, and another that would have required all organizations not funded by the Israeli government to pay a 45 percent tax on all donations from foreign states. And another would establish a Basic Law in which Israel would be defined as an inherently Jewish state that has “a democratic regime,” in which Arabic would be a language with “special standing” instead of one of two official languages of the state.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has warned of “intensifying infringements on democratic freedoms in Israel” coming from both the Knesset and the cabinet.
“As a result,” it said, “the basic principles of the Israeli democratic system are being undermined.”
Steinberg of NGO Monitor, who is also a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, pointed out, however, the Israeli High Court “has a reputation as being a judicial body, not a political body.” And he said its decision last week “was nuanced, carefully weighed and given in great detail.”
For instance, he noted that there were different parts to the High Court’s decision and that the nine-member court ruled differently on each — suggesting that they “carefully weighed the evidence.”
In last week’s decision, the court voted 9-0 to preserve the heart of the law that authorized the finance minister to impose fines or withhold state funding from Israeli NGOs that call for boycotts of businesses in all or parts of Israel; by an 8-1 vote, the court upheld the ability to file suits against those NGOs that call for a boycott; by a 9-0 vote it struck down as unconstitutional a provision of the law that permitted punitive damages against those calling for a boycott, and by a 5-4 vote it said the anti-boycott law applied to both Israel proper and the Israeli territories.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli attorney known for her legal activism and as founder of the Shurat HaDin Israeli Law Center, said she believes the court in effect gutted the law by declaring as unconstitutional the section that permitted punitive damages. As a result, a business seeking to sue an individual or group boycotting its establishment must now prove it sustained monetary damage directly as a result of that boycott. And damages would be limited to the amount of damage proven.
“The law was intended to deter people from calling for a boycott against Israel by imposing civil penalties on them without having the need to prove that any damages occurred,” she said. “Now that the court deleted that part, it is almost impossible for someone to prove damages as a result of a call for a boycott.”
However, she added that should the Knesset put a limit on the punitive damages that could be collected, she believes it would pass constitutional muster.
Daniel Sokatch, CEO of NIF, said nevertheless that the court did uphold the constitutionality of the law itself.
“What kind of statement was the court making?” he said. “If it was only symbolic, it was a hell of a symbolic statement to make … The court has restricted freedom of expression when no lives are in danger. The court is saying that Israelis do not have the right to freedom of expression when they disagree with popular opinion.”
But Professor Barak Medina, a professor of human rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that by removing the punitive damages provision of the law the court was upholding the right to freedom of expression. He, too, said it would be “quite complicated” to prove that a call for a boycott caused provable damages. And he noted that the law permits only civil — not criminal — liability.
“The concern is that prohibiting this kind of speech curtails public discourse in Israel — and there is concern,” Medina observed. “But I am not calling it the end of democracy or an end to freedom of speech — it is just not favorable for democracy. … The real concern is the chilling effect of this [decision].”
Uri Avnery, founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement in Israel and one of the named petitioners in the appeal, said he sees the decision more starkly.
In an email, he told The Jewish Week that the decision is part of the “slow — but gathering in speed — destruction of Israeli democracy.”
Rabbi Rosenn said that despite the court ruling, the NIF does not believe the issue is dead.
“We understand the court ruled and upheld it as the law of the land, but citizens have a right to criticize,” he said. “Our groups are not saying the court should be scaled back or reigned in. We think the court is an essential institution for Israeli democracy. However, courts sometimes change their minds and overrule themselves. We hope and expect that in the fullness of time, the Israeli legal system will realize that this was an ill-considered restriction on and suppression of free expression and will overturn the ruling.”
Sokatch said he is also disturbed that the court found no difference “between criticizing the settlements and Israel proper.” That ruling, he argued, “hands a huge victory to the global BDS movement, which sees no difference between Tel Aviv and Ariel [in the West Bank]. First the prime minister said there would be no two-state solution on my watch, and now the High Court says it sees no difference between Tel Aviv and Ariel. But most of us believe there is a tremendous difference.”
On the other hand, the Zionist Organization of America issued a statement “strongly praising” the court decision and saying it properly refused “to exempt from Israel’s anti-boycott law those boycotts that ‘only’ target Jews and Israelis in Judea and Samaria [West Bank]. The high court properly recognized that these so-called ‘targeted’ boycotts in fact delegitimize and damage all of Israel.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
NEW YORK
Jewish Students Caught In Identity Politics Crossfire
Molly Horwitz isn't alone. After the incident at Stanford, experts and student leaders here weigh in. Was this case different?
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Stanford student Molly Horwitz was quizzed about her Jewish identity while running for an office in the student government. JTA
Naomi Kadish, a student leader atNYU, sent Molly Horwitz a Facebook message in solidarity after reading about her in The New York Times.
“I wanted her to know she had support,” said Kadish, legislative committee-member of TorchPAC, the pro-Israel group at NYU. “What happens to one Jewish student leader affects us all.”
Horwitz, a candidate running for student government at Stanford University, made headlines last week after claiming she was asked how her Judaism affects her view of divestment from Israel, changing a campus election into a fierce discussion about identity politics.
According to Horwitz, a member of the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) asked her how she would vote on divestment, given her “Jewish identity.” Taken aback, Horwitz responded that she opposed divestment; she did not receive the group’s endorsement. Members of SOCC have since called Horwitz’s charge “baseless.”
In a student survey released this week, the Jewish Student Association at Stanford found that the incident is not isolated. According to an open letter published in the Stanford Daily, many Jewish students no longer feel accepted on campus because of their Jewish identity.
