Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Dear Reader,
A New Jersey jury this past week found JONAH, a Jewish group claiming to "heal" gays and reorient their sexual drive, guilty of consumer fraud and "unconscionable business practices." Rachel Delia Benaim, Jesse Lempel and Hella Winston report on the organization that was recommended by prominent rabbis.NATIONAL
The Rise And Fall Of JONAH
How a program using nudity, cuddling and group showers became Orthodox rabbis’ answer for gay Jews.
Rachel Delia Benaim, Jesse Lempel and Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week
Attorney David Dinielli points to photos of the plaintiffs during opening statements. The Star-Ledger, via AP Pool
On a warm day in June, a Jersey City jury heard Jonathan Hoffman, an Orthodox Jew, describe an exhilarating weekend he spent sponsored by JONAH, an organization that claims to “heal” same sex attraction.
He described a “wild party” where a group of men danced naked in the woods, threw cake at each other and rolled in the mud before washing off in a group shower. Hoffman told the court that JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) had helped him in his effort to change his sexual orientation.
Hoffman was deemed as a “success story” by JONAH — someone with a history of sexual relations with other men who has married a woman and started a family. In a videotaped deposition played for the court, Hoffman credited JONAH’s program as “the stuff that has helped me and the stuff that I hold dear to my heart.”
But others claim they were harmed by the organization. Last week, in a landmark verdict, a jury agreed. The five plaintiffs alleged that JONAH defrauded them by saying the program’s methods were scientific. The jury found JONAH liable for $72,400 in damages for consumer fraud and “unconscionable business practices.”
The verdict, however, leaves the Orthodox community with more questions than answers. Like how a young Orthodox Jewish man struggling with homosexual desires was guided by well known rabbis to spend weekends in the woods like the one Hoffman described? All under the watchful eye of a self-styled “life coach” who is also a Mormon high priest.
Much of the answer lies in the brilliant salesmanship of JONAH’s director, convicted fraudster Arthur Goldberg, and his less colorful co-director Elaine Berk. But it also includes the fact that recommendations of JONAH came from a number of respected Orthodox rabbis and mental health professionals.
The Beginning
In the late 1990s, Berk’s son came out to her as gay, she testified. She was troubled by this and “wrote letters to rabbis and different Jewish organizations and didn't receive answers.” Frustrated, she did her own research and found psychologists positing there were ways to “heal” homosexuality.
She met Goldberg, whose son had come out to him as gay, at a conference about homosexuality and healing in 1997. The next year they founded JONAH.
Described by Goldberg and Berk as a referral service, JONAH espouses treatment that includes one-on-one counseling, group therapy, and weekends in the woods. JONAH asserts that “wounds” incurred in childhood cause homosexuality, and once those wounds are “healed,” men will have healthy, non-sexual relationships with other men and become straight.
In 2000, JONAH received an endorsement from Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, dean of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia and a member of Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages. The endorsement remains on JONAH’s website today.
Around the same time, the award-winning documentary “Trembling Before God,” depicting the struggle of Orthodox gays and lesbians for acceptance in their religious communities, was released. Suddenly, gay Orthodox Jews became visible — and vocal — in a way they never had before.
Jonathan Hoffman noted that he found JONAH in 2006 through an online comment critiquing the film. He was 19 and struggling with “behaviors that were homosexual, not in line with my values,” he said.
“There weren't any other resources in the Jewish community that [were] providing Jewish men with the help that I was looking for,” Hoffman said in his deposition.
Moishie Rabinowitz, now treasurer of Jewish Queer Youth, was referred to JONAH by Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, known as the Novominsker Rebbe. Raised in a charedi home, Rabinowitz, 22, was well into the process of shidduch dating. The only problem: he knew he was gay. At the time, “there was no gay Jewish world,” he told The Jewish Week.
“I called his office ... and said this is a life or death situation, I need to see the rebbe tomorrow.” The next morning at 9:30, Rabinowitz walked into Perlow’s Brooklyn office. The white-bearded Rebbe emerged from his office donning tallit and a tefillin.
“Oh my God, I’m telling Mashiach [Messiah] I’m gay,” Rabinowitz recalled thinking.
After their meeting, Rabbi Perlow promised to look into the matter and four days later referred Rabinowitz to JONAH. But knowing that the organization used unscientific methods of conversion therapy, he decided not to go.
In 2004, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest Orthodox rabbinic association, issued an endorsement of JONAH, suggesting “rabbis might refer congregants to them for reparative therapy.”
But the biggest endorsement for JONAH came with “The Torah Declaration” in 2011, signed by over 200 rabbis. The document, apparently drafted by about two dozen men, attributed homosexuality to “childhood emotional wounds” and declared that attempting change was the only Torah-consistent way to deal with the problem.
And JONAH was the only Jewish organization offering the possibility of such change.
The Unraveling
Just when JONAH had reached the height of rabbinic backing, it came under attack. In November 2012, four former clients and two mothers filed a fraud suit.
In court papers and later at trial, witnesses said that Alan Downing, JONAH’s Mormon “life coach” who claimed to have subdued his own homosexual attractions, routinely “invited” young men he was counseling to strip in his office and then “physically feel” their masculinity. Downing also led others to believe the behaviors of their parents had turned them gay.
Immediately after the complaint became public, the RCA rescinded its support and asked JONAH to remove the endorsement from its website, where it remains today.
Last week’s verdict against JONAH did not come as a surprise to Rabbi Samuel Rosenberg, the Orthodox rabbi and licensed clinical social worker who was co-director of JONAH from 1999 until around 2002, when he left due to “theological and professional differences,” particularly regarding the weekend retreats’ nudity and cuddling.
“I would not approve the methods,” Rosenberg told The Jewish Week.
Rabbi Rosenberg and Goldberg clashed over the boldness of Goldberg’s claims.
“Mr. Goldberg insisted that he wanted to publicize the claim that he can assure anyone who comes through his doors that he can ‘cure’ them, quote unquote,” Rosenberg said. “My position was that it’s totally unethical to guarantee it, as with any psychotherapy. And also, that the term ‘cure’ is totally inappropriate in this context, because I would not call it an illness.”
Goldberg and his attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Rabbi Rosenberg said he was also troubled by Goldberg’s efforts to marshal Orthodox rabbinic support for JONAH through adopting calculated, Torah-friendly language while concealing the fact that he is not personally Orthodox.
Despite Goldberg’s lack of formal Jewish education — he left yeshiva after grammar school — and his personal non-observance, he was instrumental in the formation of right-wing Orthodoxy’s approach toward gay Jews. It was Goldberg’s name that was on the 2011 article in the Orthodox journal “Hakirah,” featuring a discussion between Rabbi Kamenetsky and him about the necessity of “setting forth Torah values” and touting JONAH’s services.
Within months, language from that article appeared in the Torah Declaration.
Some rabbis have successfully had their signatures removed from the document, like Rabbi Dr. Martin Schloss, director of the Jewish Education Project’s day school division. Others have hit a brick wall.
Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, a licensed clinical social worker and president of Nefesh, the International Network of Orthodox Mental Health Professionals, said he initially signed the declaration because he thought it “was merely a stance on the idea that sexual orientation is not absolute” and that some motivated clients could “find a healthy way to manage heterosexual relationships.” However, he later took issue with the document’s “unequivocal language that all homosexuals can be treated with today's available clinical expertise.” Despite asking to be removed several times, he said, his name remains on the website.
According to plaintiff Chaim Levin, however, even Rabbi Kamenetsky has privately expressed doubts about the Torah Declaration.
Levin said he met the rabbi two years ago and “saw the pain in his eyes as I recounted my experiences in conversion therapy and JONAH. He asked me for forgiveness and said that the document ‘needs to be changed.’ To date, nothing has, and Rabbi Kamenetsky has remained silent.”
Rabbi Kamenetsky declined to comment.
Although JONAH’s bizarre methods were exposed over the course of the trial, some Orthodox rabbis stand by it.
Asked about the recent verdict, Rabbi Shmuel Fuerst, a signatory to the Torah Declaration, said he wasn’t aware of it but was content to have his name on the document.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, an Orthodox rabbi in Teaneck who has been outspoken in support of the Torah Declaration, described the verdict against JONAH as imposing "draconian limitations on the pursuit of self-help."
While admitting that JONAH's techniques are sometimes "harsh,” Rabbi Pruzansky defended them as necessary "behavioral tools to sublimate the desires and lead a heterosexual life."
But the details that emerged shocked others.
“Although there are reputable therapists who use and have had successes with conventional counseling methods to help people wishing to control their same-sex attraction,” said Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, “the sort of ‘therapy’ that Mr. Downing says he employed is utterly outrageous and would never be sanctioned by any reputable Orthodox rabbi.”
Gay Jews celebrated at Cong. Beit Simchat Torah, and along Fifth Avenue, the Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage. Doug Chandler describes the scene.NATIONAL
The Battle Continues
At CBST and along Fifth Avenue, gay Jews rejoiced, and planned next steps.
Doug Chandler and Talia Lakritz
American Jewish World Service, with president Ruth Messinger, right, at the Gay Pride Parade. Harold Levine
Like many Americans, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum spent part of her morning last Friday glued to her computer watching the live blog from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The blog, of course, carried the court’s momentous decision granting a constitutional right to same-sex marriage — news that wasn’t unexpected for the rabbi, but that still had her “in shock” five hours later.
“It shows the radical social transformation is possible and that you can’t give up. We’re out of Egypt, so to speak, although we’re not at the Promised Land. We still have work to do, but we’re instructed to celebrate,” said Rabbi Kleinbaum, senior cleric at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, known informally as New York’s gay and lesbian synagogue.
It was a theme that Rabbi Kleinbaum repeated during a celebration that day at the Stonewall Inn, a landmark for the LGBTQ community, and during services that night. It was also repeated in the comments of other rabbis, activists and communal leaders, all of whom expressed joy over the court’s decision while acknowledging the challenges that lie ahead.
For members of Rabbi Kleinbaum’s congregation, the chance to share their jubilation with others began at Friday night services, which coincided with the start of Gay Pride Weekend. They heard an emotional words from the bima, linked arms while singing “We Shall Overcome,” and listened to the evening’s speaker, Diane Ravitch, the prominent educator who, for the first time publicly, announced she was gay.
Ravitch spoke to the congregation with her partner of 30 years, Mary Butz, only a few feet away. She told The Jewish Week that she decided to “come out” publicly as soon as she was invited to speak at CBST.
Asked if she felt any trepidation about making that announcement, Ravitch responded, “I’m 76 years old, so what do I care?”
The jubilation continued Sunday during New York’s annual Gay Pride Parade, which included contingents from CBST, the American Jewish World Service, Jewish Queer Youth and Mosaic of Westchester.
Each group sported distinct banners, signs, and t-shirts and garnered shouts of “Shalom!” A hora circle formed midway through the route around Congregation Beit Simchat Torah’s float (which featured a chuppah [wedding canopy] made of a rainbow flag and a spangled Star of David).
Part civil rights demonstration, part celebration of LGBTQ identities, exuberant onlookers waved and cheered as decorative floats, families, and rainbow flags paraded down Fifth Avenue.
Shonna Levin wore a black suit, white shirt, and wide-brimmed black hat, an outfit often worn by young men in yeshiva. “For the bochur [young religious man] who lives in silence, I march with you,” her sign said.
“This is about pikuach nefesh (saving lives),” said Levin, citing how LGBT youth from unsupportive families are eight times more likely to commit suicide.
“This isn’t about an act that the Torah declares is not okay,” she said. “This is just about saving lives and affirming people’s identities and accepting people as they are regardless of their choices.”
Like Rabbi Kleinbaum, marchers stressed that their work is far from over.
“There are 77 countries in the world where same-sex relationships are punishable by imprisonment, and 8 or 10 where they’re punishable by death,” Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service, told The Jewish Week as Jewish groups gathered before the march. “They’re not fighting for same-sex marriage. They’re fighting not to be imprisoned, they’re fighting not to be killed. Our sign says ‘The Jewish Voice for LGBT Rights Worldwide,’ and we’re marching on that cause.”
Similar opposition lined the sides of the parade behind the crowd, where a few protesters held signs reading “Judaism prohibits homosexuality, that is why God sent AIDS to punish male gays” and other messages. But most paid little notice, instead emphasizing the role Judaism continues to play in advancing social justice causes.
“Judaism, especially progressive Judaism, has always been a very prominent voice for change in this country,” said a marcher with CBST who asked not to be named since he is not a member of the synagogue. “We’re called upon to defend the rights of the poor and the downtrodden and the widow and the orphan and so on and so forth. Judaism always seems to me to be this iconoclast voice calling out complacency, calling out conformity for the sake of conformity.”
In the U.S., perhaps those most affected by the court’s ruling are gay and lesbian couples in states that didn’t recognize same-sex marriage until the day of the decision or shortly before it. Ed Reggi, who lives with his spouse, Scott Emanuel, in St. Louis, made headlines when he Emanuel began organizing bus trips from St. Louis to Iowa, where a court overturned that state’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2009.
