Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Dear Reader,
We follow the Charleston church massacre this week. Stewart Ain reports on synagogues in the South Carolina city tightening security and assessing the threat after a suspected white supremacist opened fire at the Emanuel AME Church, killing nine, in an act of domestic terrorism that has shocked the nation. Also, Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgott writes from Charleston, at the corner of pain and hope.NATIONAL
Tightened Security In Wake Of Massacre
In Charleston, synagogues assess threat while finding ways to stand up to hate.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
In a show of unity in the wake of the Emanuel AME killings. Getty Images
Security has been heightened at synagogues in Charleston, S.C., following the church massacre last week of nine black parishioners by a suspected white supremacist whose website was filled with hatred for both blacks and Jews.
In the wake of the shooting, the South Carolina Legislature agreed to debate the removal of the Confederate battle flag from outside South Carolina’s Statehouse. The flag, long a divisive symbol to many, had remained by law at full-staff following the shooting even as all other flags were lowered to half-staff — something that was galling to many.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley surprised many by suddenly calling for the flag’s removal, a move welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League.
Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, said that just as the flag was a “symbol of hate that justified fighting for slavery, it was later used as a symbol for anti-Semitism as well.”
“It became a symbol of white supremacy and the racism of the past that included Jews,” he added, noting that he hopes the shooting will spark renewed calls for gun control “because guns enable bigots to kill.”
Although President Barack Obama has advocated new gun control laws, he said he is doubtful Congress will enact them.
But rather than give up, Barbara Weinstein, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said her organization is concentrating on getting each of the 50 states to pass their own gun control laws. She noted that in May, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed into law a bill requiring background checks on firearm transfers between private parties.
Oregon is now one of seven states — including New York — to require background checks for all gun purchases.
Weinstein said gun violence and hate crimes are “both scourges we have to address.”
Just days before last week’s church shooting, Rabbi Alan Cohen of Synagogue Emanu-El, a 350-family Conservative congregation, said the synagogue board had discussed ways to improve security.
“This incident will only heighten the need for that kind of conversation,” he said. “There is now a sense of vulnerability among members of the Jewish community.”
Rabbi Cohen said that for the first time a plainclothes officer was in attendance during last weekend’s Shabbat services, and that a policeman sat in a police car outside the synagogue as he left the morning minyan Monday.
Rabbi Moshe Davis, spiritual leader of Brith Sholom Beth Israel, a 200-family Modern Orthodox congregation, said his board also “reassessed our security” and hired an off-duty police officer to provide protection during last weekend’s Shabbat services.
“He told us that given the circumstances surrounding the [church shooting] there was no reason for added security, but we had him there anyway,” Rabbi Davis said. “We wanted to make sure we did everything possible to make our people feel secure.”
At Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation and the largest of the three congregations with 520-families, security guards were posted at the synagogue last Shabbat as they are every week.
“We also have panic buttons around the synagogue and under the bima that go directly to 911,” said Rabbi Stephanie Alexander, the congregation’s senior spiritual leader.
Unlike the other two congregations, which held Shabbat services as usual, Rabbi Alexander said her congregation’s “leadership determined that the most significant way we could support [the community] was to be present when the community gathered together as one.
“So rather than holding our Friday night service at 8, we convened at the temple at 5 p.m., lit Shabbat candles, joined in song, and then walked the four blocks from our synagogue to the [College of Charleston] arena. At least 150 walked with us and other congregants met us there. We are proud to have had a sizeable Jewish presence, and I was honored to offer words of comfort to the community.”
In her invocation, Rabbi Alexander, 39, recalled the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and asked, “Why haven’t we eradicated the hate? Why haven’t we stopped the violence? We search, but we search together.”
She noted that when the shooting occurred last Thursday night at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, she was on a bus tour of civil rights sites in the South that was organized jointly by her synagogue and two area churches. They filled three buses and were between Memphis, Tenn., and Montgomery, Ala., when they learned of the massacre. She and the clergy of the two churches, Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III and Rev. Jeremy Rutledge, left the tour and flew back to Charleston. She left behind her 7-year-old son and husband, Rabbi Aaron Sherman.
“We had been to Atlanta and Selma, Jackson and Memphis,” Rabbi Alexander recalled in her invocation. “We’d stood in the precise locations where great leaders had been shot, and walked down the very roads where communities had marched and lifted one another up. At some point in this whirlwind, I’ve lost the ability to differentiate between what’s been preserved in black-and-white and what is happening in living color. I had hoped against hope that we had left behind the racism that could spur such violence and destruction.”
An interreligious service of solidarity was also held last Friday night at Temple Israel of Lawrence, L.I. Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, the Reform congregation’s spiritual leader, said it was organized to show support for the families of the victims “and to make a statement for our nation as a whole that the carnage [was] brought about by the lack of proper legislation involving hand guns … and because racists of all types still exist.”
And an interfaith community prayer vigil was scheduled for this week in Silver Spring, Md., that was organized in part by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.
On Monday, Rabbi Davis said, “Charleston was and still is in a state of shock.”
But since the arrest of the suspected gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, of Lexington, S.C., within hours of the shooting that Roof reportedly said he hoped would trigger a race war, Rabbi Davis said a “sense of unity” had fallen over the community.
“People of all races and religions are coming together to stand against racial prejudice and hate,” he said. “The guy was a racist and a white supremacist. I’m not surprised to learn he also hated Jews.”
An online racist manifesto said to be written by Roof and filled with grammatical errors — he dropped out of high school after repeating the ninth grade — asserts that the “issues with jews [sic] is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the Jewish identity, then they wouldn’t cause much of a problem. …
“Just like n***, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on. I dont [sic] pretend to understand why jews do what they do. They are enigma [sic].”
In commenting on the events of the last week, Ethan Felson, vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said the “teachable moments out of this unspeakable tragedy are about the unfinished conversation in America about race and bigotry. There is something deeply broken in our society when extremists of any stripe repeatedly act out their hatred in these dystopian scenes.”
Hadar Susskind, director of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, said last week’s church massacre was “different from some of the other horrible shootings that have happened in that it is clearly racially motivated and very much connected to our work on racial justice.”
Those thoughts were echoed by Marjorie Dove Kent, executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, who said the “issue of institutional racism” has been brought to the fore by the shooting.
“The real issue here is white supremacy and it rests on a hatred of both blacks and Jews,” she said. “This is a place of alignment for all to rally against. … For the last 25 years our group in partnership with other organizations that are led by people of color have been working on some of the major issues affecting our city and country. Now is a powerful moment for the Jewish community to invest in those relationships.”
Jacobo Mintzer, president of Synagogue Emanu-El who was born in Argentina and lived in New York City before moving to Charleston, said the one thing he has learned in his travels is that “there are always people with hatred in their hearts.”
“Hatred is everywhere and it is often directed towards the people believed to be the most vulnerable,” he observed.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot, spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, N.J., flew to Charleston for a one-day visit as a representative of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a modern Orthodox group.
“In addition to feeling sympathy, we wanted to show in a concrete way our solidarity,” he said.
He said he went to the Emanuel AME Church and found it closed. But he said he spoke with people outside the church “and tried to express our condolences and sympathy.”
“I was very encouraged by the tone of the talk I’ve heard here,” he said. “I didn’t hear bitterness. There is a lot of goodwill and a desire to come together.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
FIRST PERSON
In Charleston, At The Corner Of Pain And Hope
A rabbi's view from the ground in post-Massacre South Carolina.
Nathaniel Helfgot
Special To The Jewish Week
Barbara Owens leaves a message on a tree in front of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Getty Images
Charleston, S.C. — In last Shabbat’s Torah portion, we read the last words recorded in the Bible uttered by the people of the first generation that left Egypt but did not reach the Promised Land. After all of the struggles and challenges and the sins and death and destruction, they plaintively ask, “ha-im tamnu ligvoah?” — “Have we come to the end of our dying?” or, left unspoken, will such tragedies continue and continue?
As my dear friend, Rabbi Shmuel Hain put it last week, the massacre of the nine innocent people at the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, S.C., is a moment in our nation’s history where we also cry out, “Will the dying, the killing, the racism, the hate never end?” Are we destined to repeat these scenes over and over again?
In the aftermath of the horrible murder of churchgoers engaged in the study of God’s word, many people reached out in sympathy and empathy to help and to heal. The leadership of the International Rabbinic Fellowship felt it was important for one of us to go down to Charleston as well, in person. It was a small gesture to share our presence and words and solidarity as committed Jews and fellow Americans of faith with the community that had experienced such pain and sorrow. And so on Monday, I flew to Charleston.
On the short ride from the airport, one is struck by both the beauty of the landscape and the names of the streets and sights that thrust you back in time for a long-forgotten American history lesson. An exit on the right directs you to Fort Sumter, the very spot where the bloody four-year conflict over slavery and dignity, our nation’s Civil War, began. Here one walks on the very touchstones of our nation’s sullied past, while at the same time looking around and appreciating the amazing strides we as a nation have achieved since those terrible years, and the challenges that still lie ahead.
Reaching downtown Charleston one turns onto Calhoun Street, named after Sen. John Calhoun. He is recognized as one of the great senators in American history but was a vigorous proponent of slavery and state rights, pushing the South toward succession.
One reaches the Emanuel AME Church with its soaring steeple and sees a mass of bright colors from flowers and cards and balloons and ribbons all left behind by people who want to express their sympathy, love and hope. One appreciates the diversity of the color, ethnicity and background of the crowd of people paying their respects, perhaps the greatest response to the racist gunman who wanted to divide and spark another war between the citizens of our country.
In the hour or so that I am there I speak to people on the street, share my words of solidarity and empathy, attempt to deliver a letter of sympathy and solidarity to the leadership of the church, and just take in the moment. All the while there is a calmness and serenity to all those who visit with spouses, children and friends of the victims. There is no anger in the air, no shouting, no calls for vengeance or retribution. One leaves the site of the church in pain, but encouraged with the outpouring of unity and desire among so many to reject the hatred and racism that still pollutes our society.
As I start to walk across the street, just one block away, I come across Marion Square, a lovely bit of green in the middle of the concrete and buildings. And remarkably at the side of the plaza facing Calhoun Street stands a simple but powerful Holocaust Memorial to the martyrs of our people and in recognition of the survivors who made their way to Charleston. And once again a jumble of feelings and memories wells up and I think of the hate that produced the Shoah, and some of the affinities between the history of the Jewish people and the African-American community.
The African-American cab driver taking me back to my hotel tells me he grew up in New York, near Newburgh, and his best friend since then is a Jewish kid from an observant home. We talk of faith and communities and hopes, and of what could be.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot is chair of the department of Talmud and rabbinics at the SAR High School. He is the spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, N.J., and an officer of the International Rabbinic Fellowship.
charleston shooting
Six months after the attack on the Hyper Cacher market in Paris, we talk to French ex-pat Jews here as their friends and relatives back home are still in a "wait-and-see mode" about making aliyah.INTERNATIONAL
French Jews Still In ‘Wait-And-See Mode’
Six months after attack on kosher market, ex-pats here say little has changed back home.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Upper West Sider Stella Amar-Cohen says people there “are not talking about leaving right away.”
Most of the Parisian Jews who had considered making aliyah before a fatal terrorist attack on the city’s Hyper Cacher supermarket six months ago still think about moving to Israel, but few have taken the step, said a Manhattan expatriate who returned earlier this month from a visit to relatives in France.
In Nantes, northwest France, the soldiers guarding the city’s synagogue around the clock are gone, but police stand outside on Shabbat — as before the kosher market attack — according to a native of northwest France who was back there with her family last week.
But on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, home to a growing number of French Jews in recent decades, Rabbi Eitan Bendavid of the West Side Sephardic Synagogue said he notices an increase in the number of young Jews from France, mostly professionals, attending synagogue events since the Jan. 7 attack.
Following the attacks on the kosher supermarket and the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 16 lives, Israel called for wide-scale immigration from France. And many French Jews, wary of further anti-Semitic incidents, said they were ready to leave.
Since then, according to the Jewish Agency and to French Jews here who recently visited their homeland, reality has set in — it’s back to Jewish business, and Jewish life as usual, they say. It’s all talk and little aliyah.
A 2013 European Union study found that nearly half of French Jews said they were considering emigrating.
While the Hyper Cacher attack, the latest in a series of often-fatal attacks on French Jewry in recent decades, still resonates with many Jewish leaders and American politicians, the heightened concern within the French Jewish community seems to have abated; Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that “indifference is the profound challenge” in an address to the American Jewish Committee New York Region last week.
“Nothing has changed” since January, said Ilan Benhamou, a Paris native who moved to the Upper West Side six years ago. His friends discussed aliyah. “Nobody left. They’re in a wait-and-see mode.
“They have a good life in France,” he said. The attacks six months ago, “if anything, strengthened their pride in being French Jews,” he said, adding, “It’s not that easy to make a living in Israel.”
“The shock has passed. The sentiment of danger has somewhat leveled off,” said Stella Amar-Cohen, a native of France who has lived on the Upper West Side for a decade. She returned last week from a family visit.
She said the Jews she met in France are “more cautious, more aware” of personal security and show an interest in moving abroad, particularly to Israel. “But,” she said, “these clearly are not short-term plans. They’re not talking about leaving right away.”
Amar-Cohen said many people she knows in France took vacations in Israel this spring. “They realize it’s so expensive [to live] in Israel.”
