Dear Reader,
Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman picked Amos' Oz' memoir, "A Tale Of Love And Darkness," as her directorial debut, and she's filming it right now, in Israel, in Hebrew.Click to find out why she's lost track of her Oscar and what she thinks of Bibi.INTERNATIONAL
Why Doesn't Natalie Portman Display Her Oscar?
In a recent interview, the Israeli-born actress sounds off on filming in Israel, Bibi, anti-semitism and Alan Dershowitz.
Miriam Groner
Web Editor
Natalie Portman on the set of her new film, 'A Tale Of Love And Darkness', in Jerusalem last year. Getty Images
If the Harvard degree on her wall, brilliant kop and incredible acting abilities wasn’t enough, Natalie Portman just gave bubbes everywhere another 100 reasons to love her. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter she opened up about her deep connection to Israel, her debut film, and why she doesn’t put her Oscar on display.
Portman was born Neta-Lee Hershlag in Israel in 1981. Over the course of her career she’s won over 40 awards, and been nominated for tens more. In 2011 she won an Oscar for Best Actress for her leading role in the psychological thriller, Black Swan. But the 33-year-old is not one to brag. When asked whether she brought it with her to Paris (the star recently relocated to Paris with her husband and 3-year-old son, Aleph) she told THR, “I don't know where it is. I think it's in the safe or something. I don't know. I haven't seen it in a while. I mean, Darren [Aronofsky] actually said to me something when we were in that whole thing that resonated so deeply. I was reading the story of Abraham to my child and talking about, like, not worshipping false idols. And this is literally like gold men. This is literally worshipping gold idols — if you worship it. That's why it's not displayed on the wall. It's a false idol."
What a mensch.
Now she’s just finished directing her feature film, an adaptation of Amos Oz's memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness. The movie will premier at Cannes Film Festival on May 18. She told THR that she was adamant about shooting in Hebrew, whatever the cost. "The language was really what [drew me], his obsession with words and the way words are connected in Hebrew, which has this incredible poetry and magic," she said. "It's obviously almost impossible to translate, but there's just incredible beauty to that. [Jews are] a people built of words, people built of books, and it's quite beautiful to see that, which is a strange thing to start for a movie."
Portman, who said she rarely watches television but prefers trips to the museum with Aleph instead, also expressed discontent in the recent election results in Israel. "I'm very much against Netanyahu. Against. I am very, very upset and disappointed that he was re-elected,” she told THR.
But she softened the criticism with a disclaimer, “I find his racist comments horrific. However, I don't — what I want to make sure is, I don't want to use my platform [the wrong way]. I feel like there's some people who become prominent, and then it's out in the foreign press. You know, shit on Israel. I do not. I don't want to do that."
And she’s the forgiving type. When asked about former Dior fashion designer John Galliano and his drunken, anti-Semitic rant she said, "I don't see why not to be forgiving to someone who is, I mean, someone who's trying to change. However, I don't think those comments are ever OK. I don't forgive the comments, but … we've all done things that we regret."
Portman took a break from her acting career to get an A.B. in psychology from Harvard. While there she served as a research assistant to law professor, Alan Dershowitz of which she said, "He has quite different politics than I do, but I really, really like him. He's a very good friend. We just have different opinions."
And with a raw honesty so unique in Hollywood, Portman admits she is not perfect and constantly working on herself. When asked about her relationship with her husband Benjamin Millepied, who is reportedly converting, the Schechter Day School alumna said, “It's like a mirror that you have to yourself, and you can see your own good behavior and bad behavior. And it's a beautiful challenge to be the best person in the mirror that you can be.”
Amen, sister.
miriam@jewishweek.org
An entire new literary genre is accumulating around the stories of ex-Orthodox Jews who have left their communities and forged new lives. Culture Editor Sandee Brawarsky reflects on the trend.NEW YORK
Leaving The Fold, Onto The Bookshelf
Growing literary genre of ex-Orthodox testing traditional narrative of insular communities.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Shulem Deen was a man in his 20s when he felt bold enough to slip unseen into a public library. Like the inner-city African-American boy in Philip Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” who, on a visit to the Newark Public Library, first sees Gauguin’s striking paintings of exotic Tahiti, a world cracked open for Deen.
On a tiny chair in the children’s section, the Skverer chasid made his way through the World Book Encyclopedia, encountering Einstein, Egyptian hieroglyphics and ElvisPresley for the first time.
His debut memoir, “All Who Go Do Not Return” (Graywolf), is the latest work in the new and deepening literary tradition of brutally honest works by ex-chasidim about leaving their community. Through these books, the reading public is guided inside thecloistered worlds of chasidic life. Whether that cloistered world has been changed — opened up, if you will — by the growing number of these works remains a point of debate.
Deen is the poet laureate of ex-chasidim. His sentences flow with originality as he unveils his story with passion and sensitivity. Readers will be surprised to realize that he is largely self-taught, that most of his schooling was in Yiddish.
While “All Who Go Do Not Return” is a story of leaving, his is not the voice of someone in exile, looking back. Rather, Deen writes as a traveler, looking around and deeply noticing all that he missed in the outside world, yearning for knowledge and experience.
It is also a heartbreaking book, as Deen — at least for the time being — is no longer in touch with his five children, three daughters and two sons who range in age from 13 to 20. That’s not his choice, but a complicated outcome of family court, his ex-wife Gitty’s desire to shield them from his heretical ways, community pressure and the children’s absorption of communal norms of conformity. He writes of losing their hearts. Still, Deen is respectful of Gitty and the Skverers. Readers may hope that his children get to read this book and come to understand their father and his love for them.
Since Hella Winston’s groundbreaking study, “Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels,” was published in 2005, there have been many books published by people who seem like they stepped out of her pages. Deen’s book belongs on bookshelves alongside the compelling and much-discussed memoirs by formerly fervently Orthodox writers including Shalom Auslander, Deborah Feldman and Leah Vincent, and Anouk Markovits’ novel “I Am Forbidden.”
Just out last month is a film, “Felix and Meira,” about a young chasidic married woman drawn into a romance with a non-Jewish French Canadian and into a world outside of her restrictive Montreal community. It’s a gentle film, with images that linger. Meira’s loving husband is played by Luzer Twersky, a former chasid who grew up in Borough Park and left that world seven years ago.
