Dear Reader,
Since it's almost Shabbat, we want to share with you the hugely popular article on our homepage about Don Greenberg, the pre-recorded his commencement speech so he could still "speak" on Shabbat.NEW YORK
Orthodox Jewish Commencement Speaker Gets It Done
Don Greenberg, graduating from Binghamton University this year, pulls a "Sandy Koufax."
RNS and Miriam Groner
Don Greenberg pre-recording his Commencement Speech. RNS.
Senior Don Greenberg was looking forward to addressing his fellow students as a commencement speaker at Binghamton University’s engineering school when his girlfriend broke the bad news: May 16, graduation day, falls on a Saturday.“Great!” he remembers telling her, in the most sarcastic of tones.
A triple major from Teaneck, N.J., with a 3.93 GPA, Greenberg is an Orthodox Jew. Speaking into a microphone would not be considered kosher. Greenberg knew this, and his rabbi confirmed it.
But when 2,500 students and their families gather on the upstate New York campus for the Watson School of Engineering graduation on Saturday, Greenberg will still take his place at the podium. And on jumbo screens on either side of the stage, he will watch himself deliver the graduation address he taped in the university’s video studio three days earlier.
It is nearly the same speech he submitted weeks ago, about setting meaningful goals, which won him the honor of addressing his fellow graduates. Added more recently: an introduction in which he explains why he’s standing before them silently watching a video of himself addressing them.
“So, this is awkward,” his video begins. He goes on to explain how on Shabbat he must leave the workaday world behind and refrain, from cooking, driving and — the 22-year-old computer science major emphasized — “a microphone.”
“I am inexpressibly thankful to the school for going above and beyond to accommodate this central part of my life, and for ensuring that I could still deliver a meaningful speech to the Watson class of 2015,” he says, and then jokes:
“I know it will be meaningful, because I get as many tries as I want.”
When he first found out about the calendar conflict, Greenberg consulted his rabbi, the principal of his Jewish high school in the Bronx.
Rabbi Tully Harcsztark and other rabbis told him that it may be no problem to speak into an open mic, one that he did nothing to activate. But if his voice caused any other electronics to function — such as the lights on the sound board — that would conflict with Jewish law. Harcsztark advised Greenberg to speak to university officials to see if they could help.
Binghamton, part of the State University of New York, could solve the mic problem, but not the sound board issue. So Ryan Yarosh, director of media and publications, came up with the idea for Greenberg to record the speech on Wednesday (May 13), in front of the same podium that he would quietly stand before on Saturday.
Rabbi Aaron Slonim, the executive director of the Rohr Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University — of which Greenberg is an active member — said it reminded him of the time Sandy Koufax (Major League Baseball pitcher) refused to pitch the first game in the 1965 World Series because it conflicted with Yom Kippur.
"Dan's unwavering commitment to the Shabbat… is a source of great pride and strength to Jewish students here,” Slonim said.
Greenberg is reportedly graduating with a triple major in computer science, math and management. He will begin his career in Manhattan in July.
Katharine Ellis, senior director of communications and a speech coach to the university’s student commencement speakers, said she knew little about Orthodox Jewish practice until she met Greenberg, but that Binghamton was determined to do what it could to allow him to accept the honor he had earned.
Shabbat’s restrictions may be limiting for many people, she said. “But it’s freeing for him.”
Watch a snippet of the pre-recorded commencement speech here.
editor@jewishweek.org
Another bit of fun -- TGIF and all that -- comes to us from Israel, where a male professor casually picked up a student's crying baby and proceeded to calm the little guy by walking him around, and continuing to lecture. Israel is one of the most baby-friendly places in the world!INTERNATIONAL
Hebrew U Professor Picks Up Baby, Rocks The Web
What would your professor do?
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
The photo of professor Sydney Engelberg holding his student’s baby has become an internet sensation. Via imgur.com/ndyAIPS
Hebrew University professor Sydney Engelberg encourages young moms to bring their babies to class.That’s why earlier this week when a student’s baby started to cry during an organizational behavior lecture, Engelberg, not missing a beat, picked up the baby and kept teaching.
Though the occurrence was business-as-usual for Engelberg according to one of his students, the story has since gone viral.
“What’s caught people’s attention is the value statement he’s making,” said Tal Attia, a graduate student at Hebrew University and a past student of Engelberg. “He’s saying it’s not all about education to the point of neglecting your kids, but it doesn’t have to be all about your kids to the point of neglecting your education.”
Engelberg’s daughter, Sarit Fishbaine, first posted the photos of her father holding the adorable tot on Facebook.
“That’s what I call an ‘organizational behavior’ lesson!’” she wrote in Hebrew. “My father is the best in the world.”
According to Fishbaine, the mom stood up to leave class with the crying infant, but Engelberg insisted on sweeping up the child in his arms and continuing class “as if nothing had happened.”
According to Attia, who is married but does not yet have children, seeing graduate students bring children to class at Hebrew University is “common.”
“You can be a mom without compromising your education,” she said. “The professors understand that students are people with real lives, and it can be an ideal to prioritize both.”