While the number of French Jews who said they would make aliyah in the first months of this year was predicted to be 25 percent higher than last year’s figure, an actual decrease is likely, recent figures show.
Haaretz reported last week that 1,710 French Jews made aliyah in the first five months of this year, a drop of 19 percent compared with 2014.
While “the latest statistics say there has been a decrease of 15 percent of aliyah this year, these statistics are slightly flawed for several reasons,” Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, American Jewish Committee director in Paris, said in an email interview. The 2014 figure of 7,000 French Jews making aliyah “doesn’t take into account the number of Jews coming back to France and those who live in reality between France and Israel. This also doesn’t take into account those who emigrate elsewhere such as the United States or Canada.”
Rodan-Benzaquen cautioned that a sudden increase in aliyah from France was unlikely, despite the heightened fear in early 2015. She cited as a reason that fact that French Jews view “the January attacks … not isolated incidents” as part of an ongoing series of attacks committed mostly by poor, Arab émigrés whose families come from northern Africa. “French Jews have been worried for the past 15 years,” she said. “Every attack, every anti-Semitic incident renders the Jewish community more anxious and more worried. Smaller incidents have continued to happen since January. They know that it is possible, even probable that further, bigger attacks will happen.
“On the other hand,” Rodan-Benzaquen said, “they are grateful and reassured that the French government is taking the threat so seriously and has made it its priority to combat anti-Semitism.”
A spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, said interest in aliyah among French Jews and their participation in the Agency’s aliyah information sessions has remained high throughout the year.
“We expect more than 4,500 French Jews to make aliyah by the end of August, a 27.5 percent increase over the first eight months of 2014,” Avi Mayer, the agency’s spokesman told The Jewish Week in an email interview. He added that the “sense of insecurity amongst many French Jews remains potent.
“We are holding significantly more aliyah information sessions than ever before. … a recent [session] in Paris drew more than 6,000 attendees, triple the number of those who attended the same event last year,” he said.
For many French Jews, the United States, with more career opportunities for people with professional training, is a more likely destination than Israel.
Rabbi Bendavid, whose congregation is comprised of at least 60 percent French Jews, said the number of members with roots in France has not gone up significantly in the last six months, but he has noticed more young, single Jews from France; in other words, families and seniors are not coming here from France, but unattached members of the community are looking into possible employment here.
“Everyone who has family in France — there’s a lot of discussion about the future: Are we going to move? Are we going to make aliyah? Are we going to America?”
Their families often encourage them to consider the US instead of Israel, Rabbi Bendavid said.
Benhamou said many of the French Jews he knows are members of families who fled northern Africa 60 years ago after Israel was created and anti-Jewish discrimination increased. In France, they created new lives for themselves. “They don’t want to do this again,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
Also this week, Hannah Dreyfus reports on the launch of the New York branch of Honeymoon Israel, a Birthright Israel-like trip that gives young couples a heavily subsidized taste of Israel as they set off in their married lives. It's Summer Reading time and we offer a section that focuses on city stories, from Memphis to the Bronx and beyond. And in keeping with the summer theme, travel writer Hilary Danailova reports on the cultural offerings in the Berkshires.SHORT TAKES
Honeymoon Israel Launches In NYC
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Growing up as a Southern Baptist in the Deep South, Mary Davis never dreamed she’s spend her honeymoon in Israel, let alone as a Jew.
But the recent convert and Atlanta-native joined the first cohort of Honeymoon Israel, a program that provides highly subsidized, nine-day trips to Israel for groups of couples from the same city.
She went on the trip from Los Angeles with her new husband, Ari Kadin, originally from New York. “As a new Jew, I’ve never felt so accepted,” gushed Davis, who converted and married Kadin less than a month before the trip departed. “My heart is overflowing — we’ve already booked tickets back for Passover!”
Next stop for Honeymoon Israel: New York City. The program, launched in 2014 by Mike Wise, a long-time executive in Jewish federations, and Avi Rubel, the founding director of the travelprogram Masa Israel Journey, will launchapplications for their first-ever New York City cohort on July 15.
Rubel is expecting six or seven couples to apply per spot in NYC, compared to the four couples that applied per spot in Los Angeles and Phoenix. Twenty couples, between the ages of 25 and 40, will be accepted. Interfaith couples, same-sex couples, and committed life partners will be welcomed, as long as one of them is Jewish.
“This is not a Birthright trip,” said Rubel, who said couples are wined, dined and accommodated in upscale hotels throughout the nine days. “We’re not bopping around on busses — these couples are here to be pampered, and we deliver.”
According to Rubel, each couple pays $1,800 (flights included) for a tour worth an estimated $10,000. The trips are funded by an anonymous family foundation.
“We select for couples that are least engaged in Jewish life, and who have not yet figured out how they want to relate to Judaism, though they are open to exploring,” he said, citing the 71 percent intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews produced by the 2013 Pew Study on American Jews. “We have no prescription and no agenda — we just want to provide the chance to connect.”
Sustaining connection requires infrastructure, said Rubel, and Honeymoon Israel roots every trip in local Jewish organizations in order for couples to remain in contact after their return.
In New York City, the JCC Manhattan on the Upper West side, in partnership with UJA-Federation, will play a key role in keeping the group connected, said Dava Schub, chief program officer at the JCC.
“The Honeymoon Israel model, unlike Birthright, works with organizations and not just individuals,” said Schub, who said her team expends significant time looking to reconnect with local Birthright alum. A direct partnership will save the effort, she said.
“When the trip is over, we get a busload full of young couples who are jazzed, reconnected to Jewish life and Israel, and looking to engage. We’ll continue the journey with them,” said Schub, who added that the program’s mission dovetails with the JCC’s recent efforts to explore innovate ways to engage interfaith couples.
After their recent return from Israel, Davis and Kadin couldn’t wait to reconnect with their fellow couples, which she described as her “new Jewish family.”
“We’re on for a group movie night tonight,” she said, “and it’s only been a week since we got back.”
Image: First cohort of Honeymoon Israel from Phoenix, Az. Courtesy of Honeymoon Israel.
editor@jewishweek.org
Summer Reading 2015
Summer Reading: City Stories Neighborhood lit, from Memphis to the Bronx and beyond.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
TRAVEL
High Culture In The Hills
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
Most of us have never contemplated a Van Gogh and immediately thought of Western Massachusetts. But the undulating green hills of the Berkshires region bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Provence — at least as rendered by the artist in a series of works on view in “Van Gogh and Nature,” the summer blockbuster at theClark Art Institute in Williamstown.
And just as Van Gogh found inspiration in the landscapes of Arles and St.-Rémy, Jewish vacationers come to the bucolic towns of the Berkshires to be inspired in myriad ways, by everything from museums and theater to Jacob’s Pillow, the cradle of modern dance — not to mention a smorgasbord of Jewish activity that has little equal at summer resorts. Depending on your mood, you can easily fill summer days with intensive Torah study, practice your conversational Yiddish, learn to bake rugelach, immerse yourself in a Jewish literary scene and spend your nights listening to Jewish music from klezmer to Mendelssohn.
Lodging options have expanded accordingly, with new and restored properties ready to welcome the summer influx. The latest addition to the scene is Hotel on North in Pittsfield, a boutique hotel and restaurant that recently opened in a pair of 19th-century buildings.
Several historic properties offer incentives for visitors willing to book outside of the popular weekends. The Apple Tree Inn in Lenox offers a 20 percent midweek discount at its rolling, 22-acre estate, just a short walk uphill from Tanglewood. The Cranwell Spa and Golf Resort — another Lenox compound from the Gilded Age — offers specials that include a midweek Tanglewood package with two lawn concert tickets, aparking pass and a souvenir album. And the venerable Inn at Stockbridge, a gracious white mansion with rolling lawns, has a midweek deal that includes in-room massages and afternoon wine and cheese.
Generations of youngsters have lodged in considerably more rustic surroundings atCamp Ramah in the Berkshires, a local bulwark of the Conservative movement’s iconic summer camp. Many Berkshires visitors began summering here in the bunks at Ramah; there’s an entire website devoted to Ramah marriages, along with an annual alumni reunion, for those who haven’t already run into each other over lox and coffee at the Great Barrington Bagel Company.
Or former campers might meet up at the Berkshires’ grown-up outpost of Conservative Judaism — JTS in the Berkshires, a lecture series on alternate Fridays at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. This summer, scholars from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America will address the theme of “Hidden Histories,” with topics ranging from Jezebel to Jewish marriage.
The seminary isn’t the only institution moving out of doors. All summer long, Hevreh of Southern Berkshires, a Reform congregation in Great Barrington, takes worship into some of the area’s prettiest settings. Hevreh hosts a series of Tanglewood Shabbats; follow the blue and white balloons to an evening Kabbalat Shabbat and pre-concert picnic on the lawn, or a family morning Shabbat picnic before the matinée. There are also outdoor Havdalah services, including one for returning campers and their nostalgic parents that features a campfire, s’mores and a singalong.
Those looking for a daily minyan will find it at “Minyan in the Berkshires,” hosted by Chabad of the Berkshires. From now through August, there’s a weekday minyan in Pittsfield and a Shabbat minyan in Lenox, along with kabbalah workshops and classes in Yiddish and Hebrew.
Between Jewish book clubs, Talmud and lunch-and-learn study groups, and scholarly roundtables on topical issues, many spend the entire summer deep in conversation. (What could be more Jewish, really?) There is certainly plenty to discuss, as always — everything from Judaism’s changing demographics and America-Israel relations to the Shabbat ritual. A full listing of summer programs, available in PDF format from the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, is online at jewishberkshires.org — but one highlight worth noting is the popular Jewish book discussion group at Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.
Come evening, it’s time to settle in for some of America’s top theater and classical music. James Levine no longer presides over the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — but there are plenty of Jewish artists on the roster at Tanglewood, where Levine’s successor, Andris Nelson, is fresh off his inaugural season with the orchestra. From stalwarts like violinist Pinchas Zukerman and the pianists Emanuel Ax and Leon Fleisher to Vadim Gluzman, the young Soviet-born violin sensation, Tanglewood is a showcase for Jewish musicianship.
Lighter fare is the Jewish highlight of this summer’s theater. The Comden and Green classic “Bells Are Ringing,” with music by Jule Styne, ushers in the season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, with performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. The comedian Robert Klein also performs at the Colonial, while Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap” is at the Berkshire Theatre Group’s main stage in Stockbridge. And New York humor is once again the feature in Pittsfield, where Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” is on the lineup at the Barrington Stage Company.
In between shows, relax amid the hills with world-class art. The Clark, which turns 60 this year, just completed the final phase of an award-winning campus expansion that has transformed the museum into one of the Berkshires’ prettiest spots. With reflecting pools, floor-to-ceiling windows and views over the mountains, the Clark offers visual splendor even before you step inside one of America’s finest collections, with particularly strong holdings in American art.
Americana is the calling card at Stockbridge’s Norman Rockwell Museum, of course — but this summer, the Rockwell takes on a decidedly Brooklyn slant with “Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs,” on view through October. Chast, whose ironic eye has come to epitomize a certain New York Jewish outlook, has legions of fans from her longtime association with The New Yorker, and is enjoying a high profile after the success of last year’s graphic memoir, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”
Chast would appreciate the irony of so many Jewish New Yorkers escaping to the New England countryside, only to seek out the biting wit, Brooklyn accents and restless intellectualism of their hometown. But that combination of rustic and cosmopolitan has always been the Berkshires’ calling card — and this summer, there are more ways than ever to answer it.
editor@jewishweek.org
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BETWEEN THE LINES GARY ROSENBLATT
Pushing For Massive French Aliyah
Minimal investment could spur record immigration from a prosperous country, advocate says.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Speaking at the Grand Synagogue in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket murders in January, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stirred controversy when he announced: “Any Jew who chooses to come to Israel will be greeted with open arms and an open heart; it is not a foreign nation, and hopefully they and you will one day come to Israel.”
Some said that the prime minister, like his predecessors, was simply encouraging aliyah from the diaspora, while critics asserted that he was being insensitive to the community so soon after the tragedy.
But well before the terror attacks, a group of Israeli officials were developing an emergency plan for French aliyah that would be unique: proactive, comprehensive, and aimed at inducing all elements of the Jewish community there to resettle in the Jewish state.
The proposal, “an historic opportunity to absorb a massive aliyah wave from France,” is designed to take in 120,000 immigrants — about 30,000 families — over four years, according to a report issued by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), a Jerusalem-based Jewish think tank established by the Jewish Agency for Israel.
If Israel is prepared to create adequate housing and job opportunities through the private sector, the project would cost the government little and still be possible to achieve, “for the first time in the history of Zionism, a large immigration wave from a prosperous country,” according to Dov Maimon, a French-born senior fellow at JPPI. He, along with five government officials, drafted the 150-page report.
During the annual conference the group held last month in Long Island, and later by phone from Jerusalem, he outlined the proposal for me with great enthusiasm. But after presenting a convincing case for the many benefits of the ambitious strategy that he said would be a major asset for Israeli society as well as French Jewry, Maimon acknowledged that in all likelihood “for the moment, nothing will happen.”
He believes few Israeli leaders and politicians will call for change, in part because they see no political advantage in advocating for a non-voting foreign constituency — helping potential newcomers is not high on their priority list, Maimon noted — and because many believe large numbers of French Jews will come to Israel anyway as their situation at home worsens. So why outlay money and make elaborate preparations in advance?
