Friday, June 26, 2015
Dear Reader,
KulturfestNYC - a weeklong festival of Jewish performing arts - drew more than 50,000 people for its inaugural season. Jewish Week culture editor Sandee Brawarsky gives us a taste of the diverse performances - and the camaraderie that developed among the spectators. NEW YORK
A Pop-up World’s Fair Of Jewish Culture
Taking in a sampling of shows at KulturfestNYC, which drew some 50,000 people.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
From Kulturfest concert in Central Park. Courtesy of Kulturfest
Watching a concert of Yiddish music in Central Park last week was a bit like playing an old-fashioned game of Telephone. My Yiddish-speaking husband would translate a refrain, whisper it to me, and then I’d lean over to try to explain the meaning to the opera singer from Ukraine who happened to be sitting next to me, along with another Ukrainian who understood some of the lyrics, as he spoke German. He’d then pass the sentence along to an American friend.
But mostly we clapped, sang along and enjoyed the gorgeous voices and showmanship of Cantors Avraham Fried, Netanel Hershtik, Yanky Lemmer, Joseph Malovaney, Lipa Shmeltzer and the neo-chasidic band Zusha. Each cantor sang solo, but the best parts were when they came on stage together, when the elegant Cantor Malovaney, the elder statesman of the group, introduced the singer known as Lipa to conclude his song about “Three Cantors” with some cantorial hiphop. Lipa later belted out “Manhattan, Manhattan, Manhattan” to the tune of the Yiddish stage classic, “Rumania, Rumania, Rumania,” and the very mixed audience cheered.
“Yiddish Soul: A Concert of Cantorial and Chassidic Music” attracted 4,000 people to Central Park’s Summer Stage last Tuesday for what was probably the largest Yiddish gathering ever in the park. This was one of the highlight events of KulturfestNYC, which ended its inaugural weeklong run on Sunday night. Presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (to mark its centennial) and Museum of Jewish Heritage in collaboration with UJA-Federation of New York, events took place in venues all over the city.
It was New York City’s pop-up World’s Fair of Jewish culture, with musicians and theater troupes from all over the world, an international film festival featuring talkbacks with directors and stars, a symposium for scholars of Yiddish, as well as dance, street performances and walking tours of the Lower East Side in English and Russian. There were more than 120 events, almost 200 performers and some 50,000 viewers.
The closing event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — the Folksbiene’s new home — featured “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholem Aleichem,” a film, as Alan Alda said, “about two Jewish giants.” Bikel was presented with the NYTF’s Lifetime Achievement Award and appeared on stage after the film with Alda, who narrates the film, director John Lollos and Eric Goldman, who curated the film series. Alda and Bikel have been friends for more than 50 years, since they starred together in the 1964 Broadway musical production of “Café Crown,” which was panned by critics and closed after three nights.
“Theo more than any other personality has brought Yiddish songs to millions,” Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of NYTF, said. Bikel, who is 91 and in a wheelchair, would raise his cane in acknowledgement of the audience’s rousing applause.
The thing about KulturFest was that each event was layered with stories — the stories about the performers, the back stories about the productions and ,of course, the stories behind the people in the different audiences every night. In an interview after her excellent performance at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, Polina Shepherd of Great Britain, told of being born in Siberia, growing up in Tatarstan, training in classical music, and then hearing klezmer for the first time in Kazan, the capital of the Russian republic. She joined Russia’s first klezmer band after Perestroika, and now performs on vocals and piano with her clarinetist husband Merlin Shepherd. She belted out “Avinu Malkeinu” from the High Holiday liturgy with soulful phrasing.
“I cannot speak Yiddish but I can speak the Yiddish feeling,” said Miwazow Kogure, who plays percussion and vocals in the Japanese band Jinta-La-Mvta, which also performed at Joe’s Pub. Her friend showed us a dictionary featuring English, Japanese, Yiddish and Yiddish transliteration into English.
NYTF officials say it’s too soon to determine whether this “incredible inaugural event” will be repeated annually. Chris Massimine, executive producer, comments in an email, “This wasn’t about holding onto the past. It was about reveling in the past and throttling toward the future and appreciating how much richer the world is to have diversity, and how our heritage plays vital for who we were, are and will be.”
Leaving Central Park after “Yiddish Soul,” we guided a Satmar woman and her two young sons, dressed alike although one was a year older, both with thick payes, to Central Park West. She loved the concert and is a big fan of Lipa Shmeltzer, although she doesn’t say that too loudly in her Williamsburg community, where he is a controversial figure for his flamboyant musical approach. But she won’t tell her young sons’ teachers where she was. “I tell my sons that we’re all Jews, that some people may do things differently than we do, and they are Jews too and we respect them.”
That was a great takeaway as we continued through the park, where she had never been before. She declined to give me her name, but we went on to talk about books and music and the beauty of Central Park straight through to her subway.
editor@jewishweek.org
In France, there's been a lot of talk about aliyah, but so far, not much action. In Israel, however, a public policy think tank is arguing that creating programs to attract French Jews is well worth the investment, Jewish Week editor and publisher Gary Rosenblatt writes in his column this week. 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
Meanwhile, an opinion piece by a group of high-ranking Jewish doctors argues that Mayor de Blasio's new policy on metzitzah b'peh is "insufficient" and allowing the practice to continue puts innocent children at unneeded risk. They argue that it is the responsibility of the Jewish medical community to take a stand against it.OPINION
NYC Metzitzah Policy Is ‘Insufficient’
Edward R. Burns, Robert Goldberg, Laura Gutman, Robert Gutman, Edward C. Halperin, Allen M. Spiegel
Special To The Jewish Week
As Jewish physicians we feel a special responsibility to speak out on health matters that uniquely affect the Jewish community. The policy recently adopted by the City of New York to respond to herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection risk as a result of a certain form of ritual circumcision is inadequate. For Jewish medical professionals to remain silent during this discussion would be, in our judgment, inappropriate.
HSV, which commonly causes “cold sores” and genital herpes, can result in death or permanent disability in newborns.
There have been multiple cases of newborn males with laboratory-confirmed HSV infection following out-of-hospital Jewish ritual circumcision. There is strong evidence that in the majority of these cases the infection was associated with metzitzah b’peh, in which the mohel places his mouth directly on the newly circumcised penis and sucks blood away from the wound (direct orogenital suction, abbreviated as DOS). This represents an ancient practice, but since the formulation of germ theory in the 1800s the overwhelming majority of traditional ritual Jewish circumcisions no longer employ this practice, instead using alternative methods of suction. Some members of the charedi community continue the practice of DOS.
Keeping a campaign promise, Mayor de Blasio has rescinded the requirement that parents give written consent prior to the performance of DOS on their newborns. Instead, when a baby contracts HSV following DOS, if the mohel is proven to have the same HSV strain as the infected baby by DNA testing, then the mohel will be banned for life from the practice. It can sometimes require multiple DNA tests to establish a match.
We think the policy is insufficient.
Circumcision is surgery and can transmit infection if not performed under antiseptic conditions. Oral contact with an incision by a person who is an HSV carrier, even if he is unaware of an open sore, risks transmission of HSV and other pathogens. Alternative means exist by which blood may be drawn from a circumcision wound such as a sterile glass tube or sterile gauze.
Several arguments have been voiced either in defense of DOS or to mitigate concern. The ones we, as physicians, are least qualified to respond to are theological. Genesis [17:10-11] instructs “every male child among you shall be circumcised. ...” The Babylonian Talmud states that “if a mohel does not perform suction, that is deemed dangerous and he is to be dismissed.” While defenders of DOS will invoke an interpretation of the Talmud passage to support it, the overwhelming majority of Orthodox rabbinic rulings — as well as those of the other religious streams — either deem DOS as being inconsistent with Jewish law and contemporary knowledge of hygiene or, at the least, acknowledge that removing blood by other means, such as with sterile gauze or a sterile glass tube, is preferable.