“Our survey indicated that many Jewish students, even those not engaged in the debate over divestment, have felt excluded solely due to their Jewish identities,” the open letter reads. “For instance, some reported being silenced in conversations due to their peers’ perception that their Jewish identity relegates them to a place of naïve bias. Others expressed pain because they feel the need to hide their connection to the larger Jewish community.”
Similar to Horwitz, who scrubbed her Facebook page of any reference to Israel before running in the election, Jewish students at Stanford said they do not feel comfortable expressing their love of Israel, an integral aspect of their Jewish identity.
This is not the first time the debate on college campuses over divestment from Israel has led to discussions about anti-Semitism. Earlier this year, students at the University of California, Los Angeles, asked a Jewish student who was a candidate for a campus judicial committee whether her religion would influence her decision-making. Unlike at Stanford, where Horwitz’s claims are still being investigated, the incident was caught on tape.
“The intensity and volume of these incidents has increased,” said Michael Salberg, director of international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League. Though these cases took place on the West Coast, they are not “geographically isolated,” he said; a similar “environment of hostility” is at play in campuses across New York.
“Debates on campus must be limited to what you think, not who you are,” said Salberg, explaining why he believes the incident, if true as alleged, was anti-Semitic. “When others start looking at immutable characteristics, like race and ethnicity, and extrapolating political positions, a line has been crossed.”
Melanie Goldberg, a graduate of Brooklyn College, recalled the atmosphere of hostility she faced as a pro-Israel student on campus, especially concerning divestment. At the time, she and three other pro-Israel students were ousted from a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions event for handing out fliers.
“Student groups claim that they’re not anti-Semitic, they just oppose Israeli policies,” said Goldberg, currently a law student at Cardozo Law School. “But if they’re only going to ask Jewish students about Israeli policy, that’s contradictory. Incidents like this reveal internal inconsistences at the root of the problem.”
Though Goldberg never ran for office, she said it was commonplace for student body representatives to hide their Jewish identity in order to solicit votes.
“If you were openly Jewish, it could work against you,” she recalled.
Sydney Levy, the advocacy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, a nonprofit group that supports divestment from Israel, agreed that “disentangling” Jewish identity from Israeli policy is an imperative.
“Mainstream pro-Israel groups repeatedly claim to represent all Jews, and explicitly state that all Jews are against divestment,” he said, speaking on the phone from his office in Oakland, Calif. “This is not true, and it confuses others.”
What happened at Stanford is symptomatic of what’s happening on campuses across the country, he said. “Jewish students are being told by mainstream organizations that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. As a community, we need to be a better job of un-meshing the two.”
Hindy Poupko, managing director of Israel and international affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, reinforced that what happened at UCLA and Stanford are not “isolated incidents.”
“On campus, we are seeing a deliberate attempt by BDS-supporters to cast Jewish activists as somehow suspect,” said Poupko, who serves as a campus consultant in New York. She likened the incident to BDS-activist Josh Ruebner’s recent comments referring to New York Sen. Charles Schumer as an “Israel-firster,” a derogatory term used to deride supporters of Israel.
“Comments like these are reminiscent of old-time anti-Semitic stereotypes, portraying Jews as unable to remain loyal to their home country,” she said. “The allegations leveled by the BDS movement against Senator Schumer are the same allegations being leveled against some of our students in the context of student government elections.”
Poupko also pointed out that overt anti-Semitism, like swastikas painted on campus, have frequently appeared shortly after campus debates regarding Israel.
“Jewish students are singled out in the Israel debate, so what often follows is not surprising,” she said.
Linda Maizels, director of Israel and international concerns at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, stressed the importance of placing incidents like this in ahistorical context.
“This is not something new — the conversation around Israel crests and troughs based on what’s going in the Middle East,” she said.
Still, the BDS-movement on campus right now is different in certain ways, she said.
“Firstly, BDS is seen as the right choice on campus, and those who oppose divestment are seen as oppressive and threatening,” she said. The second problem is that Jewish students are “presupposed to all feel the same way,” based on their identity affiliations.
“Jewish students are being silenced because they are assumed to be biased, and therefore unfit to participate in the debate,” she said.
Though both are concerning, jumping to accusations of anti-Semitism has risks, said Maizels. While “highly sensitive antenna” is understandable, if overused, the cry of anti-Semitism might eventually desensitize others. Determining when “that line is crossed” is increasingly difficult, she said.
NYU’s Kadish, a freshman studying economics and politics, is considering running for student senators council next year. Though what allegedly happened to Horwitz is “disturbing and scary,” Kadish won’t let it dissuade her from entering the race.
“I’m not ashamed to have a pro-Israel group on my resume,” she said. Though she doesn’t judge Horwitz for hiding her connections to Israel, Kadish hopes a defiant approach will boost her platform. “I support Israel,” she said. “Let people ask.”
editor@jewishweek.org
NEW YORKLearning And Legacy
Readers of the Gilgamesh epic are often struck by its similarity to the Bible story. There is a man created from earth who loses paradise, who accepts food from a woman, who is clothed after nakedness, a massive flood, a perfidious snake and much more. Gilgamesh tells of a quest for immortality, and in that quest we see an important distinction.
In the Bible, Adam and Eve do not lose the Garden of Eden because they seek eternal life, but rather because they seek knowledge. It is the hunger to understand that encourages them to reach toward the Divine. There were two trees in Eden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. The Torah teaches that humanity reached first for the tree of knowledge.
The desire to know stretches our influence beyond earthly limitations. What we pass on to others outlives us. Legacy is a truer test of immortality than the accumulation of years. Everyone benefits from those who devoted themselves to the tree of knowledge. Their existence is ensured by the thread of knowing winding through this life even after they are gone. Don’t only live and learn — also learn, and live.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.