According to Yahoo Parenting, Engelberg has received a slew of “love letters” since news of the occurrence started spreading.
Though it is less likely that students in the U.S. will start bring kids to class, the world’s overwhelming positive response to Engelberg is “encouraging,” said Attia.
“Change always starts somewhere,” she said.
And on a much sadder note, this week we mourned Belda Lindenbaum, a pioneering Jewish feminist and a beautiful spirit.
Recalling Belda Lindenbaum, A Nurturer ForJewish Women
Ilana Fodiman-Silverman
Ilana Fodiman-Silverman
As I heard the devastating news of the passing of Belda Lindenbaum in Manhattan this week, I recalled a leader whose presence lit up the faces of all who surrounded her. She had a profound love of Judaism and the Jewish people, and insisted that we pursue an ethical, meaningful, just, Jewish life as the most valued priority.I came of age into a Jewish world that was shaped by Belda’s continued leadership. I had the privilege to study at two of the leading institutions of Torah study for women that were built and guided by Belda and her husbandMarcel with determination, generosity, and vision. Both Midreshet Lindenbaum, and Drisha Institute not only teach to engage Torah with rigor and dedication in the beit midrash, but instill and understanding that the Torah is a wellspring to guide a dynamic Jewish life.
I studied together with Belda in the walls of Drisha’s Beit Midrash where, together with her sister Carol, she created opportunities for others; they led by example in prioritizing Torah study in their own lives. I had the privilege of getting to know Belda’s extended family through the years and I witnessed a love and commitment to Torah that never shied away from addressing injustice or opportunities for improvement head-on. As I found myself among the thousands of women and men who had joined the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) I learned that we were never to be alone again in our journey – that the concerns of Jewish women were not women’s alone, but central agenda concerns for the whole Jewish people.
In the portion of the Haftorah we will read this Shabbat, Jeremiah prophecies the image of the person grounded in faith.
“She will be as a tree planted next to the water, which spreads out its roots along a brook and does not see when heat comes, whose foliage is ever fresh, and in the years of drought it will not cease producing fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:8)
Belda was our “tree planted next to the water.” She was firmly grounded by the water of Torah and the insistence that it was a dynamic life force. She “spread out her roots” to create opportunity and share her beloved Torah. She encouraged us all – men and women – to hang onto the roots of the Tree of Life. As the Jewish world confronted challenge after challenge, Belda stood strong, with “foliage that was ever fresh,” with a commitment to experiment, invest, explore, and never despair in seeking out the path to lead us forward.
Belda “will not cease producing fruit.” She made herself a partner who would not rest, to all of us who are blessed to have studied and worked with her; to the students whose caliber of education is thanks to her and Marcel; to the men and women who painful wrestle with the injustice of agunot; and to the passionate people who found community in the mission of JOFA. All of us have been dreamed, nurtured, encouraged, and challenged by Belda. We form her tree; we bear her fruit.
The Talmud in Tractate Taanit, tells the story of a destitute traveler. Hungry and thirsty, he discovers a tree standing near a wellspring of water, sits in its shade, eats of its fruits, and drinks of its water. The hungry and thirsty Jewish people were blessed to find Belda. We sat in her shade, and her tireless energy and efforts nourished the Jewish people on our continued journey.
As the story in the Talmud continues, the now refreshed traveler looks upon the tree with wonder, “Tree, tree, how can I share my appreciation?” The passage concludes that the greatest blessing is as follows: “May the many new plants that grow as offshoots of your tree be like you.”
May the institutions that Belda built, the generation of Torah scholars that she invested in, and the people who felt the impact of Belda’s unwavering commitment to bringing us forward, hold dear to our mighty tree and bring forth new saplings with Belda’s fiery passion and love for Torah, the Jewish people, and the land of Israel.
Ilana Fodiman-Silverman is co-founder of Moed, promoting a vibrant engagement with Jewish life in Israel. She is a graduate of the Drisha Scholar’s Circle and an alumnus of Midreshet Lindenbaum.
Shabbat Shalom, and have a lovely weekend,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
FIRST PERSON
Brand Name Jewish Education
Malka Margolies
Special To The Jewish WeekIt began with a Facebook posting. Hesitantly, this past Chanukah I joined the ranks of millions who participate in “Throwback Thursday,” the day when people post a nostalgicphoto. The response caught me off guard.
The photo was from 1966, the year theHyman Brand Hebrew Academy (HBHA), then named the Hebrew Academy of Greater Kansas City, opened with 33 students. I was one of them.
In the photo I’m with three first-grade classmates lighting the Chanukah candles. I look timid and perhaps somehow knew we were part of a grand experiment, a “start-up” day school with no building of our own, few students or teachers and little support from Kansas City’s organized Jewish community.
My father, then the rabbi of the largest synagogue in town (1,600 families), was one of its few staunch advocates, and he played a key role in the school’s establishment. Today HBHA, renamed after its first president, Hyman Brand, a prominent Jewish leader in Kansas City, is a thriving school with nearly 250 students, a beautiful building and impressive faculty. But back then the future was uncertain, as day school education outside the framework of the Hebrew school system was controversial. However, my father, whose synagogue had a large Hebrew school, had no greater wish than to put his own school out of business. I still recall his excitement when showing me an article in The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in 1966 announcing the school’s fall opening. It was accompanied by a photo of two administrators, and with pride and joy he told me they would be my new teachers. I was only 6, yet had a strange sense this was a big deal.