“No one in the government is inclined to do this,” said Maimon, who has an engineering degree from the Technion and went on to receive an MBA and a then a doctorate in Jewish and Islamic mysticism.
“The old paradigm,” he said, “is that people come to Israel when in distress, faced with no other choice. So just wait.” He added that Israelis want politicians to address their needs. “This project is for people not here or not yet born. It’s hard to invest in the future.”
But the pity, he believes, is that in light of the attraction of countries like the U.S. and Canada, and with no serious Israeli response, many secular, less identified French Jews will assimilate. And more affluent Jews seeking solid business opportunities will move elsewhere, leaving the weaker and poorer elements of the Jewish community to make aliyah under duress.
That, in turn, would perpetuate an all-too-familiar immigration scenario where the Jerusalem government, faced with a serious economic burden in providing for tens of thousands of needy newcomers, will house them wherever it is convenient, creating additional financial and social problems for the new immigrants, and fostering resentment from them and society at large.
“In the next 15 years many Jews will have to leave Europe,” up to 250,000 of an estimated 600,000 from France alone, said Maimon. He cited growing anti-Semitism, largely carried out by a growing population of Muslims; an economic downturn; the strength of far-right parties; and a deterioration of the domestic security situation.
Last year 14,000 French Jews came to live in Israel, a dramatic increase of 32 percent over the previous year, with France topping the aliyah list of countries of origin for the first time. This year, in the wake of the terror attacks in January, the numbers are expected to be far higher.
In addition, studies show that 70 percent of French Jews see no future for them in France, 49 percent are considering leaving in the coming years, and only 3 percent trust France to take action against Islamic fundamentalists.
“Our assessment, based on studies conducted by the European Union and Israeli immigration statistics, as well as a deep understanding of the field, is that the aliyah potential from France numbers in the hundreds of thousands,” according to the JPPI report.
It calls for: establishing an “administrative oversight team” in the prime minister’s office to cut through the bureaucracy; allocating land for “accelerated real estate development”; offering tax incentives and salary subsidies to those creating jobs for the newcomers; and creating an investment fund of at least one billion shekels (about $260 million) — “Shekels For Euros” — for establishing infrastructure.
Natan Sharansky, chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, credits Maimon for “thinking out of the box, and thinking big, which is very important.” He told me in a phone interview from Jerusalem that French aliyah is one of the agency’s three primary day-to-day goals, along with aliyah from Ukraine and promoting Israel on U.S. campuses.
“Implementation [of the JPPI plan] would require coordination from several government ministries, foreign investment, and the private sector here and abroad,” he noted, “and nothing will be possible without the prime minister at the center.”
Sharansky said the issue would be part of the discussions at the agency board of governors meetings in Jerusalem this week. He is hopeful that he and Minister of Absorption Ze’ev Elkin, with whom he has held “intense discussions” on the subject, will present a coordinated plan for major-scale French aliyah to Netanyahu at some point.
Maimon is not holding his breath. In the meantime he is actively pursuing his goal, speaking frequently to Jewish groups when he visits France, and encouraging philanthropists in France and the U.S. to advance the plan. He hopes to create a pilot program in Ashkelon for about 2,000 French Jews, offering attractive housing and jobs.
Maimon thinks success there, and pressure on the government in Jerusalem to act, may have positive results. But he is a realist as well as a dreamer.
“I am told that American donors will only respond if there are more terror attacks [in France]. People tend to react to a crisis, and I worry that the Jewish people are not mature enough to see the future.” He cites the long history of Jewish persecution and exodus under extreme circumstances, from the biblical slaves in Egypt to the doomed Jews of Europe during the Nazi era.
“Unfortunately the French story may well be the same,” Maimon said. “If we don’t learn from history it will be the same — Jews only fleeing out of desperation.”
gary@jewishweek.org
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MUSINGS
Stretching The Limits
Rabbi David Wolpe
Special to the Jewish Week
Rabbi David Wolpe
Why do the five books of the Torah end with Israel still in the wilderness? The entire story points toward the Promised Land, yet Moses dies and the Israelites are outside the land.
One possibility is the Torah’s lesson that the land is both a reality and an ideal. In the book of Joshua, the Israelites enter the land and have to fight to establish themselves. In the wilderness, they will dream of the land and envision an ideal.
Robert Browning famously wrote: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?” In other words, the ideal is what motivates us to stretch ourselves, especially if we know that we are trying to achieve something out of reach. We will always fall short; if we set great goals, however, in our falling short we can still achieve remarkable things.
The Torah overestimated what the Jewish people could accomplish in the land. It would never be a perfect, peaceful place flowing with milk and honey. But only by presenting the ideal could they hope to make it a home worthy of the land God gave them.
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.
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An exhibit of the works of Van Gogh is on display this summer at the Clark Art Institute in williamstown, Mass. Jeff Goldberg
TRAVEL
High Culture In The Hills
Hilary Danailova
Travel WriterMost of us have never contemplated a Van Gogh and immediately thought of Western Massachusetts. But the undulating green hills of the Berkshires region bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Provence — at least as rendered by the artist in a series of works on view in “Van Gogh and Nature,” the summer blockbuster at theClark Art Institute in Williamstown.
And just as Van Gogh found inspiration in the landscapes of Arles and St.-Rémy, Jewish vacationers come to the bucolic towns of the Berkshires to be inspired in myriad ways, by everything from museums and theater to Jacob’s Pillow, the cradle of modern dance — not to mention a smorgasbord of Jewish activity that has little equal at summer resorts. Depending on your mood, you can easily fill summer days with intensive Torah study, practice your conversational Yiddish, learn to bake rugelach, immerse yourself in a Jewish literary scene and spend your nights listening to Jewish music from klezmer to Mendelssohn.
Lodging options have expanded accordingly, with new and restored properties ready to welcome the summer influx. The latest addition to the scene is Hotel on North in Pittsfield, a boutique hotel and restaurant that recently opened in a pair of 19th-century buildings.
Several historic properties offer incentives for visitors willing to book outside of the popular weekends. The Apple Tree Inn in Lenox offers a 20 percent midweek discount at its rolling, 22-acre estate, just a short walk uphill from Tanglewood. The Cranwell Spa and Golf Resort — another Lenox compound from the Gilded Age — offers specials that include a midweek Tanglewood package with two lawn concert tickets, aparking pass and a souvenir album. And the venerable Inn at Stockbridge, a gracious white mansion with rolling lawns, has a midweek deal that includes in-room massages and afternoon wine and cheese.
Generations of youngsters have lodged in considerably more rustic surroundings atCamp Ramah in the Berkshires, a local bulwark of the Conservative movement’s iconic summer camp. Many Berkshires visitors began summering here in the bunks at Ramah; there’s an entire website devoted to Ramah marriages, along with an annual alumni reunion, for those who haven’t already run into each other over lox and coffee at the Great Barrington Bagel Company.
Or former campers might meet up at the Berkshires’ grown-up outpost of Conservative Judaism — JTS in the Berkshires, a lecture series on alternate Fridays at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. This summer, scholars from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America will address the theme of “Hidden Histories,” with topics ranging from Jezebel to Jewish marriage.
The seminary isn’t the only institution moving out of doors. All summer long, Hevreh of Southern Berkshires, a Reform congregation in Great Barrington, takes worship into some of the area’s prettiest settings. Hevreh hosts a series of Tanglewood Shabbats; follow the blue and white balloons to an evening Kabbalat Shabbat and pre-concert picnic on the lawn, or a family morning Shabbat picnic before the matinée. There are also outdoor Havdalah services, including one for returning campers and their nostalgic parents that features a campfire, s’mores and a singalong.
Those looking for a daily minyan will find it at “Minyan in the Berkshires,” hosted by Chabad of the Berkshires. From now through August, there’s a weekday minyan in Pittsfield and a Shabbat minyan in Lenox, along with kabbalah workshops and classes in Yiddish and Hebrew.
Between Jewish book clubs, Talmud and lunch-and-learn study groups, and scholarly roundtables on topical issues, many spend the entire summer deep in conversation. (What could be more Jewish, really?) There is certainly plenty to discuss, as always — everything from Judaism’s changing demographics and America-Israel relations to the Shabbat ritual. A full listing of summer programs, available in PDF format from the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, is online at jewishberkshires.org — but one highlight worth noting is the popular Jewish book discussion group at Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.
Come evening, it’s time to settle in for some of America’s top theater and classical music. James Levine no longer presides over the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — but there are plenty of Jewish artists on the roster at Tanglewood, where Levine’s successor, Andris Nelson, is fresh off his inaugural season with the orchestra. From stalwarts like violinist Pinchas Zukerman and the pianists Emanuel Ax and Leon Fleisher to Vadim Gluzman, the young Soviet-born violin sensation, Tanglewood is a showcase for Jewish musicianship.
Lighter fare is the Jewish highlight of this summer’s theater. The Comden and Green classic “Bells Are Ringing,” with music by Jule Styne, ushers in the season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, with performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. The comedian Robert Klein also performs at the Colonial, while Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap” is at the Berkshire Theatre Group’s main stage in Stockbridge. And New York humor is once again the feature in Pittsfield, where Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” is on the lineup at the Barrington Stage Company.
In between shows, relax amid the hills with world-class art. The Clark, which turns 60 this year, just completed the final phase of an award-winning campus expansion that has transformed the museum into one of the Berkshires’ prettiest spots. With reflecting pools, floor-to-ceiling windows and views over the mountains, the Clark offers visual splendor even before you step inside one of America’s finest collections, with particularly strong holdings in American art.
Americana is the calling card at Stockbridge’s Norman Rockwell Museum, of course — but this summer, the Rockwell takes on a decidedly Brooklyn slant with “Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs,” on view through October. Chast, whose ironic eye has come to epitomize a certain New York Jewish outlook, has legions of fans from her longtime association with The New Yorker, and is enjoying a high profile after the success of last year’s graphic memoir, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”
Chast would appreciate the irony of so many Jewish New Yorkers escaping to the New England countryside, only to seek out the biting wit, Brooklyn accents and restless intellectualism of their hometown. But that combination of rustic and cosmopolitan has always been the Berkshires’ calling card — and this summer, there are more ways than ever to answer it.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Featured on NYBLUEPRINTWine Not?
Wine Lovers Beware: High Demand May Lead To Shortage
Let the good times flow, but be careful with that Prosecco
Joshua E. London and Lou Marmon | Contributing Writers
In our age of sheer abundance and seemingly endless variety, it is difficult to wrap one’s head around something like a possible wine shortage.
There are tens of thousands of wineries across the planet after all, including nearly 9,000 in the US alone, with nearly half of those in California. Apparently though, the global thirst for wine is not so easily quenched. According to a recent Vinexpo and the IWSR drinks industry report, annual wine consumption will increase to 273 billion cases by 2018. As pointed out by Wine Spectator magazine, that is equivalent to 32.8 billion bottles or enough wine to flood Manhattan. That’s a lot of vino.
Lucky for the wine drinkers, producers seem all too eager to try and meet demand. So despite wine being a remarkably tough business to succeed in, the number of new wineries and wine brands being started and the sheer acreage of cultivable land being newly planted with wine grapes are steadily increasing the world over.
Of course, when we recall that wine necessarily comes from this or that place in a fixed point in time, shortages seem less farfetched. Thus, late last month came news that the world may soon run out of Prosecco. As USAToday.comeported, “a shortage of the Italian bubbly could occur as a result of high demand and rainy weather, according to Roberto Cremonese, the exportmanager of the popular prosecco manufacturer Bisol.”
Prosecco is a sparkling wine made in the Friuli, Venezia, Giulia, and Veneto regions of northeastern Italy. There are some lovely, jolly good, kosher Proseccos on the market. Consider, for example, the Deccolio Prosecco ($11; sold at Whole Foods Markets), which offers floral, green apple, and tangerine aromas that develop into honey, pear, and lemon flavors in a medium bodied, nicely effervescent frame with hints of mineral and spice in the finish.
In truth, this “shortage” may also just be a marketing wheeze to drive up prices—note the “could occur” turn of phrase.
By contrast, The Drinks Business, a trade publication, days ago reported: “News of an upcoming Sauvignon Blanc shortage has been confirmed by New Zealand Winegrowers as the 2015 vintage is almost one third smaller than last year.” The quality of the 2015 vintage is expected to be great, due to a fabulous summer creating excellent conditions for ripening grapes, but the crop yields were diminished by 27 percent due to an unexpected spring frost.
So while Prosecco “may” experience a shortage, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc will definitely suffer a shortage, so expect prices to increase. Fans should buy and drink now, while the price and weather is right. A great kosher New Zealand option is the classically composed Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2013 ($20) that opens with citrusy floral aromas and hints of grass with peach, herbal, and melon flavors in a smooth frame nicely balanced with lemon and green apple.
L’Chaim!
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One reaches the Emanuel AME Church with its soaring steeple and sees a mass of bright colors from flowers and cards and balloons and ribbons all left behind by people who want to express their sympathy, love and hope. One appreciates the diversity of the color, ethnicity and background of the crowd of people paying their respects, perhaps the greatest response to the racist gunman who wanted to divide and spark another war between the citizens of our country.
In the hour or so that I am there I speak to people on the street, share my words of solidarity and empathy, attempt to deliver a letter of sympathy and solidarity to the leadership of the church, and just take in the moment. All the while there is a calmness and serenity to all those who visit with spouses, children and friends of the victims. There is no anger in the air, no shouting, no calls for vengeance or retribution. One leaves the site of the church in pain, but encouraged with the outpouring of unity and desire among so many to reject the hatred and racism that still pollutes our society.