HEALTHCARE
Healthcare April 2015
Battling genetic disease among the Bedouins. Silicon Valley BRCA testing kit making waves in market. Atlanta-based screening program expanding reach. Israeli app for ADHD gaining traction. The silence of infertility.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Fighting Genetic Disease Among The Bedouins
Giving The Overactive Mind A ‘Lift’
Bringing Genetic Screening Home
The Silence Of Infertility
When Vaccinations And Faith Collide
Mail-In Test Puts Genetic Screening Within Reach
Fighting Genetic Disease Among The Bedouins ›
TRAVEL
King, Carter And Beyond
Hilary Larson
Travel Writer
Many cities like to promote themselves as collections of neighborhoods — enclaves that are distinctive and yet still meld, harmoniously, into a cohesive metropolis.
New Orleans is a shining example of such a city. But Atlanta — where my husband, Oggi, and I were headed a few days later on our cross-country road trip — strikes me as a place best enjoyed as a series of memorable institutions. Many of its neighborhoods fall into the category of places you would love to live in, but wouldn’t necessarily want to visit: too residential, too sprawling, not much to do for the casual visitor.
But as we discovered, within a few minutes’ drive of each other lie the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library; the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and National Historic Site; several historic Jewish congregations — 104-year-old Anshi S’fard, the city’s oldest Orthodox shul, and Shearith Israel, which dates to 1904; and the Little Five Points neighborhood, home to numerous small, intriguing theaters. Oggi and I found that focusing on a small area with big attractions can make this vast city both digestible and fun.
We arrived in Atlanta on a rainy day as spring was just coming into bloom, but the Jewish cultural scene was already in full flower. March brings one of the country’s most exciting Jewish events, the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival, 10 days of concerts that run the gamut from reggae to Middle Eastern pop to cantorial song.
Jewish music remains vibrant throughout the year in a city that is also home to one of the nation’s top symphony orchestras and some of the most dynamic theater in the Southeast. When Oggi and I were exploring the Jewish Music Festival, we noticed listings for several upcoming concerts, including a Shabbat hoedown-theme potluck concert and the Maccabeats — the renowned Yeshiva University a cappella group — at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta.
Jimmy Carter is a polarizing figure among American Jews, not least for his assertive opinions about the Mideast peace process. He has expounded on this theme in several of his nearly 30 books, and from the crowds we saw arriving for an author talk and book signing at his Library — one of several held here each month — we saw the ex-president’s passion for the page reflected.
Whether or not you are a fan of his presidency, there’s no denying that Carter led the U.S. through a turbulent four years — and a visit here is a look into the most significant events of that period, including the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal treaties, the Israel-Egypt peace talks, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Communist China, and the Iranian hostage crisis, to name just a few.
Just a few minutes away is the massive campus of the King Center, which combines monuments and memorials with exhibitions, frequent performances and historic buildings preserved for posterity. You can join a tour of the mustard-yellow King Birth Home, the stately Queen Anne house where King was raised by his extended family in the core of black Atlanta. Then you can stroll five minutes to the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both King and his father served as pastor.
Тhe other face of the King Center is homage. The civil rights leader and his wife, Coretta, rest in a grand memorial crypt; nearby is the Eternal Flame, which burns brightly from a wide memorial urn. At the core of the site is an exhibition center displaying art from black perspectives both local (Georgia) and distant (Africa), as well as a gallery that sheds light on King’s civil rights movement.
Feeling enlightened about the achievements of notable Atlantans, Oggi and I drove through a cloud of cherry blossoms to Euclid Avenue, the countercultural heart ofLittle Five Points. Splashed with graffiti, studded with hookah lounges and tattoo parlors, the lively streets of Little Five Points offer a small-scale contrast to the institutional landscape nearby. We walked by skateboard shops, hole-in-the-wall ethnic eateries — no chains here — and hipster record stores where Atlantans of all races gathered to check out beats.
Little Five Points is also known for its arts scene — specifically, a cluster of theaters as intimate and distinctive as the ‘hood itself. There’s the Variety Playhouse, where the Psychedelic Furs and Ani DiFranco are appearing this month.
“Most of the places here, they’re owned by local residents, and we all know each other,” the security guard told me when I stopped for organic apples at the Sevananda Natural Foods Market. “People are proud of that. It’s a real neighborhood.” In a city that can feel both monumental and a little overwhelming, we were inclined to agree. editor@jewishweek.org
ISRAEL NEWS
BDS Roiling Israel, U.S. College Campuses
High Court ruling sparking fresh debate over democracy.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
The ruling of Israel’s top court last week upholding the country’s so-called anti-boycott law has touched off a fresh debate about the nature of Israel’s democracy, with some saying it ends freedom of speech and others saying it affirms the destructive nature of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.
In the ruling, Israel’s High Court of Justice upheld the constitutionality of the 2011 law that permits the finance minister to fine or remove tax breaks from any organization that participates in a boycott of Israel proper and its territories. The decision was lauded by NGO (non-governmental organization) Monitor as an “important milestone in the response to political warfare.”
Its founder, Gerald Steinberg, said its importance is the “recognition that the BDS movement needs to be taken seriously, that it is a form of warfare and discrimination, and that there are costs” to such activity.
“It makes fighting BDS a legitimate issue and no longer a far right issue,” he added.
But an official of the New Israel Fund, an American nonprofit that describes itself as advancing equality, human rights and democracy in Israel, said it believes Israel’s High Court of Justice “got it wrong” and that attempts will be made to convince the court to soon revisit the issue.
“To exclude calls for a boycott from the category of free speech is incorrect,” said Rabbi David Rosenn, NIF’s executive vice president. “There is not a separate category for speech that is political. The most important speech is political, and people should have the ability to express their opinions without fear of government sanctions.”