And coming in July is a new memoir by Judy Brown, who in 2010 penned the young adult book, “Hush,” under the pseudonym Eishes Chayil (woman of valor) for fear of backlash in the chasidic world in which she grew up because of her depiction of sexual abuse within the community. Brown’s “This Is Not A Love Story” is her story of growing up in a family with six children, including a brother who is afflicted with a medical condition they don’t understand. Told in the voice of her younger self, Brown, who has left the chasidic community, although she remains religious, presents an insider’s view of family and communal life, with a questioning spirit.
Alan Brill, a professor in the graduate department of Jewish-Christian studies at Seton Hall University, points to an earlier tradition of chasidic rebels, like Isaac Joel Linetzky (1839 - 1915), a Yiddish writer born into a Chassidic family in Podolia, Ukraine. His novel, “Dos Poylishe Yingl” (“The Polish Boy,” 1869), satirizing Chassidic life in coarse and colorful language, appeared in 30 editions, the last in Kiev in 1939. The sequel was published under the evocative title “Der Vorm in Khreyn” (“The Worm in the Horseradish”).
Brill also mentions stories of people who went to the home of the poet and author Y. L. Peretz in Warsaw: “They came in as chasidim and left as secular Yiddish authors, writing accounts of the changes in their lives.”
Perhaps the ongoing appeal of these works has something to do with the fact that some Jews see their own family’s more traditional pasts in the characters’ strict lifestyle. The memoirs about leaving touch on extreme transformations and complex questions of faith, theology, tradition and family that many struggle with, albeit in different permutations.
“These are coming-of-age stories, but the writers are not teenagers but adults trying to understand the world we live in,” says Twersky, who is a writer as well as an actor. “Before, we had other people telling our stories. Now we are able to speak in our own voices.”
For him, acting in the film “Felix & Meira” was cathartic. “You go back to a place where you were and try to understand it. As an actor you can’t judge your characters. You have to believe in what they believe in at the moment.” He says that he now understands the place he came from in new ways, although he remains critical.
Brill, who closely follows the demographics of the Jewish community, says that nobody has any statistics about the number of people leaving chassidic life. When asked about whether people are also exiting from religious communities like Lakewood, N.J., which are fervently Orthodox but non-chasidic, he says that they are, but not to the same degree.
Brown points out that the chasidic community has quadrupled in the last generation — recent studies show that Borough Park has the highest birthrate of any New York City neighborhood — so that it makes sense that the number of people leaving is also larger. She says it’s natural that some would want to articulate their experience.
As to whether the chasidic communities are changing, Brill says, “I don’t think they change, in a direct sense of becoming more sensitive, more open, or more responsive. I do think these communities have a sense of what the [World Wide] Web brings into their world, how easy it is now to learn about the outside world. There’s greater awareness.
“There are a combination of things going on now,” he continues. “Abuses are being exposed; there are problems of pornography, incredible materialism — seeing how other people live. Real knowledge is available. You have to publicly buy a newspaper, but here the knowledge of what’s going on in the world is [privately] available on your phone. They haven’t come to grips with that yet.”
Twersky believes that he and his fellow chroniclers are indeed having an impact. “We are poking massive holes in the narrative: We are told as kids that if you go out, you’re going to end up in jail, or in rehab, that life will be horrible. The rise of this community is to inspire other people — kids, teenagers, people with kids — to think, ‘I can go out and make it. I can live the life I really want.’”
While Deen, the founding editor of the website Unpious (where he published distinguished work by a number of ex-chasidim), is indeed sad about what has happened with his family, he is not a broken man; rather, he is alive with possibility. In an interview, he shares his ideas with a thoughtfulness that belies how long and deeply he has been considering belief and reason, family and community, and building a new value system. After he married at 18 (he had met his wife for only a few moments before they agreed to wed) and had children, he lost his belief in all that he had been taught not to question.
This wasn’t the book Deen intended to write. He had in mind to write a novel, but his agent convinced him that it would be easier to sell a memoir. He says that he’s always had the impulse to write — as a teenager, he used to write in a florid rabbinic Hebrew and then in Yiddish. Early in his marriage, he published some essays in Yiddish. After sneaking a radio and then a computer into their home in New Square, he discovered the world of blogging in 2003 and attracted a huge audience to his (anonymous) “Hasidic Rebel” blog. Eventually, he was expelled from the Rockland County town as a heretic.
The memoir’s narrative skillfully goes back and forward in time, with flashbacks to his childhood and more innocent times. As a young student when he first visits New Square from Brooklyn, he is struck by the intensity, piety and warmth of the place, and the modesty of the people who seem less interested in remodeled kitchens than the chasidim he knew in Borough Park. Now, he recalls how he was truly uplifted and even ecstatic in his prayer life among the Skverers and he says, “Nothing in the secular world so far has been able to move me with that intensity.”
He no longer prays, but enjoys occasionally going to non-Orthodox synagogues, “connecting to a sense of peoplehood, mystery and culture.”
Deen says that one of the questions he is most frequently asked is whether leaving was worthwhile, whether he’d do it again
“Was it worth it? Absolutely. I’m happier, more fulfilled, I have a wonderful network of friends,” he says.
“Would I have done it if I knew I would lose my children? No I would not. That was too much to bear and I would not have been able to consciously take that step. But perhaps if I was better prepared, the outcome would not have been inevitable, and I’d like to think I’d have had the courage to undertake that battle, because living a fear-based life, lying and hiding to yourself and everyone around you, is no way to live.”
Deen now lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and is on the board of Footsteps, an organization that helps individuals in different stages of leaving Chassidic life, providing much-needed counseling in job skills and education, along with a new sense of community. “Footsteps has saved lives in the most literal sense,” he says.
Basya Schechter, a musician and composer who leads the group “Pharaoh’s Daughter,” also grew up in the chassidic world and left it many years ago. She now serves as music director of Romemu, a progressive, egalitarian synagogue on the Upper West Side, and is studying to be a cantor.
She notes that people have been telling these stories through films and documentaries for the last 20 years, and more recently through memoirs. “Every story is so different, each journey is so individual.”
“I love the genre. Every time another book or movie comes out, I feel it is a triumph of a voice being heard.”
editor@jewishweek.org
Shavuot is coming, and you may be contemplating the dairy dishes you'll make or eat, or both. At JW F&W we take the tradition to the limit with a Tres Leches Cake from Brazil. Yes, that is three milks. Brazilians Really Got Milk
Don't hold back on Shavuot, the only holiday that celebrates dairy over meat.