As I start to walk across the street, just one block away, I come across Marion Square, a lovely bit of green in the middle of the concrete and buildings. And remarkably at the side of the plaza facing Calhoun Street stands a simple but powerful Holocaust Memorial to the martyrs of our people and in recognition of the survivors who made their way to Charleston. And once again a jumble of feelings and memories wells up and I think of the hate that produced the Shoah, and some of the affinities between the history of the Jewish people and the African-American community.
The African-American cab driver taking me back to my hotel tells me he grew up in New York, near Newburgh, and his best friend since then is a Jewish kid from an observant home. We talk of faith and communities and hopes, and of what could be.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot is chair of the department of Talmud and rabbinics at the SAR High School. He is the spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, N.J., and an officer of the International Rabbinic Fellowship.
charleston shooting
Six months after the attack on the Hyper Cacher market in Paris, we talk to French ex-pat Jews here as their friends and relatives back home are still in a "wait-and-see mode" about making aliyah.INTERNATIONAL
French Jews Still In ‘Wait-And-See Mode’
Six months after attack on kosher market, ex-pats here say little has changed back home.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Upper West Sider Stella Amar-Cohen says people there “are not talking about leaving right away.”
Most of the Parisian Jews who had considered making aliyah before a fatal terrorist attack on the city’s Hyper Cacher supermarket six months ago still think about moving to Israel, but few have taken the step, said a Manhattan expatriate who returned earlier this month from a visit to relatives in France.
In Nantes, northwest France, the soldiers guarding the city’s synagogue around the clock are gone, but police stand outside on Shabbat — as before the kosher market attack — according to a native of northwest France who was back there with her family last week.
But on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, home to a growing number of French Jews in recent decades, Rabbi Eitan Bendavid of the West Side Sephardic Synagogue said he notices an increase in the number of young Jews from France, mostly professionals, attending synagogue events since the Jan. 7 attack.
Following the attacks on the kosher supermarket and the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 16 lives, Israel called for wide-scale immigration from France. And many French Jews, wary of further anti-Semitic incidents, said they were ready to leave.
Since then, according to the Jewish Agency and to French Jews here who recently visited their homeland, reality has set in — it’s back to Jewish business, and Jewish life as usual, they say. It’s all talk and little aliyah.
A 2013 European Union study found that nearly half of French Jews said they were considering emigrating.
While the Hyper Cacher attack, the latest in a series of often-fatal attacks on French Jewry in recent decades, still resonates with many Jewish leaders and American politicians, the heightened concern within the French Jewish community seems to have abated; Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that “indifference is the profound challenge” in an address to the American Jewish Committee New York Region last week.
“Nothing has changed” since January, said Ilan Benhamou, a Paris native who moved to the Upper West Side six years ago. His friends discussed aliyah. “Nobody left. They’re in a wait-and-see mode.
“They have a good life in France,” he said. The attacks six months ago, “if anything, strengthened their pride in being French Jews,” he said, adding, “It’s not that easy to make a living in Israel.”
“The shock has passed. The sentiment of danger has somewhat leveled off,” said Stella Amar-Cohen, a native of France who has lived on the Upper West Side for a decade. She returned last week from a family visit.
She said the Jews she met in France are “more cautious, more aware” of personal security and show an interest in moving abroad, particularly to Israel. “But,” she said, “these clearly are not short-term plans. They’re not talking about leaving right away.”
Amar-Cohen said many people she knows in France took vacations in Israel this spring. “They realize it’s so expensive [to live] in Israel.”
While the number of French Jews who said they would make aliyah in the first months of this year was predicted to be 25 percent higher than last year’s figure, an actual decrease is likely, recent figures show.
Haaretz reported last week that 1,710 French Jews made aliyah in the first five months of this year, a drop of 19 percent compared with 2014.
While “the latest statistics say there has been a decrease of 15 percent of aliyah this year, these statistics are slightly flawed for several reasons,” Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, American Jewish Committee director in Paris, said in an email interview. The 2014 figure of 7,000 French Jews making aliyah “doesn’t take into account the number of Jews coming back to France and those who live in reality between France and Israel. This also doesn’t take into account those who emigrate elsewhere such as the United States or Canada.”
Rodan-Benzaquen cautioned that a sudden increase in aliyah from France was unlikely, despite the heightened fear in early 2015. She cited as a reason that fact that French Jews view “the January attacks … not isolated incidents” as part of an ongoing series of attacks committed mostly by poor, Arab émigrés whose families come from northern Africa. “French Jews have been worried for the past 15 years,” she said. “Every attack, every anti-Semitic incident renders the Jewish community more anxious and more worried. Smaller incidents have continued to happen since January. They know that it is possible, even probable that further, bigger attacks will happen.
“On the other hand,” Rodan-Benzaquen said, “they are grateful and reassured that the French government is taking the threat so seriously and has made it its priority to combat anti-Semitism.”
A spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, said interest in aliyah among French Jews and their participation in the Agency’s aliyah information sessions has remained high throughout the year.
“We expect more than 4,500 French Jews to make aliyah by the end of August, a 27.5 percent increase over the first eight months of 2014,” Avi Mayer, the agency’s spokesman told The Jewish Week in an email interview. He added that the “sense of insecurity amongst many French Jews remains potent.
“We are holding significantly more aliyah information sessions than ever before. … a recent [session] in Paris drew more than 6,000 attendees, triple the number of those who attended the same event last year,” he said.
For many French Jews, the United States, with more career opportunities for people with professional training, is a more likely destination than Israel.
Rabbi Bendavid, whose congregation is comprised of at least 60 percent French Jews, said the number of members with roots in France has not gone up significantly in the last six months, but he has noticed more young, single Jews from France; in other words, families and seniors are not coming here from France, but unattached members of the community are looking into possible employment here.
“Everyone who has family in France — there’s a lot of discussion about the future: Are we going to move? Are we going to make aliyah? Are we going to America?”
Their families often encourage them to consider the US instead of Israel, Rabbi Bendavid said.
Benhamou said many of the French Jews he knows are members of families who fled northern Africa 60 years ago after Israel was created and anti-Jewish discrimination increased. In France, they created new lives for themselves. “They don’t want to do this again,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
Also this week, Hannah Dreyfus reports on the launch of the New York branch of Honeymoon Israel, a Birthright Israel-like trip that gives young couples a heavily subsidized taste of Israel as they set off in their married lives. It's Summer Reading time and we offer a section that focuses on city stories, from Memphis to the Bronx and beyond. And in keeping with the summer theme, travel writer Hilary Danailova reports on the cultural offerings in the Berkshires.SHORT TAKES
Honeymoon Israel Launches In NYC
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Growing up as a Southern Baptist in the Deep South, Mary Davis never dreamed she’s spend her honeymoon in Israel, let alone as a Jew.
But the recent convert and Atlanta-native joined the first cohort of Honeymoon Israel, a program that provides highly subsidized, nine-day trips to Israel for groups of couples from the same city.
She went on the trip from Los Angeles with her new husband, Ari Kadin, originally from New York. “As a new Jew, I’ve never felt so accepted,” gushed Davis, who converted and married Kadin less than a month before the trip departed. “My heart is overflowing — we’ve already booked tickets back for Passover!”
Next stop for Honeymoon Israel: New York City. The program, launched in 2014 by Mike Wise, a long-time executive in Jewish federations, and Avi Rubel, the founding director of the travelprogram Masa Israel Journey, will launchapplications for their first-ever New York City cohort on July 15.
Rubel is expecting six or seven couples to apply per spot in NYC, compared to the four couples that applied per spot in Los Angeles and Phoenix. Twenty couples, between the ages of 25 and 40, will be accepted. Interfaith couples, same-sex couples, and committed life partners will be welcomed, as long as one of them is Jewish.
“This is not a Birthright trip,” said Rubel, who said couples are wined, dined and accommodated in upscale hotels throughout the nine days. “We’re not bopping around on busses — these couples are here to be pampered, and we deliver.”
According to Rubel, each couple pays $1,800 (flights included) for a tour worth an estimated $10,000. The trips are funded by an anonymous family foundation.
“We select for couples that are least engaged in Jewish life, and who have not yet figured out how they want to relate to Judaism, though they are open to exploring,” he said, citing the 71 percent intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews produced by the 2013 Pew Study on American Jews. “We have no prescription and no agenda — we just want to provide the chance to connect.”
Sustaining connection requires infrastructure, said Rubel, and Honeymoon Israel roots every trip in local Jewish organizations in order for couples to remain in contact after their return.
In New York City, the JCC Manhattan on the Upper West side, in partnership with UJA-Federation, will play a key role in keeping the group connected, said Dava Schub, chief program officer at the JCC.
“The Honeymoon Israel model, unlike Birthright, works with organizations and not just individuals,” said Schub, who said her team expends significant time looking to reconnect with local Birthright alum. A direct partnership will save the effort, she said.
“When the trip is over, we get a busload full of young couples who are jazzed, reconnected to Jewish life and Israel, and looking to engage. We’ll continue the journey with them,” said Schub, who added that the program’s mission dovetails with the JCC’s recent efforts to explore innovate ways to engage interfaith couples.
After their recent return from Israel, Davis and Kadin couldn’t wait to reconnect with their fellow couples, which she described as her “new Jewish family.”
“We’re on for a group movie night tonight,” she said, “and it’s only been a week since we got back.”
Image: First cohort of Honeymoon Israel from Phoenix, Az. Courtesy of Honeymoon Israel.
editor@jewishweek.org
Summer Reading 2015
Summer Reading: City Stories Neighborhood lit, from Memphis to the Bronx and beyond.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
TRAVEL
High Culture In The Hills
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
Most of us have never contemplated a Van Gogh and immediately thought of Western Massachusetts. But the undulating green hills of the Berkshires region bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Provence — at least as rendered by the artist in a series of works on view in “Van Gogh and Nature,” the summer blockbuster at theClark Art Institute in Williamstown.
And just as Van Gogh found inspiration in the landscapes of Arles and St.-Rémy, Jewish vacationers come to the bucolic towns of the Berkshires to be inspired in myriad ways, by everything from museums and theater to Jacob’s Pillow, the cradle of modern dance — not to mention a smorgasbord of Jewish activity that has little equal at summer resorts. Depending on your mood, you can easily fill summer days with intensive Torah study, practice your conversational Yiddish, learn to bake rugelach, immerse yourself in a Jewish literary scene and spend your nights listening to Jewish music from klezmer to Mendelssohn.
Lodging options have expanded accordingly, with new and restored properties ready to welcome the summer influx. The latest addition to the scene is Hotel on North in Pittsfield, a boutique hotel and restaurant that recently opened in a pair of 19th-century buildings.
Several historic properties offer incentives for visitors willing to book outside of the popular weekends. The Apple Tree Inn in Lenox offers a 20 percent midweek discount at its rolling, 22-acre estate, just a short walk uphill from Tanglewood. The Cranwell Spa and Golf Resort — another Lenox compound from the Gilded Age — offers specials that include a midweek Tanglewood package with two lawn concert tickets, aparking pass and a souvenir album. And the venerable Inn at Stockbridge, a gracious white mansion with rolling lawns, has a midweek deal that includes in-room massages and afternoon wine and cheese.
Generations of youngsters have lodged in considerably more rustic surroundings atCamp Ramah in the Berkshires, a local bulwark of the Conservative movement’s iconic summer camp. Many Berkshires visitors began summering here in the bunks at Ramah; there’s an entire website devoted to Ramah marriages, along with an annual alumni reunion, for those who haven’t already run into each other over lox and coffee at the Great Barrington Bagel Company.
Or former campers might meet up at the Berkshires’ grown-up outpost of Conservative Judaism — JTS in the Berkshires, a lecture series on alternate Fridays at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. This summer, scholars from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America will address the theme of “Hidden Histories,” with topics ranging from Jezebel to Jewish marriage.
The seminary isn’t the only institution moving out of doors. All summer long, Hevreh of Southern Berkshires, a Reform congregation in Great Barrington, takes worship into some of the area’s prettiest settings. Hevreh hosts a series of Tanglewood Shabbats; follow the blue and white balloons to an evening Kabbalat Shabbat and pre-concert picnic on the lawn, or a family morning Shabbat picnic before the matinée. There are also outdoor Havdalah services, including one for returning campers and their nostalgic parents that features a campfire, s’mores and a singalong.
Those looking for a daily minyan will find it at “Minyan in the Berkshires,” hosted by Chabad of the Berkshires. From now through August, there’s a weekday minyan in Pittsfield and a Shabbat minyan in Lenox, along with kabbalah workshops and classes in Yiddish and Hebrew.
Between Jewish book clubs, Talmud and lunch-and-learn study groups, and scholarly roundtables on topical issues, many spend the entire summer deep in conversation. (What could be more Jewish, really?) There is certainly plenty to discuss, as always — everything from Judaism’s changing demographics and America-Israel relations to the Shabbat ritual. A full listing of summer programs, available in PDF format from the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, is online at jewishberkshires.org — but one highlight worth noting is the popular Jewish book discussion group at Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.