He said NIF is “on record as opposing the global BDS movement and thinks it is a bad strategy to support calls for BDS. But even though we disagree with this view, we still say people ought to be able to express it in a free society.”
He stressed that NIF has never provided support for BDS activities, and in the last four or five years has refused to fund groups that support BDS in any manner -- even if that support was peripheral to their mission and done with funds from other sources.
The anti-boycott law is just one of several laws or bills that some argue impact the soul of the country. In 2011, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, then the leader of the Reform movement in the United States, was quoted as saying that “the anti-democratic laws that have passed, or that are expected to pass, in the Knesset are not bad only for Israel — these laws could have a catastrophic impact on relations between Israel and the Jews of the diaspora — especially American Jews. Commitment to shared moral values and to democracy is what binds Jews to Israel.”
He was referring to one bill that would have put a cap on the amount of money Israeli NGOs could receive from overseas, and another that would have required all organizations not funded by the Israeli government to pay a 45 percent tax on all donations from foreign states. And another would establish a Basic Law in which Israel would be defined as an inherently Jewish state that has “a democratic regime,” in which Arabic would be a language with “special standing” instead of one of two official languages of the state.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has warned of “intensifying infringements on democratic freedoms in Israel” coming from both the Knesset and the cabinet.
“As a result,” it said, “the basic principles of the Israeli democratic system are being undermined.”
Steinberg of NGO Monitor, who is also a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, pointed out, however, the Israeli High Court “has a reputation as being a judicial body, not a political body.” And he said its decision last week “was nuanced, carefully weighed and given in great detail.”
For instance, he noted that there were different parts to the High Court’s decision and that the nine-member court ruled differently on each — suggesting that they “carefully weighed the evidence.”
In last week’s decision, the court voted 9-0 to preserve the heart of the law that authorized the finance minister to impose fines or withhold state funding from Israeli NGOs that call for boycotts of businesses in all or parts of Israel; by an 8-1 vote, the court upheld the ability to file suits against those NGOs that call for a boycott; by a 9-0 vote it struck down as unconstitutional a provision of the law that permitted punitive damages against those calling for a boycott, and by a 5-4 vote it said the anti-boycott law applied to both Israel proper and the Israeli territories.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli attorney known for her legal activism and as founder of the Shurat HaDin Israeli Law Center, said she believes the court in effect gutted the law by declaring as unconstitutional the section that permitted punitive damages. As a result, a business seeking to sue an individual or group boycotting its establishment must now prove it sustained monetary damage directly as a result of that boycott. And damages would be limited to the amount of damage proven.
“The law was intended to deter people from calling for a boycott against Israel by imposing civil penalties on them without having the need to prove that any damages occurred,” she said. “Now that the court deleted that part, it is almost impossible for someone to prove damages as a result of a call for a boycott.”
However, she added that should the Knesset put a limit on the punitive damages that could be collected, she believes it would pass constitutional muster.
Daniel Sokatch, CEO of NIF, said nevertheless that the court did uphold the constitutionality of the law itself.
“What kind of statement was the court making?” he said. “If it was only symbolic, it was a hell of a symbolic statement to make … The court has restricted freedom of expression when no lives are in danger. The court is saying that Israelis do not have the right to freedom of expression when they disagree with popular opinion.”
But Professor Barak Medina, a professor of human rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that by removing the punitive damages provision of the law the court was upholding the right to freedom of expression. He, too, said it would be “quite complicated” to prove that a call for a boycott caused provable damages. And he noted that the law permits only civil — not criminal — liability.
“The concern is that prohibiting this kind of speech curtails public discourse in Israel — and there is concern,” Medina observed. “But I am not calling it the end of democracy or an end to freedom of speech — it is just not favorable for democracy. … The real concern is the chilling effect of this [decision].”
Uri Avnery, founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement in Israel and one of the named petitioners in the appeal, said he sees the decision more starkly.
In an email, he told The Jewish Week that the decision is part of the “slow — but gathering in speed — destruction of Israeli democracy.”
Rabbi Rosenn said that despite the court ruling, the NIF does not believe the issue is dead.
“We understand the court ruled and upheld it as the law of the land, but citizens have a right to criticize,” he said. “Our groups are not saying the court should be scaled back or reigned in. We think the court is an essential institution for Israeli democracy. However, courts sometimes change their minds and overrule themselves. We hope and expect that in the fullness of time, the Israeli legal system will realize that this was an ill-considered restriction on and suppression of free expression and will overturn the ruling.”
Sokatch said he is also disturbed that the court found no difference “between criticizing the settlements and Israel proper.” That ruling, he argued, “hands a huge victory to the global BDS movement, which sees no difference between Tel Aviv and Ariel [in the West Bank]. First the prime minister said there would be no two-state solution on my watch, and now the High Court says it sees no difference between Tel Aviv and Ariel. But most of us believe there is a tremendous difference.”
On the other hand, the Zionist Organization of America issued a statement “strongly praising” the court decision and saying it properly refused “to exempt from Israel’s anti-boycott law those boycotts that ‘only’ target Jews and Israelis in Judea and Samaria [West Bank]. The high court properly recognized that these so-called ‘targeted’ boycotts in fact delegitimize and damage all of Israel.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
NEW YORK
Jewish Students Caught In Identity Politics Crossfire
Molly Horwitz isn't alone. After the incident at Stanford, experts and student leaders here weigh in. Was this case different?
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Naomi Kadish, a student leader atNYU, sent Molly Horwitz a Facebook message in solidarity after reading about her in The New York Times.
“I wanted her to know she had support,” said Kadish, legislative committee-member of TorchPAC, the pro-Israel group at NYU. “What happens to one Jewish student leader affects us all.”
Horwitz, a candidate running for student government at Stanford University, made headlines last week after claiming she was asked how her Judaism affects her view of divestment from Israel, changing a campus election into a fierce discussion about identity politics.