The Marriage Equality Bus, as it was dubbed, made a total of 15 trips to Iowa in five years, recalled Reggi, a 44-year-old Brooklyn native and member of Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis. The idea came to fruition, he said, after he and Emanuel decided to travel to Iowa to get married and, within a week or two, heard from more than a dozen couples who wanted to join them.
Another Jewish couple directly affected by the ruling are Joseph Metzger and Keith Dossiere, members of Dallas’ Temple Emanu-El, the largest Reform synagogue in the Southwest.
Metzger, 25, said that he and Dossiere traveled to New York last fall to get legally married in order to ease the process or hiring a surrogate to carry their baby. The action “helped us enter the contract as one unit,” Metzger said, but they couldn’t begin planning their estate since Texas didn’t recognize out-of-state marriages.
“The day of the [U.S. Supreme Court] ruling, we called our estate-planning attorney to get the ball rolling,” Metzger said. “We didn’t have to jump through any hoops, because the State of Texas now recognizes our marriage as legal.”
Back at New York’s CBST, reactions to last Friday’s ruling ranged from expressions of satisfaction to those of sheer joy.
Standing next to her partner, Marni Arlev, Julie Arlev reacted as the lawyer she is, saying that in light of the court’s 2013 decision overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act, “it would have been hard for the court not to rule this way. It would have been inconsistent with Windsor,” the 2013 case named for Edith Windsor, a New York resident and a member of CBST.
“I hope for it, and we were completely overjoyed,” said Marsha Melnick, 68, speaking for herself and her spouse, Susan E. Meyer. “It’s a great victory for everyone — for the whole country.”
Even while celebrating, though, leaders and friends of the LGBTQ couldn’t help but return to thoughts of the work that lies ahead.
Pockets of resistance to the ruling were reported in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, where the state’s attorney general advised county clerks that they could refuse marriage licenses to gays on religious grounds.
Within the Jewish community, the goal needs to be on ensuring that synagogues, day schools and community centers take steps to make LGBT Jews feel welcome, said James Cohen, acting executive director of Keshet, a national group working for LGBT inclusion in Jewish life. Those steps might include posting photos of gay couples on synagogue websites or changing the wording on day-school application forms “from mother and father to parent one and parent two.”
“Those might seem superficial, but they’re a start,” Cohen added. “When I look at a synagogue website and see families that look like mine, I know I’m welcome.”
Meanwhile, in the Orthodox community, both the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel of America issued statements expressing concern about the ruling.
“We reiterate the historical position of the Jewish faith, enunciated unequivocally in our Bible, Talmud and Codes, which forbids homosexual relationships and condemns the institutionalization of such relationships as marriages,” the OU Advocacy Center said. “Our religion is emphatic in defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.”
At the same time, the OU Advocacy Center said the organization recognizes that “no religion has the right to dictate its beliefs to the entire body politic” and doesn’t expect that “secular law will always align with our viewpoint.”
Like other religious organizations, including Agudath Israel, the OU’s statement expressed concern about how the court’s ruling would affect “institutions and individuals who abide by religious teachings that limit their ability to support same-sex relationships.”
But Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, said Tuesday that pockets of resistance to the ruling were “fizzling out.” He also dismissed the claim by conservative religious groups that last Friday’s ruling could result in discrimination against religious schools or clerics opposed to gay marriage.
“It’s a familiar tactic used by opponents of civil rights,” said Wolfson, a member of CBST. “When they fail to block advances in civil rights, they then try to subvert them by claiming special licenses to discriminate.”
Looking to the future, Wolfson said LGBT activists now need to focus on the passage of a federal law that bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Such a measure should prohibit discrimination in all areas of the law, including housing, employment and public accommodations, he said.
Doug Chandler is a Jewish Week correspondent and Talia Lakritz is a Jewish Week editorial intern.
Rhinebeck, New York now has its first permanent synagogue, founded by a Chabad couple in the 329-year-old Hudson Valley town. Staff Writer Steve Lipman paid a visit.NEW YORK
Rhinebeck Gets A Shul Of Its Own
First permanent Jewish presence in the Hudson Valley town, thanks to Chabad couple.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Sandy and Saul Fraiman, inset, are active congregants of the new Rhinebeck Jewish Center. Steve Lipman/JW
Rhinebeck, N.Y. — The first thought that crossed Saul Fraiman’s mind when his son, Matthew, announced 20 years ago that he was moving to this Dutchess County town to take a chef’s job, was “it seemed far away.”
Far away from New York City —102 miles north.
Fraiman, a native of the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, known to his friends as “Sonny,” lived then in Manhattan, working in the diamond business. He knew that Rhinebeck had a negligible Jewish community, and a reputation as a WASPy enclave that had not been welcoming to Jews.
He and his wife Sandy came up for a weekend to visit his son. They kept coming back, feeling more at home each time. Finally the couple bought “a weekend place,” a home on a four-acre tract of land.
Now, at 68, he’s “semi-retired,” and spends four days a week in Rhinebeck. When he fully retires, he said, he and Sandy will live here full-time.
Fraiman, who grew up in a “100 percent glatt kosher” family but became less ritually observant as an adult, said part of Rhinebeck’s attraction is a synagogue, the village’s first independent one not affiliated with another congregation, which is to be dedicated at the end of this summer.
The Rhinebeck Jewish Center was founded by Tzivie and Rabbi Hanoch Hecht, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch chasidic movement who settled here eight years ago.
The synagogue, according to chabaddutchess.com, is “a Modern Orthodox congregation” with a chasidic flavor.
Rabbi Hecht, member of a prominent Lubavitch rabbinic family, is conducting an $800,000 fundraising campaign for construction of a mikvah and the synagogue, which is barn-shaped, in keeping with local architecture, incorporates some of the cedar beams from the 100-year-old barn that formerly stood there.
A ceremony marking the start of the writing of a Torah scroll, donated by the family of Ivan and Frema Sobel, RJC supporters, was held in mid-May, two years after construction began. In addition, Eliana Abramoff, a congregant, is lending the synagogue a 150-year-old Torah from a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Bukharian neighborhood that was built by her grandfather in 1894.
The Rhinebeck synagogue’s postponed dedication will take place in time for full use on the upcoming High Holy Days.
The “Barn Shul,” environmentally “green,” is located behind the Hechts’ home on a tree-lined 1.5-acre lot, once the property of the Astor family; the grounds also include the family’s 2,000-square-foot garden where the Hechts are growing a wide variety of vegetables and herbs.
Like other shluchim, or emissary, couples, the Hechts, both 30, have set up a full-service enterprise, offering classes for adults and children, hosting community seders and distributing challahs for Shabbat and cheesecakes for Shavuot.
The synagogue is the latest sign both of the growth of the international network of Chabad shluchim, and the expansion of the movement’s current emphasis on places, like Rhinebeck, which have small Jewish populations.
“In northern Dutchess County there are about 500 Jewish homes, many of them being weekenders,” Rabbi Hecht said. He estimated the Jewish population of Rhinebeck itself, in the northwest corner of the county across the Hudson River from the Catskill Mountains, as no more than 150.
Rhinebeck is also the home of a small-scale synagogue and a religious school whose primary bases are out of town. Israeli-born Rabbi Yael Romer is spiritual leader of the “Jewish presence” here of Kingston-based Congregation Emanuel, which is Reform. The rabbi conducts a weekly Torah study class and meditation service in a “meeting center” near her home, and holiday services several times a year. The Community Hebrew School of Dutchess County, founded by a group of synagogues in Poughkeepsie, holds classes one afternoon a week in the parish hall of a church here.
The Rhinebeck Jewish Center, community members said, will be the first indigenous Jewish institution here — a situation in which Chabad emissaries in other communities frequently find themselves.
“Immediately upon his arrival to the shores of the United States [in 1941], the Rebbe [Menachem Mendel Schneerson] initiated intensive programs to reach out to Jews in Jewishly-isolated places,” Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice-chairman of Merkos L’lnyonei Chinuch, Chabad-Lubavitch’s educational arm, said in an email message. “With shluchim now in major cities across the globe, there is now a greater focus of manpower to create more permanent services for Jews in the smaller and often more isolated communities.”
Most emissaries face a common financial problem in establishing themselves in new surroundings; though they get seed money for several years, they must fundraise on their own.
Which is part of the Hechts’ challenge. “We pay our bills with a lot of $18 checks,” Rabbi Hecht said.
His brother, Rabbi Yitzchok Hecht, is a shaliach across the Hudson in Kingston (the Jewish population of the area is about 700 to 800 families.)
Rabbi Hanoch Hecht said he and Tzivie decided to move to Rhinebeck after visiting the village while working in Kingston a decade ago, and seeing the need for a synagogue here. “I knew the area,” he said.
♦Rhinebeck is a slice of small-town Americana (population 2,657), a 329-year-old community with strict zoning laws that is light on national franchise businesses and heavy on quaint, locally owned boutiques and restaurants with homey names like Pete’s Famous Restaurant and Gaby’s Mexican Café, as well as a gourmet scene that brings to mind Park Slope.
There are few Jewish resources here. While local groceries and health food stores stock some kosher food, full kosher shopping is available only in New York City and Monsey, each a 90-minute-to-2-hour drive away. There’s a kosher pizzeria in Hudson, a city 25 miles north.
Rhinebeck, according to locals, has a limited Jewish history, with a Jewish presence dating back only to the early 20th century. It’s a community of transplants, with few longtime Jewish residents. The village experienced a slight increase in Jewish numbers after 9/11, as people seeking a respite from city pressures headed upstate.
Rabbi Hecht said his vision is for Rhinebeck, once the synagogue is finished, to become a Jewish destination — for weekend visitors or permanent residents.
Housing prices “are a lot less than in New York City,” said Eliane Abramoff, a local realtor real who is an active congregant of the Rhinebeck Jewish Center. She said the price of a three-to-four bedroom house here ranges from $250,000 to about $6 million; most are between $500,000 and $700,000. “You don’t have to be wealthy to live here,” Saul Fraiman said.
In Rhinebeck, where Rabbi Hecht began his outreach with a pre-Shavuot class that two people attended, he and his wife have built up a mailing list of 500 people, virtually none of them Orthodox. Many have since become financial supporters of the synagogue.
Rabbi Hecht said a wide range of congregants have donated their time, expertise and dollars to construction of the building. The supporters include several people who are not Jewish, the rabbi said.
One supporter is paying for a parochet, a Torah ark cover, designed by noted physician-artist Mark Podwal.
The presence of a synagogue and of a visible, readily identifiable rabbi — Rabbi Hecht, with a short beard and bright maroon, velvet kipa — has made it easier for Jews who live here, often not identifying themselves as such, to come out of the ethnic “closet,” Saul Fraiman said. Many have emerged in recent years, he said, similar to the phenomenon that outreach-oriented rabbis have experienced in once-communist Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary.
However, Jonah Triebwasser, a native of Far Rockaway, Queens, and participant in some RJC activities who has lived in the area since 1979 and serves as a village and town justice in Red Hook, Rhinebeck’s northern neighbor, said Jews here have not been reluctant to identify as Jewish. He said he has experienced no incidents of anti-Semitism, and has been elected three times to his judicial positions.
Justus Rosenberg, a German-born Holocaust survivor who at 94 is a professor emeritus of languages and literature at nearby Bard College and still teaches two classes each semester, said he became a supporter of the synagogue after being approached by Rabbi Hecht a few years ago to give a speech about his wartime experiences.
Rosenberg, who said he does not believe in God, said he has begun to light Shabbat candles each week and has arranged, when the time comes, to be buried with a traditional tahara washing ritual instead of being cremated.
Rosenberg said he admires the Hechts’ outreach. “They embrace people whose affiliation is of a different kind,” he said.
The Hechts “are very accepting of everybody,” said Sandy Fraiman, who grew up in the Bronx’s Grand Concourse area with “absolutely no” Jewish background. “I bring a lot of people who are like me” to synagogue activities, which take place in the under-construction building, the Hechts’ home and in congregants’ homes.
Participants in synagogue activities come from a radius of at least 15 miles; a few dozen attended a Shabbat meal and worship services one recent week, most driving, no questions asked.
“I find [the Hechts] to be incredibly open,” said Leah Reingewirtz, another former New Yorker.
Rabbi Hecht tells of one openly gay man, a frequent participant in RJC activities, who attended a weekend retreat in New England for gay Jews a few years ago. The man, asked by gay friends at the retreat if he belonged to a synagogue, mentioned the Rhinebeck congregation. Asked if he felt comfortable in a synagogue led by a chasidic rabbi, “He answered, feel more comfortable there than I do here,’” Rabbi Hecht said.
Rhinebeck offers the basics for a full Jewish life, besides the availability of nearby kosher food, the rabbi and his congregants said.
Everything available in a big city can be found here, Reingewirtz said. “You just can’t eat in restaurants.”
steve@jewishweek.org
Also this week, experts on whether the Iran deal will be signed; Israel's Druze community torn between two loyalties; controversial Riverdale rabbi says he is staying in his pulpit; winners of The Jewish Week annual "funniest Jewish comic" contest; Joshua Cohen's "Book Of Numbers" dazzles; and Erica Brown on writing the Great American Novel.