The finished product: gorgeous and luscious. Leticia Schwartz/JW
Sweetened condensed milk. Coconut milk. Evaporated milk. All of these ingredients used to be considered exotic; now you can find them in any supermarket because of the popularity of Latin cuisine, where they are common in everyday cooking.
Who better, then, to consult for a Shavuot recipe? Tradition tells us that Jews did not eat any meat during the time they were waiting for Moses to bring the Torah, but lots of cheese and milk. This is probably the only holiday where Jews play in the kitchen with a bonanza of dairy foods. This recipe for the tropical classic, Tres Leches Cake, gives you ample permission to play.
It was always present on the Shavuot tables of my childhood in Rio through the Moroccan side of my family, who were from Tangier. Most traditional Latin cakes come from the sponge cake family, and are direct descendants of a very old Spanish recipe called pan di españa, which is also typical of Sephardic Jewish cooking. Tres Leches is no exception.
This cake is a wonder: simple to make, impressive to serve and full of harmonious flavors that seduce the palate. The basic premise of the recipe is that a sponge cake is soaked in 3 different types of milk: sweetenedcondensed milk, evaporated milk, and coconut milk, hence the name.
I like to prepare a whipped cream to top the cake, but you don’t have to. You can serve with dusted powder sugar, or some berries or some caramel ice cream. More dairy to celebrate Shavuot! More!
Slideshow
HideServings & Times
Yield:
Serves 14-16Active Time:
1 hrTotal Time:
9 hrHideIngredients
For the cake:
10 eggs
1 cup (200g) sugar
1 1/8 cup (175g) flour
For soaking the cake:
1 (12-oince) can evaporated milk
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut milk
1¼ cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon coconut extract
For the whipped cream:
1 cup (250ml) heavy cream
1 tablespoon (8g) powdered sugar
HideSteps
Grease a 9 X 13 baking dish (glass or porcelain). Pre-heat the oven to 325˚F.
Place the eggs and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water (bowl should not touch water) and heat just until lukewarm to the touch, whisking constantly with a long whisk to prevent curdling. Bring the bowl to the mixer and attach the whisk beater. Start beating on low speed, gradually increasing to high speed. Beat on high until mixture has thickened, whitened, and tripled in volume, about ten to 12 minutes.
Sift the flour over the mixture and gently fold to combine. The eggs will naturally deflate a little but they will still be fluffy. Carefully pour the batter into the prepared baking dish. Bake until the cake is lightly golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool for 30 minutes.
In a large bowl, whisk together the three milks and cream together. Add the vanilla and coconut extracts and whisk again. Pierce the cake all over with a toothpick or skewer. Carefully and slowly pour the liquid, one ladle at a time over the cake. Add another ladle only when the previous one has been completely absorbed. This process will take about 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, until the liquid is completely absorbed.
Bring the cake to room temperature 30 minutes before serving. In an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream until it starts to thicken. Sift the sugar over, and continue to whip until it reaches soft peaks. Pour on top of the cake and use a spoon to make swirl moves. Serve immediately.
HideShabbat Shalom,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Editor
THE NEW NORMAL
A Mother's Day Tribute For Grandmothers: 6 Tips To Help Raise Grandchildren Who Have Autism
Frances Victory
As Mother’s Day approaches, I begin to think about my two beloved grandmothers who played a huge role in my life. They helped shaped me in so many different ways and I cherish each and every memory of our time together. For grandmothers who have grandchildren diagnosed with autism, understanding the role they can play in their grandchild's life is not always clear. But their are many ways that with supports and education, those grandmothers can still make a wonderful impact in their grandchildren's lives. Here are some tips towards making that happen.
1. Educate yourself and other adults and children in your family: Spend some time reading about autism and becoming fully knowledgeable about causes, treatments, and behaviors.
Try to explain autism to other adults and children in the family so that they can also understand the child’s behavior. It's very important to remember and understand that if you have met one child with autism, you have only met one child with autism. Every child with autism is different. Every child has different strengths and weaknesses and treatment must be planned according to his or her needs. The following are some website resources and books geared towards educating grandparents.
Websites:
Autism Grandparents Support Group
Grandparent Autism Network
Autism Speaks- Grandparents Resources
Books:
Grandparenting a Child With Special Needs
The Grandparent Connection: Practical Ways to Understand and Help Your Grandchild with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Your Special Grandchild: A Book for Grandparents of Children Diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome
Grandparent's Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorders: Making the Most of the Time at Nana's House
Grandparenting a Child with Autism: The Joy, Frustration, and Growth of Living with Autism
Voices from the Spectrum: Parents, Grandparents, Siblings, People with Autism, and Professionals Share Their Wisdom
2. Deal with your own emotions/feelings about the diagnosis: It is important to work on figuring out how you feel about having a grandchild with autism. If you begin to feel guilty, powerless, helpless, denial, shocked, or angry, maybe take some time to speak to a professional or friend about your feelings. This is important because you do not want to project your feelings onto the child’s parents who are already dealing with their own stress and emotions.
3. Be an active part of your grandchild’s life: If possible, schedule daily, weekly or monthly special time for you and your grandchild. Remember, children with autism need predictable and consistent schedules. Try to find regular structured activities that you can do together. Ask the child’s parents about what he or she will enjoy doing and not become frustrated. When participating in activities together, make sure to respect the rules and boundaries that have been set by mom and dad. Also, some children with autism may have dietary restrictions so make sure you know what your grandchild can and cannot eat. It may take a while to connect with your granddaughter or grandson with autism. Have patience. You may want to kiss and hug the child, but remember that can be sensory overload for him or her. Ask if you can attend the child’s treatment sessions so that you can learn more about his or her strengths and weaknesses, and ways you can help them when spending time alone together.
4. Help out with other child(ren): The other child(ren) in the family may feel left out because parents are focusing a lot of their time and energy on the child with autism. Try to also schedule regular daily, weekly, or monthly regular special time with them. They will appreciate you working on developing a special connection and bond with them.