Additional arguments have been voiced in defense of DOS. The first is that, according to some New York infectious disease specialists, the link between HSV and DOS and newborn death or severe brain injury has “not been proven.” Those holding such viewseem unpersuaded by the detailed analyses published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which establish the link and the ratio of newborn infections of HSV type 1 v. type 2. Scientific evidence supporting the causal link between DOS and HSV was recently reviewed by six members of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine faculty in the Journal of the Pediatrics Infectious Disease Society. If individuals, however, are not persuaded by sound virology and epidemiology research, we would bet that no adult who understands the transmission of disease by microbes would consent to a human being’s putting their mouths upon a fresh surgical incision.
The second argument is the assertion that, if a mohel rinses his mouth with wine or an antiseptic mouthwash, the risk of HSV infection by DOS is eliminated. While prolonged exposure to alcohol in a laboratory Petri dish can indeed inactivate HSV, any claim that a dilute alcohol swish in the mouth, with its multiple nooks and crevices, will prevent HSV infection is fanciful.
The third argument is that the new NYC policy represents a reasonable compromise, protecting an individual’s right to practice his/her religion while employing the tools of public health to limit the spread of disease. But allowing some babies to suffer the consequences of HSV infection before taking any action against the offending mohel, who must be proven to be the culprit by DNA testing, is not a preventive public health measure. It is too little, too late. DOS violates a baby’s right to be protected from an obvious impending harm. The government has an overriding interest in protecting infants who cannot speak for themselves.
DOS ignores the teachings of modern medicine and the overwhelming consensus of modern rabbinic rulings. Behavior by mohelim and local politicians that ignores fundamental principles of hygiene, and abrogates their responsibility to protect innocent children, is shameful and simply wrong, despite their express desire to maintain ancient religious traditions.
The Jewish medical community should strongly affirm its respect for religious pluralism and sectarian particularism. It should dedicate itself to working with rabbinic leaders to make them aware of the unequivocal scientific and medical facts about the dangers of DOS and the urgency of using existing safe and acceptable alternatives. Moreover, we urge our political leaders to go on record supporting this approach.
This statement is from Dr. Edward R. Burns, executive dean, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx; Dr. Robert Goldberg, executive dean, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Manhattan; Dr. Laura Gutman, associate clinical professor emeritus, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, N.C.; Dr. Robert Gutman, consulting professor, Duke University School of Medicine; Dr. Edward C. Halperin, chancellor and CEO New York Medical College, Valhalla, N.Y.; and Dr. Allen M. Spiegel, dean, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Diamonds, photo equipment and ... medical marijuana? Two chasidic businessmen have applied for one of five highly sought-after permits to grow medical marijuana. If they get one, cannabis could be the next big chasidic business. NEW YORK
Kosher Cannabis?
Ger and Satmar duo apply for medical marijuana manufacturing permit, though quietly.
Hella Winston
Special Correspondent
By Bogdan/Fotografii natura via Wikimedia Commons
It seems that chasidim are trying to get into the medical marijuana business.
According to Saugerties Town Supervisor Greg Helsmoortel, two of the principals behind NY Growing Partners, LLC are nursing home magnate and Ger chasid Michael Melnicke and Leo Friedman, the son of Satmar powerbroker Moses Friedman, otherwise known as Moshe Gabbai.
The company is one of 43 that submitted an application earlier this month to the New York State Department of Health to become one of five registered organizations to manufacture and dispense approved medical marijuana products in the state. The other two principals in NY Growing Partners are Alexander Solovey and Pat (Pasquale) DeBenedictis.
NY Growing Partners has set its sights on a 12-acre, “shovel-ready” property in upstate Saugerties, about 90 miles from New York, which it plans to use as a manufacturing facility should it be granted a license, according to Helsmoortel. (The term “shovel ready” means that the required preliminary impact studies have already been completed, streamlining the approval process.)
Applicants for the licenses were required to pay a $10,000 application free as well as a $200,000 registration fee, the latter of which will be returned to those not chosen. Criteria for consideration include the ability to manufacture medical grade marijuana in sufficient quantities to meet the needs of certified patients and being in possession of — or having secured the right to use — property, buildings and equipment to carry out production operations or, failing that, posting a $2 million bond.
A recent story in the Daily Freeman News noted that NY Growing Partners has not submitted a formal proposal or site plan and will do so only if it receives a license; at that point, Helsmoortel confirmed, it intends to work with the Ulster County Industrial Development Agency to fast-track the local approval process.
Melnicke, Friedman, Solovey and DeBenedictis have been partners in other ventures. A 2014 article in Crain’s notes that The Komanoff Center for Geriatric and Rehabilitative Medicine in Long Beach, L.I., was sold separately to two entities formed by the four men.
Melnicke, ambassador-at-large from Grenada, is a licensed nursing home administrator in New York and Connecticut and, according to government documents, lists his current employment as the receiver of Peninsula Center for Extended Care and Rehabilitation in Far Rockaway. He also has ownership interests in six other nursing homes.
Friedman is the CEO of Advanced Care Staffing, Inc., a healthcare staffing agency and is also a receiver of Peninsula Center for Extended Care and Rehabilitation, which he, Melnicke and another partner bought, through four limited liability companies, out of bankruptcy for $24 million in 2012. It is now known as the Peninsula Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
In July of 2014, Advanced Care Staffing contributed $3,000 to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In November of the same year, Friedman added another $10,000 to the governor’s coffers. Through his companies, Leo Friedman gave more than $30,000 to Kenneth Thompson’s successful campaign for Brooklyn district attorney.
Leo Friedman’s father testified before the grand jury that indicted chasidic sex abuse whistleblower Sam Kellner. The Brooklyn DA’s office dropped the Kellner case after a review by his office determined the witnesses against him lacked credibility to such an extent the case could not be prosecuted.
While the health department has released only the names of the 43 companies vying for the five licenses, almost all of them have issued press releases, given interviews to the media and/or have websites containing information about themselves, including their principals. Many of the hopefuls are in the pharmaceutical business and/or have experience in the medical marijuana field in other states. (It’s unclear what expertise in the field NY Growing Partners brings to the table.) Some of these companies are in the process of trying to acquire property and, because they will need building and Department of Environmental Conservation permits, have presented proposals to local town planning boards detailing their intentions.
But not NY Growing Partners, LLC, about which public information is scant. This is despite the fact that the company has engaged the services of Zimmerman/Edelson, a Long Island-based public relations firm with close ties to Cuomo. Indeed, Helsmoortel told The Jewish Week Monday that he has been trying to persuade representatives of NY Growing Partners to reach out to the public in the town, to no avail.
“My secretary contacted them to ask for outreach and they said they’re not doing it now,” he said.
Emails to Zimmerman/Edelson and Leo Friedman seeking information about NY Growing Partners did not receive a response. A message left for Melnicke was not returned.
editor@jewishweek.org
Happy reading everyone, and have a peaceful weekend.
Shabbat Shalom,
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
THE ARTSBOOKS
Joshua Cohen’s Circuit Overload
‘Book of Numbers’ can be dazzling, but his long meditation on being human in the age of computers bogs down.
Jerome A. Chanes
Special To The Jewish Week
The cover of Joshua Cohen’s startling new 580-page novel, “Book of Numbers”.
“Ulysses,” it ain’t. And why, you may ask, do I start by saying what this book is not? Because Joshua Cohen’s startling new 580-page novel, “Book of Numbers” (Random House), reads like James Joyce’s giant classic — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Wordy, to a fault — yes, and dense. But Cohen’s prose is dazzling, often magical. It’s not just the polymathic command of his subject matter — and Cohen is a polymath of art history, and computers, and comparative religion, and seemingly everything else. He is a master wordsmith of wordplay.
Yet, “Book of Numbers” is a mess, and worse: it’s a massive circuit overload. And still, the book hums along. The reader eagerly awaits the next paragraph, the next line, the next strange locution, the next neologism, the next bizarre footnote, the next weird character...