ISRAEL NEWS
Druze Loyalties To Israel, and Relatives In Syria, Complicate Life In The Golan
Joshua Mitnick
Israel Correspondent
Majdal Shams, Golan Heights – The celebrations in the central squares of this Druze village on the slopes of the Hermon Mountains were so raucous last Monday night that Rawad Shoufi could make out the music and the chants from blocks away.
Thousands of residents had poured into the streets after getting word that a Druze mob nearby had attacked an Israeli military ambulance. Though two Israelis in the ambulance were lightly wounded, the real targets of the mob were two wounded Syrians being transported to an Israeli hospital. One was killed and the other seriously wounded in the attack by the Druze, who are loyal to their fellow Druze – some of them family members – living in Syria and loyal to the regime of President Assad.
The incident, one of several such attacks on Israeli ambulances in recent days,underscores the conflicting identity issues for the Israeli Druze community in the Golan Heights, which numbers about 130,000.
As part of a little known Arab minority, the Druze are an ethnic-religious sect known for strong loyalty to their host country. In today’s chaotic Middle East, Israeli Druze take pride in their service in the Israeli army but are deeply concerned about their families living in Syria. As a result, they have criticized Israel for taking medical care of wounded rebel soldiers fighting the Assad regime.
Describing the scene Monday night, Shoufi, a 23-year-old metal worker, said, “They were chanting ‘Druze, Druze, Druze.’ They were playing music from the Druze mountain’’ in Syria.
Basel Abu Saleh, a 20-year-old student, was at a brother-in-law’s home that looks eastward across the border into Syria when he got a phone call from friends. A picture he took of the celebration showed dozens of Druze merry makers — some of them dressed in black religious gowns and white caps — waving Druze and Syrian flags.
“They were celebrating that they had helped stop a terrorist,’’ Abu Saleh said, reflecting the Druze view of the rebel groups on the other side of the border with which Israel has forged a quiet, tactical alliance.
For Israel’s government and military, the attack highlighted the chaotic fallout of the unrest roiling the country’s Arab Druze minority as Syrian civil war moves closer to the villages of the pro-regime Syrian Druze on the other side of the border.
While the IDF has pledged to protect Druze fleeing to Israel from Syria, Prime Minister Netanyahu called for calm and said Israel would not “let anyone take the law into their own hands and prevent the army from carrying out its mission.”
In recent weeks, fear that ISIS and Al Qaeda rebels will overrun Druze villages in Syria allied with Assad has spurred thousands of Israeli Druze to take to the streets to hold solidarity demonstrations. Druze leaders in Israel have lobbied Israeli leaders to ensure there is no massacre of their coreligionists across the border even though they support Assad.
“We feel an obligation to support each other. Political opinions are separate from blood connection,’’ said Ziyad Dabour, a Druze businessman who is former officer in the Israeli army. “Everyone can be on a different side, but when there is an existential threat, we unite.”
Druze boast of a “blood alliance” with the state of Israel from decades of service in Israel’s security forces and count hundreds of fallen soldiers. That is being put to the test as Druze leaders say they expect the Israeli government to honor their alliance and ensure kin in Syria are safe. Analysts say the integration of the Druze in the Israeli has peaked in recent years.
“The test is from both sides. It forces the Druze to think what is the commitment of the state toward them,’’ said Ehud Eiran, a political science professor at Haifa University who focuses on the military. “In Israel society, the military is a card for legitimacy.”
On the street in Druze villages there is frustration that Israel has been giving medical aid to the same Syrian rebels who have their kin surrounded.
Despite the frustration with Israel, Druze leaders both in Israel and in the Golan have condemned the vigilante violence against the Israeli military.
The Syrian civil war has weakened the decades-old ties of the Druze in the Golan Heights to the Assad regime, and Druze in the Golan are still only beginning to grapple with the shift and what it means for their identity.
“Golan people have realized that only in the state of Israel is there security and rule of law,’’ said Dolan Abu Salh, the head of the Majdal Shams local council. “They understand there is a huge difference between Israel and Syria.”
NEW YORK
Rabbi Is Staying; Who Will Go?
Jonathan Rosenblatt applauded for apology, but some find situation ‘untenable.’
Hannah Dreyfus and Gary Rosenblatt
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, a leading Modern Orthodox rabbi, was believed to be stepping down from his pulpit at the Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC) after becoming the center of an embarrassing controversy last month. But he is now determined to stay, bolstered by a warm reception to his dramatic public apology last Wednesday evening in front of hundreds of congregants, and a New York law that makes it difficult to oust him.
The rabbi’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, told The Jewish Week on Tuesday that Rabbi Rosenblatt resumes his full duties this week, at the conclusion of a six-month sabbatical, and plans to fulfill the three years remaining on his contract.
Contrary to persistent rumors that the rabbi’s status with the congregation, which he has led almost 30 years, is still in flux, Brafman said Rabbi Rosenblatt “has no intention of resigning and there is no cause for him to do so.” He added that “the overwhelming majority of his congregants have signed a petition for him to stay, and as for the minority, other than creating a public spectacle, they have accomplished nothing.”
Several weeks ago the synagogue board of directors voted 34-8 to seek a financial settlement and have Rabbi Rosenblatt resign. At the time Brafman indicated discussions were taking place to bring a dignified conclusion to the rabbi’s tenure.
But since then nearly 200 of the congregation’s members signed a petition on his behalf, as did about 70 rabbinic interns he helped mentor over the years. And the New York Religious Corporations Law prohibits a synagogue board from firing a rabbi without involving the congregation in the decision.
As the focus shifts from the rabbi to his congregation, several members told The Jewish Week they did not know of any plans to hold a vote on the rabbi’s status — or what the outcome would be should a vote be held.
The annual election of synagogue officers was scheduled to be held this week, with few changes expected from last year’s slate.
Still, a significant number of congregants in the 700-member synagogue are unhappy with the status quo and feel the rabbi can no longer be their spiritual leader. An estimated 60 members, representing up to 40 families, met at a private home in the neighborhood on Monday night to express their dissatisfaction with the situation. Some said they plan to attend other local synagogues, others spoke of starting a new shul. The immediate focus, though, was where to attend High Holy Day services this fall.
“The sense in the room was that the current situation is untenable,” said one attendee, who like others interviewed, asked to remain anonymous, given the delicacy of the situation.
“People have to decide now” about where to buy seats for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” he said. “They are looking for alternatives to RJC.”
In his first address from the pulpit since a story about the controversy in The New York Times was published May 30, Rabbi Rosenblatt said last Wednesday night that he felt “fragile and embarrassed” for the “anguish” and “shame” he has brought to his family and community. He described as “lapses of judgment” his longtime practice of inviting boys, and later young men, to play racquetball, and then shower and shmooze in the sauna while naked.
At various times, Rabbi Rosenblatt was told by rabbinic bodies or his congregation’s board to limit such activity.
“That I have been a source of desecration of the Divine Name and of a noble calling brings me nearly to despair,” the rabbi said.
He reiterated that he had committed no crime and that his controversial behavior had no sexual connotations and has ceased.
Rabbi Rosenblatt argued that the punishment he has already received in the court of public opinion is disproportional to what he described as a misguided belief that he could remove the barriers between “rabbi” and “congregant” by meeting young men in various stages of undress in saunas for heart-to-heart talks and counseling.
“I still love being a rabbi,” he said. “I still believe I have contributions to make. In short, with God’s grace, I am ready to serve Him, and with yours, I am ready tocontinue to serve him here.”
Attendees said that at the conclusion of the 20-minute address, the great majority of people in the packed synagogue stood and applauded.
No one cited in the original New York Times story accused Rabbi Rosenblatt of sexual touching, but several men expressed their discomfort with the practice and described the behavior as deeply inappropriate for a rabbi and mentor, especially with teens and young single men.
The only accuser to publicly speak of his “shock” and discomfort when invited by the rabbi to join him nude in a sauna in 1997 is Yehuda Kurtzer, then a Columbia University student and now president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
On his Facebook page on Thursday, Kurtzer wrote that he was saddened that “this synagogue … is now stained not just by this scandal but by the stubbornness of a rabbi who will not allow the community to regain its dignity.” He noted that “we get the leaders we deserve” and “we are implicated by the actions of our leaders.”
Kurtzer has been praised and vilified for being the only one of many alleged young men distraught by the rabbi’s personal interactions to have spoken out publicly. He wrote that “whistleblowing yields no rewards for those who do it, but immediatelybreeds skepticism about motivation and then alienation of the already-lonely voices.”
He expressed anger that “the consequences of this hubris [on the part of the rabbi] is that the victims here are even less likely than before to speak up.”
Rabbi Rosenblatt says he is innocent of any crime. The Bronx district attorney’s office said it is looking into whether any crime was committed and has urged victims to come forward.
Hannah Dreyfus is a staff writer; Gary Rosenblatt is editor and publisher.
SHORT TAKES
Classic Catskills Humor Comes To Broadway
Maya Klausner
Contest winners, from left, Roy Schaeffer, Belinda Boxer, producer Geoff Kole, and Rena Blech. Courtesy of Broadway Comedy Club
At the Jewish Week’s 17th annual “Funniest Jewish Comic” contest on Sunday night, one competitor gave the audience a scare right at the start with a hackneyed set up as old as Moses.
“Knock knock,” he said, pretending to be his parents in a hoarse, crackling voice.
The crowd cringed.
Tentatively they played along, “Who’s there?”
“Not our son because he never visits us.”
The audience roared.
After three preliminary rounds spread out over several weeks, the seven finalists reconvened in the main room of Broadway Comedy Club on West 53rd Street to perform their best five minutes to a packed house for paid spots and assorted prizes.
Roy Schaeffer, 55, an insurance man from Rye Brook, took first place.
Schaeffer talked about his struggle with losing weight, saying that exercise is exhausting and “cuts into his eating time.” When he asked his wife to diet with him she was offended, reminding him that they’ve been married for 25 years and that she can still fit into her wedding dress. “She forgets she was eight and a half months pregnant at the time,” said Schaeffer.
Coming in second place, Belinda Boxer, a 23-year-old Manhattan native, won the judges over with her unapologetic candor and laidback likability.
She focused on the idiosyncrasies of living in New York City and why everything is her parents’ fault. “Whenever anyone asks where I live, I say Brooklyn … Heights. So they know I’m not poor,” she said.
Recognizing that it’s become the status quo to have a therapist in New York, Boxer said that she loves her therapist, but now has a problem: “We would briefly talk about my issues and then play cards for an hour. So now I blame my parents’ divorce for my gambling problem.”
The third runner-up, Rena Blech, was also this year’s first-ever “popular comic,” taking home an extra dose of confidence along with her cash prize. “Not everyone agrees with the judges. So here was a chance for the audience to contribute to the process,” said Geoff Kole, producer of the contest for the past 12 years.
The 35-year-old, in a long skirt and headscarf, wades in the pool of risqué without ever leaving the shallow end. “I met a guy on frumster who asked if I was shomer negiya,” she said, referring to the practice of not touching a member of the opposite sex until marriage. “I took one look at him and said, ‘I just started.’”
This year’s judges were David Goldman, founder of the David Goldman Agency; Gloria Nadel-Davidson, author and actress who produced her own cable show, “In The Spotlight”; and Kole, creator and star of “Geoff Kole Presents” on MNN Network and a regular at Broadway Comedy Club.
In addition to the contestants, the lineup included a handful of professional comics. Freddie Roman, creator, producer and star of “Catskills on Broadway” opened and a number of the club’s regulars, including Davin Rosenblatt, delivered polished sets.
Elon Altman, a New York-based comedian, who is in the final four of Cozi Cheesy Comedy Search, hosted the event. Even NY Blueprint’s resident editor and stand up comic by night, Maya Hackity-Hack Klausner, took the stage for a quick set.
Last year’s winner, “High-Powered Howard” Newman, closed the show.
BOOKS
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.
JEW BY VOICE
Writing The Great American Novel
Erica Brown
Special To The Jewish Week
Erica Brown
A friend was just telling me a personal story that ended with, “It would make a great book.” No comment. Let’s face it. Most of us do not have book-worthy lives, but many of us would like to believe we do.
“Of making many books there is no end,” reports Ecclesiastes [12:12]. But this wisdom doesn’t stop us. Anyone standing in Barnes and Noble cannot help arriving at the same wearying conclusion. There are just too many books out there. Many are wonderful and will pass the test of time. Most will become remaindered, then possibly pulped and recycled into toilet paper. It’s hard to write. It’s harder to write well. Harder still is to make a living as a writer.
That’s why I am always shocked by the fallacy held tightly by many non-writers: anyone can write a book. The writer Joseph Epstein in a New York Times op-ed from 2003 claims that according to a survey, 81 percent of Americans feel like they have a book in them. Or as someone recently quipped, no one wants to read a book. Everyone wants to write one.
The novelist and bookstore owner Ann Patchett was so tired of giving out writing advice that she put it all together in a memoir: “My Getaway Car.” Slightly drunk at a family reunion and offended by a distant relative’s remark that everyone has a book in them, she pointed to flowers in a nearby vase and asked, “Does everyone have one great floral arrangement in them?”
“One algebraic proof?”
“One Hail Mary pass?”
“One five-minute mile?”
Readers would approach her, often aggressively, after a talk and tell her that they had within them the Great American novel. Problem was they couldn’t write it. Could they enlist her help? Answer: no.