According to Horwitz, a member of the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) asked her how she would vote on divestment, given her “Jewish identity.” Taken aback, Horwitz responded that she opposed divestment; she did not receive the group’s endorsement. Members of SOCC have since called Horwitz’s charge “baseless.”
In a student survey released this week, the Jewish Student Association at Stanford found that the incident is not isolated. According to an open letter published in the Stanford Daily, many Jewish students no longer feel accepted on campus because of their Jewish identity.
“Our survey indicated that many Jewish students, even those not engaged in the debate over divestment, have felt excluded solely due to their Jewish identities,” the open letter reads. “For instance, some reported being silenced in conversations due to their peers’ perception that their Jewish identity relegates them to a place of naïve bias. Others expressed pain because they feel the need to hide their connection to the larger Jewish community.”
Similar to Horwitz, who scrubbed her Facebook page of any reference to Israel before running in the election, Jewish students at Stanford said they do not feel comfortable expressing their love of Israel, an integral aspect of their Jewish identity.
This is not the first time the debate on college campuses over divestment from Israel has led to discussions about anti-Semitism. Earlier this year, students at the University of California, Los Angeles, asked a Jewish student who was a candidate for a campus judicial committee whether her religion would influence her decision-making. Unlike at Stanford, where Horwitz’s claims are still being investigated, the incident was caught on tape.
“The intensity and volume of these incidents has increased,” said Michael Salberg, director of international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League. Though these cases took place on the West Coast, they are not “geographically isolated,” he said; a similar “environment of hostility” is at play in campuses across New York.
“Debates on campus must be limited to what you think, not who you are,” said Salberg, explaining why he believes the incident, if true as alleged, was anti-Semitic. “When others start looking at immutable characteristics, like race and ethnicity, and extrapolating political positions, a line has been crossed.”
Melanie Goldberg, a graduate of Brooklyn College, recalled the atmosphere of hostility she faced as a pro-Israel student on campus, especially concerning divestment. At the time, she and three other pro-Israel students were ousted from a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions event for handing out fliers.
“Student groups claim that they’re not anti-Semitic, they just oppose Israeli policies,” said Goldberg, currently a law student at Cardozo Law School. “But if they’re only going to ask Jewish students about Israeli policy, that’s contradictory. Incidents like this reveal internal inconsistences at the root of the problem.”
Though Goldberg never ran for office, she said it was commonplace for student body representatives to hide their Jewish identity in order to solicit votes.
“If you were openly Jewish, it could work against you,” she recalled.
Sydney Levy, the advocacy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, a nonprofit group that supports divestment from Israel, agreed that “disentangling” Jewish identity from Israeli policy is an imperative.
“Mainstream pro-Israel groups repeatedly claim to represent all Jews, and explicitly state that all Jews are against divestment,” he said, speaking on the phone from his office in Oakland, Calif. “This is not true, and it confuses others.”
What happened at Stanford is symptomatic of what’s happening on campuses across the country, he said. “Jewish students are being told by mainstream organizations that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. As a community, we need to be a better job of un-meshing the two.”
Hindy Poupko, managing director of Israel and international affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, reinforced that what happened at UCLA and Stanford are not “isolated incidents.”
“On campus, we are seeing a deliberate attempt by BDS-supporters to cast Jewish activists as somehow suspect,” said Poupko, who serves as a campus consultant in New York. She likened the incident to BDS-activist Josh Ruebner’s recent comments referring to New York Sen. Charles Schumer as an “Israel-firster,” a derogatory term used to deride supporters of Israel.
“Comments like these are reminiscent of old-time anti-Semitic stereotypes, portraying Jews as unable to remain loyal to their home country,” she said. “The allegations leveled by the BDS movement against Senator Schumer are the same allegations being leveled against some of our students in the context of student government elections.”
Poupko also pointed out that overt anti-Semitism, like swastikas painted on campus, have frequently appeared shortly after campus debates regarding Israel.
“Jewish students are singled out in the Israel debate, so what often follows is not surprising,” she said.
Linda Maizels, director of Israel and international concerns at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, stressed the importance of placing incidents like this in ahistorical context.
“This is not something new — the conversation around Israel crests and troughs based on what’s going in the Middle East,” she said.
Still, the BDS-movement on campus right now is different in certain ways, she said.
“Firstly, BDS is seen as the right choice on campus, and those who oppose divestment are seen as oppressive and threatening,” she said. The second problem is that Jewish students are “presupposed to all feel the same way,” based on their identity affiliations.
“Jewish students are being silenced because they are assumed to be biased, and therefore unfit to participate in the debate,” she said.
Though both are concerning, jumping to accusations of anti-Semitism has risks, said Maizels. While “highly sensitive antenna” is understandable, if overused, the cry of anti-Semitism might eventually desensitize others. Determining when “that line is crossed” is increasingly difficult, she said.
NYU’s Kadish, a freshman studying economics and politics, is considering running for student senators council next year. Though what allegedly happened to Horwitz is “disturbing and scary,” Kadish won’t let it dissuade her from entering the race.
“I’m not ashamed to have a pro-Israel group on my resume,” she said. Though she doesn’t judge Horwitz for hiding her connections to Israel, Kadish hopes a defiant approach will boost her platform. “I support Israel,” she said. “Let people ask.”
editor@jewishweek.org
LES Shtiebel Wins Round In Court Fight
As real estate turns ‘toxic,’ AG reverses course on sale to developer.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Some people like to hear concerts in football stadiums, and some like to pray in vast cathedrals. However, aficionados are often minimalists, preferring jazz in clubs, or hockey on frozen ponds. Lower East Side tourists follow guidebooks to the Eldridge Street Synagogue, now a museum, or the Bialystoker Synagogue, still in daily use, but the shtiebel — a vest-pocket shul, not much larger than a living room or a two-car garage — was once the shul of choice on the Lower East Side.