With “Book of Numbers,” his fourth novel, Joshua Cohen has emerged not only as a significant American writer but perhaps as a major literary voice. His new novel will stand as one of the impressive novels of the decade.
So what’s it all about?
The novel’s plot is deceptively simple: on the surface, it is about Joshua Cohen (yes, he is Josh Cohen), who signs on to ghostwrite the biography of the genius founder of Tetration, the world’s monster tech company. The novel may be the high-tech thriller that it is, but in the end more like, “Boy meets binary code, boy loves binary code, boy loses binary code, boy gets binary code.”
But not so fast. Who is “Joshua Cohen?” There are at least two Joshua Cohens in “Book of Numbers.” One is the struggling writer, a stalled, writer’s-block-plagued Jewish novelist — he researched for years a yawner about his mother’s escape from Nazi Poland — “with a humanities diploma between my legs and not enough arm to reach the Zohar.” That Cohen is reduced to writing (uhh) reviews to make a living. He has ambition, and envy, and a pornography addiction. The other Joshua Cohen is the billionaire tech genius. Get it?
Digression after digression takes us to the core of the story: a mind-bending journey that pushes Josh-the-failed-writer toward an understanding of the sinister motive behind the autobiography project. In order to count as a thriller, the stakes have to be high, and there is none higher than the life-and-death antics that surround the creating and publication of the biography. Yes, “Book of Numbers” is a thriller.
But “Book of Numbers” is also a truly funny book — and it’s not only Joshua Cohen’s turns-of-phrase that make it so. The book is to be read (if I am getting it right — and with this book one never knows) as a comic novel as well as techno-thriller — and at the same time as a moral screed. The billionaire creator of Tetration muses about the horrors of search engines and their effect, ultimately, on humanity and humankind. “A spouse would seek advice on infidelity from a different calc. How to hide a body. Consulting linear algebra on how to terminate a pregnancy.” And, most of all: “Breathe greedy!”
And of course, much will be made of Joshua Cohen’s opening line, “If you’re reading this on a screen, f--- off.”
The humor of “Book of Numbers” is most evident in the long middle section of the book, which is a polyphonic point-counterpoint — it’s a Bach fugue; the listener can’t quite get there — between the two Joshes, the billionaire and the narrator, balding and schleppy and brilliant Josh.
Brilliant, and funny, to be sure, but there is something off, something annoying, about Cohen’s narrative sense. Joshua Cohen the author gets carried away, indeed loses control, over his two fictional Joshes (and as a result over his novel) in the extended middle section of the book. Josh the billionaire is simply not the character that Josh the failed novelist is. It is as if the author has lost track of his characters; or, he does not want to reader to be invested in the billionaire. Whatever — the reader will nod off after a hundred or so pages of the Tetration story. A problem here with the editor’s blue pencil? Perhaps. There is too much data, too many “numbers,” in “Book of Numbers,” and not enough tachlis. At a crucial juncture, “Book of Numbers” simply stalls. What are numbers all about?
All of which leads us to the other “Book of Numbers,” the fourth of the Chumashim in the Hebrew Scripture. The eponymous “numbers” in the Chumash are those of the counting of the Israelites, both a religious obligation and as a means of raising the revenue necessary for the maintenance of the polity. But numbers as a religious obligation is a serious matter. Elsewhere in the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, inappropriate counting of Israelites is fraught with peril — indeed, if not done with Divine sanction, with mortal peril. Joshua Cohen the author — and Josh Cohen the writer — are well aware of the boons and perils of numbers. They are about ethics, and ultimately about mortality.
“Book of Numbers” is about being a human in the age of the computer. A tough proposition, that. Ethicists, historians, rabbis and priests — take note!
Jerome A. Chanes writes about arts and letters and about American Jewish public affairs and history. He is the author of four books and is a fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
NYC Metzitzah Policy Is ‘Insufficient’
Edward R. Burns, Robert Goldberg, Laura Gutman, Robert Gutman, Edward C. Halperin, Allen M. Spiegel
Special To The Jewish Week
As Jewish physicians we feel a special responsibility to speak out on health matters that uniquely affect the Jewish community. The policy recently adopted by the City of New York to respond to herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection risk as a result of a certain form of ritual circumcision is inadequate. For Jewish medical professionals to remain silent during this discussion would be, in our judgment, inappropriate.
HSV, which commonly causes “cold sores” and genital herpes, can result in death or permanent disability in newborns.
There have been multiple cases of newborn males with laboratory-confirmed HSV infection following out-of-hospital Jewish ritual circumcision. There is strong evidence that in the majority of these cases the infection was associated with metzitzah b’peh, in which the mohel places his mouth directly on the newly circumcised penis and sucks blood away from the wound (direct orogenital suction, abbreviated as DOS). This represents an ancient practice, but since the formulation of germ theory in the 1800s the overwhelming majority of traditional ritual Jewish circumcisions no longer employ this practice, instead using alternative methods of suction. Some members of the charedi community continue the practice of DOS.
Keeping a campaign promise, Mayor de Blasio has rescinded the requirement that parents give written consent prior to the performance of DOS on their newborns. Instead, when a baby contracts HSV following DOS, if the mohel is proven to have the same HSV strain as the infected baby by DNA testing, then the mohel will be banned for life from the practice. It can sometimes require multiple DNA tests to establish a match.
We think the policy is insufficient.
Circumcision is surgery and can transmit infection if not performed under antiseptic conditions. Oral contact with an incision by a person who is an HSV carrier, even if he is unaware of an open sore, risks transmission of HSV and other pathogens. Alternative means exist by which blood may be drawn from a circumcision wound such as a sterile glass tube or sterile gauze.
Several arguments have been voiced either in defense of DOS or to mitigate concern. The ones we, as physicians, are least qualified to respond to are theological. Genesis [17:10-11] instructs “every male child among you shall be circumcised. ...” The Babylonian Talmud states that “if a mohel does not perform suction, that is deemed dangerous and he is to be dismissed.” While defenders of DOS will invoke an interpretation of the Talmud passage to support it, the overwhelming majority of Orthodox rabbinic rulings — as well as those of the other religious streams — either deem DOS as being inconsistent with Jewish law and contemporary knowledge of hygiene or, at the least, acknowledge that removing blood by other means, such as with sterile gauze or a sterile glass tube, is preferable.
Additional arguments have been voiced in defense of DOS. The first is that, according to some New York infectious disease specialists, the link between HSV and DOS and newborn death or severe brain injury has “not been proven.” Those holding such viewseem unpersuaded by the detailed analyses published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which establish the link and the ratio of newborn infections of HSV type 1 v. type 2. Scientific evidence supporting the causal link between DOS and HSV was recently reviewed by six members of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine faculty in the Journal of the Pediatrics Infectious Disease Society. If individuals, however, are not persuaded by sound virology and epidemiology research, we would bet that no adult who understands the transmission of disease by microbes would consent to a human being’s putting their mouths upon a fresh surgical incision.
The second argument is the assertion that, if a mohel rinses his mouth with wine or an antiseptic mouthwash, the risk of HSV infection by DOS is eliminated. While prolonged exposure to alcohol in a laboratory Petri dish can indeed inactivate HSV, any claim that a dilute alcohol swish in the mouth, with its multiple nooks and crevices, will prevent HSV infection is fanciful.
The third argument is that the new NYC policy represents a reasonable compromise, protecting an individual’s right to practice his/her religion while employing the tools of public health to limit the spread of disease. But allowing some babies to suffer the consequences of HSV infection before taking any action against the offending mohel, who must be proven to be the culprit by DNA testing, is not a preventive public health measure. It is too little, too late. DOS violates a baby’s right to be protected from an obvious impending harm. The government has an overriding interest in protecting infants who cannot speak for themselves.
DOS ignores the teachings of modern medicine and the overwhelming consensus of modern rabbinic rulings. Behavior by mohelim and local politicians that ignores fundamental principles of hygiene, and abrogates their responsibility to protect innocent children, is shameful and simply wrong, despite their express desire to maintain ancient religious traditions.