There is a way that your story can get written even if you can’t write it. Outsource.com outsources writing projects so you can stop bothering Ann Patchett. People’s ghostwriting requests are so entertaining that I let them drop into my e-mail almost daily.
Any takers for this? “I need someone to write a book about my outrageous fight against my mortgage company. … My story needs to be told so half of the people in the U.S. can say I told you so to the people that couldn’t imagine what they were going through. My story has to be told!!!!!”
Is this really a story that must be told and half of America will read? Sorry. It’s not.
Alternatively, you can write the eight-year history of a dairy farm if you can make it “both engaging and moving, as much as it is informational and accurate. Also, we want you to tell us: why do you think this story is important?” None of the great writers I know will be able to make your dairy engaging, moving, informational, accurate and important. No one has that much talent.
Those in the throes of litigation often want “the true story told” by an experienced biographer or novelist. What are people willing to pay? Usually less than $500. You may get this compelling offer to turn journal entries into a memoir by an educated and experienced writer: “Take payment from the proceeds.” This book is going to be so good a professional author will write it on contingency.
There is an arrogance to the proposition that anyone can write a book. Remember the story of the rabbi who sat on the plane next to the astrophysicist? The scientist said to the rabbi, “I can sum up your whole profession in one sentence: Don’t do unto others what you would not want done to yourself.” The rabbi then said to the scientist, “And I can sum up all of astronomy in one sentence: Twinkle, twinkle little star.”
Take comfort in the biblical notion that we must tell our stories and pass them down to the next generation, whether children ask for them or we prompt them. Go with a vanity press. It’s a great way to tell your story. And there are many inexpensive ways today to get that story into a book for your family and friends. But the plethora of accessible publishing methods linked to an exhibitionist Facebook post-your-life attitude has promoted a dangerous myth: your story will be a bestseller.
Writing is an ancient Jewish art, starting with the chiseling of two tablets. We do all have a story. Our stories are important to us. But they are not important to everyone. The Kotzker Rebbe’s hardline approach is instructive: “Not all that is thought need be said, not all that is said need be written, not all that is written need be published, and not all that is published need be read.”
Erica Brown’s column appears the first week of the month.
editor@jewishweek.orgEnjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Keep up with breaking news on our website, and check out exclusive videos, opinion essays, blogs, and advice columns.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
BETWEEN THE LINES
GARY ROSENBLATT
Unlikely Partners For Peace
An Orthodox settler and Palestinian activist say reconciliation begins with seeing the humanity of your enemy.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
If the friendship between Hanan Schlesinger, an American-born Orthodox rabbi and self-described “passionate Zionist settler,” and Ali Abu Awwad, a leading Palestinian activist who served a four-year jail sentence in Israel for membership in a terrorist cell, was typical of West Bank Jews and Palestinians, we would be living in Messianic times.
In fact, Rabbi Schlesinger and Awwad know full well that their joint peace effort, known as the Roots Project, is viewed by many of their own people as naïve at best, and perhaps dangerous. It seeks to promote harmony by encouraging Jews and Palestinians to see each other as real people, as neighbors, and to understand each other’s hopes and pain through discussion, interaction and joint programs.
At a time when Mideast leaders and would-be peacemakers are calling for separation between Jews and Palestinians as the only chance for a peaceful end to the longtime conflict, Awwad and Rabbi Schlesinger insist that a positive political outcome must be preceded by understanding each other on a person-to-person level.
Hope must spring from the grassroots, they maintain; it cannot be imposed from the top down, as so many failed diplomatic efforts have proved since the Oslo agreement 22 summers ago.
With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a dangerous impasse and no negotiations on the horizon, is it possible that the Roots leaders’ vision will be taken seriously as an alternative to another round of violence?
Not likely. But still, it’s worth noting, if for no other reason than to see an almost unanimously dismissed model — Palestinians and Jews channeling their mutual hatred into small steps on the road to reconciliation — actually in place on the West Bank.
At a special roundtable meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations here several weeks ago, more than 30 invited guests from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities seemed both inspired by and wary of the views expressed by the two visitors who live near each other in the Gush Etzion area.
“I have paid the price all my life” as a Palestinian activist, said Awwad, 43, a ruggedly handsome man, who spent four years in jail during the first intifada, was shot and wounded by an Israeli in a drive-by shooting during the second intifada, and later learned that his brother had been shot and killed by an Israeli soldier at the entrance to their village.
He said he finally reached a point where “I wanted to give up being a victim.” Knowing that neither Jews nor Palestinians will leave the land where they live, he said he asked himself, “Do I want to be right or do I want to succeed?
“The hate and anger keeps eating at you so you look for a solution,” he said, and he came to believe that “there can be no harmony until we [Palestinians and Jews] see the humanity of the other side.”
For Awwad, that came about after participating in the Bereaved Families Forum, a grassroots group of Palestinians and Jewish families who had lost loved ones in the conflict and met to discuss their feelings.
“Those meetings changed my life,” he said.
Rabbi Schlesinger, 58, also described a personal epiphany.
With his full grey beard and large knitted kipa, he has the look of settlers often portrayed as fundamentalist bullies. But his wide grin, easy laugh and passionate declaration of remorse on learning the history of the Palestinian claim to the land sets him apart from many of his Jewish neighbors.
He explained that he left his native Long Island at 18 to settle in “the land of Biblical prophecy” because he “wanted to live where it all began.” He had been taught that when European Jews came to Palestine in the 1880s, “it was empty.” But he learned a year and a half ago, on studying the history of the conflict, that the land had not been empty, and that the Jewish people’s triumph in the 1948 war, resulting in statehood, “was someone else’s tragedy.”
“It was all new to me because the overwhelming power of the settler narrative had blinded me to another truth,” the rabbi said. As a result, “my whole spiritual world was undermined.” He said he slowly rebuilt it by learning to “live with contradictions” and to be able to hold and value two opposing truths — that the land belongs to the Palestinians and that it belongs to the Jews, each with full rights.
Awwad and Rabbi Schlesinger say they are not asking one side or the other to compromise their beliefs of full rights to the land, but to share rather than divide it.
To many Israeli Jews, the rabbi explained, “the Palestinians are invisible. We don’t see the full reality, living in our bubble, because we want to hold on” to the narrative, and to the land, and “hope the Palestinians disappear.”
That began to change for him, Rabbi Schlesinger said, when he met Awwad.
Roots sponsors programs for school children and for rabbis and imams as well as a women’s group and a summer camp. It also runs monthly meetings for Jewish and Palestinian neighbors who may encounter each other superficially in public spaces, like malls, but have never really met in a personal way.
Co-founded by Shaul Judelman and comprised of an executive committee of Palestinians and Israelis, Roots has hosted about 7,000 people who have visited the center on a small piece of land owned by Awwad’s family, adjacent to Gush Etzion.
Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem with a deep interest in Jewish-Muslim relations, has attended several Roots events at the center. He said it was “extraordinary” to see about 50 Palestinian and Jewish neighbors interacting peacefully, including children playing together.
He has great admiration for both Awwad and Rabbi Schlesinger but acknowledged that their Roots project is little known in Israel.
Klein Halevi characterized Awwad as “the Palestinian leader we’ve been waiting for. He understands the psychological need of Jews for recognition and to have their legitimacy acknowledged.”
At the roundtable discussion here, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a journalist, author and longtime Mideast peace advocate, described how a number of Jewish-Arab peace dialogues she has participated make progress for a while and then reach the same obstacle.
The “natural arc” in these exchanges, she said, goes from tentative discussions to closer personal ties – “and then you hit the wall over refugees and the Right of Return,” she noted, referring to the Palestinian insistence that any peace deal would have Palestinian refugees settling in Israel rather than in the new Palestinian state.
Both Awwad and Rabbi Schlesinger responded by asserting that their initiative emphasizes the personal over the political. “There are huge emotional issues behind the politics,” Awwad said. “And fear is our biggest enemy.” He added that both Israeli and Palestinian politicians tend to base their credibility on fear and hatred of the other side.
“Even in dialogue groups we find a competition of suffering,” whether it’s the Holocaust for Jews or the Nakba (“Day of Catastrophe,” Israeli Independence Day) for Palestinians.
Asked in various ways how they can avoid the political discussion in their work, the two leaders said they are less focused on a one-state or two-state solution than on having citizens on both sides discover their mutual dependence.
“I have to find a way to live my narrative while making room for the other’s truth,” Rabbi Schlesinger said.
“We need each other — there is no other way,” asserted Awwad, who said the goal of Roots was to pave the way for a political solution.
Rabbi Steve Gutow, president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) who moderated the discussion, later observed that “if Palestinians and Jews can find a common ground, the politicians will come along. I am afraid that if there are no people like Ali and Hanan, we will all be talking to ourselves for a very long time.”
Gary@jewishweek.org
Read More
MUSINGSAnother Land To Cherish
Rabbi David Wolpe reflects on the blessings of America in his weekly column.
Rabbi David Wolpe
Special to The Jewish Week
Rabbi David Wolpe
On July 4, we should once again recall our extraordinary good fortune. For almost 20 years I have met once a week with Kirk Douglas to study Torah. He is now 98 years old. I once asked him in his remarkable life, what was his greatest blessing? “No doubt about it,” he answered, “my greatest blessing is that my parents came to America.”
Surely many of us can say the same. My great grandparents decided almost a century ago to immigrate to America. They came from Russia and Poland and Lithuania. Risking everything on a long and difficult journey, they arrived in this unique and shining land, which enabled people from all over a benighted globe to make a better life for themselves and their children. All of us, the wretched refuse of her teeming shore.
In Jewish history this nation stands alone. Like every human endeavor, America has a lot to answer for, sins and crimes and shortsightedness. But unlike every other human endeavor, it saw the Jews and others as equal citizens and enabled us to rise and flourish. Any American Jew who is not patriotic is ignorant of history. The fireworks on the 4th light up a landscape that should move us all to prayer and thanks. God bless America.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.
Read More
A little forethought can prevent a medical emergency on a foreign trip. Above, Parga, on the Greek coast near Corfu. Hilary Danailova
TRAVEL
In Travel, A Little Prevention Goes A Long Way
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
After more than 20 years of globe-trotting, I recently had my first consultation with a travel medicine specialist.
I don’t know what took me so long. Hubris, I suppose — the fantasy that my own common sense and good luck would spare me the maladies that afflict so many fellow travelers. I’ve spent my share of time in overseas emergency rooms, but overall I have indeed been lucky.
With a child in tow, however, it’s time to become more responsible. That thought hit me one day when I took my daughter Zelda for a hepatitis A shot — and the doctor inquired as to whether I, bound for a family vacation in the Balkans, had been similarly inoculated.
I had not. The next day, I was at a Minute Clinic, lining up for the hep A shot recommended by the Centers for Disease Control for travelers to Eastern Europe.
As the experts made clear, a little prevention — certain key vaccines, a well-stocked prophylactic medicine kit and a good travel health policy — goes a long way toward ensuring your vacation won’t be deep-sixed by, for example, a weeklong bout of traveler’s diarrhea.
So just in time for the summer travel season, I thought I’d share what I learned.
It’s a good idea to visit a travel medicine clinic if you’re planning a trip outside the United States, particularly if you might visit developing countries or remote areas where healthcare may not be up to U.S. standards. Travel medicine practices are found at hospitals, stand-alone clinics and urgent care centers.
An hour-long consultation will run you about $100 and is not generally covered by insurance. Any recommended vaccines run extra, including my $140 hepatitis shot (Zelda’s was covered by insurance, since it’s now part of the regular childhood vaccination schedule.
I calculated the cost of losing up to six months of my life to fever, fatigue, jaundice and abdominal pain – not to mention ruining a four-figure vacation — and decided $140 was a good lifetime investment. Many of the vaccines recommended for other popular destinations — a polio booster for Israel, yellow fever for the Andes — prevent far more serious, life-threatening diseases.
Ideally, you visit a clinic six to eight weeks before your adventure, leaving ample time to let vaccines become effective and to fill prescriptions. But even a last-minute appointment can yield valuable prophylaxis; Zelda and I had our shots the day before we left, and they are good for life. (If you're wondering about the safety of getting a bunch of serious-sounding vaccines all at once, I already asked; the answer is yes.)
A travel medicine expert not only advises you on what shots you might need for a given itinerary (information you can also find on wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel, the CDC’s country-specific travel health site). You also get prophylactic prescriptions, such as antibiotics for traveler’s diarrhea or an anti-malaria regimen; a heads-up on the specific health risks in the region you are visiting, from rabid dogs and altitude sickness to mosquito-borne diseases; and information on reliable healthcare facilities in your target region.
This last bit of advice is critical, because most U.S. insurance plans do not cover overseas care. Many foreign hospitals refuse to even evaluate uninsured patients without a substantial upfront payment. But a travel insurance policy is cheap: $5-15 a day buys you comprehensive coverage that includes emergency evacuation if necessary, along with a verified list of local providers that meet Western standards.
If your vacation takes place closer to home, there are still health risks to consider — chief among them the myriad ailments spread by mosquitoes and ticks.