5. Offer help and support: A child with autism can have a huge affect on a marriage. Offer babysitting services so that parents can spend a few hours together outside the home to reconnect. Or you can try to help out around the house with basic household chores. If you do not live near your grandchild, ask how you can help out financially. Raising a child with autism can be very expensive, and parents will be extremely grateful for any financial support. Parents will also appreciate having a person they can talk to and a shoulder to cry on. Make sure they know that you are always available to listen. It is vital that they do not feel judged or blamed for their child’s diagnosis. Try to schedule some alone time with them. They will appreciate having a calm person in their life. Remind them of your love and support.
6. Find Outside Support, Outreach and Advocacy: You can also help your grandchild indirectly by connecting with different online networking groups and finding out the latest about events and research. Volunteer with different charity organization or donate money. Advocate and help make a change in areas such as autism legislation, research funding, special education programs, employment opportunities and housing services.
Dr. Frances Victory received her PhD in Developmental Psychology at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Her thesis was titled, "Exploring the Role of Perceived Religiosity on Daily Life, Coping, and Parenting for Jewish Parents of Children with Autism." You can reach her at victory.frances@gmail.com
Read More 
Balanced Budget Con Game
Douglas Bloomfield
When politicians start talking about amending the constitution to require a balanced budget, they're telling you two things.
They have no courage and they think you're stupid.
What they really want is the issue and none of the responsibility that goes with balancing the budget. Republicans have majorities in Congress and could pass a balanced budget today if they were serious. And if the President vetoes it, they have the issue they're looking for.
Instead they passed an unrealistic, veto-bait budget this week that makes draconiancuts in social programs, particularly Medicare and food stamps, to pay for big boosts in defense spending, and they're touting it as a path to a balanced budget in a decade.
Meanwhile, five of Republican presidential contenders so far this year have called for the balanced budget amendment (BBA) and more are sure to follow. They're kicking the proverbial can down the road because at best it will be several years before the amendment could be ratified and go into effect.
All that instead of trying to pass a realistic balanced budget that could get bipartisan support and a presidential signature, but that would call for making too many difficult decisions all around, like raising taxes and cutting spending on favored programs, so it is easier just to demagogue the issue.
If those presidential wannabes would stop to think about what they're trying to do, they would understand they'd be tying their own hands if lightning strikes and plops them into the Oval Office.
It's a cop-out. The amendment won't pass and most of those wannabes, if not all, are unlikely to make it to the White House.
So they'll keep droning on about balancing the budget while voters don't notice that's all they're really doing while they're out on the hustings making irresponsible promises (that's totally bipartisan) without a clue how they'll pay for it if they also intend to keep their vow to never raise taxes.
Read More Israeli-American Chef Wins Top U.S. Food Prize
Chef Alon Shaya recently opened Shaya, an Israeli-style restaurant in New Orleans. Courtesy of Besh Restaurant Group
JTA
Israeli-American chef Alon Shaya was named best chef in the South by the James Beard Foundation.
The prize, America’s top prize for food, was awarded on Tuesday.
Shaya, 37, broke through as the winner after being a finalist in the category for the past three years.
He was recognized for his work as the executive chef at the Domenica restaurant in New Orleans, which he opened in 2009 with the prominent chef and restaurateur John Besh. His newly opened Shaya restaurant in the same city offers an Israeli-inspired menu using local ingredients.
Shaya moved with his family from Israel to Philadelphia when he was 4 years old. He attended the Culinary Instituteof America in New York.
Read More
NEW YORK
Leaving The Fold, Onto The Bookshelf
Growing literary genre of ex-Orthodox testing traditional narrative of insular communities.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Shulem Deen was a man in his 20s when he felt bold enough to slip unseen into a public library. Like the inner-city African-American boy in Philip Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” who, on a visit to the Newark Public Library, first sees Gauguin’s striking paintings of exotic Tahiti, a world cracked open for Deen.
On a tiny chair in the children’s section, the Skverer chasid made his way through the World Book Encyclopedia, encountering Einstein, Egyptian hieroglyphics and ElvisPresley for the first time.
His debut memoir, “All Who Go Do Not Return” (Graywolf), is the latest work in the new and deepening literary tradition of brutally honest works by ex-chasidim about leaving their community. Through these books, the reading public is guided inside thecloistered worlds of chasidic life. Whether that cloistered world has been changed — opened up, if you will — by the growing number of these works remains a point of debate.
Deen is the poet laureate of ex-chasidim. His sentences flow with originality as he unveils his story with passion and sensitivity. Readers will be surprised to realize that he is largely self-taught, that most of his schooling was in Yiddish.
While “All Who Go Do Not Return” is a story of leaving, his is not the voice of someone in exile, looking back. Rather, Deen writes as a traveler, looking around and deeply noticing all that he missed in the outside world, yearning for knowledge and experience.
It is also a heartbreaking book, as Deen — at least for the time being — is no longer in touch with his five children, three daughters and two sons who range in age from 13 to 20. That’s not his choice, but a complicated outcome of family court, his ex-wife Gitty’s desire to shield them from his heretical ways, community pressure and the children’s absorption of communal norms of conformity. He writes of losing their hearts. Still, Deen is respectful of Gitty and the Skverers. Readers may hope that his children get to read this book and come to understand their father and his love for them.
Since Hella Winston’s groundbreaking study, “Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels,” was published in 2005, there have been many books published by people who seem like they stepped out of her pages. Deen’s book belongs on bookshelves alongside the compelling and much-discussed memoirs by formerly fervently Orthodox writers including Shalom Auslander, Deborah Feldman and Leah Vincent, and Anouk Markovits’ novel “I Am Forbidden.”
Just out last month is a film, “Felix and Meira,” about a young chasidic married woman drawn into a romance with a non-Jewish French Canadian and into a world outside of her restrictive Montreal community. It’s a gentle film, with images that linger. Meira’s loving husband is played by Luzer Twersky, a former chasid who grew up in Borough Park and left that world seven years ago.
And coming in July is a new memoir by Judy Brown, who in 2010 penned the young adult book, “Hush,” under the pseudonym Eishes Chayil (woman of valor) for fear of backlash in the chasidic world in which she grew up because of her depiction of sexual abuse within the community. Brown’s “This Is Not A Love Story” is her story of growing up in a family with six children, including a brother who is afflicted with a medical condition they don’t understand. Told in the voice of her younger self, Brown, who has left the chasidic community, although she remains religious, presents an insider’s view of family and communal life, with a questioning spirit.