One block, East Broadway between Montgomery and Clinton streets, once housed more than a dozen shtiebels; “Shtiebel Row,” they called it. One shtiebel, at the Home of the Sages of Israel on Willett Street, is known for sending out thousands of calendars of elderly Jews every Rosh HaShanah, a fundraiser that regularly pulls in $800,000, such is the sentimental appeal.
That’s a lot of money for a shul that is fighting for its life, not from a lack of money but from too much of it.
The streets are paved with gold, after all. Real estate developers are waving $13 million at the shtiebel, to sell. But who was getting the money? Who was authorized to sell? The shtiebel’s congregants won an unlikely victory in court this week, stopping the sale, when the attorney general’s office, whose approval is required for the sale of nonprofit charitable institutions, suddenly revoked its approval.
A spokesman for the AG’s office told us, “Some of the new information from people objecting to the sale conflicts with the statements in the petition” to sell the building. “So we are withdrawing our ‘no objection’ pending our review of the new information.” That led the judge to issue an adjournment until May 7. Will the sale be stopped? No one is claiming victory. The story is hardly over. In some ways, it’s hardly begun.
A Jew in the neighborhood said, “The people who daven [in the Sages] are sweet, down to earth, ehrlicher Yidden,” meaning they are “refined,” with integrity and dignity. Yidden who came to daven, not to care about shul business. Did the shul have a board of directors? No one quite knew. Did the shul have members, bylaws or elections of officers? Well, maybe, once upon a time, but when?
The shtiebel, founded in 1939, is housed in a room belonging to an old-age residence originally intended for elderly rabbis, teachers and scholars, but most died long ago. There may be an elderly Jew in the four-story building, but no sages remain. David Jaraslowicz, a lawyer for the congregants, said, the residents of the home “are a mixed population, African Americans, Hispanics; there are no ‘sages of Israel.’ If I walked in there,” said Jaraslowicz, “I’d be the sage.”
When the nursing facility was sub-leased to a non-Jewish operator, it was promised at a court hearing that the shtiebel would remain fully operative for the full duration of its lease, until 2025.
Last year, with no notice to the congregation and without an announced election, the board of the shtiebel suddenly became entirely comprised of nine Gerer chasidim, none of whom daven there or even live in Manhattan. Dr. Aaron From, who told The Jewish Week that he’d been davening at the Sages for more than 25 years, said, “I didn’t know anyone on the board, not one.”
Also at the top of the shtiebel leadership was Shmuel Aschkenazi, the Sages president for many years, who lives in Queens, and is connected to Ger, as well. According to New York State law, when a nonprofit, such as a synagogue, is sold, the money must go to similar nonprofits. But when Aschkenazi sold the shtiebel to Peter Fine, the developer, the Gerer board designated $10 million from the sale to build a new Gerer shul in Israel, even though the Third Temple itself would likely cost less than $10 million to build.
Another $3 million was designated for Congregation Tifereth Shmuel, a synagogue whose address just happens to be Aschkenazi’s private home in Queens. Then, Aschkenazi signed a lease to pay at least $4,000 a month, or $240,000 over five years, for the shtiebel to sublet space from Tifereth Shmuel, the shul in Aschkenazi’s home.
In the court papers, Aschkenazi said he was simply moving the shtiebel to Queens “for the use and benefit of the current congregants of the Home of the Sages.” Of course, none of the shtiebel’s congregants would be able to walk from the Lower East Side to Kew Gardens on Shabbos, nor could they reasonably commute there for daily services.
The $240,000 lease was signed by Aschkenazi, on behalf of the shtiebel, and by his wife on behalf of Tifereth Shmuel in his home. Aschkenazi did not return phone calls to either his personal residence or to the Home of the Sages.
Fine, the developer, also purchased the air rights of the neighboring Bialystoker shul and adjacent lots. Fine was a friend of William Rapfogel for more than 30 years. Rapfogel, who had been executive director of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, is now in prison for embezzling several hundred thousand dollars in an insurance scam. Although he was, before prison, a leading member of the Bialystoker Synagogue whose air rights were sold to his friend, Fine, Rapfogel was appointed by the attorney general’s office to serve on the AG’s advisory panel overseeing the sale.
There was speculation in the neighborhood that Rapfogel’s appointment by the attorney general was engineered by then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was arrested in January for taking more than $4 million in bribes and kickbacks. (Silver denies the charges.) In the small world of Lower East Side politics, Rapfogel and Silver were seen as joined at the hip. If Silver was famously known as the second-most important Democrat in the state (after the governor), he was certainly the most powerful man on the Lower East Side, with influence in the attorney general’s office, and with two state judges sitting with him in the Bialystoker pews.
Said one Jewish professional this week, “The [Jewish] Lower East Side has become just toxic politically.” That Rapfogel was conveniently appointed by the attorney general’s office to oversee and approve the Sages sale, according to the New York Observer, which first reported the mess at Home of the Sages, was “a wolf-guarding-the-henhouse situation.” One lawyer told the Observer, “Two years ago, [Rapfogel] was the prince. Whatever he said was golden. No one looked, no one checked. When he went to jail, a lot of things he did began to blow up, and this is one of them.”
In a curious development for what started out as a routine charitable transaction, Aschkenazi is being represented by the powerhouse law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, raising eyebrows. The firm did not return phone calls about the case.
Jaraslowicz, working pro-bono for the shtiebel’s congregants, told us, “I think [Aschkenazi] and the Gerer chasidim got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. One guy, according to tax returns, is the head of Friends of Ger. Suddenly he shows up on the board and votes to give Ger $10 million.”