Let’s start with mosquitoes. The same species is responsible for carrying the Dengue and Chikungunya viruses, tropical diseases that have recently expanded throughout the Caribbean and Florida and which can make you very sick. Reliable protection comes from insect repellent containing DEET.
DEET is also your best ally against ticks, whose numbers have exploded in recent years, along with the diseases they transmit: Lyme, tularemia and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
Finally, eliminate standing water that breeds mosquitoes; kiddie pools are a frequently overlooked culprit. And speaking of pools, drownings are a top cause of death for children under five — so whether in your backyard pool or at a beach in Thailand, keep kids within arm’s reach until they are sound swimmers.
Then slather on your sunscreen, throw on a hat — and enjoy summer.
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
These titles might be how you order your favorite deli dishes, or they might be names of bands
Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Hipster Band Names Or Ordering At A Kosher Deli?
These titles might be how you order your favorite deli dishes, or they might be names of bands
Maya KlausnerEditor
Comedy
Despite what many members outside of the tribe might say and regardless of how their faces might involuntarily contort due to sheer disgust and confusion, Jewish deli food is simple and delicious. They tell you you're getting a pickle and gosh darn it, a sour dill is going to show up on your plate. No surprises. Nowadays indie rock, punk and death metal bands try to trick people with osbcure, non-sensical titles. Thus, we came up up with a list of items that could easily be someone ordering their lunch from a kosher deli or the names of hipster music groups. You decide.
Bon Apetite. Or should we say, rock on.
1. Four Pastramis And A Pickle
2. The Kasha Varnishkes
3. Corned Beef/No Mustard
4. Coleslaw On The Side
5. Two Toasted Tunas
6. Are There Onions On That?
7. Borscht To Begin
8. Extra Tongue
9. Hold The Herring!
10. Three Hot Briskets
11. Gefilte Fish To Go
12. What’s One More Knish?
13. Never Enough Cholent
14. The Potato Pancakes
15. Not The Knoblewurst
16. Lox On Top
17. A Couple Of Kreplachs
18. Un Bissel Schnitzel
19. The Kosher Club
20. Half Sandwich/Half Soup
21. Kishkas By The Dozen
22. The King Sized Kugels
23. Cut The Rugelach
24. Big Baked Blintzes
25. T.O.C.L. (The Original Chopped Liver) Read More
TOP STORIES:NEW YORK
Rhinebeck Gets A Shul Of Its Own
First permanent Jewish presence in the Hudson Valley town, thanks to Chabad couple.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Sandy and Saul Fraiman, inset, are active congregants of the new Rhinebeck Jewish Center. Steve Lipman/JW
Rhinebeck, N.Y. — The first thought that crossed Saul Fraiman’s mind when his son, Matthew, announced 20 years ago that he was moving to this Dutchess County town to take a chef’s job, was “it seemed far away.”
Far away from New York City —102 miles north.
Fraiman, a native of the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, known to his friends as “Sonny,” lived then in Manhattan, working in the diamond business. He knew that Rhinebeck had a negligible Jewish community, and a reputation as a WASPy enclave that had not been welcoming to Jews.
He and his wife Sandy came up for a weekend to visit his son. They kept coming back, feeling more at home each time. Finally the couple bought “a weekend place,” a home on a four-acre tract of land.
Now, at 68, he’s “semi-retired,” and spends four days a week in Rhinebeck. When he fully retires, he said, he and Sandy will live here full-time.
Fraiman, who grew up in a “100 percent glatt kosher” family but became less ritually observant as an adult, said part of Rhinebeck’s attraction is a synagogue, the village’s first independent one not affiliated with another congregation, which is to be dedicated at the end of this summer.
The Rhinebeck Jewish Center was founded by Tzivie and Rabbi Hanoch Hecht, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch chasidic movement who settled here eight years ago.
The synagogue, according to chabaddutchess.com, is “a Modern Orthodox congregation” with a chasidic flavor.
Rabbi Hecht, member of a prominent Lubavitch rabbinic family, is conducting an $800,000 fundraising campaign for construction of a mikvah and the synagogue, which is barn-shaped, in keeping with local architecture, incorporates some of the cedar beams from the 100-year-old barn that formerly stood there.
A ceremony marking the start of the writing of a Torah scroll, donated by the family of Ivan and Frema Sobel, RJC supporters, was held in mid-May, two years after construction began. In addition, Eliana Abramoff, a congregant, is lending the synagogue a 150-year-old Torah from a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Bukharian neighborhood that was built by her grandfather in 1894.
The Rhinebeck synagogue’s postponed dedication will take place in time for full use on the upcoming High Holy Days.
The “Barn Shul,” environmentally “green,” is located behind the Hechts’ home on a tree-lined 1.5-acre lot, once the property of the Astor family; the grounds also include the family’s 2,000-square-foot garden where the Hechts are growing a wide variety of vegetables and herbs.
Like other shluchim, or emissary, couples, the Hechts, both 30, have set up a full-service enterprise, offering classes for adults and children, hosting community seders and distributing challahs for Shabbat and cheesecakes for Shavuot.
The synagogue is the latest sign both of the growth of the international network of Chabad shluchim, and the expansion of the movement’s current emphasis on places, like Rhinebeck, which have small Jewish populations.
“In northern Dutchess County there are about 500 Jewish homes, many of them being weekenders,” Rabbi Hecht said. He estimated the Jewish population of Rhinebeck itself, in the northwest corner of the county across the Hudson River from the Catskill Mountains, as no more than 150.
Rhinebeck is also the home of a small-scale synagogue and a religious school whose primary bases are out of town. Israeli-born Rabbi Yael Romer is spiritual leader of the “Jewish presence” here of Kingston-based Congregation Emanuel, which is Reform. The rabbi conducts a weekly Torah study class and meditation service in a “meeting center” near her home, and holiday services several times a year. The Community Hebrew School of Dutchess County, founded by a group of synagogues in Poughkeepsie, holds classes one afternoon a week in the parish hall of a church here.
The Rhinebeck Jewish Center, community members said, will be the first indigenous Jewish institution here — a situation in which Chabad emissaries in other communities frequently find themselves.
“Immediately upon his arrival to the shores of the United States [in 1941], the Rebbe [Menachem Mendel Schneerson] initiated intensive programs to reach out to Jews in Jewishly-isolated places,” Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice-chairman of Merkos L’lnyonei Chinuch, Chabad-Lubavitch’s educational arm, said in an email message. “With shluchim now in major cities across the globe, there is now a greater focus of manpower to create more permanent services for Jews in the smaller and often more isolated communities.”
Most emissaries face a common financial problem in establishing themselves in new surroundings; though they get seed money for several years, they must fundraise on their own.
Which is part of the Hechts’ challenge. “We pay our bills with a lot of $18 checks,” Rabbi Hecht said.
His brother, Rabbi Yitzchok Hecht, is a shaliach across the Hudson in Kingston (the Jewish population of the area is about 700 to 800 families.)
Rabbi Hanoch Hecht said he and Tzivie decided to move to Rhinebeck after visiting the village while working in Kingston a decade ago, and seeing the need for a synagogue here. “I knew the area,” he said.
♦Rhinebeck is a slice of small-town Americana (population 2,657), a 329-year-old community with strict zoning laws that is light on national franchise businesses and heavy on quaint, locally owned boutiques and restaurants with homey names like Pete’s Famous Restaurant and Gaby’s Mexican Café, as well as a gourmet scene that brings to mind Park Slope.
There are few Jewish resources here. While local groceries and health food stores stock some kosher food, full kosher shopping is available only in New York City and Monsey, each a 90-minute-to-2-hour drive away. There’s a kosher pizzeria in Hudson, a city 25 miles north.
Rhinebeck, according to locals, has a limited Jewish history, with a Jewish presence dating back only to the early 20th century. It’s a community of transplants, with few longtime Jewish residents. The village experienced a slight increase in Jewish numbers after 9/11, as people seeking a respite from city pressures headed upstate.
Rabbi Hecht said his vision is for Rhinebeck, once the synagogue is finished, to become a Jewish destination — for weekend visitors or permanent residents.
Housing prices “are a lot less than in New York City,” said Eliane Abramoff, a local realtor real who is an active congregant of the Rhinebeck Jewish Center. She said the price of a three-to-four bedroom house here ranges from $250,000 to about $6 million; most are between $500,000 and $700,000. “You don’t have to be wealthy to live here,” Saul Fraiman said.
In Rhinebeck, where Rabbi Hecht began his outreach with a pre-Shavuot class that two people attended, he and his wife have built up a mailing list of 500 people, virtually none of them Orthodox. Many have since become financial supporters of the synagogue.
Rabbi Hecht said a wide range of congregants have donated their time, expertise and dollars to construction of the building. The supporters include several people who are not Jewish, the rabbi said.
One supporter is paying for a parochet, a Torah ark cover, designed by noted physician-artist Mark Podwal.
The presence of a synagogue and of a visible, readily identifiable rabbi — Rabbi Hecht, with a short beard and bright maroon, velvet kipa — has made it easier for Jews who live here, often not identifying themselves as such, to come out of the ethnic “closet,” Saul Fraiman said. Many have emerged in recent years, he said, similar to the phenomenon that outreach-oriented rabbis have experienced in once-communist Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary.
However, Jonah Triebwasser, a native of Far Rockaway, Queens, and participant in some RJC activities who has lived in the area since 1979 and serves as a village and town justice in Red Hook, Rhinebeck’s northern neighbor, said Jews here have not been reluctant to identify as Jewish. He said he has experienced no incidents of anti-Semitism, and has been elected three times to his judicial positions.
Justus Rosenberg, a German-born Holocaust survivor who at 94 is a professor emeritus of languages and literature at nearby Bard College and still teaches two classes each semester, said he became a supporter of the synagogue after being approached by Rabbi Hecht a few years ago to give a speech about his wartime experiences.
Rosenberg, who said he does not believe in God, said he has begun to light Shabbat candles each week and has arranged, when the time comes, to be buried with a traditional tahara washing ritual instead of being cremated.
Rosenberg said he admires the Hechts’ outreach. “They embrace people whose affiliation is of a different kind,” he said.
The Hechts “are very accepting of everybody,” said Sandy Fraiman, who grew up in the Bronx’s Grand Concourse area with “absolutely no” Jewish background. “I bring a lot of people who are like me” to synagogue activities, which take place in the under-construction building, the Hechts’ home and in congregants’ homes.
Participants in synagogue activities come from a radius of at least 15 miles; a few dozen attended a Shabbat meal and worship services one recent week, most driving, no questions asked.
“I find [the Hechts] to be incredibly open,” said Leah Reingewirtz, another former New Yorker.
Rabbi Hecht tells of one openly gay man, a frequent participant in RJC activities, who attended a weekend retreat in New England for gay Jews a few years ago. The man, asked by gay friends at the retreat if he belonged to a synagogue, mentioned the Rhinebeck congregation. Asked if he felt comfortable in a synagogue led by a chasidic rabbi, “He answered, feel more comfortable there than I do here,’” Rabbi Hecht said.
Rhinebeck offers the basics for a full Jewish life, besides the availability of nearby kosher food, the rabbi and his congregants said.
Everything available in a big city can be found here, Reingewirtz said. “You just can’t eat in restaurants.”
steve@jewishweek.org
Read More
NEW YORK
Rabbi Is Staying; Who Will Go?
Jonathan Rosenblatt applauded for apology, but some find situation ‘untenable.’
Hannah Dreyfus and Gary Rosenblatt
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, a leading Modern Orthodox rabbi, was believed to be stepping down from his pulpit at the Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC) after becoming the center of an embarrassing controversy last month. But he is now determined to stay, bolstered by a warm reception to his dramatic public apology last Wednesday evening in front of hundreds of congregants, and a New York law that makes it difficult to oust him.
The rabbi’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, told The Jewish Week on Tuesday that Rabbi Rosenblatt resumes his full duties this week, at the conclusion of a six-month sabbatical, and plans to fulfill the three years remaining on his contract.
Contrary to persistent rumors that the rabbi’s status with the congregation, which he has led almost 30 years, is still in flux, Brafman said Rabbi Rosenblatt “has no intention of resigning and there is no cause for him to do so.” He added that “the overwhelming majority of his congregants have signed a petition for him to stay, and as for the minority, other than creating a public spectacle, they have accomplished nothing.”
Several weeks ago the synagogue board of directors voted 34-8 to seek a financial settlement and have Rabbi Rosenblatt resign. At the time Brafman indicated discussions were taking place to bring a dignified conclusion to the rabbi’s tenure.
But since then nearly 200 of the congregation’s members signed a petition on his behalf, as did about 70 rabbinic interns he helped mentor over the years. And the New York Religious Corporations Law prohibits a synagogue board from firing a rabbi without involving the congregation in the decision.
As the focus shifts from the rabbi to his congregation, several members told The Jewish Week they did not know of any plans to hold a vote on the rabbi’s status — or what the outcome would be should a vote be held.
The annual election of synagogue officers was scheduled to be held this week, with few changes expected from last year’s slate.