Half a century later, when I posted my “tbt” photo on Facebook, I was stunned by the more than 100 comments it generated; they were mostly from HBHA alumni. Many were from the “original 33,” as we affectionately call ourselves, now scattered throughout the country and Israel, and all — firmly ensconced in middle age — actively involved in Jewish life. Tragically, a month earlier we found solace while bonding via social media when we went into collective shock over the brutal murders in Har Nof, which included one of the “originals,” Rabbi Kalman Levine. What compelled the rabbi, or “Cary” as we called him back then, along with other HBHA graduates, to make aliyah? What was it from our HBHA education that kept so many of us engaged in Jewish life long after we had graduated? Why do we still feel like family?
Suddenly I found myself thinking about HBHA and other day schools, in particular SAR Academy and High School, the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School and the Solomon Schechter schools, as I have a personal relationship with these institutions. Do these and other Jewish schools instill the same sense of pride among their graduates? Also, I wondered, do the current and former students know anything about the names behind these institutions: Hyman Brand, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Solomon Schechter and Israel Salanter?
Brand was a dear family friend. One of my strongest childhood memories is going to the Brand home to break the fast after Yom Kippur, and to this day I remember every dish that was served. Long after he has passed he remains a real person to me, and not the name of an institution. But what about the other names, all towering figures in Jewish history, but whom sadly few students at schools with their names know much about.
The Heschel School, which teaches extensively about the life of its namesake, the philosopher and civil rights activist, and models the school after his worldview, may be the exception. Salanter (the “S” in SAR) was born in 1810 in Lithuania and was a renowned Talmudist and leader of the musar movement, believing that the study of Talmud had to be learned alongside ethical studies. It was Schechter who revitalized the fledging Jewish Theological Seminary when he came to the States from England in 1902, transforming JTS into a vibrant force and recruiting an outstanding faculty of Jewish scholars.
So what’s in a name? A lot. As I recall the names of all the “originals,” it’s even more important to know the names of icons in Jewish history. Jewish illiteracy is rampant, and willful amnesia is frowned upon in Jewish tradition. The very heart of our liturgy, the Amidah, begins with the words “Praised You, Lord our G-d and G-d of our Fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” As my father said, “to be cognizant of our ancestors is one of the pillars of both the faith and the destiny of our people.” Thirty-seven years after graduation, I feel privileged to have known the late Hyman Brand, and proud to call myself a graduate of HBHA.
My next Facebook posting? Perhaps a bio of Rabbi Israel Salanter, and here’s hoping it will generate more than 100 comments.Malka Margolies is a former publishing executive and is currently a freelance writer and publicist.
Quintuple Simcha At YU
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Jewish Penicillin With A Crunch
Ronnie Fein
Jewish Week Online Correspondent
Taking His Shots
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
Give to AFMDA's Nepal emergency campaign
BLOGSWELL VERSED
Adrienne Rich And Fixing Our “Half-Finished Houses”
Elana Maryles Sztokman
Adrienne Rich narrated her life and our world through her poems. Her poetry chronicles her transformation from bored, repressed suburban wife to restless, passionate, lesbian feminist activist. Her descriptions of the inner lives of women – radically spoken at the time from a woman’s point of view – were revolutionary then and continue to resonate today. As women (and others) struggle to break free from societal expectations of gender, Rich’s voice gives power and credence to the process of social change and discovering freedom. She embodied the personal as political.
She did not merely narrate feminism; she also urged it along with power and vision. Her impact on the evolution of the feminist movement can be felt in the many tributes to her since her death, which testify to the sometimes very personal ways in which her writing affected people, liberated women and often validated the desire to live fully and embrace their passions and identities. The Jewish Women’s Archive also paid tribute to her last month as part of Poetry month.
Still, I think that in the Jewish world, her impact has perhaps not yet been fully actualized. We still have a lot to learn from her. Her poetry leaves signposts for Jewish feminist activists, bits of power and encouragement along the way.
One poem that articulates the mission in a way that particularly relates to Jewish life is “The Roofwalker” (1961), where Rich wrote of the “half-finished houses”. She asks, “Was it worth while to lay--/with infinite exertion--/a roof I can't live under?/All those blueprints/ closings of gaps/ measurings, calculations?/A life I didn't choose/ chose me: even/my tools are the wrong ones/for what I have to do.” This resonates deeply with me, and possibly with others who are trying to make changes around gender within Jewish life. I also feel that the life chose me, of fixing the roof of the half-finished house that I am not sure I can live under. It is half-finished because Jewish women have not been fully able to make our mark on the culture. And the “measurings, calculations” remind me of all the Talmudic and halakhic discourse with which theJewish house is built. There are other, better tools out there, and Rich reminds me to search for them and use them.