The Home of the Sages, said Jaraslowicz, “still sends out a calendar with a mailing soliciting money. My sister says she has the calendar on her refrigerator. One of the old rabbis [supposedly from the Sages] on the calendar reminds her of our grandfather, so every year she sends them a check. They ask for money for Passover for the old rabbis,” and offer to say Kaddish for people. “The whole thing was a sham.”
Jaraslowicz is continuing to discover further curiosities, if not illegalities, in the Home of Sages portfolio. For example, he said, Aschkenazi is president of a second facility using the Home of the Sages name, the Belle Harbor Home of the Sages, Inc., which does business as Belle Harbor Manor. They also have a board that was not properly elected, said Jaraslowicz. “According to my calculations, Belle Harbor [Sages] has donated over $2 million to charities operated by [Gerer chasidim].” And another half-million to some of the “196 Jewish charities that share the same address in Brooklyn.”
editor@jewishweek.org
NEW YORK
Helping Israeli Arabs Join The High-Tech Revolution
Takwin Labs offers seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
New start-up incubator in Israel “can make a big difference” in the Arab population in the next decade.Courtesy of Takwin Labs
The Start-Up Nation is starting to include more of its citizens.
Israel, which has earned the title of Start-Up Nation for its disproportionate international role in high-technology advancements, most launched by Jewish Israelis and Army veterans, is slowly bringing Israeli Arabs into the high-tech fold.
In recent years, such initiatives as Nazareth-based New Generation Technology, an entrepreneur-training program that supports 20 start-up companies in the northern Galilee region, and similar programs named Al Bawader and Tsofen, also from Nazareth, all of which support Arab-founded high-tech companies, have reached out to Israel’s Arab population, which has been underrepresented in the country’s high-tech revolution.
A new start-up incubator, which is supporting fledgling Israeli Arab companies in order to help both the minority population and the wider economy, recently brought its message of inter-ethnic cooperation here.
Itzik Frid, an Israeli Jew who had served as vice president of the world’s leading provider of content adaptation and browsing solutions for online carriers, and Imad Telhami, an Israeli Arab who had served as a senior executive with the Delta Galil Industries textiles firm and founded a successful call center and software development company, attended the Israel DealMakers Summit last month in Manhattan; the two held separate meetings with other potential investors to promote Takwin Labs (Takwin is Arabic for “genesis” or “start”), which will offer seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
“We will also invest in promising candidates in the West Bank,” Frid said.
Takwin’s model of Arab-Jewish cooperation serves as a tacit rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks in the closing days of his successful re-election campaign last month that warned of a growing Arab vote and threatened to worsen Arab-Jewish relations.
Takwin, whose initial goal is $20 million, found a high level of interest here but no investments yet; Frid said he is optimistic that financial support from U.S. investors will come. He had lined up some $5 million in investment funding from Jews and Arabs in Israel before coming to the United States. Such entrepreneurial investments typically take several months to arrange, he said. “It is still in process.”
“I see excitement for what we are doing in Israel,” Frid told The Jewish Week; he said he has found some interest among Palestinians who live across the Green Line, but was reluctant to discuss details.
Frid said the Israeli government has offered moral support to Takwin, but no financial support. All the funding is private, from Jews and Arabs in Israel. “On both sides” of the ethnic divide — “we see the excitement,” he said.
“The vast majority of initiatives for Arab economic development in Israel are focused on access and integration into employment,” Frid said. In other words, finding jobs. Takwin’s emphasis is on helping companies that will create jobs. “Takwin Labs is the first private venture capital fund and incubator investing solely in Arab high-tech start-ups.
“We believe that this will inspire a high-tech entrepreneurial culture in Israel’s Arab society that will be vital to economic development in Arab society,” Frid said.
He and Telhami established Takwin in partnership with Chemi Peres, a veteran of theventure capital field and son of former president Shimon Peres, and Erel Margalit, founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, who served as a Knesset member.
Tawkin has already provided funding to one Israeli Arab start-up (Frid and Telhami decline to reveal the recipient’s identity, or the exact size of the financial investment), and expects to provide money to several other firms in the next several months. Each investment will be “a few hundred thousand dollars,” Frid said.
Once fully underway, Takwin will fund four to six Israeli Arab firms a year, he said. About 100 potential recipients have taken part in the initial interview process. Most of the firms are located in northern Israel, where most Israeli Arabs live. Takwin will also offer mentoring advice, Frid said.
While the participation of Israeli Jews, many of them one-time members of Army intelligence units, in the country’s high-tech entrepreneur activities has accelerated in recent years and achieved legendary status around the world, Israeli Arabs have remained largely outsiders.
Several factors have discouraged Israeli Arabs’ high-tech role: they largely do not serve in the Army, and lack that inside track; some Israeli firms are reluctant to hire Arabs who have an engineering or similar high-tech background; many ambitious Israeli Arabs opt for traditional career paths like physician or teacher; few Israeli Arabs who have achieved financial success have a tradition of making entrepreneurial investments.
“There is a huge gap,” Telhami said. “Arabs are not part of Israeli high-tech, not part of Israel’s start-up [ethos].”
Takwin is starting to change this culture, Telhami said. “We have received a lot of cooperation from Arab businessmen. For the first time in their life, they invest. We believe that in 10 years we can make a big difference.”
Overall, Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s population, have a higher unemployment rate than Israeli Jews.
“For those who overcome barriers to attaining the necessary education and experience, the two biggest obstacles to launching a start-up are access to early-stage capital and connections to the rich high-tech ecosystem that has developed in Israel over the last 15-plus years,” Frid said.