Still, a significant number of congregants in the 700-member synagogue are unhappy with the status quo and feel the rabbi can no longer be their spiritual leader. An estimated 60 members, representing up to 40 families, met at a private home in the neighborhood on Monday night to express their dissatisfaction with the situation. Some said they plan to attend other local synagogues, others spoke of starting a new shul. The immediate focus, though, was where to attend High Holy Day services this fall.
“The sense in the room was that the current situation is untenable,” said one attendee, who like others interviewed, asked to remain anonymous, given the delicacy of the situation.
“People have to decide now” about where to buy seats for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” he said. “They are looking for alternatives to RJC.”
In his first address from the pulpit since a story about the controversy in The New York Times was published May 30, Rabbi Rosenblatt said last Wednesday night that he felt “fragile and embarrassed” for the “anguish” and “shame” he has brought to his family and community. He described as “lapses of judgment” his longtime practice of inviting boys, and later young men, to play racquetball, and then shower and shmooze in the sauna while naked.
At various times, Rabbi Rosenblatt was told by rabbinic bodies or his congregation’s board to limit such activity.
“That I have been a source of desecration of the Divine Name and of a noble calling brings me nearly to despair,” the rabbi said.
He reiterated that he had committed no crime and that his controversial behavior had no sexual connotations and has ceased.
Rabbi Rosenblatt argued that the punishment he has already received in the court of public opinion is disproportional to what he described as a misguided belief that he could remove the barriers between “rabbi” and “congregant” by meeting young men in various stages of undress in saunas for heart-to-heart talks and counseling.
“I still love being a rabbi,” he said. “I still believe I have contributions to make. In short, with God’s grace, I am ready to serve Him, and with yours, I am ready tocontinue to serve him here.”
Attendees said that at the conclusion of the 20-minute address, the great majority of people in the packed synagogue stood and applauded.
No one cited in the original New York Times story accused Rabbi Rosenblatt of sexual touching, but several men expressed their discomfort with the practice and described the behavior as deeply inappropriate for a rabbi and mentor, especially with teens and young single men.
The only accuser to publicly speak of his “shock” and discomfort when invited by the rabbi to join him nude in a sauna in 1997 is Yehuda Kurtzer, then a Columbia University student and now president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
On his Facebook page on Thursday, Kurtzer wrote that he was saddened that “this synagogue … is now stained not just by this scandal but by the stubbornness of a rabbi who will not allow the community to regain its dignity.” He noted that “we get the leaders we deserve” and “we are implicated by the actions of our leaders.”
Kurtzer has been praised and vilified for being the only one of many alleged young men distraught by the rabbi’s personal interactions to have spoken out publicly. He wrote that “whistleblowing yields no rewards for those who do it, but immediatelybreeds skepticism about motivation and then alienation of the already-lonely voices.”
He expressed anger that “the consequences of this hubris [on the part of the rabbi] is that the victims here are even less likely than before to speak up.”
Rabbi Rosenblatt says he is innocent of any crime. The Bronx district attorney’s office said it is looking into whether any crime was committed and has urged victims to come forward.
Hannah Dreyfus is a staff writer; Gary Rosenblatt is editor and publisher.
Read More NATIONAL
The Rise And Fall Of JONAH
How a program using nudity, cuddling and group showers became Orthodox rabbis’ answer for gay Jews.
Rachel Delia Benaim, Jesse Lempel and Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week
Attorney David Dinielli points to photos of the plaintiffs during opening statements. The Star-Ledger, via AP Pool
On a warm day in June, a Jersey City jury heard Jonathan Hoffman, an Orthodox Jew, describe an exhilarating weekend he spent sponsored by JONAH, an organization that claims to “heal” same sex attraction.
He described a “wild party” where a group of men danced naked in the woods, threw cake at each other and rolled in the mud before washing off in a group shower. Hoffman told the court that JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) had helped him in his effort to change his sexual orientation.
Hoffman was deemed as a “success story” by JONAH — someone with a history of sexual relations with other men who has married a woman and started a family. In a videotaped deposition played for the court, Hoffman credited JONAH’s program as “the stuff that has helped me and the stuff that I hold dear to my heart.”
But others claim they were harmed by the organization. Last week, in a landmark verdict, a jury agreed. The five plaintiffs alleged that JONAH defrauded them by saying the program’s methods were scientific. The jury found JONAH liable for $72,400 in damages for consumer fraud and “unconscionable business practices.”
The verdict, however, leaves the Orthodox community with more questions than answers. Like how a young Orthodox Jewish man struggling with homosexual desires was guided by well known rabbis to spend weekends in the woods like the one Hoffman described? All under the watchful eye of a self-styled “life coach” who is also a Mormon high priest.
Much of the answer lies in the brilliant salesmanship of JONAH’s director, convicted fraudster Arthur Goldberg, and his less colorful co-director Elaine Berk. But it also includes the fact that recommendations of JONAH came from a number of respected Orthodox rabbis and mental health professionals.
The Beginning
In the late 1990s, Berk’s son came out to her as gay, she testified. She was troubled by this and “wrote letters to rabbis and different Jewish organizations and didn't receive answers.” Frustrated, she did her own research and found psychologists positing there were ways to “heal” homosexuality.
She met Goldberg, whose son had come out to him as gay, at a conference about homosexuality and healing in 1997. The next year they founded JONAH.
Described by Goldberg and Berk as a referral service, JONAH espouses treatment that includes one-on-one counseling, group therapy, and weekends in the woods. JONAH asserts that “wounds” incurred in childhood cause homosexuality, and once those wounds are “healed,” men will have healthy, non-sexual relationships with other men and become straight.
In 2000, JONAH received an endorsement from Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, dean of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia and a member of Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages. The endorsement remains on JONAH’s website today.
Around the same time, the award-winning documentary “Trembling Before God,” depicting the struggle of Orthodox gays and lesbians for acceptance in their religious communities, was released. Suddenly, gay Orthodox Jews became visible — and vocal — in a way they never had before.
Jonathan Hoffman noted that he found JONAH in 2006 through an online comment critiquing the film. He was 19 and struggling with “behaviors that were homosexual, not in line with my values,” he said.
“There weren't any other resources in the Jewish community that [were] providing Jewish men with the help that I was looking for,” Hoffman said in his deposition.
Moishie Rabinowitz, now treasurer of Jewish Queer Youth, was referred to JONAH by Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, known as the Novominsker Rebbe. Raised in a charedi home, Rabinowitz, 22, was well into the process of shidduch dating. The only problem: he knew he was gay. At the time, “there was no gay Jewish world,” he told The Jewish Week.
“I called his office ... and said this is a life or death situation, I need to see the rebbe tomorrow.” The next morning at 9:30, Rabinowitz walked into Perlow’s Brooklyn office. The white-bearded Rebbe emerged from his office donning tallit and a tefillin.
“Oh my God, I’m telling Mashiach [Messiah] I’m gay,” Rabinowitz recalled thinking.
After their meeting, Rabbi Perlow promised to look into the matter and four days later referred Rabinowitz to JONAH. But knowing that the organization used unscientific methods of conversion therapy, he decided not to go.
In 2004, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest Orthodox rabbinic association, issued an endorsement of JONAH, suggesting “rabbis might refer congregants to them for reparative therapy.”
But the biggest endorsement for JONAH came with “The Torah Declaration” in 2011, signed by over 200 rabbis. The document, apparently drafted by about two dozen men, attributed homosexuality to “childhood emotional wounds” and declared that attempting change was the only Torah-consistent way to deal with the problem.
And JONAH was the only Jewish organization offering the possibility of such change.
The Unraveling
Just when JONAH had reached the height of rabbinic backing, it came under attack. In November 2012, four former clients and two mothers filed a fraud suit.
In court papers and later at trial, witnesses said that Alan Downing, JONAH’s Mormon “life coach” who claimed to have subdued his own homosexual attractions, routinely “invited” young men he was counseling to strip in his office and then “physically feel” their masculinity. Downing also led others to believe the behaviors of their parents had turned them gay.
Immediately after the complaint became public, the RCA rescinded its support and asked JONAH to remove the endorsement from its website, where it remains today.
Last week’s verdict against JONAH did not come as a surprise to Rabbi Samuel Rosenberg, the Orthodox rabbi and licensed clinical social worker who was co-director of JONAH from 1999 until around 2002, when he left due to “theological and professional differences,” particularly regarding the weekend retreats’ nudity and cuddling.
“I would not approve the methods,” Rosenberg told The Jewish Week.
Rabbi Rosenberg and Goldberg clashed over the boldness of Goldberg’s claims.
“Mr. Goldberg insisted that he wanted to publicize the claim that he can assure anyone who comes through his doors that he can ‘cure’ them, quote unquote,” Rosenberg said. “My position was that it’s totally unethical to guarantee it, as with any psychotherapy. And also, that the term ‘cure’ is totally inappropriate in this context, because I would not call it an illness.”
Goldberg and his attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Rabbi Rosenberg said he was also troubled by Goldberg’s efforts to marshal Orthodox rabbinic support for JONAH through adopting calculated, Torah-friendly language while concealing the fact that he is not personally Orthodox.
Despite Goldberg’s lack of formal Jewish education — he left yeshiva after grammar school — and his personal non-observance, he was instrumental in the formation of right-wing Orthodoxy’s approach toward gay Jews. It was Goldberg’s name that was on the 2011 article in the Orthodox journal “Hakirah,” featuring a discussion between Rabbi Kamenetsky and him about the necessity of “setting forth Torah values” and touting JONAH’s services.
Within months, language from that article appeared in the Torah Declaration.
Some rabbis have successfully had their signatures removed from the document, like Rabbi Dr. Martin Schloss, director of the Jewish Education Project’s day school division. Others have hit a brick wall.
Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, a licensed clinical social worker and president of Nefesh, the International Network of Orthodox Mental Health Professionals, said he initially signed the declaration because he thought it “was merely a stance on the idea that sexual orientation is not absolute” and that some motivated clients could “find a healthy way to manage heterosexual relationships.” However, he later took issue with the document’s “unequivocal language that all homosexuals can be treated with today's available clinical expertise.” Despite asking to be removed several times, he said, his name remains on the website.
According to plaintiff Chaim Levin, however, even Rabbi Kamenetsky has privately expressed doubts about the Torah Declaration.
Levin said he met the rabbi two years ago and “saw the pain in his eyes as I recounted my experiences in conversion therapy and JONAH. He asked me for forgiveness and said that the document ‘needs to be changed.’ To date, nothing has, and Rabbi Kamenetsky has remained silent.”
Rabbi Kamenetsky declined to comment.
Although JONAH’s bizarre methods were exposed over the course of the trial, some Orthodox rabbis stand by it.
Asked about the recent verdict, Rabbi Shmuel Fuerst, a signatory to the Torah Declaration, said he wasn’t aware of it but was content to have his name on the document.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, an Orthodox rabbi in Teaneck who has been outspoken in support of the Torah Declaration, described the verdict against JONAH as imposing "draconian limitations on the pursuit of self-help."
While admitting that JONAH's techniques are sometimes "harsh,” Rabbi Pruzansky defended them as necessary "behavioral tools to sublimate the desires and lead a heterosexual life."
But the details that emerged shocked others.
“Although there are reputable therapists who use and have had successes with conventional counseling methods to help people wishing to control their same-sex attraction,” said Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, “the sort of ‘therapy’ that Mr. Downing says he employed is utterly outrageous and would never be sanctioned by any reputable Orthodox rabbi.”
Read More
INTERNATIONAL
Experts Split On Whether Iran Deal Will Be Signed
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
As world powers meeting in Vienna gave themselves another week to conclude a momentous nuclear deal with Iran, observers here were split on whether they would succeed by next Tuesday’s supposedly final deadline.
“It is likely they will reach a deal in early July — within the next week or so – a comprehensive deal,” said Matthew Kroenig, an associate professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
“If they get a deal and Iran abides by it, Iran will not be able to build nuclear weapons,” he said. “This deal would cap Iran’s [uranium] enriching program and force Iran to redo its plutonium reactor at Arak.”
But Robert Einhorn, a former special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control at the State Department during the Obama administration, said he is “skeptical” a deal would be reached.
He cited last week’s speech by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in which he called for an immediate end to all economic and diplomatic sanctions on his country by the U.S. and the United Nations. He also proclaimed that no Iranian military sites would be subject to international inspections, and he insisted that Iran would never agree to a long-term freeze on nuclear research.
In a draft agreement announced in April, Iran had agreed to those terms.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who is heading the U.S. negotiating team, reportedly told the Iranians that the world powers are holding firm on the draft agreement and would not agree to backing off from it.
The world powers involved in the talks are the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.
The main differences reportedly now being negotiated involve the timing of sanctions relief for Iran in return for curbing its nuclear program – Iran wants immediate relief on signing -- and the nature of the monitoring mechanisms to ensure Tehran does not cheat on any agreement.
In a conference call Monday with the Endowment for Middle East Truth, Kroenig, who is also a senior fellow in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at The Atlantic Council, noted that the Obama administration has said there would be “intrusive inspections” and monitoring of Iran to ensure its compliance with the agreement.
Although it would be a 10-year agreement, Kroenig said “the administration says it can maintain pressure after 10 years” by “snapping back sanctions” on Iran that are due to be lifted or eased with the agreement’s ratification.