Adrienne Rich also brilliantly revealed the ways in which gender oppression take place on the female body. In the poem "Tear Gas," she wrote "The will to change begins in the body not in the mind/My politics is in my body." Her book, “Of Woman Born,” goes even further in unpacking the myriad societal constructs around motherhood. Indeed, in Judaism the female body is at the center of incessant discourse and discord, as Jewish women grapple with demands on bodily cover and uncover, with rabbinic judgments of women’s sexuality, with societal expectations of women’s bodily appearance. Be attractive but not slutty; be sexy but not sexually active; be thin but not anorexic; eat but not too much; have sex but only in certain conditions; get pregnant but don’t get fat; be a mother, be an angel, and always smile; and no matter what, be feminine always, never to violate the social expectation that woman is a complete and singular, identity, definable and ownable by markers on her body. Rich gives voice to this reality and reminds us that social change begins with changing the societal constructs of the female body. This is a lesson that is still being learned and unlearned.
Rich urged women to be rebellious and disloyal, to revise our cultures and social expectations. As Kathleen Thompson writes for the Jewish Women’s Archive, “She was not a good girl; she was a dangerous woman.” She gave voice to oppressed and abused women. In “Translations” (1972), she wrote of a woman “obsessed/with Love, our subject/we've trained it like ivy to our walls/ baked it like bread in our ovens/ worn it like lead on our ankles/ watched it through binoculars as if/ it were a helicopter/ bringing food to our famine/ or the satellite/of a hostile power.”In “Peeling Onions,” she wrote of “Red onion slices/ Only to have a grief/ equal to all these tears!”
It’s a sliver of a portrait of an oppressed woman. In “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” she wrote, “The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band/ Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand./ When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie/ Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by./ The tigers in the panel that she made/ Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.” Rich, in describing the reality of marriage as she – and many others – experienced it, gave women permission to re-envision their lives.
For Rich, poetry is a tool for social change. When she famously refused the National Medal for the Arts in 1997, she wrote to then President Bill Clinton, “I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power that holds it hostage.” Her poetry is definitely not decorative. It is poetry urging us to action.
One of the most powerful poems she wrote that has a particular message for feminist activists is “Diving into the Wreck.” It describes an androgynous narrator diving into the depths of the ocean to find a wreck, “to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail”. The poem is a powerful metaphor for the process of unpacking culture. “I put on/ the body-armor of black rubber/ the absurd flippers/ the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this/ not like Cousteau with his/ assiduous team/ aboard the sun-flooded schooner/ but here alone.” This poem is a call to arms for fighting women, a reminder that we have the power to change. “[M]y mask is powerful/ it pumps my blood with power/ the sea is another story/ the sea is not a question of power/ I have to learn alone…”
Although Rich described the process of fighting for social change as a lonely one, perhaps it no longer has to be. I think that thanks to the work of women like Rich, today feminist women fighting for social change – including Jewish feminist women fighting for change within Jewish life – can find power in camaraderie with one another, in knowing that we are not alone in the depths of an ocean but part of a strong and growing movement that was established by great and powerful women like Adrienne Rich. Although the feminist work of social change that Rich lived so vehemently is hardly done, we are better off for having her poetry as a tool for our own work.
Elana Maryles Sztokman is an award-winning author, educator, and Jewish feminist activist. She blogs at A Jewish Feminist.
POLITICAL INSIDER
Mideast Peace: Search and Rescue
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
Brand Name Jewish Education
Malka Margolies
Special To The Jewish WeekIt began with a Facebook posting. Hesitantly, this past Chanukah I joined the ranks of millions who participate in “Throwback Thursday,” the day when people post a nostalgicphoto. The response caught me off guard.
The photo was from 1966, the year theHyman Brand Hebrew Academy (HBHA), then named the Hebrew Academy of Greater Kansas City, opened with 33 students. I was one of them.
In the photo I’m with three first-grade classmates lighting the Chanukah candles. I look timid and perhaps somehow knew we were part of a grand experiment, a “start-up” day school with no building of our own, few students or teachers and little support from Kansas City’s organized Jewish community.
My father, then the rabbi of the largest synagogue in town (1,600 families), was one of its few staunch advocates, and he played a key role in the school’s establishment. Today HBHA, renamed after its first president, Hyman Brand, a prominent Jewish leader in Kansas City, is a thriving school with nearly 250 students, a beautiful building and impressive faculty. But back then the future was uncertain, as day school education outside the framework of the Hebrew school system was controversial. However, my father, whose synagogue had a large Hebrew school, had no greater wish than to put his own school out of business. I still recall his excitement when showing me an article in The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in 1966 announcing the school’s fall opening. It was accompanied by a photo of two administrators, and with pride and joy he told me they would be my new teachers. I was only 6, yet had a strange sense this was a big deal.
Half a century later, when I posted my “tbt” photo on Facebook, I was stunned by the more than 100 comments it generated; they were mostly from HBHA alumni. Many were from the “original 33,” as we affectionately call ourselves, now scattered throughout the country and Israel, and all — firmly ensconced in middle age — actively involved in Jewish life. Tragically, a month earlier we found solace while bonding via social media when we went into collective shock over the brutal murders in Har Nof, which included one of the “originals,” Rabbi Kalman Levine. What compelled the rabbi, or “Cary” as we called him back then, along with other HBHA graduates, to make aliyah? What was it from our HBHA education that kept so many of us engaged in Jewish life long after we had graduated? Why do we still feel like family?