He and Telhami stressed that the success of programs like Takwin is likely to improve interethnic relations within Israel, and serve as an example for Arabs in the Middle East.
“Whenever people spend time together at work, create companies together, invest together, develop relationships, stereotypes do not hold,” Frid said. “When people feel they have good jobs, opportunity, hope, and a sense of inclusion, they are more likely to seek stability and cooperation.”
Arab-Jewish relations in Israel are part of Takwin’s short-term goals, Frid said. An influence on the region’s majority Arab population is long-term, he said.
“The Israeli Arab can be a real bridge to peace in the Middle East,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
The Jewish Week
Helping Israeli Arabs Join The High-Tech Revolution
Takwin Labs offers seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
The Start-Up Nation is starting to include more of its citizens.
Israel, which has earned the title of Start-Up Nation for its disproportionate international role in high-technology advancements, most launched by Jewish Israelis and Army veterans, is slowly bringing Israeli Arabs into the high-tech fold.
In recent years, such initiatives as Nazareth-based New Generation Technology, an entrepreneur-training program that supports 20 start-up companies in the northern Galilee region, and similar programs named Al Bawader and Tsofen, also from Nazareth, all of which support Arab-founded high-tech companies, have reached out to Israel’s Arab population, which has been underrepresented in the country’s high-tech revolution.
A new start-up incubator, which is supporting fledgling Israeli Arab companies in order to help both the minority population and the wider economy, recently brought its message of inter-ethnic cooperation here.
Itzik Frid, an Israeli Jew who had served as vice president of the world’s leading provider of content adaptation and browsing solutions for online carriers, and Imad Telhami, an Israeli Arab who had served as a senior executive with the Delta Galil Industries textiles firm and founded a successful call center and software development company, attended the Israel DealMakers Summit last month in Manhattan; the two held separate meetings with other potential investors to promote Takwin Labs (Takwin is Arabic for “genesis” or “start”), which will offer seed money to Israeli Arab entrepreneurs.
“We will also invest in promising candidates in the West Bank,” Frid said.
Takwin’s model of Arab-Jewish cooperation serves as a tacit rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks in the closing days of his successful re-election campaign last month that warned of a growing Arab vote and threatened to worsen Arab-Jewish relations.
Takwin, whose initial goal is $20 million, found a high level of interest here but no investments yet; Frid said he is optimistic that financial support from U.S. investors will come. He had lined up some $5 million in investment funding from Jews and Arabs in Israel before coming to the United States. Such entrepreneurial investments typically take several months to arrange, he said. “It is still in process.”
“I see excitement for what we are doing in Israel,” Frid told The Jewish Week; he said he has found some interest among Palestinians who live across the Green Line, but was reluctant to discuss details.
Frid said the Israeli government has offered moral support to Takwin, but no financial support. All the funding is private, from Jews and Arabs in Israel. “On both sides” of the ethnic divide — “we see the excitement,” he said.
“The vast majority of initiatives for Arab economic development in Israel are focused on access and integration into employment,” Frid said. In other words, finding jobs. Takwin’s emphasis is on helping companies that will create jobs. “Takwin Labs is the first private venture capital fund and incubator investing solely in Arab high-tech start-ups.
“We believe that this will inspire a high-tech entrepreneurial culture in Israel’s Arab society that will be vital to economic development in Arab society,” Frid said.
He and Telhami established Takwin in partnership with Chemi Peres, a veteran of theventure capital field and son of former president Shimon Peres, and Erel Margalit, founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, who served as a Knesset member.
Tawkin has already provided funding to one Israeli Arab start-up (Frid and Telhami decline to reveal the recipient’s identity, or the exact size of the financial investment), and expects to provide money to several other firms in the next several months. Each investment will be “a few hundred thousand dollars,” Frid said.
Once fully underway, Takwin will fund four to six Israeli Arab firms a year, he said. About 100 potential recipients have taken part in the initial interview process. Most of the firms are located in northern Israel, where most Israeli Arabs live. Takwin will also offer mentoring advice, Frid said.
While the participation of Israeli Jews, many of them one-time members of Army intelligence units, in the country’s high-tech entrepreneur activities has accelerated in recent years and achieved legendary status around the world, Israeli Arabs have remained largely outsiders.
Several factors have discouraged Israeli Arabs’ high-tech role: they largely do not serve in the Army, and lack that inside track; some Israeli firms are reluctant to hire Arabs who have an engineering or similar high-tech background; many ambitious Israeli Arabs opt for traditional career paths like physician or teacher; few Israeli Arabs who have achieved financial success have a tradition of making entrepreneurial investments.
“There is a huge gap,” Telhami said. “Arabs are not part of Israeli high-tech, not part of Israel’s start-up [ethos].”
Takwin is starting to change this culture, Telhami said. “We have received a lot of cooperation from Arab businessmen. For the first time in their life, they invest. We believe that in 10 years we can make a big difference.”
Overall, Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s population, have a higher unemployment rate than Israeli Jews.
“For those who overcome barriers to attaining the necessary education and experience, the two biggest obstacles to launching a start-up are access to early-stage capital and connections to the rich high-tech ecosystem that has developed in Israel over the last 15-plus years,” Frid said.
He and Telhami stressed that the success of programs like Takwin is likely to improve interethnic relations within Israel, and serve as an example for Arabs in the Middle East.
“Whenever people spend time together at work, create companies together, invest together, develop relationships, stereotypes do not hold,” Frid said. “When people feel they have good jobs, opportunity, hope, and a sense of inclusion, they are more likely to seek stability and cooperation.”
Arab-Jewish relations in Israel are part of Takwin’s short-term goals, Frid said. An influence on the region’s majority Arab population is long-term, he said.
“The Israeli Arab can be a real bridge to peace in the Middle East,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
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