“At the end of the day, the U.S. still has a military option 10 years from now,” he observed, referring to a U.S. military strike on Iran’s nuclear construction facilities.
“My contacts in the administration say it would be better if there was no [uranium] enrichment [by Iran as part of the agreement], but this deal is better than war,” Kroenig added.
Nevertheless, he said, “It was a mistake to go back on the zero enrichment demand. … [because] scientists understand that fuel can be produced for peace or war. … The U.S. says [such a deal] is better than the alternatives, but I think there is a better way forward — give Iran a choice. It can have a peaceful nuclear program in which it would ship [spent fuel] rods to another country in return for sanctions relief, or we would increase sanctions and set clear military red lines” on its nuclear program.
Kroenig said he does not believe “snap back sanctions” would work, and noted that Iran is developing an intercontinental ballistic missile “whose only purpose is to deliver a nuclear warhead.”
Kroenig was also critical of the U.S. decision to negotiate Iran’s nuclear program in a vacuum, ignoring its human rights abuses at home and record of supporting and fomenting terrorism worldwide.
Einhorn told The Jewish Week that he can “only speculate” on the motives of the ayatollah for making his speech last week.
“One explanation is that he said it for bargaining leverage in the hope the Iranians will get a somewhat better deal – but that assumes they are prepared to fall back to what they had essentially agreed to.
“Another explanation is that he is being a domestic critic and he will retreat. And a third explanation is that he has decided to redraw the red lines and take an uncompromising position on critical issues. If that is the explanation, I think Iran will be responsible for sabotaging the agreement because I don’t see anyway the U.S. could abide by the supreme leader’s unreasonable red lines.”
Einhorn is one of 18 prominent American security advisers – including five former Obama administration officials – who signed a letter last week detailing what the Iranian nuclear deal must include. Otherwise, they said, it would “fall short of meeting the administration's own standard of a 'good' agreement.’"
Among the other signatories were Dennis Ross, a former Obama adviser on Iran and the Middle East; David Petraeus, former CIA director and U.S. commander in Iraq; retired U.S. General James Cartwright, and David Makovsky, who had been part of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East negotiating team. The letter was Makovsky’s idea.
“My dream was to get a bipartisan panel close to the Obama team on Iran to come forward with a clear yardstick of how to measure it [an agreement],” he told The Jewish Week. “What we tried to do was to take consensus issues and say these are the standards by which to judge the agreement. Then you can compare what is versus what should be and assess it.”
Among the minimal conditions the experts said are needed in the agreement are timely access to any sites in Iran: an investigation of nuclear weaponization activities; strict limits on advanced centrifuge research; and sanctions relief based on Iran’s performance of its obligations, which would be restored if it cheats.
Read More
The Jewish Week
Despite what many members outside of the tribe might say and regardless of how their faces might involuntarily contort due to sheer disgust and confusion, Jewish deli food is simple and delicious. They tell you you're getting a pickle and gosh darn it, a sour dill is going to show up on your plate. No surprises. Nowadays indie rock, punk and death metal bands try to trick people with osbcure, non-sensical titles. Thus, we came up up with a list of items that could easily be someone ordering their lunch from a kosher deli or the names of hipster music groups. You decide.
Bon Apetite. Or should we say, rock on.
1. Four Pastramis And A Pickle
2. The Kasha Varnishkes
3. Corned Beef/No Mustard
4. Coleslaw On The Side
5. Two Toasted Tunas
6. Are There Onions On That?
7. Borscht To Begin
8. Extra Tongue
9. Hold The Herring!
10. Three Hot Briskets
11. Gefilte Fish To Go
12. What’s One More Knish?
13. Never Enough Cholent
14. The Potato Pancakes
15. Not The Knoblewurst
16. Lox On Top
17. A Couple Of Kreplachs
18. Un Bissel Schnitzel
19. The Kosher Club
20. Half Sandwich/Half Soup
21. Kishkas By The Dozen
22. The King Sized Kugels
23. Cut The Rugelach
24. Big Baked Blintzes
25. T.O.C.L. (The Original Chopped Liver) Read More
TOP STORIES:NEW YORK
Rhinebeck Gets A Shul Of Its Own
First permanent Jewish presence in the Hudson Valley town, thanks to Chabad couple.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Sandy and Saul Fraiman, inset, are active congregants of the new Rhinebeck Jewish Center. Steve Lipman/JW
Rhinebeck, N.Y. — The first thought that crossed Saul Fraiman’s mind when his son, Matthew, announced 20 years ago that he was moving to this Dutchess County town to take a chef’s job, was “it seemed far away.”
Far away from New York City —102 miles north.
Fraiman, a native of the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, known to his friends as “Sonny,” lived then in Manhattan, working in the diamond business. He knew that Rhinebeck had a negligible Jewish community, and a reputation as a WASPy enclave that had not been welcoming to Jews.
He and his wife Sandy came up for a weekend to visit his son. They kept coming back, feeling more at home each time. Finally the couple bought “a weekend place,” a home on a four-acre tract of land.
Now, at 68, he’s “semi-retired,” and spends four days a week in Rhinebeck. When he fully retires, he said, he and Sandy will live here full-time.
Fraiman, who grew up in a “100 percent glatt kosher” family but became less ritually observant as an adult, said part of Rhinebeck’s attraction is a synagogue, the village’s first independent one not affiliated with another congregation, which is to be dedicated at the end of this summer.
The Rhinebeck Jewish Center was founded by Tzivie and Rabbi Hanoch Hecht, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch chasidic movement who settled here eight years ago.
The synagogue, according to chabaddutchess.com, is “a Modern Orthodox congregation” with a chasidic flavor.
Rabbi Hecht, member of a prominent Lubavitch rabbinic family, is conducting an $800,000 fundraising campaign for construction of a mikvah and the synagogue, which is barn-shaped, in keeping with local architecture, incorporates some of the cedar beams from the 100-year-old barn that formerly stood there.
A ceremony marking the start of the writing of a Torah scroll, donated by the family of Ivan and Frema Sobel, RJC supporters, was held in mid-May, two years after construction began. In addition, Eliana Abramoff, a congregant, is lending the synagogue a 150-year-old Torah from a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Bukharian neighborhood that was built by her grandfather in 1894.
The Rhinebeck synagogue’s postponed dedication will take place in time for full use on the upcoming High Holy Days.
The “Barn Shul,” environmentally “green,” is located behind the Hechts’ home on a tree-lined 1.5-acre lot, once the property of the Astor family; the grounds also include the family’s 2,000-square-foot garden where the Hechts are growing a wide variety of vegetables and herbs.
Like other shluchim, or emissary, couples, the Hechts, both 30, have set up a full-service enterprise, offering classes for adults and children, hosting community seders and distributing challahs for Shabbat and cheesecakes for Shavuot.
The synagogue is the latest sign both of the growth of the international network of Chabad shluchim, and the expansion of the movement’s current emphasis on places, like Rhinebeck, which have small Jewish populations.
“In northern Dutchess County there are about 500 Jewish homes, many of them being weekenders,” Rabbi Hecht said. He estimated the Jewish population of Rhinebeck itself, in the northwest corner of the county across the Hudson River from the Catskill Mountains, as no more than 150.
Rhinebeck is also the home of a small-scale synagogue and a religious school whose primary bases are out of town. Israeli-born Rabbi Yael Romer is spiritual leader of the “Jewish presence” here of Kingston-based Congregation Emanuel, which is Reform. The rabbi conducts a weekly Torah study class and meditation service in a “meeting center” near her home, and holiday services several times a year. The Community Hebrew School of Dutchess County, founded by a group of synagogues in Poughkeepsie, holds classes one afternoon a week in the parish hall of a church here.
The Rhinebeck Jewish Center, community members said, will be the first indigenous Jewish institution here — a situation in which Chabad emissaries in other communities frequently find themselves.
“Immediately upon his arrival to the shores of the United States [in 1941], the Rebbe [Menachem Mendel Schneerson] initiated intensive programs to reach out to Jews in Jewishly-isolated places,” Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice-chairman of Merkos L’lnyonei Chinuch, Chabad-Lubavitch’s educational arm, said in an email message. “With shluchim now in major cities across the globe, there is now a greater focus of manpower to create more permanent services for Jews in the smaller and often more isolated communities.”
Most emissaries face a common financial problem in establishing themselves in new surroundings; though they get seed money for several years, they must fundraise on their own.
Which is part of the Hechts’ challenge. “We pay our bills with a lot of $18 checks,” Rabbi Hecht said.
His brother, Rabbi Yitzchok Hecht, is a shaliach across the Hudson in Kingston (the Jewish population of the area is about 700 to 800 families.)
Rabbi Hanoch Hecht said he and Tzivie decided to move to Rhinebeck after visiting the village while working in Kingston a decade ago, and seeing the need for a synagogue here. “I knew the area,” he said.
♦Rhinebeck is a slice of small-town Americana (population 2,657), a 329-year-old community with strict zoning laws that is light on national franchise businesses and heavy on quaint, locally owned boutiques and restaurants with homey names like Pete’s Famous Restaurant and Gaby’s Mexican Café, as well as a gourmet scene that brings to mind Park Slope.
There are few Jewish resources here. While local groceries and health food stores stock some kosher food, full kosher shopping is available only in New York City and Monsey, each a 90-minute-to-2-hour drive away. There’s a kosher pizzeria in Hudson, a city 25 miles north.
Rhinebeck, according to locals, has a limited Jewish history, with a Jewish presence dating back only to the early 20th century. It’s a community of transplants, with few longtime Jewish residents. The village experienced a slight increase in Jewish numbers after 9/11, as people seeking a respite from city pressures headed upstate.
Rabbi Hecht said his vision is for Rhinebeck, once the synagogue is finished, to become a Jewish destination — for weekend visitors or permanent residents.
Housing prices “are a lot less than in New York City,” said Eliane Abramoff, a local realtor real who is an active congregant of the Rhinebeck Jewish Center. She said the price of a three-to-four bedroom house here ranges from $250,000 to about $6 million; most are between $500,000 and $700,000. “You don’t have to be wealthy to live here,” Saul Fraiman said.
In Rhinebeck, where Rabbi Hecht began his outreach with a pre-Shavuot class that two people attended, he and his wife have built up a mailing list of 500 people, virtually none of them Orthodox. Many have since become financial supporters of the synagogue.
Rabbi Hecht said a wide range of congregants have donated their time, expertise and dollars to construction of the building. The supporters include several people who are not Jewish, the rabbi said.
One supporter is paying for a parochet, a Torah ark cover, designed by noted physician-artist Mark Podwal.
The presence of a synagogue and of a visible, readily identifiable rabbi — Rabbi Hecht, with a short beard and bright maroon, velvet kipa — has made it easier for Jews who live here, often not identifying themselves as such, to come out of the ethnic “closet,” Saul Fraiman said. Many have emerged in recent years, he said, similar to the phenomenon that outreach-oriented rabbis have experienced in once-communist Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary.
However, Jonah Triebwasser, a native of Far Rockaway, Queens, and participant in some RJC activities who has lived in the area since 1979 and serves as a village and town justice in Red Hook, Rhinebeck’s northern neighbor, said Jews here have not been reluctant to identify as Jewish. He said he has experienced no incidents of anti-Semitism, and has been elected three times to his judicial positions.
Justus Rosenberg, a German-born Holocaust survivor who at 94 is a professor emeritus of languages and literature at nearby Bard College and still teaches two classes each semester, said he became a supporter of the synagogue after being approached by Rabbi Hecht a few years ago to give a speech about his wartime experiences.
Rosenberg, who said he does not believe in God, said he has begun to light Shabbat candles each week and has arranged, when the time comes, to be buried with a traditional tahara washing ritual instead of being cremated.
Rosenberg said he admires the Hechts’ outreach. “They embrace people whose affiliation is of a different kind,” he said.
The Hechts “are very accepting of everybody,” said Sandy Fraiman, who grew up in the Bronx’s Grand Concourse area with “absolutely no” Jewish background. “I bring a lot of people who are like me” to synagogue activities, which take place in the under-construction building, the Hechts’ home and in congregants’ homes.
Participants in synagogue activities come from a radius of at least 15 miles; a few dozen attended a Shabbat meal and worship services one recent week, most driving, no questions asked.
“I find [the Hechts] to be incredibly open,” said Leah Reingewirtz, another former New Yorker.
Rabbi Hecht tells of one openly gay man, a frequent participant in RJC activities, who attended a weekend retreat in New England for gay Jews a few years ago. The man, asked by gay friends at the retreat if he belonged to a synagogue, mentioned the Rhinebeck congregation. Asked if he felt comfortable in a synagogue led by a chasidic rabbi, “He answered, feel more comfortable there than I do here,’” Rabbi Hecht said.
Rhinebeck offers the basics for a full Jewish life, besides the availability of nearby kosher food, the rabbi and his congregants said.
Everything available in a big city can be found here, Reingewirtz said. “You just can’t eat in restaurants.”
steve@jewishweek.org
Read More
NEW YORK
Rabbi Is Staying; Who Will Go?
Jonathan Rosenblatt applauded for apology, but some find situation ‘untenable.’