The Jewish medical community should strongly affirm its respect for religious pluralism and sectarian particularism. It should dedicate itself to working with rabbinic leaders to make them aware of the unequivocal scientific and medical facts about the dangers of DOS and the urgency of using existing safe and acceptable alternatives. Moreover, we urge our political leaders to go on record supporting this approach.
This statement is from Dr. Edward R. Burns, executive dean, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx; Dr. Robert Goldberg, executive dean, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Manhattan; Dr. Laura Gutman, associate clinical professor emeritus, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, N.C.; Dr. Robert Gutman, consulting professor, Duke University School of Medicine; Dr. Edward C. Halperin, chancellor and CEO New York Medical College, Valhalla, N.Y.; and Dr. Allen M. Spiegel, dean, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Diamonds, photo equipment and ... medical marijuana? Two chasidic businessmen have applied for one of five highly sought-after permits to grow medical marijuana. If they get one, cannabis could be the next big chasidic business. NEW YORK
Kosher Cannabis?
Ger and Satmar duo apply for medical marijuana manufacturing permit, though quietly.
Hella Winston
Special Correspondent
By Bogdan/Fotografii natura via Wikimedia Commons
It seems that chasidim are trying to get into the medical marijuana business.
According to Saugerties Town Supervisor Greg Helsmoortel, two of the principals behind NY Growing Partners, LLC are nursing home magnate and Ger chasid Michael Melnicke and Leo Friedman, the son of Satmar powerbroker Moses Friedman, otherwise known as Moshe Gabbai.
The company is one of 43 that submitted an application earlier this month to the New York State Department of Health to become one of five registered organizations to manufacture and dispense approved medical marijuana products in the state. The other two principals in NY Growing Partners are Alexander Solovey and Pat (Pasquale) DeBenedictis.
NY Growing Partners has set its sights on a 12-acre, “shovel-ready” property in upstate Saugerties, about 90 miles from New York, which it plans to use as a manufacturing facility should it be granted a license, according to Helsmoortel. (The term “shovel ready” means that the required preliminary impact studies have already been completed, streamlining the approval process.)
Applicants for the licenses were required to pay a $10,000 application free as well as a $200,000 registration fee, the latter of which will be returned to those not chosen. Criteria for consideration include the ability to manufacture medical grade marijuana in sufficient quantities to meet the needs of certified patients and being in possession of — or having secured the right to use — property, buildings and equipment to carry out production operations or, failing that, posting a $2 million bond.
A recent story in the Daily Freeman News noted that NY Growing Partners has not submitted a formal proposal or site plan and will do so only if it receives a license; at that point, Helsmoortel confirmed, it intends to work with the Ulster County Industrial Development Agency to fast-track the local approval process.
Melnicke, Friedman, Solovey and DeBenedictis have been partners in other ventures. A 2014 article in Crain’s notes that The Komanoff Center for Geriatric and Rehabilitative Medicine in Long Beach, L.I., was sold separately to two entities formed by the four men.
Melnicke, ambassador-at-large from Grenada, is a licensed nursing home administrator in New York and Connecticut and, according to government documents, lists his current employment as the receiver of Peninsula Center for Extended Care and Rehabilitation in Far Rockaway. He also has ownership interests in six other nursing homes.
Friedman is the CEO of Advanced Care Staffing, Inc., a healthcare staffing agency and is also a receiver of Peninsula Center for Extended Care and Rehabilitation, which he, Melnicke and another partner bought, through four limited liability companies, out of bankruptcy for $24 million in 2012. It is now known as the Peninsula Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
In July of 2014, Advanced Care Staffing contributed $3,000 to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In November of the same year, Friedman added another $10,000 to the governor’s coffers. Through his companies, Leo Friedman gave more than $30,000 to Kenneth Thompson’s successful campaign for Brooklyn district attorney.
Leo Friedman’s father testified before the grand jury that indicted chasidic sex abuse whistleblower Sam Kellner. The Brooklyn DA’s office dropped the Kellner case after a review by his office determined the witnesses against him lacked credibility to such an extent the case could not be prosecuted.
While the health department has released only the names of the 43 companies vying for the five licenses, almost all of them have issued press releases, given interviews to the media and/or have websites containing information about themselves, including their principals. Many of the hopefuls are in the pharmaceutical business and/or have experience in the medical marijuana field in other states. (It’s unclear what expertise in the field NY Growing Partners brings to the table.) Some of these companies are in the process of trying to acquire property and, because they will need building and Department of Environmental Conservation permits, have presented proposals to local town planning boards detailing their intentions.
But not NY Growing Partners, LLC, about which public information is scant. This is despite the fact that the company has engaged the services of Zimmerman/Edelson, a Long Island-based public relations firm with close ties to Cuomo. Indeed, Helsmoortel told The Jewish Week Monday that he has been trying to persuade representatives of NY Growing Partners to reach out to the public in the town, to no avail.
“My secretary contacted them to ask for outreach and they said they’re not doing it now,” he said.
Emails to Zimmerman/Edelson and Leo Friedman seeking information about NY Growing Partners did not receive a response. A message left for Melnicke was not returned.
editor@jewishweek.org
Happy reading everyone, and have a peaceful weekend.
Shabbat Shalom,
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
THE ARTSBOOKS
Joshua Cohen’s Circuit Overload
‘Book of Numbers’ can be dazzling, but his long meditation on being human in the age of computers bogs down.
Jerome A. Chanes
Special To The Jewish Week
The cover of Joshua Cohen’s startling new 580-page novel, “Book of Numbers”.
“Ulysses,” it ain’t. And why, you may ask, do I start by saying what this book is not? Because Joshua Cohen’s startling new 580-page novel, “Book of Numbers” (Random House), reads like James Joyce’s giant classic — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Wordy, to a fault — yes, and dense. But Cohen’s prose is dazzling, often magical. It’s not just the polymathic command of his subject matter — and Cohen is a polymath of art history, and computers, and comparative religion, and seemingly everything else. He is a master wordsmith of wordplay.
Yet, “Book of Numbers” is a mess, and worse: it’s a massive circuit overload. And still, the book hums along. The reader eagerly awaits the next paragraph, the next line, the next strange locution, the next neologism, the next bizarre footnote, the next weird character...
With “Book of Numbers,” his fourth novel, Joshua Cohen has emerged not only as a significant American writer but perhaps as a major literary voice. His new novel will stand as one of the impressive novels of the decade.
So what’s it all about?
The novel’s plot is deceptively simple: on the surface, it is about Joshua Cohen (yes, he is Josh Cohen), who signs on to ghostwrite the biography of the genius founder of Tetration, the world’s monster tech company. The novel may be the high-tech thriller that it is, but in the end more like, “Boy meets binary code, boy loves binary code, boy loses binary code, boy gets binary code.”
But not so fast. Who is “Joshua Cohen?” There are at least two Joshua Cohens in “Book of Numbers.” One is the struggling writer, a stalled, writer’s-block-plagued Jewish novelist — he researched for years a yawner about his mother’s escape from Nazi Poland — “with a humanities diploma between my legs and not enough arm to reach the Zohar.” That Cohen is reduced to writing (uhh) reviews to make a living. He has ambition, and envy, and a pornography addiction. The other Joshua Cohen is the billionaire tech genius. Get it?
Digression after digression takes us to the core of the story: a mind-bending journey that pushes Josh-the-failed-writer toward an understanding of the sinister motive behind the autobiography project. In order to count as a thriller, the stakes have to be high, and there is none higher than the life-and-death antics that surround the creating and publication of the biography. Yes, “Book of Numbers” is a thriller.
But “Book of Numbers” is also a truly funny book — and it’s not only Joshua Cohen’s turns-of-phrase that make it so. The book is to be read (if I am getting it right — and with this book one never knows) as a comic novel as well as techno-thriller — and at the same time as a moral screed. The billionaire creator of Tetration muses about the horrors of search engines and their effect, ultimately, on humanity and humankind. “A spouse would seek advice on infidelity from a different calc. How to hide a body. Consulting linear algebra on how to terminate a pregnancy.” And, most of all: “Breathe greedy!”