Alan Brill, a professor in the graduate department of Jewish-Christian studies at Seton Hall University, points to an earlier tradition of chasidic rebels, like Isaac Joel Linetzky (1839 - 1915), a Yiddish writer born into a Chassidic family in Podolia, Ukraine. His novel, “Dos Poylishe Yingl” (“The Polish Boy,” 1869), satirizing Chassidic life in coarse and colorful language, appeared in 30 editions, the last in Kiev in 1939. The sequel was published under the evocative title “Der Vorm in Khreyn” (“The Worm in the Horseradish”).
Brill also mentions stories of people who went to the home of the poet and author Y. L. Peretz in Warsaw: “They came in as chasidim and left as secular Yiddish authors, writing accounts of the changes in their lives.”
Perhaps the ongoing appeal of these works has something to do with the fact that some Jews see their own family’s more traditional pasts in the characters’ strict lifestyle. The memoirs about leaving touch on extreme transformations and complex questions of faith, theology, tradition and family that many struggle with, albeit in different permutations.
“These are coming-of-age stories, but the writers are not teenagers but adults trying to understand the world we live in,” says Twersky, who is a writer as well as an actor. “Before, we had other people telling our stories. Now we are able to speak in our own voices.”
For him, acting in the film “Felix & Meira” was cathartic. “You go back to a place where you were and try to understand it. As an actor you can’t judge your characters. You have to believe in what they believe in at the moment.” He says that he now understands the place he came from in new ways, although he remains critical.
Brill, who closely follows the demographics of the Jewish community, says that nobody has any statistics about the number of people leaving chassidic life. When asked about whether people are also exiting from religious communities like Lakewood, N.J., which are fervently Orthodox but non-chasidic, he says that they are, but not to the same degree.
Brown points out that the chasidic community has quadrupled in the last generation — recent studies show that Borough Park has the highest birthrate of any New York City neighborhood — so that it makes sense that the number of people leaving is also larger. She says it’s natural that some would want to articulate their experience.
As to whether the chasidic communities are changing, Brill says, “I don’t think they change, in a direct sense of becoming more sensitive, more open, or more responsive. I do think these communities have a sense of what the [World Wide] Web brings into their world, how easy it is now to learn about the outside world. There’s greater awareness.
“There are a combination of things going on now,” he continues. “Abuses are being exposed; there are problems of pornography, incredible materialism — seeing how other people live. Real knowledge is available. You have to publicly buy a newspaper, but here the knowledge of what’s going on in the world is [privately] available on your phone. They haven’t come to grips with that yet.”
Twersky believes that he and his fellow chroniclers are indeed having an impact. “We are poking massive holes in the narrative: We are told as kids that if you go out, you’re going to end up in jail, or in rehab, that life will be horrible. The rise of this community is to inspire other people — kids, teenagers, people with kids — to think, ‘I can go out and make it. I can live the life I really want.’”
While Deen, the founding editor of the website Unpious (where he published distinguished work by a number of ex-chasidim), is indeed sad about what has happened with his family, he is not a broken man; rather, he is alive with possibility. In an interview, he shares his ideas with a thoughtfulness that belies how long and deeply he has been considering belief and reason, family and community, and building a new value system. After he married at 18 (he had met his wife for only a few moments before they agreed to wed) and had children, he lost his belief in all that he had been taught not to question.
This wasn’t the book Deen intended to write. He had in mind to write a novel, but his agent convinced him that it would be easier to sell a memoir. He says that he’s always had the impulse to write — as a teenager, he used to write in a florid rabbinic Hebrew and then in Yiddish. Early in his marriage, he published some essays in Yiddish. After sneaking a radio and then a computer into their home in New Square, he discovered the world of blogging in 2003 and attracted a huge audience to his (anonymous) “Hasidic Rebel” blog. Eventually, he was expelled from the Rockland County town as a heretic.
The memoir’s narrative skillfully goes back and forward in time, with flashbacks to his childhood and more innocent times. As a young student when he first visits New Square from Brooklyn, he is struck by the intensity, piety and warmth of the place, and the modesty of the people who seem less interested in remodeled kitchens than the chasidim he knew in Borough Park. Now, he recalls how he was truly uplifted and even ecstatic in his prayer life among the Skverers and he says, “Nothing in the secular world so far has been able to move me with that intensity.”
He no longer prays, but enjoys occasionally going to non-Orthodox synagogues, “connecting to a sense of peoplehood, mystery and culture.”
Deen says that one of the questions he is most frequently asked is whether leaving was worthwhile, whether he’d do it again
“Was it worth it? Absolutely. I’m happier, more fulfilled, I have a wonderful network of friends,” he says.
“Would I have done it if I knew I would lose my children? No I would not. That was too much to bear and I would not have been able to consciously take that step. But perhaps if I was better prepared, the outcome would not have been inevitable, and I’d like to think I’d have had the courage to undertake that battle, because living a fear-based life, lying and hiding to yourself and everyone around you, is no way to live.”
Deen now lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and is on the board of Footsteps, an organization that helps individuals in different stages of leaving Chassidic life, providing much-needed counseling in job skills and education, along with a new sense of community. “Footsteps has saved lives in the most literal sense,” he says.
Basya Schechter, a musician and composer who leads the group “Pharaoh’s Daughter,” also grew up in the chassidic world and left it many years ago. She now serves as music director of Romemu, a progressive, egalitarian synagogue on the Upper West Side, and is studying to be a cantor.
She notes that people have been telling these stories through films and documentaries for the last 20 years, and more recently through memoirs. “Every story is so different, each journey is so individual.”
“I love the genre. Every time another book or movie comes out, I feel it is a triumph of a voice being heard.”
editor@jewishweek.org
Read More
LENS
On-court Success
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Courtesy of University of Maryland Hillel
The Jewish student population at the University of Maryland experienced a sudden surge recently — for one weekend.
Some 1,000 Jewish students from around the country were on campus late last month for the fifth annual National Hillel Basketball Tournament.
The competition, initiated by members of the national Jewish student organization, brought teams from 40 schools for a series of events that included Shabbat services, Torah study sessions, guests speakers, social events, and the athletic tournament itself. Boston University won the men’s event, and defending champion University of Maryland took the women’s event.
Participating schools from the New York area included Barnard, NYU and Queens College.