Suddenly I found myself thinking about HBHA and other day schools, in particular SAR Academy and High School, the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School and the Solomon Schechter schools, as I have a personal relationship with these institutions. Do these and other Jewish schools instill the same sense of pride among their graduates? Also, I wondered, do the current and former students know anything about the names behind these institutions: Hyman Brand, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Solomon Schechter and Israel Salanter?
Brand was a dear family friend. One of my strongest childhood memories is going to the Brand home to break the fast after Yom Kippur, and to this day I remember every dish that was served. Long after he has passed he remains a real person to me, and not the name of an institution. But what about the other names, all towering figures in Jewish history, but whom sadly few students at schools with their names know much about.
The Heschel School, which teaches extensively about the life of its namesake, the philosopher and civil rights activist, and models the school after his worldview, may be the exception. Salanter (the “S” in SAR) was born in 1810 in Lithuania and was a renowned Talmudist and leader of the musar movement, believing that the study of Talmud had to be learned alongside ethical studies. It was Schechter who revitalized the fledging Jewish Theological Seminary when he came to the States from England in 1902, transforming JTS into a vibrant force and recruiting an outstanding faculty of Jewish scholars.
So what’s in a name? A lot. As I recall the names of all the “originals,” it’s even more important to know the names of icons in Jewish history. Jewish illiteracy is rampant, and willful amnesia is frowned upon in Jewish tradition. The very heart of our liturgy, the Amidah, begins with the words “Praised You, Lord our G-d and G-d of our Fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” As my father said, “to be cognizant of our ancestors is one of the pillars of both the faith and the destiny of our people.” Thirty-seven years after graduation, I feel privileged to have known the late Hyman Brand, and proud to call myself a graduate of HBHA.
My next Facebook posting? Perhaps a bio of Rabbi Israel Salanter, and here’s hoping it will generate more than 100 comments.Malka Margolies is a former publishing executive and is currently a freelance writer and publicist.
Yeshiva University
LENSQuintuple Simcha At YU
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
A tradition at Yeshiva University that is more than a half-century old continues this Sunday — the graduation of members of the extended Schreiber family.
Actually, several members.
Three triplet children of Rabbi Joseph and Robin Schreiber of Los Angeles, and two of the triplets’ spouses, will receive their undergraduate degrees at the school’s 84th Commencement Ceremony at the Prudential Center in Newark.
It is not known if the Schreibers are the first set of triplets to graduate from YU in the same year.
The graduates, from left, are Daniel Schreiber, Naftali Nunberg, Elisheva (Schreiber) Nunberg, Sara (Schechter) Schreiber and Nathaniel Schreiber.
The triplets will graduate from YU’s Sy Syms School of Business, as will Naftali Nunberg. Sara Schechter Schreiber will graduate from Stern College for Women.
The triplets’ older brother, Akiva, and his wife, Avigayil Goldson Schreiber, graduated from the Sy Syms School and Stern College, respectively, in the last three years.
“We raised our children with strong Torah values as their foundation to life and encouraged the pursuit of secular education and personal growth both spiritually and professionally,” said Rabbi Schreiber, principal of the YULA High School in Los Angeles.
The earliest member of the family to attend YU was the triplets’ great-uncle, Marvin Teicher, who graduated in 1956.
“We were not noodged or told to attend YU,” Elisheva Schreiber Nunberg said. “It was always our decision. It was where we all wanted to go.”
The triplets live near each other in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, home of the school’s main campus. “We spend a lot of time with each other and it’s always a good time,” said Sara Schechter Schreiber.steve@jewishweek.org
Actually, several members.
Three triplet children of Rabbi Joseph and Robin Schreiber of Los Angeles, and two of the triplets’ spouses, will receive their undergraduate degrees at the school’s 84th Commencement Ceremony at the Prudential Center in Newark.
It is not known if the Schreibers are the first set of triplets to graduate from YU in the same year.
The graduates, from left, are Daniel Schreiber, Naftali Nunberg, Elisheva (Schreiber) Nunberg, Sara (Schechter) Schreiber and Nathaniel Schreiber.
The triplets will graduate from YU’s Sy Syms School of Business, as will Naftali Nunberg. Sara Schechter Schreiber will graduate from Stern College for Women.
The triplets’ older brother, Akiva, and his wife, Avigayil Goldson Schreiber, graduated from the Sy Syms School and Stern College, respectively, in the last three years.
“We raised our children with strong Torah values as their foundation to life and encouraged the pursuit of secular education and personal growth both spiritually and professionally,” said Rabbi Schreiber, principal of the YULA High School in Los Angeles.
The earliest member of the family to attend YU was the triplets’ great-uncle, Marvin Teicher, who graduated in 1956.
“We were not noodged or told to attend YU,” Elisheva Schreiber Nunberg said. “It was always our decision. It was where we all wanted to go.”