And of course, much will be made of Joshua Cohen’s opening line, “If you’re reading this on a screen, f--- off.”
The humor of “Book of Numbers” is most evident in the long middle section of the book, which is a polyphonic point-counterpoint — it’s a Bach fugue; the listener can’t quite get there — between the two Joshes, the billionaire and the narrator, balding and schleppy and brilliant Josh.
Brilliant, and funny, to be sure, but there is something off, something annoying, about Cohen’s narrative sense. Joshua Cohen the author gets carried away, indeed loses control, over his two fictional Joshes (and as a result over his novel) in the extended middle section of the book. Josh the billionaire is simply not the character that Josh the failed novelist is. It is as if the author has lost track of his characters; or, he does not want to reader to be invested in the billionaire. Whatever — the reader will nod off after a hundred or so pages of the Tetration story. A problem here with the editor’s blue pencil? Perhaps. There is too much data, too many “numbers,” in “Book of Numbers,” and not enough tachlis. At a crucial juncture, “Book of Numbers” simply stalls. What are numbers all about?
All of which leads us to the other “Book of Numbers,” the fourth of the Chumashim in the Hebrew Scripture. The eponymous “numbers” in the Chumash are those of the counting of the Israelites, both a religious obligation and as a means of raising the revenue necessary for the maintenance of the polity. But numbers as a religious obligation is a serious matter. Elsewhere in the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, inappropriate counting of Israelites is fraught with peril — indeed, if not done with Divine sanction, with mortal peril. Joshua Cohen the author — and Josh Cohen the writer — are well aware of the boons and perils of numbers. They are about ethics, and ultimately about mortality.
“Book of Numbers” is about being a human in the age of the computer. A tough proposition, that. Ethicists, historians, rabbis and priests — take note!
Jerome A. Chanes writes about arts and letters and about American Jewish public affairs and history. He is the author of four books and is a fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Read More 
CULTURE VIEWTouch Of Gray
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Ted Merwin
‘Hurry up!” The text message from my friend materialized on my phone. “Seats are going fast, and I just tripped over two walkers, a cane, and an old lady in a wheelchair.” I was en route to the Harrisburg JCC, where a showing of Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya’s 2013 film, “Where Comedy Went to School,” about Catskills comics, was about to begin. Perhaps not surprisingly, the audience members were almost entirely geriatric; they especially appreciated the live comedy act that followed the film, in which an aging female comic from New York cracked jokes aboutincontinence, sexual dysfunction, and difficulties in mastering new technology.
The aging of both (non-charedi) synagogue members and arts patrons jeopardizes the long-term survival of religious and cultural organizations. Millennials and Gen-Xers are conspicuously missing from the membership or subscription rolls of both public spirituality and public art. Can anything be done to bring back the younger generation?
The graying of both synagogue members and arts audiences is a relatively new phenomenon. The post-WWII move to the suburbs was driven in large part by the baby boom; tens of millions of dollars were spent in building new synagogues with huge Hebrew schools. (Now, by contrast, some synagogues have no Hebrew school-aged children at all.)
And as recently as the 1930s, when both my parents were born, studies showed that the median age of classical music concertgoers in Grand Rapids, Mich., was 27; in Los Angeles, it was 33. Two decades later, in 1955, a survey of attendees at an orchestra concert in Minneapolis found that more than half the audience was under the age of 35. Even in the 1960s, a study of Broadway theater audiences found that while few under the age of 20 were in the seats, there were also few over the age of 60.
Ari Roth is the former artistic director of Theater J at the JCC in Washington, D.C. He now runs a new theater company, Mosaic, located on H Street in what used to be a Jewish neighborhood that went through a decline, and is now rapidly gentrifying. “Young people don’t want to be around folks with bald spots,” he said. In a bid to attract young Jewish and non-Jewish audience members, his upcoming season features young playwrights of different races grappling with issues ranging from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the experience of African-Americans.
Roth grew up going to Jewish day schools and summer camps, where he learned the value of being an “amateur practitioner” first before becoming a “professional” shul-goer or audience member. The more that both organized religion and the arts engage young people, he suggested, the more that they will appear in the pews or the seats. As he put it, “Today’s economy rewards disruptive technology and innovation, as well as interactivity — the ability to participate rather than just to consume.” He pointed to the example of the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in his own city, which eliminated synagogue dues and sponsored rock concerts and canoe/kayak outings.
Rabbi Eric Yanoff is the spiritual leader of Adath Israel, a Conservative congregation in suburban Philadelphia. He has a background in theater, and has been known to do magic tricks during his High Holy Day sermons. He sees millennials finding community on-line, through social media, in ways that are no longer based on “long-standing, intergenerational, geographical proximity.”
Nevertheless, he detects a “fidgety, unsettled sense of underlying doubt in the sustainability of these connections,” which gives both synagogues and arts organizations, he theorized, a pair of strategic opportunities to respond to the new reality — “either as an old school, counter-cultural escape from a world defined by the superficiality of newly defined definitions of interpersonal connection, or as agents of fundamental change in how our institutions deliver their sense of community.”
The double meaning of this last phrase wasn’t lost on me. When will younger people turn up at—or “come around” to—our synagogues and concert halls? As we put it in a very different context, in our prayers for the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem, may it happen “speedily, in our days.” The vitality of our Jewish community, and our cultural life, depends quite literally upon it.
Ted Merwin teaches religion and Judaic studies at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa.). He writes about theater for the paper.
Read More SHORT TAKES
Michael Douglas Salutes Son, Dad At Genesis Award
JTA
Michael Douglas accepts the Genesis Prize in Jerusalem. JTA
Actor Michael Douglas credited his son and celebrity father for helping him reconnect to Judaism as he accepted the Genesis Prize, “the Jewish Nobel,” in Jerusalem.
Douglas, an Academy Award winner, accepted the $1 million award last Thursday night for his commitment to Jewish values and the Jewish people. His wife, the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and children, Dylan, 14, and Carys, 12, were on hand for the ceremony.
In his address, Douglas noted his new ties to Judaism at age 70.
He said his son’s decision to have a bar mitzvah “made me think and it made me strong. And for that I will always be grateful.” His voice broke as he thanked Dylan, who had his bar mitzvah last June, and later his whole family for their support.
“My journey to this stage was a long time in the making,” Douglas said, adding that it led him “to be able to say those four words with great pride: I am a Jew.”
Douglas criticized those who “insist that to say those words” one has to be Jewish through his mother. His mother, Diana Dill, is not Jewish. Douglas said that choosing him to be the Genesis laureate “sends a message around the world.”
He said his father, the actor Kirk Douglas, also inspired him, having also reconnected to Judaism at 70. Kirk Douglas had a second bar mitzvah at 83.
“There was no contradiction between his Jewishness and his universality,” Douglas said of his father, who offered a videotaped greeting for the ceremony.
The prize is endowed by the Genesis Philanthropy Group, which endeavors to build Jewish identity among Russian-speaking Jews worldwide.
Douglas said he will use the prize money to reach out to other Jews from intermarried families seeking a connection to the Jewish community through grants to Hillel and the Jewish Funders Network.
At the end of the program, host Jay Leno announced that an anonymous philanthropist was donating another $1 million for inclusiveness programs for intermarried families. Coupled with matching grant programs from Genesis and the Jewish Funders Network, some $3.5 million would be available for such programs as a result of Douglas’ prize.
The co-founder of the Genesis Prize Foundation, Mikhail Fridman, said the prize was established in order to inspire people “to reflect on their Jewishness and not take it for granted.” He described Douglas as “not a perfect Jew, yet he is someone who put his energy into being Jewish.” Fridman called on the Jewish community to welcome intermarried families and not turn them away.