“Jewish students from all around the nation were connected through the game of basketball,” New Yorker Jacob Neumark, the sophomore from the host school who served as co-chair of this year’s competition, wrote on his blog. “These students put their hearts and souls into this weekend because they themselves were driven by their own vision of what bringing Jewish college students from across the country could accomplish. The weekend embodied empowerment and unity.”
steve@jewishweek.org
Read More
FIRST PERSON
Toward A Radical Empathy
David Bryfman
Special To The Jewish Week
The First Temple was destroyed [in 586 BCE] because of three sins committed by the Jews of that period: idolatry, sexual immorality and murder. The Second Temple was destroyed [70 CE] because senseless hatred was prevalent. This teaches us that the offense of senseless hatred is the equivalent of the three sins of idolatry, sexual immorality and murder. — Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, 9B
The Second Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred. Perhaps the Third will be rebuilt because of causeless love. — Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook, first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Israel
Whether it’s our argumentative nature (two Jews, three opinions) or the capacity for anyone to hold a bullhorn in this age of social media, it’s been a particularly bad year for Jewish communal discourse. At times, the vitriol and venom we’ve witnessed, particularly but not restricted to issues around Israel, has been so biting that I’ve wondered whether this would be the moment of Temple destruction, had it not already happened.
At this year’s Passover seder, as my family proceeded with its annual custom of identifying a modern-day plague afflicting our world, I called-out “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias is the tendency for human beings to surround themselves in an echo chamber of like minds and like opinions that serve to reinforce their existing viewpoints on given issues. With the proliferation of options that continue to validate our own opinions (only making us more intractable), this modern-day plague feels more potent than ever for me.
Which could explain why I keep gravitating toward a pressing call that has emerged across sectors, industries and disciplines for a new civil discourse, one that respects and validates other perspectives, even while we may disagree with them. It’s a far cry from the incivility and even hatred we’ve seen in our own community, aimed at those who may hold views different from ours.
What would it look like if we actively pursued data to disconfirm our biases? If we watched news broadcasts that held different political viewpoints than our own? If we joined Facebook groups that we were challenged by instead of those we “liked?” What would happen if we all took time in our days to actively engage in conversation with “the other” — whoever they might be?
What would happen if we embraced empathy as the core value of our time, considering the world from a place other than our own? If we were able to recognize that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes and seeing the world from another’s vantage point were not only valuable, but also an imperative to making our communities and the world a better place?
In some ways philosopher Martin Buber describes these empathetic encounters as “I-Thou” relationships (as opposed to “I-It” encounters) achieved when people dig behind the surface to gain a deeper understanding of the other person. So powerful are I-Thou encounters that they become mutually enhancing and potentially transformative relationships.
I’m not so naïve as to suggest that we will ever collectively reach a place of such high attainment and unconditional love, but I’m hopeful enough to recognize the transformative power of empathy on our community — an essential leap forward if we hope to ever return to an era of civility and a thoughtful exchange of ideas.
As an educator I believe that empathy is critical to the design of relevant and meaningful experiences for our learners. More than any curriculum, Jewish learning will be more meaningful if we accept where our learners really are, and take that as a starting point for the educational experiences. Moreover, if teaching empathy leads to it becoming a life skill, that teaching is invaluable; regardless of their age, learners need empathy to better prepare them to see the world from multiple perspectives.
Empathy is uncomfortable. Difficult. Challenging. But it is a skill that can be learned and developed. And embracing empathy as the new imperative — challenging ourselves to view things from a new perspective —makes us not only better people, but also better, more effective professionals, living and working in a more vibrant and dynamic community.
David Bryfman is the chief innovation officer at The Jewish Education Project, which will sponsor a Jewish Futures Conference on May 13 in New York; the conference is dedicated to radical empathy and is open to the public.
Read More
The Jewish Week
Balanced Budget Con Game
Douglas Bloomfield
When politicians start talking about amending the constitution to require a balanced budget, they're telling you two things.
They have no courage and they think you're stupid.
What they really want is the issue and none of the responsibility that goes with balancing the budget. Republicans have majorities in Congress and could pass a balanced budget today if they were serious. And if the President vetoes it, they have the issue they're looking for.
Instead they passed an unrealistic, veto-bait budget this week that makes draconiancuts in social programs, particularly Medicare and food stamps, to pay for big boosts in defense spending, and they're touting it as a path to a balanced budget in a decade.
Meanwhile, five of Republican presidential contenders so far this year have called for the balanced budget amendment (BBA) and more are sure to follow. They're kicking the proverbial can down the road because at best it will be several years before the amendment could be ratified and go into effect.
All that instead of trying to pass a realistic balanced budget that could get bipartisan support and a presidential signature, but that would call for making too many difficult decisions all around, like raising taxes and cutting spending on favored programs, so it is easier just to demagogue the issue.
If those presidential wannabes would stop to think about what they're trying to do, they would understand they'd be tying their own hands if lightning strikes and plops them into the Oval Office.
It's a cop-out. The amendment won't pass and most of those wannabes, if not all, are unlikely to make it to the White House.
So they'll keep droning on about balancing the budget while voters don't notice that's all they're really doing while they're out on the hustings making irresponsible promises (that's totally bipartisan) without a clue how they'll pay for it if they also intend to keep their vow to never raise taxes.
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Israeli-American Chef Wins Top U.S. Food PrizeChef Alon Shaya recently opened Shaya, an Israeli-style restaurant in New Orleans. Courtesy of Besh Restaurant Group
JTA
Israeli-American chef Alon Shaya was named best chef in the South by the James Beard Foundation.
The prize, America’s top prize for food, was awarded on Tuesday.
Shaya, 37, broke through as the winner after being a finalist in the category for the past three years.
He was recognized for his work as the executive chef at the Domenica restaurant in New Orleans, which he opened in 2009 with the prominent chef and restaurateur John Besh. His newly opened Shaya restaurant in the same city offers an Israeli-inspired menu using local ingredients.
Shaya moved with his family from Israel to Philadelphia when he was 4 years old. He attended the Culinary Instituteof America in New York.
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NEW YORKLeaving The Fold, Onto The Bookshelf
Growing literary genre of ex-Orthodox testing traditional narrative of insular communities.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Shulem Deen was a man in his 20s when he felt bold enough to slip unseen into a public library. Like the inner-city African-American boy in Philip Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” who, on a visit to the Newark Public Library, first sees Gauguin’s striking paintings of exotic Tahiti, a world cracked open for Deen.