The triplets live near each other in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, home of the school’s main campus. “We spend a lot of time with each other and it’s always a good time,” said Sara Schechter Schreiber.steve@jewishweek.org
Jimmy Attias, Tony Goodman and Ronen Derber, Ten Acre's co-founders. Courtesy of Ten Acre
FOOD & WINEJewish Penicillin With A Crunch
Ronnie Fein
Jewish Week Online Correspondent
Some people are chocoholics. Others scream for ice cream. My passion is potato chips. I love ’em thin. I love ’em kettle-cooked. Waffle-cut. Crinkle-cut. Wasabi-flavored. Vinegar, creamy dill pickle, jalapeno and Old Bay.
And then I discovered the ultimate: chicken soup-flavored chips. How did no one think of this before?
The chips are the inspiration of Ronen Derber, who is kosher and bemoaned the lack of high-quality kosher chips. He left his job as a salesman to start his own snack company, Ten Acres.
It isn’t surprising that a nice Jewish guy came up with the idea for a chicken soup flavored chip. Jewish penicillin with a crunch! And it doesn’t take hours to cook! I’m thinking it might be a good idea to crumble some of these chips on top of chicken soup.
Derber lives in Manchester, England, so these are called “crisps” and their name is “How Chicken Soup Saved the Day.” Okay, chip aficionados and serious snackers might think the name a bit twee, but it’s the crunch and taste that matter. The chicken soup chips, er, crisps, do the trick.
They have a meaty taste, but there’s no meat in them; ingredients such as yeast extract, herbs and onion powder supply that flavor. They are small and incredibly crunchy. What’s more, they are somehow not greasy. When you open the bag you don’t see fat smears on the inside of the package, so you won’t have to wipe your hands on your jeans after you eat some.
I also liked a bunch of the other flavors, like The Day Sweet and Sour Became Friends, which contains just a hint of sugar, and When Hickory Got BBQ’d. It has an extra bit of heat.
Ten Acre chips are not only kosher (Machzikei Hadas; OU), they are also meat-free, dairy-free, gluten-free and MSG-free. In the U.K., the chips are also certified non-GMO and halal; the company expects that certification soon in the United States.
So far so good, Ten Acres. While I adore the salty snacks, I’m not one of those foodies who goes gaga over novelty for its own sake. Don’t jump the shark. No cappuccino-flavored chips, please! Such a thing does exist, and probably shouldn’t.
Ten Acre snacks are available in the New York area at Cedar Market in Teaneck, NJ; Grand & Essex in Bergenfield, NJ and Tenafly Gourmet, also in New Jersey. The 1.4 ounce packages sell for about $1 a bag; the 5 ounce packages cost between $2.99 and $3.99 a bag.
Ronnie Fein is a cookbook author, food writer and cooking teacher in Stamford, CT. She is the author of Hip Kosher and The Modern Kosher Kitchen. Visit her food blog, Kitchen Vignettes, at www.ronniefein.com, friend on Facebook, Twitter at @RonnieVFein.
Martin Rejtman's films are characterized by tacitum, deadpan humor. Courtesy of Cinema Tropical
ARTSTaking His Shots
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
It was a situation out of one of his films.
Martín Rejtman sat down to answer questions for an e-mail interview while he waited for his plane from Hong Kong to New York in the departure lounge Sunday. Then his computer seized up. Eventually he found himself working on a communal machine in the departure lounge, typing hurriedly as the time for boarding approached.
The writer-director of a half-dozen Argentine films, Rejtman is the subject of a retrospective that runs May 13-19, concurrently with the theatrical debut of his latest film, “Two Shots Fired.” He is also a highly regarded short-story author.
Both his films and his fiction are marked by their dry, taciturn deadpan humor and attention to the minutiae of daily life, and driven by rhythms of repetition and echoes of absurdity. Although his characters never get very far from his native Buenos Aires, if they did you would expect them to experience computer meltdowns in the Hong Kong airport.
Asked if fans of his films expect him to be as humorous as his films, he seems a bit baffled by the question itself.
“I guess my films are funny and not,” he wrote. “They are not just comic, they alternate between funny situations and situations that are less funny.”
Sometimes it isn’t so easy to figure out which is which. Take “Two Shots Fired,” for example. The film begins with the sort of event that usually is a harbinger of a family melodrama. Mariano (Rafael Federman), a 16-year-old, comes home from a night of clubbing, goes for a swim, mows the lawn, then finds a pistol hidden in the garage and for no reason shoots himself twice. He apparently hasn’t even wounded himself seriously, although there is a running joke about the inability of his doctors to find one of the bullets in his body, which causes serious intonation problems when he plays recorder in his early-music group.
This sort of obliquely humorous response to potential tragedy strikes some viewers as very Jewish. Rejtman acknowledges a connection, but he seems uncertain as to how his Jewishness comes out in his art.
“Although I believe Jewishness is there somehow, I can’t help it,” he wrote. “[Just] as I can’t help being Argentinian. At a recent screening of ‘Two Shots Fired’ a professor of Minneapolis University [sic] after the Q & A and asked me if I was Jewish. She believed I was after watching the film, although there’s nothing in the subject matter that would directly suggest it.”