A video presentation about Douglas was narrated by his wife and included praise from Jewish actors and directors. In his congratulatory remarks to Douglas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded Douglas for having “pride in the Jewish people and pride in the Jewish state.”
Netanyahu presented the prize along with Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the prize committee; Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, chairman of the selection committee; and Stan Polovets, co-founder and chairman of the Genesis Prize Foundation.
Leno, who hosted the inaugural Genesis Prize ceremony last year, told the audience that he considers himself “Israel’s Shabbos goy,” and remarked that Albert Einstein was smart for turning down an offer to become the first president of Israel.
“Einstein knew it was easier to figure out the mysteries of the universe than to keep Israeli voters happy,” he quipped.
editor@jewishweek.org
Read More
CULTURE VIEWTouch Of Gray
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Ted Merwin
‘Hurry up!” The text message from my friend materialized on my phone. “Seats are going fast, and I just tripped over two walkers, a cane, and an old lady in a wheelchair.” I was en route to the Harrisburg JCC, where a showing of Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya’s 2013 film, “Where Comedy Went to School,” about Catskills comics, was about to begin. Perhaps not surprisingly, the audience members were almost entirely geriatric; they especially appreciated the live comedy act that followed the film, in which an aging female comic from New York cracked jokes aboutincontinence, sexual dysfunction, and difficulties in mastering new technology.
The aging of both (non-charedi) synagogue members and arts patrons jeopardizes the long-term survival of religious and cultural organizations. Millennials and Gen-Xers are conspicuously missing from the membership or subscription rolls of both public spirituality and public art. Can anything be done to bring back the younger generation?
The graying of both synagogue members and arts audiences is a relatively new phenomenon. The post-WWII move to the suburbs was driven in large part by the baby boom; tens of millions of dollars were spent in building new synagogues with huge Hebrew schools. (Now, by contrast, some synagogues have no Hebrew school-aged children at all.)
And as recently as the 1930s, when both my parents were born, studies showed that the median age of classical music concertgoers in Grand Rapids, Mich., was 27; in Los Angeles, it was 33. Two decades later, in 1955, a survey of attendees at an orchestra concert in Minneapolis found that more than half the audience was under the age of 35. Even in the 1960s, a study of Broadway theater audiences found that while few under the age of 20 were in the seats, there were also few over the age of 60.
Ari Roth is the former artistic director of Theater J at the JCC in Washington, D.C. He now runs a new theater company, Mosaic, located on H Street in what used to be a Jewish neighborhood that went through a decline, and is now rapidly gentrifying. “Young people don’t want to be around folks with bald spots,” he said. In a bid to attract young Jewish and non-Jewish audience members, his upcoming season features young playwrights of different races grappling with issues ranging from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the experience of African-Americans.
Roth grew up going to Jewish day schools and summer camps, where he learned the value of being an “amateur practitioner” first before becoming a “professional” shul-goer or audience member. The more that both organized religion and the arts engage young people, he suggested, the more that they will appear in the pews or the seats. As he put it, “Today’s economy rewards disruptive technology and innovation, as well as interactivity — the ability to participate rather than just to consume.” He pointed to the example of the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in his own city, which eliminated synagogue dues and sponsored rock concerts and canoe/kayak outings.
Rabbi Eric Yanoff is the spiritual leader of Adath Israel, a Conservative congregation in suburban Philadelphia. He has a background in theater, and has been known to do magic tricks during his High Holy Day sermons. He sees millennials finding community on-line, through social media, in ways that are no longer based on “long-standing, intergenerational, geographical proximity.”
Nevertheless, he detects a “fidgety, unsettled sense of underlying doubt in the sustainability of these connections,” which gives both synagogues and arts organizations, he theorized, a pair of strategic opportunities to respond to the new reality — “either as an old school, counter-cultural escape from a world defined by the superficiality of newly defined definitions of interpersonal connection, or as agents of fundamental change in how our institutions deliver their sense of community.”
The double meaning of this last phrase wasn’t lost on me. When will younger people turn up at—or “come around” to—our synagogues and concert halls? As we put it in a very different context, in our prayers for the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem, may it happen “speedily, in our days.” The vitality of our Jewish community, and our cultural life, depends quite literally upon it.
Ted Merwin teaches religion and Judaic studies at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa.). He writes about theater for the paper.
Read More
SHORT TAKESMichael Douglas Salutes Son, Dad At Genesis Award
JTA
Michael Douglas accepts the Genesis Prize in Jerusalem. JTA
Actor Michael Douglas credited his son and celebrity father for helping him reconnect to Judaism as he accepted the Genesis Prize, “the Jewish Nobel,” in Jerusalem.
Douglas, an Academy Award winner, accepted the $1 million award last Thursday night for his commitment to Jewish values and the Jewish people. His wife, the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and children, Dylan, 14, and Carys, 12, were on hand for the ceremony.
In his address, Douglas noted his new ties to Judaism at age 70.
He said his son’s decision to have a bar mitzvah “made me think and it made me strong. And for that I will always be grateful.” His voice broke as he thanked Dylan, who had his bar mitzvah last June, and later his whole family for their support.
“My journey to this stage was a long time in the making,” Douglas said, adding that it led him “to be able to say those four words with great pride: I am a Jew.”
Douglas criticized those who “insist that to say those words” one has to be Jewish through his mother. His mother, Diana Dill, is not Jewish. Douglas said that choosing him to be the Genesis laureate “sends a message around the world.”
He said his father, the actor Kirk Douglas, also inspired him, having also reconnected to Judaism at 70. Kirk Douglas had a second bar mitzvah at 83.
“There was no contradiction between his Jewishness and his universality,” Douglas said of his father, who offered a videotaped greeting for the ceremony.
The prize is endowed by the Genesis Philanthropy Group, which endeavors to build Jewish identity among Russian-speaking Jews worldwide.
Douglas said he will use the prize money to reach out to other Jews from intermarried families seeking a connection to the Jewish community through grants to Hillel and the Jewish Funders Network.
At the end of the program, host Jay Leno announced that an anonymous philanthropist was donating another $1 million for inclusiveness programs for intermarried families. Coupled with matching grant programs from Genesis and the Jewish Funders Network, some $3.5 million would be available for such programs as a result of Douglas’ prize.
The co-founder of the Genesis Prize Foundation, Mikhail Fridman, said the prize was established in order to inspire people “to reflect on their Jewishness and not take it for granted.” He described Douglas as “not a perfect Jew, yet he is someone who put his energy into being Jewish.” Fridman called on the Jewish community to welcome intermarried families and not turn them away.
A video presentation about Douglas was narrated by his wife and included praise from Jewish actors and directors. In his congratulatory remarks to Douglas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded Douglas for having “pride in the Jewish people and pride in the Jewish state.”
Netanyahu presented the prize along with Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the prize committee; Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, chairman of the selection committee; and Stan Polovets, co-founder and chairman of the Genesis Prize Foundation.
Leno, who hosted the inaugural Genesis Prize ceremony last year, told the audience that he considers himself “Israel’s Shabbos goy,” and remarked that Albert Einstein was smart for turning down an offer to become the first president of Israel.
“Einstein knew it was easier to figure out the mysteries of the universe than to keep Israeli voters happy,” he quipped.
editor@jewishweek.org
Read More
Students, faculty, staff, and alumni from the Touro College Graduate School of Social Work gathered to celebrate the school's reaffirmation of its national accreditation for eight years. The School received a perfect score from the Council on Social Work Education. Touro President Dr. Alan Kadish, left, delivered remarks, following a welcome from Founding Dean Dr. Steven Huberman, right. With an enrollment of 320 students the school has achieved excellence in four specializations: severe mental illness, military veterans, aging and Jewish social services. Learn more at http://gssw.touro.edu/
BLOGS
THE NEW NORMAL
Self-Advocate With Asperger's Syndrome Speaks Out On Inclusion
Nathan Weissler
As a college student living with Asperger’s Syndrome, I have learned to know when I am being accepted and included. I’ve learned about my challenges and my strengths — and I speak out about what true inclusion feels like. When I am viewed as a person with unique areas of strengths in addition to unique areas of challenge instead of primarily as a person with special needs, I know that I am being fully included and accepted.