Come evening, it’s time to settle in for some of America’s top theater and classical music. James Levine no longer presides over the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — but there are plenty of Jewish artists on the roster at Tanglewood, where Levine’s successor, Andris Nelson, is fresh off his inaugural season with the orchestra. From stalwarts like violinist Pinchas Zukerman and the pianists Emanuel Ax and Leon Fleisher to Vadim Gluzman, the young Soviet-born violin sensation, Tanglewood is a showcase for Jewish musicianship.
Lighter fare is the Jewish highlight of this summer’s theater. The Comden and Green classic “Bells Are Ringing,” with music by Jule Styne, ushers in the season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, with performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. The comedian Robert Klein also performs at the Colonial, while Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap” is at the Berkshire Theatre Group’s main stage in Stockbridge. And New York humor is once again the feature in Pittsfield, where Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” is on the lineup at the Barrington Stage Company.
In between shows, relax amid the hills with world-class art. The Clark, which turns 60 this year, just completed the final phase of an award-winning campus expansion that has transformed the museum into one of the Berkshires’ prettiest spots. With reflecting pools, floor-to-ceiling windows and views over the mountains, the Clark offers visual splendor even before you step inside one of America’s finest collections, with particularly strong holdings in American art.
Americana is the calling card at Stockbridge’s Norman Rockwell Museum, of course — but this summer, the Rockwell takes on a decidedly Brooklyn slant with “Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs,” on view through October. Chast, whose ironic eye has come to epitomize a certain New York Jewish outlook, has legions of fans from her longtime association with The New Yorker, and is enjoying a high profile after the success of last year’s graphic memoir, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”
Chast would appreciate the irony of so many Jewish New Yorkers escaping to the New England countryside, only to seek out the biting wit, Brooklyn accents and restless intellectualism of their hometown. But that combination of rustic and cosmopolitan has always been the Berkshires’ calling card — and this summer, there are more ways than ever to answer it.
editor@jewishweek.org
Enjoy the issue.
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BETWEEN THE LINES GARY ROSENBLATT
Pushing For Massive French Aliyah
Minimal investment could spur record immigration from a prosperous country, advocate says.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Speaking at the Grand Synagogue in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket murders in January, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stirred controversy when he announced: “Any Jew who chooses to come to Israel will be greeted with open arms and an open heart; it is not a foreign nation, and hopefully they and you will one day come to Israel.”
Some said that the prime minister, like his predecessors, was simply encouraging aliyah from the diaspora, while critics asserted that he was being insensitive to the community so soon after the tragedy.
But well before the terror attacks, a group of Israeli officials were developing an emergency plan for French aliyah that would be unique: proactive, comprehensive, and aimed at inducing all elements of the Jewish community there to resettle in the Jewish state.
The proposal, “an historic opportunity to absorb a massive aliyah wave from France,” is designed to take in 120,000 immigrants — about 30,000 families — over four years, according to a report issued by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), a Jerusalem-based Jewish think tank established by the Jewish Agency for Israel.
If Israel is prepared to create adequate housing and job opportunities through the private sector, the project would cost the government little and still be possible to achieve, “for the first time in the history of Zionism, a large immigration wave from a prosperous country,” according to Dov Maimon, a French-born senior fellow at JPPI. He, along with five government officials, drafted the 150-page report.
During the annual conference the group held last month in Long Island, and later by phone from Jerusalem, he outlined the proposal for me with great enthusiasm. But after presenting a convincing case for the many benefits of the ambitious strategy that he said would be a major asset for Israeli society as well as French Jewry, Maimon acknowledged that in all likelihood “for the moment, nothing will happen.”
He believes few Israeli leaders and politicians will call for change, in part because they see no political advantage in advocating for a non-voting foreign constituency — helping potential newcomers is not high on their priority list, Maimon noted — and because many believe large numbers of French Jews will come to Israel anyway as their situation at home worsens. So why outlay money and make elaborate preparations in advance?
“No one in the government is inclined to do this,” said Maimon, who has an engineering degree from the Technion and went on to receive an MBA and a then a doctorate in Jewish and Islamic mysticism.
“The old paradigm,” he said, “is that people come to Israel when in distress, faced with no other choice. So just wait.” He added that Israelis want politicians to address their needs. “This project is for people not here or not yet born. It’s hard to invest in the future.”
But the pity, he believes, is that in light of the attraction of countries like the U.S. and Canada, and with no serious Israeli response, many secular, less identified French Jews will assimilate. And more affluent Jews seeking solid business opportunities will move elsewhere, leaving the weaker and poorer elements of the Jewish community to make aliyah under duress.
That, in turn, would perpetuate an all-too-familiar immigration scenario where the Jerusalem government, faced with a serious economic burden in providing for tens of thousands of needy newcomers, will house them wherever it is convenient, creating additional financial and social problems for the new immigrants, and fostering resentment from them and society at large.
“In the next 15 years many Jews will have to leave Europe,” up to 250,000 of an estimated 600,000 from France alone, said Maimon. He cited growing anti-Semitism, largely carried out by a growing population of Muslims; an economic downturn; the strength of far-right parties; and a deterioration of the domestic security situation.
Last year 14,000 French Jews came to live in Israel, a dramatic increase of 32 percent over the previous year, with France topping the aliyah list of countries of origin for the first time. This year, in the wake of the terror attacks in January, the numbers are expected to be far higher.
In addition, studies show that 70 percent of French Jews see no future for them in France, 49 percent are considering leaving in the coming years, and only 3 percent trust France to take action against Islamic fundamentalists.
“Our assessment, based on studies conducted by the European Union and Israeli immigration statistics, as well as a deep understanding of the field, is that the aliyah potential from France numbers in the hundreds of thousands,” according to the JPPI report.
It calls for: establishing an “administrative oversight team” in the prime minister’s office to cut through the bureaucracy; allocating land for “accelerated real estate development”; offering tax incentives and salary subsidies to those creating jobs for the newcomers; and creating an investment fund of at least one billion shekels (about $260 million) — “Shekels For Euros” — for establishing infrastructure.
Natan Sharansky, chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, credits Maimon for “thinking out of the box, and thinking big, which is very important.” He told me in a phone interview from Jerusalem that French aliyah is one of the agency’s three primary day-to-day goals, along with aliyah from Ukraine and promoting Israel on U.S. campuses.
“Implementation [of the JPPI plan] would require coordination from several government ministries, foreign investment, and the private sector here and abroad,” he noted, “and nothing will be possible without the prime minister at the center.”
Sharansky said the issue would be part of the discussions at the agency board of governors meetings in Jerusalem this week. He is hopeful that he and Minister of Absorption Ze’ev Elkin, with whom he has held “intense discussions” on the subject, will present a coordinated plan for major-scale French aliyah to Netanyahu at some point.
Maimon is not holding his breath. In the meantime he is actively pursuing his goal, speaking frequently to Jewish groups when he visits France, and encouraging philanthropists in France and the U.S. to advance the plan. He hopes to create a pilot program in Ashkelon for about 2,000 French Jews, offering attractive housing and jobs.
Maimon thinks success there, and pressure on the government in Jerusalem to act, may have positive results. But he is a realist as well as a dreamer.
“I am told that American donors will only respond if there are more terror attacks [in France]. People tend to react to a crisis, and I worry that the Jewish people are not mature enough to see the future.” He cites the long history of Jewish persecution and exodus under extreme circumstances, from the biblical slaves in Egypt to the doomed Jews of Europe during the Nazi era.
“Unfortunately the French story may well be the same,” Maimon said. “If we don’t learn from history it will be the same — Jews only fleeing out of desperation.”
gary@jewishweek.org
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MUSINGSStretching The Limits
Rabbi David Wolpe
Special to the Jewish Week
Rabbi David Wolpe
Why do the five books of the Torah end with Israel still in the wilderness? The entire story points toward the Promised Land, yet Moses dies and the Israelites are outside the land.
One possibility is the Torah’s lesson that the land is both a reality and an ideal. In the book of Joshua, the Israelites enter the land and have to fight to establish themselves. In the wilderness, they will dream of the land and envision an ideal.
Robert Browning famously wrote: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?” In other words, the ideal is what motivates us to stretch ourselves, especially if we know that we are trying to achieve something out of reach. We will always fall short; if we set great goals, however, in our falling short we can still achieve remarkable things.
The Torah overestimated what the Jewish people could accomplish in the land. It would never be a perfect, peaceful place flowing with milk and honey. But only by presenting the ideal could they hope to make it a home worthy of the land God gave them.
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.
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An exhibit of the works of Van Gogh is on display this summer at the Clark Art Institute in williamstown, Mass. Jeff Goldberg
TRAVEL
High Culture In The Hills
Hilary Danailova
Travel WriterMost of us have never contemplated a Van Gogh and immediately thought of Western Massachusetts. But the undulating green hills of the Berkshires region bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Provence — at least as rendered by the artist in a series of works on view in “Van Gogh and Nature,” the summer blockbuster at theClark Art Institute in Williamstown.
And just as Van Gogh found inspiration in the landscapes of Arles and St.-Rémy, Jewish vacationers come to the bucolic towns of the Berkshires to be inspired in myriad ways, by everything from museums and theater to Jacob’s Pillow, the cradle of modern dance — not to mention a smorgasbord of Jewish activity that has little equal at summer resorts. Depending on your mood, you can easily fill summer days with intensive Torah study, practice your conversational Yiddish, learn to bake rugelach, immerse yourself in a Jewish literary scene and spend your nights listening to Jewish music from klezmer to Mendelssohn.
Lodging options have expanded accordingly, with new and restored properties ready to welcome the summer influx. The latest addition to the scene is Hotel on North in Pittsfield, a boutique hotel and restaurant that recently opened in a pair of 19th-century buildings.
Several historic properties offer incentives for visitors willing to book outside of the popular weekends. The Apple Tree Inn in Lenox offers a 20 percent midweek discount at its rolling, 22-acre estate, just a short walk uphill from Tanglewood. The Cranwell Spa and Golf Resort — another Lenox compound from the Gilded Age — offers specials that include a midweek Tanglewood package with two lawn concert tickets, aparking pass and a souvenir album. And the venerable Inn at Stockbridge, a gracious white mansion with rolling lawns, has a midweek deal that includes in-room massages and afternoon wine and cheese.
Generations of youngsters have lodged in considerably more rustic surroundings atCamp Ramah in the Berkshires, a local bulwark of the Conservative movement’s iconic summer camp. Many Berkshires visitors began summering here in the bunks at Ramah; there’s an entire website devoted to Ramah marriages, along with an annual alumni reunion, for those who haven’t already run into each other over lox and coffee at the Great Barrington Bagel Company.
Or former campers might meet up at the Berkshires’ grown-up outpost of Conservative Judaism — JTS in the Berkshires, a lecture series on alternate Fridays at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. This summer, scholars from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America will address the theme of “Hidden Histories,” with topics ranging from Jezebel to Jewish marriage.
The seminary isn’t the only institution moving out of doors. All summer long, Hevreh of Southern Berkshires, a Reform congregation in Great Barrington, takes worship into some of the area’s prettiest settings. Hevreh hosts a series of Tanglewood Shabbats; follow the blue and white balloons to an evening Kabbalat Shabbat and pre-concert picnic on the lawn, or a family morning Shabbat picnic before the matinée. There are also outdoor Havdalah services, including one for returning campers and their nostalgic parents that features a campfire, s’mores and a singalong.
Those looking for a daily minyan will find it at “Minyan in the Berkshires,” hosted by Chabad of the Berkshires. From now through August, there’s a weekday minyan in Pittsfield and a Shabbat minyan in Lenox, along with kabbalah workshops and classes in Yiddish and Hebrew.
Between Jewish book clubs, Talmud and lunch-and-learn study groups, and scholarly roundtables on topical issues, many spend the entire summer deep in conversation. (What could be more Jewish, really?) There is certainly plenty to discuss, as always — everything from Judaism’s changing demographics and America-Israel relations to the Shabbat ritual. A full listing of summer programs, available in PDF format from the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, is online at jewishberkshires.org — but one highlight worth noting is the popular Jewish book discussion group at Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.
Come evening, it’s time to settle in for some of America’s top theater and classical music. James Levine no longer presides over the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — but there are plenty of Jewish artists on the roster at Tanglewood, where Levine’s successor, Andris Nelson, is fresh off his inaugural season with the orchestra. From stalwarts like violinist Pinchas Zukerman and the pianists Emanuel Ax and Leon Fleisher to Vadim Gluzman, the young Soviet-born violin sensation, Tanglewood is a showcase for Jewish musicianship.
Lighter fare is the Jewish highlight of this summer’s theater. The Comden and Green classic “Bells Are Ringing,” with music by Jule Styne, ushers in the season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, with performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. The comedian Robert Klein also performs at the Colonial, while Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap” is at the Berkshire Theatre Group’s main stage in Stockbridge. And New York humor is once again the feature in Pittsfield, where Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” is on the lineup at the Barrington Stage Company.
In between shows, relax amid the hills with world-class art. The Clark, which turns 60 this year, just completed the final phase of an award-winning campus expansion that has transformed the museum into one of the Berkshires’ prettiest spots. With reflecting pools, floor-to-ceiling windows and views over the mountains, the Clark offers visual splendor even before you step inside one of America’s finest collections, with particularly strong holdings in American art.