The process may have been osmotic. His family wasn’t particularly observant, although he noted that “we had dinners to celebrate the holidays, etc., and my [paternal] grandmother was a very good cook.”
He added, “The funny thing is, in high school most of my classmates and friends were Jewish, although it was not a Jewish school.”
Perhaps the same is true of the pervasive presence of Jewish filmmakers in the New Argentine Cinema, although again Rejtman demurred.
“Honestly, I never thought of this before, asking the question if a fellow filmmaker is Jewish or not,” he replied. “But you are right, in Argentina there are many Jewish filmmakers, indeed.”
The 54-year-old Rejtman is frequently mentioned as both a founder and influential member of that loose configuration of younger Argentine directors. He embraces the label, more for the change in the country’s filmmaking practice than for any cachet associated with it.
“From the mid-’90s things have really changed in Argentina in terms of filmmaking,” he wrote. “Things got much more vital and better. I feel that I have filmmakers with whom I can share a conversation about film now. It was not the case when I started making movies.”
In fact, the limitations of Argentina’s filmmaking world at the time led Rejtman to leave and go to film school at NYU. It was, he said, “an incredibly valuable” experience.
“NYU taught me how to look at what is nearby when looking for a subject for a film,” he wrote. And when he returned to Buenos Aires, “I had a different perspective, I could look at things that were familiar from a certain distance.”
Rejtman’s output of films is small but potent. In part that is the result, he said, of his slowness as a writer.
“I guess I’m slow writing scripts,” he admitted. “I don’t start with a storyline, I start with characters and situations and find the storyline on the way. This takes longer, but I’m fine with that.”
One suspects that he feels a greater degree of freedom writing short stories.
“When I write literature, I know that it all ends there [on the page], so it’s more fluid,” he explained. “When I write a script I have to consider that I will have to shoot that later; it has to be feasible in terms of locations, actors, etc. And the structure has more weight in a film than in a short story for me.”
He has no intentions of abandoning either form though. Asked what his next project is, he replied, “Still writing and looking for the storyline. ...”
“Sounds Like Music: The Films of Martín Rejtman” will run from May 13-19 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center of the Film Society of Lincoln Center (144 W. 65th St.). Included in the series is a one-week run of Rejtman’s most recent film, “Two Shots Fired,” presented by the Film Society and Cinema Tropical. For information, go to www.filmlinc.com.
MDA in Nepal: First on the Ground, First in Medical Expertise
MDA first responders, including Ravit Martinez (in hat), weren't just the first Israelis in Nepal to help save lives. They were also the best-equipped and best-trained. From Netanya to Nepal, MDA is there.Give to AFMDA's Nepal emergency campaign
BLOGSWELL VERSED
Adrienne Rich And Fixing Our “Half-Finished Houses”
Elana Maryles Sztokman
Adrienne Rich
This week would have been the 85th birthday of Adrienne Rich, the Jewish feminist poet who died three years ago leaving behind a tremendous legacy of ideas and words that helped shape many people’s gender identities and inspired the work of feminist activism.Adrienne Rich narrated her life and our world through her poems. Her poetry chronicles her transformation from bored, repressed suburban wife to restless, passionate, lesbian feminist activist. Her descriptions of the inner lives of women – radically spoken at the time from a woman’s point of view – were revolutionary then and continue to resonate today. As women (and others) struggle to break free from societal expectations of gender, Rich’s voice gives power and credence to the process of social change and discovering freedom. She embodied the personal as political.
She did not merely narrate feminism; she also urged it along with power and vision. Her impact on the evolution of the feminist movement can be felt in the many tributes to her since her death, which testify to the sometimes very personal ways in which her writing affected people, liberated women and often validated the desire to live fully and embrace their passions and identities. The Jewish Women’s Archive also paid tribute to her last month as part of Poetry month.
Still, I think that in the Jewish world, her impact has perhaps not yet been fully actualized. We still have a lot to learn from her. Her poetry leaves signposts for Jewish feminist activists, bits of power and encouragement along the way.
One poem that articulates the mission in a way that particularly relates to Jewish life is “The Roofwalker” (1961), where Rich wrote of the “half-finished houses”. She asks, “Was it worth while to lay--/with infinite exertion--/a roof I can't live under?/All those blueprints/ closings of gaps/ measurings, calculations?/A life I didn't choose/ chose me: even/my tools are the wrong ones/for what I have to do.” This resonates deeply with me, and possibly with others who are trying to make changes around gender within Jewish life. I also feel that the life chose me, of fixing the roof of the half-finished house that I am not sure I can live under. It is half-finished because Jewish women have not been fully able to make our mark on the culture. And the “measurings, calculations” remind me of all the Talmudic and halakhic discourse with which theJewish house is built. There are other, better tools out there, and Rich reminds me to search for them and use them.