On a tiny chair in the children’s section, the Skverer chasid made his way through the World Book Encyclopedia, encountering Einstein, Egyptian hieroglyphics and ElvisPresley for the first time.
His debut memoir, “All Who Go Do Not Return” (Graywolf), is the latest work in the new and deepening literary tradition of brutally honest works by ex-chasidim about leaving their community. Through these books, the reading public is guided inside thecloistered worlds of chasidic life. Whether that cloistered world has been changed — opened up, if you will — by the growing number of these works remains a point of debate.
Deen is the poet laureate of ex-chasidim. His sentences flow with originality as he unveils his story with passion and sensitivity. Readers will be surprised to realize that he is largely self-taught, that most of his schooling was in Yiddish.
While “All Who Go Do Not Return” is a story of leaving, his is not the voice of someone in exile, looking back. Rather, Deen writes as a traveler, looking around and deeply noticing all that he missed in the outside world, yearning for knowledge and experience.
It is also a heartbreaking book, as Deen — at least for the time being — is no longer in touch with his five children, three daughters and two sons who range in age from 13 to 20. That’s not his choice, but a complicated outcome of family court, his ex-wife Gitty’s desire to shield them from his heretical ways, community pressure and the children’s absorption of communal norms of conformity. He writes of losing their hearts. Still, Deen is respectful of Gitty and the Skverers. Readers may hope that his children get to read this book and come to understand their father and his love for them.
Since Hella Winston’s groundbreaking study, “Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels,” was published in 2005, there have been many books published by people who seem like they stepped out of her pages. Deen’s book belongs on bookshelves alongside the compelling and much-discussed memoirs by formerly fervently Orthodox writers including Shalom Auslander, Deborah Feldman and Leah Vincent, and Anouk Markovits’ novel “I Am Forbidden.”
Just out last month is a film, “Felix and Meira,” about a young chasidic married woman drawn into a romance with a non-Jewish French Canadian and into a world outside of her restrictive Montreal community. It’s a gentle film, with images that linger. Meira’s loving husband is played by Luzer Twersky, a former chasid who grew up in Borough Park and left that world seven years ago.
And coming in July is a new memoir by Judy Brown, who in 2010 penned the young adult book, “Hush,” under the pseudonym Eishes Chayil (woman of valor) for fear of backlash in the chasidic world in which she grew up because of her depiction of sexual abuse within the community. Brown’s “This Is Not A Love Story” is her story of growing up in a family with six children, including a brother who is afflicted with a medical condition they don’t understand. Told in the voice of her younger self, Brown, who has left the chasidic community, although she remains religious, presents an insider’s view of family and communal life, with a questioning spirit.
Alan Brill, a professor in the graduate department of Jewish-Christian studies at Seton Hall University, points to an earlier tradition of chasidic rebels, like Isaac Joel Linetzky (1839 - 1915), a Yiddish writer born into a Chassidic family in Podolia, Ukraine. His novel, “Dos Poylishe Yingl” (“The Polish Boy,” 1869), satirizing Chassidic life in coarse and colorful language, appeared in 30 editions, the last in Kiev in 1939. The sequel was published under the evocative title “Der Vorm in Khreyn” (“The Worm in the Horseradish”).
Brill also mentions stories of people who went to the home of the poet and author Y. L. Peretz in Warsaw: “They came in as chasidim and left as secular Yiddish authors, writing accounts of the changes in their lives.”
Perhaps the ongoing appeal of these works has something to do with the fact that some Jews see their own family’s more traditional pasts in the characters’ strict lifestyle. The memoirs about leaving touch on extreme transformations and complex questions of faith, theology, tradition and family that many struggle with, albeit in different permutations.
“These are coming-of-age stories, but the writers are not teenagers but adults trying to understand the world we live in,” says Twersky, who is a writer as well as an actor. “Before, we had other people telling our stories. Now we are able to speak in our own voices.”
For him, acting in the film “Felix & Meira” was cathartic. “You go back to a place where you were and try to understand it. As an actor you can’t judge your characters. You have to believe in what they believe in at the moment.” He says that he now understands the place he came from in new ways, although he remains critical.
Brill, who closely follows the demographics of the Jewish community, says that nobody has any statistics about the number of people leaving chassidic life. When asked about whether people are also exiting from religious communities like Lakewood, N.J., which are fervently Orthodox but non-chasidic, he says that they are, but not to the same degree.
Brown points out that the chasidic community has quadrupled in the last generation — recent studies show that Borough Park has the highest birthrate of any New York City neighborhood — so that it makes sense that the number of people leaving is also larger. She says it’s natural that some would want to articulate their experience.
As to whether the chasidic communities are changing, Brill says, “I don’t think they change, in a direct sense of becoming more sensitive, more open, or more responsive. I do think these communities have a sense of what the [World Wide] Web brings into their world, how easy it is now to learn about the outside world. There’s greater awareness.
“There are a combination of things going on now,” he continues. “Abuses are being exposed; there are problems of pornography, incredible materialism — seeing how other people live. Real knowledge is available. You have to publicly buy a newspaper, but here the knowledge of what’s going on in the world is [privately] available on your phone. They haven’t come to grips with that yet.”
Twersky believes that he and his fellow chroniclers are indeed having an impact. “We are poking massive holes in the narrative: We are told as kids that if you go out, you’re going to end up in jail, or in rehab, that life will be horrible. The rise of this community is to inspire other people — kids, teenagers, people with kids — to think, ‘I can go out and make it. I can live the life I really want.’”
While Deen, the founding editor of the website Unpious (where he published distinguished work by a number of ex-chasidim), is indeed sad about what has happened with his family, he is not a broken man; rather, he is alive with possibility. In an interview, he shares his ideas with a thoughtfulness that belies how long and deeply he has been considering belief and reason, family and community, and building a new value system. After he married at 18 (he had met his wife for only a few moments before they agreed to wed) and had children, he lost his belief in all that he had been taught not to question.
This wasn’t the book Deen intended to write. He had in mind to write a novel, but his agent convinced him that it would be easier to sell a memoir. He says that he’s always had the impulse to write — as a teenager, he used to write in a florid rabbinic Hebrew and then in Yiddish. Early in his marriage, he published some essays in Yiddish. After sneaking a radio and then a computer into their home in New Square, he discovered the world of blogging in 2003 and attracted a huge audience to his (anonymous) “Hasidic Rebel” blog. Eventually, he was expelled from the Rockland County town as a heretic.