For example, if there is an activity that others are unsure about whether I will be able to do, the best way to be inclusive is to ask me whether I think that I can do the activity instead of others trying to make decisions for me. When I am asked whether I think that I can do an activity, I am given the opportunity to make my own decision about whether I can do it. I am fully comfortable with my need for extra assistance in some contexts and I think all people, whether they will admit it or not, need extra help in certain contexts.
I have several special memories regarding inclusion at my family's synagogue in Washington, D.C. However, there is one memory which is especially vivid for me. There is a children’s program which meets during the school year once a week, after school. When I communicated interest in working for the children's program, I have the definite impression that the youth director not only seriously considered a variety of ways in which I could participate but wanted me to be able to participate in a way that would represent my abilities and areas of strength. The youth director asked me if I would be willing to write summaries of the Parasha on a weekly basis along with discussion questions for the children to use to discuss and to share with their families. I was thrilled to do so and wrote those summaries for the year’s program. That experience for me represents an example of what inclusion is all about: I was being treated respectfully, my opinions were being taken seriously and others were encouraging me to offer contributions in my areas of strength.
Additionally, I have a vivid memory of inclusion is from my junior year in high school on an Israel trip with my school. I attended a special education program called Sulam,housed at the Berman Hebrew Academy and the Torah School of Greater Washington (Orthodox schools in the Washington, D.C., area). Sulam is one of the very few educational options, if not the only educational option, for Jewish children with special needs who have the goal of obtaining a rich Jewish education with appropriate accommodations. The high school at the Berman Hebrew Academy takes a trip to Israel once every four years and the students in the Sulam program who are in high school go on the trip. On the last Shabbat of the Israel trip, we were in the Old City of Jerusalem. At Shabbat dinner, different students briefly spoke about meaningful experiences on the trip. I decided that I had some reflections that I wanted to share. I had asked in advance if I could speak and had written remarks before Shabbat. As soon as I began to speak, the entire room, in which there were many high school students and adults, became silent. I deeply and truly appreciate the respect shown to me by me by fellow students and teachers. Everyone wanted to hear what I had to share. I am still very moved by that experience and I always will be. My fellow students were treating me with respect and were communicating that they accepted and respected me unconditionally and did not primarily view me as an individual with special needs.
My personal dreams for the future are to work in a profession in which I will be able to have a positive impact for individuals with special needs. I have thought about being a psychologist, a special education teacher, a consultant and a rabbi. I have thought about advocating for people with special needs in a variety of contexts.
Furthermore, my dream of a truly inclusive future is as follows: individuals who have special needs being viewed not primarily as individuals with limits but as individuals with strengths and abilities as well as challenges and obstacles. I think that if when people meet somebody with special needs, if one were to think about that individual's abilities and strengths and how one can help encourage and support that individual in his/her areas of challenge, this would be a far more friendly place for individuals with special needs. It is my hope that we all do our best to continue to make this world into a friendlier environment for individuals who have special needs.
Nathan Weissler, 22, is a college student at Montgomery College in the Washington, D.C., area. He has been advocating for individuals with special needs for several years. In his free time, Nathan likes to read. He hopes to work in special education after completing his studies.
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WELL VERSED
This Week: Rare Judaica At Rare Prices
Gloria Kestenbaum
Autograph manuscript, Melecheth Shlomo by Solomon ben Joshua Adani, 1589-1623. Courtesy Kestenbaum & Company
Bibliophiles and collectors of Jewish texts have been prowling the precincts of Kestenbaum & Company these past days, covetously eyeing and reverently handling the rare items now on display and scheduled for auction on Thursday, June 25. Dubbed the “Singular Collection,” the provenance for this remarkable grouping of early printed Hebrew books, and Biblical and Rabbinic manuscripts remains undisclosed.
Rumor has it that the collection is being sold off to pay the debts of a well-known dealer who’s fallen on hard times but regardless of its source, the auction offers an opportunity to acquire items rarely available for sale. Adding frenzy to an already passionate marketplace is the fact that the items are being offered at surprisingly low reserves, encouraging Hebrew booklovers from all corners to come out and bid. As one fanatic collector said, avidly poring over the catalogue and items on display, “If I had the money, I’d buy the entire catalogue— books, art, letters and all.”
Although small in size, the collection is wide-ranging and extraordinary in the quality and rarity of the many of the items up for sale. The highlights of the auction, according to Daniel Kestenbaum, owner of the auction house (full disclosure: Daniel’s a distant cousin of my husband), are the Hebrew manuscripts, “scholarly, esoteric and rarely available.” Almost one-third of these medieval and pre-modern Hebraic manuscripts have never been printed.
Perhaps the crown jewel of the collection is the autograph manuscript of the Melecheth Shlomo, a seminal work by Rabbi Solomon Adani, one of the key commentators on the Mishnah. Born in Yemen in 1567, Rabbi Adani moved to Hebron where, at age 22, he began the work that was to occupy him for the next 30 years: attempting to “resolve textual difficulties and establish the most reliable reading of the Mishnah.“ His was an impoverished and tragic life — all of his 11 children died — and in the introduction to his book, Rabbi Adani wrote: “It is now the year 5379 (1519), and today I am fifty-two years old. And to this day I have not been privileged to have a son to follow my guidance..." His legacy however did live on through his monumental opus. You can sense the excitement of the scholars, hovered reverently round this remarkable text, who are finally able to see and touch this museum-worthy tome “Bi’ktav Yad Kadsho” (written in his sacred hand).
Other treasures include a 12th century Hebrew manuscript of Psalms “written in a square Spanish hand…on vellum” and “most likely of Spanish origin – hence remarkably scarce,” according to the catalogue, along with a 13th century German manuscript of the Book of Genesis whose Hebrew is calligraphed in Gothic lettering. Kestenbaum enthused, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I often have Rabbinic manuscripts but not of this quality.”
Ranging across several centuries, the collection contains a first edition — and a personal copy — of the anti-Sabbatian polemic, “Zoth Torath Hakan’oth” by Rabbi Jacob Emden from 1752. Revealed on its margins are the revered Talmudist’s hand-written, “bitingly sarcastic” notes contemning Sabbatai Tzvi, the self-proclaimed 17th Century messiah, whose initial message of redemption and ultimate conversion to Islam wreaked havoc on the Jewish world of that time. Rabbi Emden’s loathing of the entire Sabbatian movement was so strong that it led to his accusing his contemporary, Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, the renowned Rabbi of the “three communities,” of being a secret follower of that reviled sect.
But manuscripts and books are not the only items of interest. An emissary letter signed by the “Saintly R. Menachem Mendel of Shklov” written in 1823, now frayed and taped, was originally penned in order to obtain a license from the authorities in Constantinople to rebuild the ‘Churvah’ synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. “It’s extraordinarily appealing,“ Kestenbaum mused, “to imagine the trip that letter took just sitting in the pocket [of the emissary]. It’s the original meat and potatoes of history in tattered condition.”
It should prove to be an exciting and interesting afternoon. If you’re there, waiting with the other eagerly anxious attendees, be sure to check out the wonderful bits of history lining the walls and shelves. Early Zionist posters mingle with Bezalel rugs while a beautifully illuminated manuscript from 1920 celebrates the appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel, “the first Jewish Governor of our Holy Land in two thousand years.” Imagining the trip of each of these wondrous items, many of which changed the course of Jewish history, can be dizzying.
Kestenbaum & Company, an auction house specializing in the fields of Hebraica and Judaica, is at 242 West 30th Street, New York City. Online bidding is available.
Gloria Kestenbaum is a corporate communications consultant and freelance writer.