Adrienne Rich also brilliantly revealed the ways in which gender oppression take place on the female body. In the poem "Tear Gas," she wrote "The will to change begins in the body not in the mind/My politics is in my body." Her book, “Of Woman Born,” goes even further in unpacking the myriad societal constructs around motherhood. Indeed, in Judaism the female body is at the center of incessant discourse and discord, as Jewish women grapple with demands on bodily cover and uncover, with rabbinic judgments of women’s sexuality, with societal expectations of women’s bodily appearance. Be attractive but not slutty; be sexy but not sexually active; be thin but not anorexic; eat but not too much; have sex but only in certain conditions; get pregnant but don’t get fat; be a mother, be an angel, and always smile; and no matter what, be feminine always, never to violate the social expectation that woman is a complete and singular, identity, definable and ownable by markers on her body. Rich gives voice to this reality and reminds us that social change begins with changing the societal constructs of the female body. This is a lesson that is still being learned and unlearned.
Rich urged women to be rebellious and disloyal, to revise our cultures and social expectations. As Kathleen Thompson writes for the Jewish Women’s Archive, “She was not a good girl; she was a dangerous woman.” She gave voice to oppressed and abused women. In “Translations” (1972), she wrote of a woman “obsessed/with Love, our subject/we've trained it like ivy to our walls/ baked it like bread in our ovens/ worn it like lead on our ankles/ watched it through binoculars as if/ it were a helicopter/ bringing food to our famine/ or the satellite/of a hostile power.”In “Peeling Onions,” she wrote of “Red onion slices/ Only to have a grief/ equal to all these tears!”
It’s a sliver of a portrait of an oppressed woman. In “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” she wrote, “The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band/ Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand./ When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie/ Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by./ The tigers in the panel that she made/ Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.” Rich, in describing the reality of marriage as she – and many others – experienced it, gave women permission to re-envision their lives.
For Rich, poetry is a tool for social change. When she famously refused the National Medal for the Arts in 1997, she wrote to then President Bill Clinton, “I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power that holds it hostage.” Her poetry is definitely not decorative. It is poetry urging us to action.
One of the most powerful poems she wrote that has a particular message for feminist activists is “Diving into the Wreck.” It describes an androgynous narrator diving into the depths of the ocean to find a wreck, “to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail”. The poem is a powerful metaphor for the process of unpacking culture. “I put on/ the body-armor of black rubber/ the absurd flippers/ the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this/ not like Cousteau with his/ assiduous team/ aboard the sun-flooded schooner/ but here alone.” This poem is a call to arms for fighting women, a reminder that we have the power to change. “[M]y mask is powerful/ it pumps my blood with power/ the sea is another story/ the sea is not a question of power/ I have to learn alone…”
Although Rich described the process of fighting for social change as a lonely one, perhaps it no longer has to be. I think that thanks to the work of women like Rich, today feminist women fighting for social change – including Jewish feminist women fighting for change within Jewish life – can find power in camaraderie with one another, in knowing that we are not alone in the depths of an ocean but part of a strong and growing movement that was established by great and powerful women like Adrienne Rich. Although the feminist work of social change that Rich lived so vehemently is hardly done, we are better off for having her poetry as a tool for our own work.
Elana Maryles Sztokman is an award-winning author, educator, and Jewish feminist activist. She blogs at A Jewish Feminist.
Mideast Peace: Search and Rescue
Douglas Bloomfield
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The Jewish Week
The coalition guidelines Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented to Knesset on Wednesday revealed more by what they did not say that what they told about where he wants to lead his newly minted right wing government diplomatically.
The guidelines offered only vague language about peace and made no mention of the two-state approach or any new diplomatic vision or peace initiatives for the Netanyahu's fourth term.
Instead it offered what the Jerusalem Post defined as "a rather anemic clause" declaring:
“the government will move the diplomatic process forward and strive for a peace agreement with the Palestinians and with all our neighbors, while preserving the security, historic, and national interests of Israel.”
It was reassuring for those who believed Netanyahu's election eve vow to make sure there would be no Palestinian state on his watch, and discouraging for those who took him at his word when he tried to take back that vow right after the election.
This comes against a background of the Vatican's announcement this week of diplomatic recognition of the State of Palestine and increasingly heated tensions between Israel and France.
The French are shopping around a resolution they plan to take to the Security Council later this year in an effort to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. According to Haaretz:
The resolution is expected to call for basing the borders of the Palestinian state along the 1967 lines with territorial exchanges, making Jerusalem the capital of both states, some formulation that recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, setting a timetable for finishing negotiations and the convening of an international peace conference.
The Obama administration has pressed the French to delay any action until conclusion of the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Similar resolutions by the French and the Palestinians have been blocked by the Americans in the past on the grounds that the best route to peace is direct negotiations between the parties themselves and not by UN resolutions.
The Israeli government is worried that this time the White House may not want to stop the resolution because President Obama was not persuaded by Netanyahu's feeble post-election effort to walk back his vow to oppose Palestinian statehood during his tenure.
The administration has adopted a wait-and-see approach.
Following his 2009 Bar Ilan University speech supporting the two-state solution, Netanyahu did nothing to implement it and never sought support for that position from his Likud Party nor his cabinet.
The Jerusalem Post predicted that in the coming months "Netanyahu will give an updated version of his Bar Ilan speech."
But will anyone inside or outside of Israel believe him?The Jewish Week
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