Americana is the calling card at Stockbridge’s Norman Rockwell Museum, of course — but this summer, the Rockwell takes on a decidedly Brooklyn slant with “Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs,” on view through October. Chast, whose ironic eye has come to epitomize a certain New York Jewish outlook, has legions of fans from her longtime association with The New Yorker, and is enjoying a high profile after the success of last year’s graphic memoir, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”
Chast would appreciate the irony of so many Jewish New Yorkers escaping to the New England countryside, only to seek out the biting wit, Brooklyn accents and restless intellectualism of their hometown. But that combination of rustic and cosmopolitan has always been the Berkshires’ calling card — and this summer, there are more ways than ever to answer it.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Featured on NYBLUEPRINTWine Not?
Wine Lovers Beware: High Demand May Lead To Shortage
Let the good times flow, but be careful with that Prosecco
Joshua E. London and Lou Marmon | Contributing Writers
In our age of sheer abundance and seemingly endless variety, it is difficult to wrap one’s head around something like a possible wine shortage.
There are tens of thousands of wineries across the planet after all, including nearly 9,000 in the US alone, with nearly half of those in California. Apparently though, the global thirst for wine is not so easily quenched. According to a recent Vinexpo and the IWSR drinks industry report, annual wine consumption will increase to 273 billion cases by 2018. As pointed out by Wine Spectator magazine, that is equivalent to 32.8 billion bottles or enough wine to flood Manhattan. That’s a lot of vino.
Lucky for the wine drinkers, producers seem all too eager to try and meet demand. So despite wine being a remarkably tough business to succeed in, the number of new wineries and wine brands being started and the sheer acreage of cultivable land being newly planted with wine grapes are steadily increasing the world over.
Of course, when we recall that wine necessarily comes from this or that place in a fixed point in time, shortages seem less farfetched. Thus, late last month came news that the world may soon run out of Prosecco. As USAToday.comeported, “a shortage of the Italian bubbly could occur as a result of high demand and rainy weather, according to Roberto Cremonese, the exportmanager of the popular prosecco manufacturer Bisol.”
Prosecco is a sparkling wine made in the Friuli, Venezia, Giulia, and Veneto regions of northeastern Italy. There are some lovely, jolly good, kosher Proseccos on the market. Consider, for example, the Deccolio Prosecco ($11; sold at Whole Foods Markets), which offers floral, green apple, and tangerine aromas that develop into honey, pear, and lemon flavors in a medium bodied, nicely effervescent frame with hints of mineral and spice in the finish.
In truth, this “shortage” may also just be a marketing wheeze to drive up prices—note the “could occur” turn of phrase.
By contrast, The Drinks Business, a trade publication, days ago reported: “News of an upcoming Sauvignon Blanc shortage has been confirmed by New Zealand Winegrowers as the 2015 vintage is almost one third smaller than last year.” The quality of the 2015 vintage is expected to be great, due to a fabulous summer creating excellent conditions for ripening grapes, but the crop yields were diminished by 27 percent due to an unexpected spring frost.
So while Prosecco “may” experience a shortage, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc will definitely suffer a shortage, so expect prices to increase. Fans should buy and drink now, while the price and weather is right. A great kosher New Zealand option is the classically composed Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2013 ($20) that opens with citrusy floral aromas and hints of grass with peach, herbal, and melon flavors in a smooth frame nicely balanced with lemon and green apple.
L’Chaim!
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CELEBRATE JUNE 2015
Special Supplement to The Jewish Week
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Celebrate June 2015
Welcome to the bar/bat mitzvah do-over. A hunger for a good mitzvah project. Marking milestone birthdays, with a twist.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
TOP STORIES:INTERNATIONAL
French Jews Still In ‘Wait-And-See Mode’
Six months after attack on kosher market, ex-pats here say little has changed back home.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Upper West Sider Stella Amar-Cohen says people there “are not talking about leaving right away.”
Most of the Parisian Jews who had considered making aliyah before a fatal terrorist attack on the city’s Hyper Cacher supermarket six months ago still think about moving to Israel, but few have taken the step, said a Manhattan expatriate who returned earlier this month from a visit to relatives in France.
In Nantes, northwest France, the soldiers guarding the city’s synagogue around the clock are gone, but police stand outside on Shabbat — as before the kosher market attack — according to a native of northwest France who was back there with her family last week.
But on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, home to a growing number of French Jews in recent decades, Rabbi Eitan Bendavid of the West Side Sephardic Synagogue said he notices an increase in the number of young Jews from France, mostly professionals, attending synagogue events since the Jan. 7 attack.
Following the attacks on the kosher supermarket and the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 16 lives, Israel called for wide-scale immigration from France. And many French Jews, wary of further anti-Semitic incidents, said they were ready to leave.
Since then, according to the Jewish Agency and to French Jews here who recently visited their homeland, reality has set in — it’s back to Jewish business, and Jewish life as usual, they say. It’s all talk and little aliyah.
A 2013 European Union study found that nearly half of French Jews said they were considering emigrating.
While the Hyper Cacher attack, the latest in a series of often-fatal attacks on French Jewry in recent decades, still resonates with many Jewish leaders and American politicians, the heightened concern within the French Jewish community seems to have abated; Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that “indifference is the profound challenge” in an address to the American Jewish Committee New York Region last week.
“Nothing has changed” since January, said Ilan Benhamou, a Paris native who moved to the Upper West Side six years ago. His friends discussed aliyah. “Nobody left. They’re in a wait-and-see mode.
“They have a good life in France,” he said. The attacks six months ago, “if anything, strengthened their pride in being French Jews,” he said, adding, “It’s not that easy to make a living in Israel.”
“The shock has passed. The sentiment of danger has somewhat leveled off,” said Stella Amar-Cohen, a native of France who has lived on the Upper West Side for a decade. She returned last week from a family visit.
She said the Jews she met in France are “more cautious, more aware” of personal security and show an interest in moving abroad, particularly to Israel. “But,” she said, “these clearly are not short-term plans. They’re not talking about leaving right away.”
Amar-Cohen said many people she knows in France took vacations in Israel this spring. “They realize it’s so expensive [to live] in Israel.”
While the number of French Jews who said they would make aliyah in the first months of this year was predicted to be 25 percent higher than last year’s figure, an actual decrease is likely, recent figures show.
Haaretz reported last week that 1,710 French Jews made aliyah in the first five months of this year, a drop of 19 percent compared with 2014.
While “the latest statistics say there has been a decrease of 15 percent of aliyah this year, these statistics are slightly flawed for several reasons,” Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, American Jewish Committee director in Paris, said in an email interview. The 2014 figure of 7,000 French Jews making aliyah “doesn’t take into account the number of Jews coming back to France and those who live in reality between France and Israel. This also doesn’t take into account those who emigrate elsewhere such as the United States or Canada.”
Rodan-Benzaquen cautioned that a sudden increase in aliyah from France was unlikely, despite the heightened fear in early 2015. She cited as a reason that fact that French Jews view “the January attacks … not isolated incidents” as part of an ongoing series of attacks committed mostly by poor, Arab émigrés whose families come from northern Africa. “French Jews have been worried for the past 15 years,” she said. “Every attack, every anti-Semitic incident renders the Jewish community more anxious and more worried. Smaller incidents have continued to happen since January. They know that it is possible, even probable that further, bigger attacks will happen.
“On the other hand,” Rodan-Benzaquen said, “they are grateful and reassured that the French government is taking the threat so seriously and has made it its priority to combat anti-Semitism.”
A spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, said interest in aliyah among French Jews and their participation in the Agency’s aliyah information sessions has remained high throughout the year.
“We expect more than 4,500 French Jews to make aliyah by the end of August, a 27.5 percent increase over the first eight months of 2014,” Avi Mayer, the agency’s spokesman told The Jewish Week in an email interview. He added that the “sense of insecurity amongst many French Jews remains potent.
“We are holding significantly more aliyah information sessions than ever before. … a recent [session] in Paris drew more than 6,000 attendees, triple the number of those who attended the same event last year,” he said.
For many French Jews, the United States, with more career opportunities for people with professional training, is a more likely destination than Israel.
Rabbi Bendavid, whose congregation is comprised of at least 60 percent French Jews, said the number of members with roots in France has not gone up significantly in the last six months, but he has noticed more young, single Jews from France; in other words, families and seniors are not coming here from France, but unattached members of the community are looking into possible employment here.
“Everyone who has family in France — there’s a lot of discussion about the future: Are we going to move? Are we going to make aliyah? Are we going to America?”
Their families often encourage them to consider the US instead of Israel, Rabbi Bendavid said.
Benhamou said many of the French Jews he knows are members of families who fled northern Africa 60 years ago after Israel was created and anti-Jewish discrimination increased. In France, they created new lives for themselves. “They don’t want to do this again,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
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Tightened Security In Wake Of Massacre
In Charleston, synagogues assess threat while finding ways to stand up to hate.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
In a show of unity in the wake of the Emanuel AME killings. Getty Images
Security has been heightened at synagogues in Charleston, S.C., following the church massacre last week of nine black parishioners by a suspected white supremacist whose website was filled with hatred for both blacks and Jews.
In the wake of the shooting, the South Carolina Legislature agreed to debate the removal of the Confederate battle flag from outside South Carolina’s Statehouse. The flag, long a divisive symbol to many, had remained by law at full-staff following the shooting even as all other flags were lowered to half-staff — something that was galling to many.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley surprised many by suddenly calling for the flag’s removal, a move welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League.
Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, said that just as the flag was a “symbol of hate that justified fighting for slavery, it was later used as a symbol for anti-Semitism as well.”
“It became a symbol of white supremacy and the racism of the past that included Jews,” he added, noting that he hopes the shooting will spark renewed calls for gun control “because guns enable bigots to kill.”
Although President Barack Obama has advocated new gun control laws, he said he is doubtful Congress will enact them.
But rather than give up, Barbara Weinstein, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said her organization is concentrating on getting each of the 50 states to pass their own gun control laws. She noted that in May, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed into law a bill requiring background checks on firearm transfers between private parties.
Oregon is now one of seven states — including New York — to require background checks for all gun purchases.
Weinstein said gun violence and hate crimes are “both scourges we have to address.”
Just days before last week’s church shooting, Rabbi Alan Cohen of Synagogue Emanu-El, a 350-family Conservative congregation, said the synagogue board had discussed ways to improve security.
“This incident will only heighten the need for that kind of conversation,” he said. “There is now a sense of vulnerability among members of the Jewish community.”
Rabbi Cohen said that for the first time a plainclothes officer was in attendance during last weekend’s Shabbat services, and that a policeman sat in a police car outside the synagogue as he left the morning minyan Monday.
Rabbi Moshe Davis, spiritual leader of Brith Sholom Beth Israel, a 200-family Modern Orthodox congregation, said his board also “reassessed our security” and hired an off-duty police officer to provide protection during last weekend’s Shabbat services.
“He told us that given the circumstances surrounding the [church shooting] there was no reason for added security, but we had him there anyway,” Rabbi Davis said. “We wanted to make sure we did everything possible to make our people feel secure.”
At Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation and the largest of the three congregations with 520-families, security guards were posted at the synagogue last Shabbat as they are every week.
“We also have panic buttons around the synagogue and under the bima that go directly to 911,” said Rabbi Stephanie Alexander, the congregation’s senior spiritual leader.
Unlike the other two congregations, which held Shabbat services as usual, Rabbi Alexander said her congregation’s “leadership determined that the most significant way we could support [the community] was to be present when the community gathered together as one.
“So rather than holding our Friday night service at 8, we convened at the temple at 5 p.m., lit Shabbat candles, joined in song, and then walked the four blocks from our synagogue to the [College of Charleston] arena. At least 150 walked with us and other congregants met us there. We are proud to have had a sizeable Jewish presence, and I was honored to offer words of comfort to the community.”
In her invocation, Rabbi Alexander, 39, recalled the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and asked, “Why haven’t we eradicated the hate? Why haven’t we stopped the violence? We search, but we search together.”
She noted that when the shooting occurred last Thursday night at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, she was on a bus tour of civil rights sites in the South that was organized jointly by her synagogue and two area churches. They filled three buses and were between Memphis, Tenn., and Montgomery, Ala., when they learned of the massacre. She and the clergy of the two churches, Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III and Rev. Jeremy Rutledge, left the tour and flew back to Charleston. She left behind her 7-year-old son and husband, Rabbi Aaron Sherman.
“We had been to Atlanta and Selma, Jackson and Memphis,” Rabbi Alexander recalled in her invocation. “We’d stood in the precise locations where great leaders had been shot, and walked down the very roads where communities had marched and lifted one another up. At some point in this whirlwind, I’ve lost the ability to differentiate between what’s been preserved in black-and-white and what is happening in living color. I had hoped against hope that we had left behind the racism that could spur such violence and destruction.”
An interreligious service of solidarity was also held last Friday night at Temple Israel of Lawrence, L.I. Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, the Reform congregation’s spiritual leader, said it was organized to show support for the families of the victims “and to make a statement for our nation as a whole that the carnage [was] brought about by the lack of proper legislation involving hand guns … and because racists of all types still exist.”
And an interfaith community prayer vigil was scheduled for this week in Silver Spring, Md., that was organized in part by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.
On Monday, Rabbi Davis said, “Charleston was and still is in a state of shock.”
But since the arrest of the suspected gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, of Lexington, S.C., within hours of the shooting that Roof reportedly said he hoped would trigger a race war, Rabbi Davis said a “sense of unity” had fallen over the community.
“People of all races and religions are coming together to stand against racial prejudice and hate,” he said. “The guy was a racist and a white supremacist. I’m not surprised to learn he also hated Jews.”