The memoir’s narrative skillfully goes back and forward in time, with flashbacks to his childhood and more innocent times. As a young student when he first visits New Square from Brooklyn, he is struck by the intensity, piety and warmth of the place, and the modesty of the people who seem less interested in remodeled kitchens than the chasidim he knew in Borough Park. Now, he recalls how he was truly uplifted and even ecstatic in his prayer life among the Skverers and he says, “Nothing in the secular world so far has been able to move me with that intensity.”
He no longer prays, but enjoys occasionally going to non-Orthodox synagogues, “connecting to a sense of peoplehood, mystery and culture.”
Deen says that one of the questions he is most frequently asked is whether leaving was worthwhile, whether he’d do it again
“Was it worth it? Absolutely. I’m happier, more fulfilled, I have a wonderful network of friends,” he says.
“Would I have done it if I knew I would lose my children? No I would not. That was too much to bear and I would not have been able to consciously take that step. But perhaps if I was better prepared, the outcome would not have been inevitable, and I’d like to think I’d have had the courage to undertake that battle, because living a fear-based life, lying and hiding to yourself and everyone around you, is no way to live.”
Deen now lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and is on the board of Footsteps, an organization that helps individuals in different stages of leaving Chassidic life, providing much-needed counseling in job skills and education, along with a new sense of community. “Footsteps has saved lives in the most literal sense,” he says.
Basya Schechter, a musician and composer who leads the group “Pharaoh’s Daughter,” also grew up in the chassidic world and left it many years ago. She now serves as music director of Romemu, a progressive, egalitarian synagogue on the Upper West Side, and is studying to be a cantor.
She notes that people have been telling these stories through films and documentaries for the last 20 years, and more recently through memoirs. “Every story is so different, each journey is so individual.”
“I love the genre. Every time another book or movie comes out, I feel it is a triumph of a voice being heard.”
editor@jewishweek.org
Read More
LENSOn-court Success
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Courtesy of University of Maryland Hillel
The Jewish student population at the University of Maryland experienced a sudden surge recently — for one weekend.
Some 1,000 Jewish students from around the country were on campus late last month for the fifth annual National Hillel Basketball Tournament.
The competition, initiated by members of the national Jewish student organization, brought teams from 40 schools for a series of events that included Shabbat services, Torah study sessions, guests speakers, social events, and the athletic tournament itself. Boston University won the men’s event, and defending champion University of Maryland took the women’s event.
Participating schools from the New York area included Barnard, NYU and Queens College.
“Jewish students from all around the nation were connected through the game of basketball,” New Yorker Jacob Neumark, the sophomore from the host school who served as co-chair of this year’s competition, wrote on his blog. “These students put their hearts and souls into this weekend because they themselves were driven by their own vision of what bringing Jewish college students from across the country could accomplish. The weekend embodied empowerment and unity.”
steve@jewishweek.org
Read More
FIRST PERSON
Toward A Radical EmpathyDavid Bryfman
Special To The Jewish Week
The First Temple was destroyed [in 586 BCE] because of three sins committed by the Jews of that period: idolatry, sexual immorality and murder. The Second Temple was destroyed [70 CE] because senseless hatred was prevalent. This teaches us that the offense of senseless hatred is the equivalent of the three sins of idolatry, sexual immorality and murder. — Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, 9B
The Second Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred. Perhaps the Third will be rebuilt because of causeless love. — Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook, first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Israel
Whether it’s our argumentative nature (two Jews, three opinions) or the capacity for anyone to hold a bullhorn in this age of social media, it’s been a particularly bad year for Jewish communal discourse. At times, the vitriol and venom we’ve witnessed, particularly but not restricted to issues around Israel, has been so biting that I’ve wondered whether this would be the moment of Temple destruction, had it not already happened.
At this year’s Passover seder, as my family proceeded with its annual custom of identifying a modern-day plague afflicting our world, I called-out “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias is the tendency for human beings to surround themselves in an echo chamber of like minds and like opinions that serve to reinforce their existing viewpoints on given issues. With the proliferation of options that continue to validate our own opinions (only making us more intractable), this modern-day plague feels more potent than ever for me.
Which could explain why I keep gravitating toward a pressing call that has emerged across sectors, industries and disciplines for a new civil discourse, one that respects and validates other perspectives, even while we may disagree with them. It’s a far cry from the incivility and even hatred we’ve seen in our own community, aimed at those who may hold views different from ours.
What would it look like if we actively pursued data to disconfirm our biases? If we watched news broadcasts that held different political viewpoints than our own? If we joined Facebook groups that we were challenged by instead of those we “liked?” What would happen if we all took time in our days to actively engage in conversation with “the other” — whoever they might be?
What would happen if we embraced empathy as the core value of our time, considering the world from a place other than our own? If we were able to recognize that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes and seeing the world from another’s vantage point were not only valuable, but also an imperative to making our communities and the world a better place?
In some ways philosopher Martin Buber describes these empathetic encounters as “I-Thou” relationships (as opposed to “I-It” encounters) achieved when people dig behind the surface to gain a deeper understanding of the other person. So powerful are I-Thou encounters that they become mutually enhancing and potentially transformative relationships.
I’m not so naïve as to suggest that we will ever collectively reach a place of such high attainment and unconditional love, but I’m hopeful enough to recognize the transformative power of empathy on our community — an essential leap forward if we hope to ever return to an era of civility and a thoughtful exchange of ideas.
As an educator I believe that empathy is critical to the design of relevant and meaningful experiences for our learners. More than any curriculum, Jewish learning will be more meaningful if we accept where our learners really are, and take that as a starting point for the educational experiences. Moreover, if teaching empathy leads to it becoming a life skill, that teaching is invaluable; regardless of their age, learners need empathy to better prepare them to see the world from multiple perspectives.
Empathy is uncomfortable. Difficult. Challenging. But it is a skill that can be learned and developed. And embracing empathy as the new imperative — challenging ourselves to view things from a new perspective —makes us not only better people, but also better, more effective professionals, living and working in a more vibrant and dynamic community.
David Bryfman is the chief innovation officer at The Jewish Education Project, which will sponsor a Jewish Futures Conference on May 13 in New York; the conference is dedicated to radical empathy and is open to the public.
Read More
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