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BLOGS
THE NEW NORMAL
Self-Advocate With Asperger's Syndrome Speaks Out On Inclusion
Nathan Weissler
As a college student living with Asperger’s Syndrome, I have learned to know when I am being accepted and included. I’ve learned about my challenges and my strengths — and I speak out about what true inclusion feels like. When I am viewed as a person with unique areas of strengths in addition to unique areas of challenge instead of primarily as a person with special needs, I know that I am being fully included and accepted.
For example, if there is an activity that others are unsure about whether I will be able to do, the best way to be inclusive is to ask me whether I think that I can do the activity instead of others trying to make decisions for me. When I am asked whether I think that I can do an activity, I am given the opportunity to make my own decision about whether I can do it. I am fully comfortable with my need for extra assistance in some contexts and I think all people, whether they will admit it or not, need extra help in certain contexts.
I have several special memories regarding inclusion at my family's synagogue in Washington, D.C. However, there is one memory which is especially vivid for me. There is a children’s program which meets during the school year once a week, after school. When I communicated interest in working for the children's program, I have the definite impression that the youth director not only seriously considered a variety of ways in which I could participate but wanted me to be able to participate in a way that would represent my abilities and areas of strength. The youth director asked me if I would be willing to write summaries of the Parasha on a weekly basis along with discussion questions for the children to use to discuss and to share with their families. I was thrilled to do so and wrote those summaries for the year’s program. That experience for me represents an example of what inclusion is all about: I was being treated respectfully, my opinions were being taken seriously and others were encouraging me to offer contributions in my areas of strength.
Additionally, I have a vivid memory of inclusion is from my junior year in high school on an Israel trip with my school. I attended a special education program called Sulam,housed at the Berman Hebrew Academy and the Torah School of Greater Washington (Orthodox schools in the Washington, D.C., area). Sulam is one of the very few educational options, if not the only educational option, for Jewish children with special needs who have the goal of obtaining a rich Jewish education with appropriate accommodations. The high school at the Berman Hebrew Academy takes a trip to Israel once every four years and the students in the Sulam program who are in high school go on the trip. On the last Shabbat of the Israel trip, we were in the Old City of Jerusalem. At Shabbat dinner, different students briefly spoke about meaningful experiences on the trip. I decided that I had some reflections that I wanted to share. I had asked in advance if I could speak and had written remarks before Shabbat. As soon as I began to speak, the entire room, in which there were many high school students and adults, became silent. I deeply and truly appreciate the respect shown to me by me by fellow students and teachers. Everyone wanted to hear what I had to share. I am still very moved by that experience and I always will be. My fellow students were treating me with respect and were communicating that they accepted and respected me unconditionally and did not primarily view me as an individual with special needs.
My personal dreams for the future are to work in a profession in which I will be able to have a positive impact for individuals with special needs. I have thought about being a psychologist, a special education teacher, a consultant and a rabbi. I have thought about advocating for people with special needs in a variety of contexts.
Furthermore, my dream of a truly inclusive future is as follows: individuals who have special needs being viewed not primarily as individuals with limits but as individuals with strengths and abilities as well as challenges and obstacles. I think that if when people meet somebody with special needs, if one were to think about that individual's abilities and strengths and how one can help encourage and support that individual in his/her areas of challenge, this would be a far more friendly place for individuals with special needs. It is my hope that we all do our best to continue to make this world into a friendlier environment for individuals who have special needs.
Nathan Weissler, 22, is a college student at Montgomery College in the Washington, D.C., area. He has been advocating for individuals with special needs for several years. In his free time, Nathan likes to read. He hopes to work in special education after completing his studies.
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WELL VERSED
This Week: Rare Judaica At Rare Prices
Gloria Kestenbaum
Autograph manuscript, Melecheth Shlomo by Solomon ben Joshua Adani, 1589-1623. Courtesy Kestenbaum & Company
Bibliophiles and collectors of Jewish texts have been prowling the precincts of Kestenbaum & Company these past days, covetously eyeing and reverently handling the rare items now on display and scheduled for auction on Thursday, June 25. Dubbed the “Singular Collection,” the provenance for this remarkable grouping of early printed Hebrew books, and Biblical and Rabbinic manuscripts remains undisclosed.
Rumor has it that the collection is being sold off to pay the debts of a well-known dealer who’s fallen on hard times but regardless of its source, the auction offers an opportunity to acquire items rarely available for sale. Adding frenzy to an already passionate marketplace is the fact that the items are being offered at surprisingly low reserves, encouraging Hebrew booklovers from all corners to come out and bid. As one fanatic collector said, avidly poring over the catalogue and items on display, “If I had the money, I’d buy the entire catalogue— books, art, letters and all.”
Although small in size, the collection is wide-ranging and extraordinary in the quality and rarity of the many of the items up for sale. The highlights of the auction, according to Daniel Kestenbaum, owner of the auction house (full disclosure: Daniel’s a distant cousin of my husband), are the Hebrew manuscripts, “scholarly, esoteric and rarely available.” Almost one-third of these medieval and pre-modern Hebraic manuscripts have never been printed.
Perhaps the crown jewel of the collection is the autograph manuscript of the Melecheth Shlomo, a seminal work by Rabbi Solomon Adani, one of the key commentators on the Mishnah. Born in Yemen in 1567, Rabbi Adani moved to Hebron where, at age 22, he began the work that was to occupy him for the next 30 years: attempting to “resolve textual difficulties and establish the most reliable reading of the Mishnah.“ His was an impoverished and tragic life — all of his 11 children died — and in the introduction to his book, Rabbi Adani wrote: “It is now the year 5379 (1519), and today I am fifty-two years old. And to this day I have not been privileged to have a son to follow my guidance..." His legacy however did live on through his monumental opus. You can sense the excitement of the scholars, hovered reverently round this remarkable text, who are finally able to see and touch this museum-worthy tome “Bi’ktav Yad Kadsho” (written in his sacred hand).
Other treasures include a 12th century Hebrew manuscript of Psalms “written in a square Spanish hand…on vellum” and “most likely of Spanish origin – hence remarkably scarce,” according to the catalogue, along with a 13th century German manuscript of the Book of Genesis whose Hebrew is calligraphed in Gothic lettering. Kestenbaum enthused, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I often have Rabbinic manuscripts but not of this quality.”
Ranging across several centuries, the collection contains a first edition — and a personal copy — of the anti-Sabbatian polemic, “Zoth Torath Hakan’oth” by Rabbi Jacob Emden from 1752. Revealed on its margins are the revered Talmudist’s hand-written, “bitingly sarcastic” notes contemning Sabbatai Tzvi, the self-proclaimed 17th Century messiah, whose initial message of redemption and ultimate conversion to Islam wreaked havoc on the Jewish world of that time. Rabbi Emden’s loathing of the entire Sabbatian movement was so strong that it led to his accusing his contemporary, Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, the renowned Rabbi of the “three communities,” of being a secret follower of that reviled sect.
But manuscripts and books are not the only items of interest. An emissary letter signed by the “Saintly R. Menachem Mendel of Shklov” written in 1823, now frayed and taped, was originally penned in order to obtain a license from the authorities in Constantinople to rebuild the ‘Churvah’ synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. “It’s extraordinarily appealing,“ Kestenbaum mused, “to imagine the trip that letter took just sitting in the pocket [of the emissary]. It’s the original meat and potatoes of history in tattered condition.”
It should prove to be an exciting and interesting afternoon. If you’re there, waiting with the other eagerly anxious attendees, be sure to check out the wonderful bits of history lining the walls and shelves. Early Zionist posters mingle with Bezalel rugs while a beautifully illuminated manuscript from 1920 celebrates the appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel, “the first Jewish Governor of our Holy Land in two thousand years.” Imagining the trip of each of these wondrous items, many of which changed the course of Jewish history, can be dizzying.
Kestenbaum & Company, an auction house specializing in the fields of Hebraica and Judaica, is at 242 West 30th Street, New York City. Online bidding is available.
Gloria Kestenbaum is a corporate communications consultant and freelance writer.
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