An online racist manifesto said to be written by Roof and filled with grammatical errors — he dropped out of high school after repeating the ninth grade — asserts that the “issues with jews [sic] is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the Jewish identity, then they wouldn’t cause much of a problem. …
“Just like n***, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on. I dont [sic] pretend to understand why jews do what they do. They are enigma [sic].”
In commenting on the events of the last week, Ethan Felson, vice president of theJewish Council for Public Affairs, said the “teachable moments out of this unspeakable tragedy are about the unfinished conversation in America about race and bigotry. There is something deeply broken in our society when extremists of any stripe repeatedly act out their hatred in these dystopian scenes.”
Hadar Susskind, director of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, said last week’s church massacre was “different from some of the other horrible shootings that have happened in that it is clearly racially motivated and very much connected to our work on racial justice.”
Those thoughts were echoed by Marjorie Dove Kent, executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, who said the “issue of institutional racism” has been brought to the fore by the shooting.
“The real issue here is white supremacy and it rests on a hatred of both blacks and Jews,” she said. “This is a place of alignment for all to rally against. … For the last 25 years our group in partnership with other organizations that are led by people of color have been working on some of the major issues affecting our city and country. Now is a powerful moment for the Jewish community to invest in those relationships.”
Jacobo Mintzer, president of Synagogue Emanu-El who was born in Argentina and lived in New York City before moving to Charleston, said the one thing he has learned in his travels is that “there are always people with hatred in their hearts.”
“Hatred is everywhere and it is often directed towards the people believed to be the most vulnerable,” he observed.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot, spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, N.J., flew to Charleston for a one-day visit as a representative of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a modern Orthodox group.
“In addition to feeling sympathy, we wanted to show in a concrete way our solidarity,” he said.
He said he went to the Emanuel AME Church and found it closed. But he said he spoke with people outside the church “and tried to express our condolences and sympathy.”
“I was very encouraged by the tone of the talk I’ve heard here,” he said. “I didn’t hear bitterness. There is a lot of goodwill and a desire to come together.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
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In Charleston, At The Corner Of Pain And Hope
A rabbi's view from the ground in post-Massacre South Carolina.
Nathaniel Helfgot
Special To The Jewish Week
Barbara Owens leaves a message on a tree in front of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Getty Images
Charleston, S.C. — In last Shabbat’s Torah portion, we read the last words recorded in the Bible uttered by the people of the first generation that left Egypt but did not reach the Promised Land. After all of the struggles and challenges and the sins and death and destruction, they plaintively ask, “ha-im tamnu ligvoah?” — “Have we come to the end of our dying?” or, left unspoken, will such tragedies continue and continue?
As my dear friend, Rabbi Shmuel Hain put it last week, the massacre of the nine innocent people at the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, S.C., is a moment in our nation’s history where we also cry out, “Will the dying, the killing, the racism, the hate never end?” Are we destined to repeat these scenes over and over again?
In the aftermath of the horrible murder of churchgoers engaged in the study of God’s word, many people reached out in sympathy and empathy to help and to heal. The leadership of the International Rabbinic Fellowship felt it was important for one of us to go down to Charleston as well, in person. It was a small gesture to share our presence and words and solidarity as committed Jews and fellow Americans of faith with the community that had experienced such pain and sorrow. And so on Monday, I flew to Charleston.
On the short ride from the airport, one is struck by both the beauty of the landscape and the names of the streets and sights that thrust you back in time for a long-forgotten American history lesson. An exit on the right directs you to Fort Sumter, the very spot where the bloody four-year conflict over slavery and dignity, our nation’s Civil War, began. Here one walks on the very touchstones of our nation’s sullied past, while at the same time looking around and appreciating the amazing strides we as a nation have achieved since those terrible years, and the challenges that still lie ahead.
Special Supplement to The Jewish Week
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TOP STORIES:INTERNATIONAL
French Jews Still In ‘Wait-And-See Mode’
Six months after attack on kosher market, ex-pats here say little has changed back home.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Upper West Sider Stella Amar-Cohen says people there “are not talking about leaving right away.”
Most of the Parisian Jews who had considered making aliyah before a fatal terrorist attack on the city’s Hyper Cacher supermarket six months ago still think about moving to Israel, but few have taken the step, said a Manhattan expatriate who returned earlier this month from a visit to relatives in France.
In Nantes, northwest France, the soldiers guarding the city’s synagogue around the clock are gone, but police stand outside on Shabbat — as before the kosher market attack — according to a native of northwest France who was back there with her family last week.
But on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, home to a growing number of French Jews in recent decades, Rabbi Eitan Bendavid of the West Side Sephardic Synagogue said he notices an increase in the number of young Jews from France, mostly professionals, attending synagogue events since the Jan. 7 attack.
Following the attacks on the kosher supermarket and the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 16 lives, Israel called for wide-scale immigration from France. And many French Jews, wary of further anti-Semitic incidents, said they were ready to leave.
Since then, according to the Jewish Agency and to French Jews here who recently visited their homeland, reality has set in — it’s back to Jewish business, and Jewish life as usual, they say. It’s all talk and little aliyah.
A 2013 European Union study found that nearly half of French Jews said they were considering emigrating.
While the Hyper Cacher attack, the latest in a series of often-fatal attacks on French Jewry in recent decades, still resonates with many Jewish leaders and American politicians, the heightened concern within the French Jewish community seems to have abated; Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that “indifference is the profound challenge” in an address to the American Jewish Committee New York Region last week.
“Nothing has changed” since January, said Ilan Benhamou, a Paris native who moved to the Upper West Side six years ago. His friends discussed aliyah. “Nobody left. They’re in a wait-and-see mode.
“They have a good life in France,” he said. The attacks six months ago, “if anything, strengthened their pride in being French Jews,” he said, adding, “It’s not that easy to make a living in Israel.”
“The shock has passed. The sentiment of danger has somewhat leveled off,” said Stella Amar-Cohen, a native of France who has lived on the Upper West Side for a decade. She returned last week from a family visit.
She said the Jews she met in France are “more cautious, more aware” of personal security and show an interest in moving abroad, particularly to Israel. “But,” she said, “these clearly are not short-term plans. They’re not talking about leaving right away.”
Amar-Cohen said many people she knows in France took vacations in Israel this spring. “They realize it’s so expensive [to live] in Israel.”
While the number of French Jews who said they would make aliyah in the first months of this year was predicted to be 25 percent higher than last year’s figure, an actual decrease is likely, recent figures show.
Haaretz reported last week that 1,710 French Jews made aliyah in the first five months of this year, a drop of 19 percent compared with 2014.
While “the latest statistics say there has been a decrease of 15 percent of aliyah this year, these statistics are slightly flawed for several reasons,” Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, American Jewish Committee director in Paris, said in an email interview. The 2014 figure of 7,000 French Jews making aliyah “doesn’t take into account the number of Jews coming back to France and those who live in reality between France and Israel. This also doesn’t take into account those who emigrate elsewhere such as the United States or Canada.”
Rodan-Benzaquen cautioned that a sudden increase in aliyah from France was unlikely, despite the heightened fear in early 2015. She cited as a reason that fact that French Jews view “the January attacks … not isolated incidents” as part of an ongoing series of attacks committed mostly by poor, Arab émigrés whose families come from northern Africa. “French Jews have been worried for the past 15 years,” she said. “Every attack, every anti-Semitic incident renders the Jewish community more anxious and more worried. Smaller incidents have continued to happen since January. They know that it is possible, even probable that further, bigger attacks will happen.
“On the other hand,” Rodan-Benzaquen said, “they are grateful and reassured that the French government is taking the threat so seriously and has made it its priority to combat anti-Semitism.”
A spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, said interest in aliyah among French Jews and their participation in the Agency’s aliyah information sessions has remained high throughout the year.
“We expect more than 4,500 French Jews to make aliyah by the end of August, a 27.5 percent increase over the first eight months of 2014,” Avi Mayer, the agency’s spokesman told The Jewish Week in an email interview. He added that the “sense of insecurity amongst many French Jews remains potent.
“We are holding significantly more aliyah information sessions than ever before. … a recent [session] in Paris drew more than 6,000 attendees, triple the number of those who attended the same event last year,” he said.
For many French Jews, the United States, with more career opportunities for people with professional training, is a more likely destination than Israel.
Rabbi Bendavid, whose congregation is comprised of at least 60 percent French Jews, said the number of members with roots in France has not gone up significantly in the last six months, but he has noticed more young, single Jews from France; in other words, families and seniors are not coming here from France, but unattached members of the community are looking into possible employment here.
“Everyone who has family in France — there’s a lot of discussion about the future: Are we going to move? Are we going to make aliyah? Are we going to America?”
Their families often encourage them to consider the US instead of Israel, Rabbi Bendavid said.
Benhamou said many of the French Jews he knows are members of families who fled northern Africa 60 years ago after Israel was created and anti-Jewish discrimination increased. In France, they created new lives for themselves. “They don’t want to do this again,” he said.
steve@jewishweek.org
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NATIONALTightened Security In Wake Of Massacre
In Charleston, synagogues assess threat while finding ways to stand up to hate.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
In a show of unity in the wake of the Emanuel AME killings. Getty Images
Security has been heightened at synagogues in Charleston, S.C., following the church massacre last week of nine black parishioners by a suspected white supremacist whose website was filled with hatred for both blacks and Jews.
In the wake of the shooting, the South Carolina Legislature agreed to debate the removal of the Confederate battle flag from outside South Carolina’s Statehouse. The flag, long a divisive symbol to many, had remained by law at full-staff following the shooting even as all other flags were lowered to half-staff — something that was galling to many.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley surprised many by suddenly calling for the flag’s removal, a move welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League.
Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, said that just as the flag was a “symbol of hate that justified fighting for slavery, it was later used as a symbol for anti-Semitism as well.”
“It became a symbol of white supremacy and the racism of the past that included Jews,” he added, noting that he hopes the shooting will spark renewed calls for gun control “because guns enable bigots to kill.”
Although President Barack Obama has advocated new gun control laws, he said he is doubtful Congress will enact them.
But rather than give up, Barbara Weinstein, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said her organization is concentrating on getting each of the 50 states to pass their own gun control laws. She noted that in May, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed into law a bill requiring background checks on firearm transfers between private parties.
Oregon is now one of seven states — including New York — to require background checks for all gun purchases.
Weinstein said gun violence and hate crimes are “both scourges we have to address.”
Just days before last week’s church shooting, Rabbi Alan Cohen of Synagogue Emanu-El, a 350-family Conservative congregation, said the synagogue board had discussed ways to improve security.
“This incident will only heighten the need for that kind of conversation,” he said. “There is now a sense of vulnerability among members of the Jewish community.”
Rabbi Cohen said that for the first time a plainclothes officer was in attendance during last weekend’s Shabbat services, and that a policeman sat in a police car outside the synagogue as he left the morning minyan Monday.
Rabbi Moshe Davis, spiritual leader of Brith Sholom Beth Israel, a 200-family Modern Orthodox congregation, said his board also “reassessed our security” and hired an off-duty police officer to provide protection during last weekend’s Shabbat services.
“He told us that given the circumstances surrounding the [church shooting] there was no reason for added security, but we had him there anyway,” Rabbi Davis said. “We wanted to make sure we did everything possible to make our people feel secure.”
At Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation and the largest of the three congregations with 520-families, security guards were posted at the synagogue last Shabbat as they are every week.
“We also have panic buttons around the synagogue and under the bima that go directly to 911,” said Rabbi Stephanie Alexander, the congregation’s senior spiritual leader.
Unlike the other two congregations, which held Shabbat services as usual, Rabbi Alexander said her congregation’s “leadership determined that the most significant way we could support [the community] was to be present when the community gathered together as one.
“So rather than holding our Friday night service at 8, we convened at the temple at 5 p.m., lit Shabbat candles, joined in song, and then walked the four blocks from our synagogue to the [College of Charleston] arena. At least 150 walked with us and other congregants met us there. We are proud to have had a sizeable Jewish presence, and I was honored to offer words of comfort to the community.”
In her invocation, Rabbi Alexander, 39, recalled the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and asked, “Why haven’t we eradicated the hate? Why haven’t we stopped the violence? We search, but we search together.”
She noted that when the shooting occurred last Thursday night at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, she was on a bus tour of civil rights sites in the South that was organized jointly by her synagogue and two area churches. They filled three buses and were between Memphis, Tenn., and Montgomery, Ala., when they learned of the massacre. She and the clergy of the two churches, Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III and Rev. Jeremy Rutledge, left the tour and flew back to Charleston. She left behind her 7-year-old son and husband, Rabbi Aaron Sherman.
“We had been to Atlanta and Selma, Jackson and Memphis,” Rabbi Alexander recalled in her invocation. “We’d stood in the precise locations where great leaders had been shot, and walked down the very roads where communities had marched and lifted one another up. At some point in this whirlwind, I’ve lost the ability to differentiate between what’s been preserved in black-and-white and what is happening in living color. I had hoped against hope that we had left behind the racism that could spur such violence and destruction.”
An interreligious service of solidarity was also held last Friday night at Temple Israel of Lawrence, L.I. Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, the Reform congregation’s spiritual leader, said it was organized to show support for the families of the victims “and to make a statement for our nation as a whole that the carnage [was] brought about by the lack of proper legislation involving hand guns … and because racists of all types still exist.”
And an interfaith community prayer vigil was scheduled for this week in Silver Spring, Md., that was organized in part by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.
On Monday, Rabbi Davis said, “Charleston was and still is in a state of shock.”
But since the arrest of the suspected gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, of Lexington, S.C., within hours of the shooting that Roof reportedly said he hoped would trigger a race war, Rabbi Davis said a “sense of unity” had fallen over the community.
“People of all races and religions are coming together to stand against racial prejudice and hate,” he said. “The guy was a racist and a white supremacist. I’m not surprised to learn he also hated Jews.”
An online racist manifesto said to be written by Roof and filled with grammatical errors — he dropped out of high school after repeating the ninth grade — asserts that the “issues with jews [sic] is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the Jewish identity, then they wouldn’t cause much of a problem. …
“Just like n***, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on. I dont [sic] pretend to understand why jews do what they do. They are enigma [sic].”
In commenting on the events of the last week, Ethan Felson, vice president of theJewish Council for Public Affairs, said the “teachable moments out of this unspeakable tragedy are about the unfinished conversation in America about race and bigotry. There is something deeply broken in our society when extremists of any stripe repeatedly act out their hatred in these dystopian scenes.”
Hadar Susskind, director of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, said last week’s church massacre was “different from some of the other horrible shootings that have happened in that it is clearly racially motivated and very much connected to our work on racial justice.”
Those thoughts were echoed by Marjorie Dove Kent, executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, who said the “issue of institutional racism” has been brought to the fore by the shooting.
“The real issue here is white supremacy and it rests on a hatred of both blacks and Jews,” she said. “This is a place of alignment for all to rally against. … For the last 25 years our group in partnership with other organizations that are led by people of color have been working on some of the major issues affecting our city and country. Now is a powerful moment for the Jewish community to invest in those relationships.”
Jacobo Mintzer, president of Synagogue Emanu-El who was born in Argentina and lived in New York City before moving to Charleston, said the one thing he has learned in his travels is that “there are always people with hatred in their hearts.”
“Hatred is everywhere and it is often directed towards the people believed to be the most vulnerable,” he observed.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot, spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, N.J., flew to Charleston for a one-day visit as a representative of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a modern Orthodox group.
“In addition to feeling sympathy, we wanted to show in a concrete way our solidarity,” he said.
He said he went to the Emanuel AME Church and found it closed. But he said he spoke with people outside the church “and tried to express our condolences and sympathy.”
“I was very encouraged by the tone of the talk I’ve heard here,” he said. “I didn’t hear bitterness. There is a lot of goodwill and a desire to come together.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
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FIRST PERSONIn Charleston, At The Corner Of Pain And Hope
A rabbi's view from the ground in post-Massacre South Carolina.
Nathaniel Helfgot
Special To The Jewish Week
Barbara Owens leaves a message on a tree in front of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Getty Images
Charleston, S.C. — In last Shabbat’s Torah portion, we read the last words recorded in the Bible uttered by the people of the first generation that left Egypt but did not reach the Promised Land. After all of the struggles and challenges and the sins and death and destruction, they plaintively ask, “ha-im tamnu ligvoah?” — “Have we come to the end of our dying?” or, left unspoken, will such tragedies continue and continue?
As my dear friend, Rabbi Shmuel Hain put it last week, the massacre of the nine innocent people at the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, S.C., is a moment in our nation’s history where we also cry out, “Will the dying, the killing, the racism, the hate never end?” Are we destined to repeat these scenes over and over again?
In the aftermath of the horrible murder of churchgoers engaged in the study of God’s word, many people reached out in sympathy and empathy to help and to heal. The leadership of the International Rabbinic Fellowship felt it was important for one of us to go down to Charleston as well, in person. It was a small gesture to share our presence and words and solidarity as committed Jews and fellow Americans of faith with the community that had experienced such pain and sorrow. And so on Monday, I flew to Charleston.
On the short ride from the airport, one is struck by both the beauty of the landscape and the names of the streets and sights that thrust you back in time for a long-forgotten American history lesson. An exit on the right directs you to Fort Sumter, the very spot where the bloody four-year conflict over slavery and dignity, our nation’s Civil War, began. Here one walks on the very touchstones of our nation’s sullied past, while at the same time looking around and appreciating the amazing strides we as a nation have achieved since those terrible years, and the challenges that still lie ahead.
Reaching downtown Charleston one turns onto Calhoun Street, named after Sen. John Calhoun. He is recognized as one of the great senators in American history but was a vigorous proponent of slavery and state rights, pushing the South toward succession.
One reaches the Emanuel AME Church with its soaring steeple and sees a mass of bright colors from flowers and cards and balloons and ribbons all left behind by people who want to express their sympathy, love and hope. One appreciates the diversity of the color, ethnicity and background of the crowd of people paying their respects, perhaps the greatest response to the racist gunman who wanted to divide and spark another war between the citizens of our country.
In the hour or so that I am there I speak to people on the street, share my words of solidarity and empathy, attempt to deliver a letter of sympathy and solidarity to the leadership of the church, and just take in the moment. All the while there is a calmness and serenity to all those who visit with spouses, children and friends of the victims. There is no anger in the air, no shouting, no calls for vengeance or retribution. One leaves the site of the church in pain, but encouraged with the outpouring of unity and desire among so many to reject the hatred and racism that still pollutes our society.
As I start to walk across the street, just one block away, I come across Marion Square, a lovely bit of green in the middle of the concrete and buildings. And remarkably at the side of the plaza facing Calhoun Street stands a simple but powerful Holocaust Memorial to the martyrs of our people and in recognition of the survivors who made their way to Charleston. And once again a jumble of feelings and memories wells up and I think of the hate that produced the Shoah, and some of the affinities between the history of the Jewish people and the African-American community.
The African-American cab driver taking me back to my hotel tells me he grew up in New York, near Newburgh, and his best friend since then is a Jewish kid from an observant home. We talk of faith and communities and hopes, and of what could be.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot is chair of the department of Talmud and rabbinics at the SAR High School. He is the spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, N.J., and an officer of the International Rabbinic Fellowship.
charleston shooting
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Honeymoon Israel Launches In NYC
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Growing up as a Southern Baptist in the Deep South, Mary Davis never dreamed she’s spend her honeymoon in Israel, let alone as a Jew.
But the recent convert and Atlanta-native joined the first cohort of Honeymoon Israel, a program that provides highly subsidized, nine-day trips to Israel for groups of couples from the same city.
She went on the trip from Los Angeles with her new husband, Ari Kadin, originally from New York. “As a new Jew, I’ve never felt so accepted,” gushed Davis, who converted and married Kadin less than a month before the trip departed. “My heart is overflowing — we’ve already booked tickets back for Passover!”
Next stop for Honeymoon Israel: New York City. The program, launched in 2014 by Mike Wise, a long-time executive in Jewish federations, and Avi Rubel, the founding director of the travelprogram Masa Israel Journey, will launchapplications for their first-ever New York City cohort on July 15.
Rubel is expecting six or seven couples to apply per spot in NYC, compared to the four couples that applied per spot in Los Angeles and Phoenix. Twenty couples, between the ages of 25 and 40, will be accepted. Interfaith couples, same-sex couples, and committed life partners will be welcomed, as long as one of them is Jewish.
“This is not a Birthright trip,” said Rubel, who said couples are wined, dined and accommodated in upscale hotels throughout the nine days. “We’re not bopping around on busses — these couples are here to be pampered, and we deliver.”
According to Rubel, each couple pays $1,800 (flights included) for a tour worth an estimated $10,000. The trips are funded by an anonymous family foundation.
“We select for couples that are least engaged in Jewish life, and who have not yet figured out how they want to relate to Judaism, though they are open to exploring,” he said, citing the 71 percent intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews produced by the 2013 Pew Study on American Jews. “We have no prescription and no agenda — we just want to provide the chance to connect.”
Sustaining connection requires infrastructure, said Rubel, and Honeymoon Israel roots every trip in local Jewish organizations in order for couples to remain in contact after their return.
In New York City, the JCC Manhattan on the Upper West side, in partnership with UJA-Federation, will play a key role in keeping the group connected, said Dava Schub, chief program officer at the JCC.
“The Honeymoon Israel model, unlike Birthright, works with organizations and not just individuals,” said Schub, who said her team expends significant time looking to reconnect with local Birthright alum. A direct partnership will save the effort, she said.
“When the trip is over, we get a busload full of young couples who are jazzed, reconnected to Jewish life and Israel, and looking to engage. We’ll continue the journey with them,” said Schub, who added that the program’s mission dovetails with the JCC’s recent efforts to explore innovate ways to engage interfaith couples.
After their recent return from Israel, Davis and Kadin couldn’t wait to reconnect with their fellow couples, which she described as her “new Jewish family.”
“We’re on for a group movie night tonight,” she said, “and it’s only been a week since we got back.”
Image: First cohort of Honeymoon Israel from Phoenix, Az. Courtesy of Honeymoon Israel.
editor@jewishweek.org
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The Jewish Week
One reaches the Emanuel AME Church with its soaring steeple and sees a mass of bright colors from flowers and cards and balloons and ribbons all left behind by people who want to express their sympathy, love and hope. One appreciates the diversity of the color, ethnicity and background of the crowd of people paying their respects, perhaps the greatest response to the racist gunman who wanted to divide and spark another war between the citizens of our country.
In the hour or so that I am there I speak to people on the street, share my words of solidarity and empathy, attempt to deliver a letter of sympathy and solidarity to the leadership of the church, and just take in the moment. All the while there is a calmness and serenity to all those who visit with spouses, children and friends of the victims. There is no anger in the air, no shouting, no calls for vengeance or retribution. One leaves the site of the church in pain, but encouraged with the outpouring of unity and desire among so many to reject the hatred and racism that still pollutes our society.
As I start to walk across the street, just one block away, I come across Marion Square, a lovely bit of green in the middle of the concrete and buildings. And remarkably at the side of the plaza facing Calhoun Street stands a simple but powerful Holocaust Memorial to the martyrs of our people and in recognition of the survivors who made their way to Charleston. And once again a jumble of feelings and memories wells up and I think of the hate that produced the Shoah, and some of the affinities between the history of the Jewish people and the African-American community.
The African-American cab driver taking me back to my hotel tells me he grew up in New York, near Newburgh, and his best friend since then is a Jewish kid from an observant home. We talk of faith and communities and hopes, and of what could be.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot is chair of the department of Talmud and rabbinics at the SAR High School. He is the spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, N.J., and an officer of the International Rabbinic Fellowship.
charleston shooting
Read More
SHORT TAKESHoneymoon Israel Launches In NYC
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Growing up as a Southern Baptist in the Deep South, Mary Davis never dreamed she’s spend her honeymoon in Israel, let alone as a Jew.
But the recent convert and Atlanta-native joined the first cohort of Honeymoon Israel, a program that provides highly subsidized, nine-day trips to Israel for groups of couples from the same city.
She went on the trip from Los Angeles with her new husband, Ari Kadin, originally from New York. “As a new Jew, I’ve never felt so accepted,” gushed Davis, who converted and married Kadin less than a month before the trip departed. “My heart is overflowing — we’ve already booked tickets back for Passover!”
Next stop for Honeymoon Israel: New York City. The program, launched in 2014 by Mike Wise, a long-time executive in Jewish federations, and Avi Rubel, the founding director of the travelprogram Masa Israel Journey, will launchapplications for their first-ever New York City cohort on July 15.
Rubel is expecting six or seven couples to apply per spot in NYC, compared to the four couples that applied per spot in Los Angeles and Phoenix. Twenty couples, between the ages of 25 and 40, will be accepted. Interfaith couples, same-sex couples, and committed life partners will be welcomed, as long as one of them is Jewish.
“This is not a Birthright trip,” said Rubel, who said couples are wined, dined and accommodated in upscale hotels throughout the nine days. “We’re not bopping around on busses — these couples are here to be pampered, and we deliver.”
According to Rubel, each couple pays $1,800 (flights included) for a tour worth an estimated $10,000. The trips are funded by an anonymous family foundation.
“We select for couples that are least engaged in Jewish life, and who have not yet figured out how they want to relate to Judaism, though they are open to exploring,” he said, citing the 71 percent intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews produced by the 2013 Pew Study on American Jews. “We have no prescription and no agenda — we just want to provide the chance to connect.”
Sustaining connection requires infrastructure, said Rubel, and Honeymoon Israel roots every trip in local Jewish organizations in order for couples to remain in contact after their return.
In New York City, the JCC Manhattan on the Upper West side, in partnership with UJA-Federation, will play a key role in keeping the group connected, said Dava Schub, chief program officer at the JCC.
“The Honeymoon Israel model, unlike Birthright, works with organizations and not just individuals,” said Schub, who said her team expends significant time looking to reconnect with local Birthright alum. A direct partnership will save the effort, she said.
“When the trip is over, we get a busload full of young couples who are jazzed, reconnected to Jewish life and Israel, and looking to engage. We’ll continue the journey with them,” said Schub, who added that the program’s mission dovetails with the JCC’s recent efforts to explore innovate ways to engage interfaith couples.
After their recent return from Israel, Davis and Kadin couldn’t wait to reconnect with their fellow couples, which she described as her “new Jewish family.”
“We’re on for a group movie night tonight,” she said, “and it’s only been a week since we got back.”
Image: First cohort of Honeymoon Israel from Phoenix, Az. Courtesy of Honeymoon Israel.
editor@jewishweek.org
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The Jewish Week
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