Hannah Dreyfus and Gary Rosenblatt
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, a leading Modern Orthodox rabbi, was believed to be stepping down from his pulpit at the Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC) after becoming the center of an embarrassing controversy last month. But he is now determined to stay, bolstered by a warm reception to his dramatic public apology last Wednesday evening in front of hundreds of congregants, and a New York law that makes it difficult to oust him.
The rabbi’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, told The Jewish Week on Tuesday that Rabbi Rosenblatt resumes his full duties this week, at the conclusion of a six-month sabbatical, and plans to fulfill the three years remaining on his contract.
Contrary to persistent rumors that the rabbi’s status with the congregation, which he has led almost 30 years, is still in flux, Brafman said Rabbi Rosenblatt “has no intention of resigning and there is no cause for him to do so.” He added that “the overwhelming majority of his congregants have signed a petition for him to stay, and as for the minority, other than creating a public spectacle, they have accomplished nothing.”
Several weeks ago the synagogue board of directors voted 34-8 to seek a financial settlement and have Rabbi Rosenblatt resign. At the time Brafman indicated discussions were taking place to bring a dignified conclusion to the rabbi’s tenure.
But since then nearly 200 of the congregation’s members signed a petition on his behalf, as did about 70 rabbinic interns he helped mentor over the years. And the New York Religious Corporations Law prohibits a synagogue board from firing a rabbi without involving the congregation in the decision.
As the focus shifts from the rabbi to his congregation, several members told The Jewish Week they did not know of any plans to hold a vote on the rabbi’s status — or what the outcome would be should a vote be held.
The annual election of synagogue officers was scheduled to be held this week, with few changes expected from last year’s slate.
Still, a significant number of congregants in the 700-member synagogue are unhappy with the status quo and feel the rabbi can no longer be their spiritual leader. An estimated 60 members, representing up to 40 families, met at a private home in the neighborhood on Monday night to express their dissatisfaction with the situation. Some said they plan to attend other local synagogues, others spoke of starting a new shul. The immediate focus, though, was where to attend High Holy Day services this fall.
“The sense in the room was that the current situation is untenable,” said one attendee, who like others interviewed, asked to remain anonymous, given the delicacy of the situation.
“People have to decide now” about where to buy seats for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” he said. “They are looking for alternatives to RJC.”
In his first address from the pulpit since a story about the controversy in The New York Times was published May 30, Rabbi Rosenblatt said last Wednesday night that he felt “fragile and embarrassed” for the “anguish” and “shame” he has brought to his family and community. He described as “lapses of judgment” his longtime practice of inviting boys, and later young men, to play racquetball, and then shower and shmooze in the sauna while naked.
At various times, Rabbi Rosenblatt was told by rabbinic bodies or his congregation’s board to limit such activity.
“That I have been a source of desecration of the Divine Name and of a noble calling brings me nearly to despair,” the rabbi said.
He reiterated that he had committed no crime and that his controversial behavior had no sexual connotations and has ceased.
Rabbi Rosenblatt argued that the punishment he has already received in the court of public opinion is disproportional to what he described as a misguided belief that he could remove the barriers between “rabbi” and “congregant” by meeting young men in various stages of undress in saunas for heart-to-heart talks and counseling.
“I still love being a rabbi,” he said. “I still believe I have contributions to make. In short, with God’s grace, I am ready to serve Him, and with yours, I am ready tocontinue to serve him here.”
Attendees said that at the conclusion of the 20-minute address, the great majority of people in the packed synagogue stood and applauded.
No one cited in the original New York Times story accused Rabbi Rosenblatt of sexual touching, but several men expressed their discomfort with the practice and described the behavior as deeply inappropriate for a rabbi and mentor, especially with teens and young single men.
The only accuser to publicly speak of his “shock” and discomfort when invited by the rabbi to join him nude in a sauna in 1997 is Yehuda Kurtzer, then a Columbia University student and now president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
On his Facebook page on Thursday, Kurtzer wrote that he was saddened that “this synagogue … is now stained not just by this scandal but by the stubbornness of a rabbi who will not allow the community to regain its dignity.” He noted that “we get the leaders we deserve” and “we are implicated by the actions of our leaders.”
Kurtzer has been praised and vilified for being the only one of many alleged young men distraught by the rabbi’s personal interactions to have spoken out publicly. He wrote that “whistleblowing yields no rewards for those who do it, but immediatelybreeds skepticism about motivation and then alienation of the already-lonely voices.”
He expressed anger that “the consequences of this hubris [on the part of the rabbi] is that the victims here are even less likely than before to speak up.”
Rabbi Rosenblatt says he is innocent of any crime. The Bronx district attorney’s office said it is looking into whether any crime was committed and has urged victims to come forward.
Hannah Dreyfus is a staff writer; Gary Rosenblatt is editor and publisher.
Read More NATIONAL
The Rise And Fall Of JONAH
How a program using nudity, cuddling and group showers became Orthodox rabbis’ answer for gay Jews.
Rachel Delia Benaim, Jesse Lempel and Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week
Attorney David Dinielli points to photos of the plaintiffs during opening statements. The Star-Ledger, via AP Pool
On a warm day in June, a Jersey City jury heard Jonathan Hoffman, an Orthodox Jew, describe an exhilarating weekend he spent sponsored by JONAH, an organization that claims to “heal” same sex attraction.
He described a “wild party” where a group of men danced naked in the woods, threw cake at each other and rolled in the mud before washing off in a group shower. Hoffman told the court that JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) had helped him in his effort to change his sexual orientation.
Hoffman was deemed as a “success story” by JONAH — someone with a history of sexual relations with other men who has married a woman and started a family. In a videotaped deposition played for the court, Hoffman credited JONAH’s program as “the stuff that has helped me and the stuff that I hold dear to my heart.”
But others claim they were harmed by the organization. Last week, in a landmark verdict, a jury agreed. The five plaintiffs alleged that JONAH defrauded them by saying the program’s methods were scientific. The jury found JONAH liable for $72,400 in damages for consumer fraud and “unconscionable business practices.”
The verdict, however, leaves the Orthodox community with more questions than answers. Like how a young Orthodox Jewish man struggling with homosexual desires was guided by well known rabbis to spend weekends in the woods like the one Hoffman described? All under the watchful eye of a self-styled “life coach” who is also a Mormon high priest.
Much of the answer lies in the brilliant salesmanship of JONAH’s director, convicted fraudster Arthur Goldberg, and his less colorful co-director Elaine Berk. But it also includes the fact that recommendations of JONAH came from a number of respected Orthodox rabbis and mental health professionals.
The Beginning
In the late 1990s, Berk’s son came out to her as gay, she testified. She was troubled by this and “wrote letters to rabbis and different Jewish organizations and didn't receive answers.” Frustrated, she did her own research and found psychologists positing there were ways to “heal” homosexuality.
She met Goldberg, whose son had come out to him as gay, at a conference about homosexuality and healing in 1997. The next year they founded JONAH.
Described by Goldberg and Berk as a referral service, JONAH espouses treatment that includes one-on-one counseling, group therapy, and weekends in the woods. JONAH asserts that “wounds” incurred in childhood cause homosexuality, and once those wounds are “healed,” men will have healthy, non-sexual relationships with other men and become straight.
In 2000, JONAH received an endorsement from Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, dean of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia and a member of Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages. The endorsement remains on JONAH’s website today.
Around the same time, the award-winning documentary “Trembling Before God,” depicting the struggle of Orthodox gays and lesbians for acceptance in their religious communities, was released. Suddenly, gay Orthodox Jews became visible — and vocal — in a way they never had before.
Jonathan Hoffman noted that he found JONAH in 2006 through an online comment critiquing the film. He was 19 and struggling with “behaviors that were homosexual, not in line with my values,” he said.
“There weren't any other resources in the Jewish community that [were] providing Jewish men with the help that I was looking for,” Hoffman said in his deposition.
Moishie Rabinowitz, now treasurer of Jewish Queer Youth, was referred to JONAH by Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, known as the Novominsker Rebbe. Raised in a charedi home, Rabinowitz, 22, was well into the process of shidduch dating. The only problem: he knew he was gay. At the time, “there was no gay Jewish world,” he told The Jewish Week.
“I called his office ... and said this is a life or death situation, I need to see the rebbe tomorrow.” The next morning at 9:30, Rabinowitz walked into Perlow’s Brooklyn office. The white-bearded Rebbe emerged from his office donning tallit and a tefillin.
“Oh my God, I’m telling Mashiach [Messiah] I’m gay,” Rabinowitz recalled thinking.
After their meeting, Rabbi Perlow promised to look into the matter and four days later referred Rabinowitz to JONAH. But knowing that the organization used unscientific methods of conversion therapy, he decided not to go.
In 2004, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest Orthodox rabbinic association, issued an endorsement of JONAH, suggesting “rabbis might refer congregants to them for reparative therapy.”
But the biggest endorsement for JONAH came with “The Torah Declaration” in 2011, signed by over 200 rabbis. The document, apparently drafted by about two dozen men, attributed homosexuality to “childhood emotional wounds” and declared that attempting change was the only Torah-consistent way to deal with the problem.
And JONAH was the only Jewish organization offering the possibility of such change.
The Unraveling
Just when JONAH had reached the height of rabbinic backing, it came under attack. In November 2012, four former clients and two mothers filed a fraud suit.
In court papers and later at trial, witnesses said that Alan Downing, JONAH’s Mormon “life coach” who claimed to have subdued his own homosexual attractions, routinely “invited” young men he was counseling to strip in his office and then “physically feel” their masculinity. Downing also led others to believe the behaviors of their parents had turned them gay.
Immediately after the complaint became public, the RCA rescinded its support and asked JONAH to remove the endorsement from its website, where it remains today.
Last week’s verdict against JONAH did not come as a surprise to Rabbi Samuel Rosenberg, the Orthodox rabbi and licensed clinical social worker who was co-director of JONAH from 1999 until around 2002, when he left due to “theological and professional differences,” particularly regarding the weekend retreats’ nudity and cuddling.
“I would not approve the methods,” Rosenberg told The Jewish Week.
Rabbi Rosenberg and Goldberg clashed over the boldness of Goldberg’s claims.
“Mr. Goldberg insisted that he wanted to publicize the claim that he can assure anyone who comes through his doors that he can ‘cure’ them, quote unquote,” Rosenberg said. “My position was that it’s totally unethical to guarantee it, as with any psychotherapy. And also, that the term ‘cure’ is totally inappropriate in this context, because I would not call it an illness.”
Goldberg and his attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Rabbi Rosenberg said he was also troubled by Goldberg’s efforts to marshal Orthodox rabbinic support for JONAH through adopting calculated, Torah-friendly language while concealing the fact that he is not personally Orthodox.
Despite Goldberg’s lack of formal Jewish education — he left yeshiva after grammar school — and his personal non-observance, he was instrumental in the formation of right-wing Orthodoxy’s approach toward gay Jews. It was Goldberg’s name that was on the 2011 article in the Orthodox journal “Hakirah,” featuring a discussion between Rabbi Kamenetsky and him about the necessity of “setting forth Torah values” and touting JONAH’s services.
Within months, language from that article appeared in the Torah Declaration.
Some rabbis have successfully had their signatures removed from the document, like Rabbi Dr. Martin Schloss, director of the Jewish Education Project’s day school division. Others have hit a brick wall.
Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, a licensed clinical social worker and president of Nefesh, the International Network of Orthodox Mental Health Professionals, said he initially signed the declaration because he thought it “was merely a stance on the idea that sexual orientation is not absolute” and that some motivated clients could “find a healthy way to manage heterosexual relationships.” However, he later took issue with the document’s “unequivocal language that all homosexuals can be treated with today's available clinical expertise.” Despite asking to be removed several times, he said, his name remains on the website.
According to plaintiff Chaim Levin, however, even Rabbi Kamenetsky has privately expressed doubts about the Torah Declaration.
Levin said he met the rabbi two years ago and “saw the pain in his eyes as I recounted my experiences in conversion therapy and JONAH. He asked me for forgiveness and said that the document ‘needs to be changed.’ To date, nothing has, and Rabbi Kamenetsky has remained silent.”
Rabbi Kamenetsky declined to comment.
Although JONAH’s bizarre methods were exposed over the course of the trial, some Orthodox rabbis stand by it.
Asked about the recent verdict, Rabbi Shmuel Fuerst, a signatory to the Torah Declaration, said he wasn’t aware of it but was content to have his name on the document.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, an Orthodox rabbi in Teaneck who has been outspoken in support of the Torah Declaration, described the verdict against JONAH as imposing "draconian limitations on the pursuit of self-help."
While admitting that JONAH's techniques are sometimes "harsh,” Rabbi Pruzansky defended them as necessary "behavioral tools to sublimate the desires and lead a heterosexual life."
But the details that emerged shocked others.
“Although there are reputable therapists who use and have had successes with conventional counseling methods to help people wishing to control their same-sex attraction,” said Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, “the sort of ‘therapy’ that Mr. Downing says he employed is utterly outrageous and would never be sanctioned by any reputable Orthodox rabbi.”
Read More
INTERNATIONAL
Experts Split On Whether Iran Deal Will Be Signed
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
As world powers meeting in Vienna gave themselves another week to conclude a momentous nuclear deal with Iran, observers here were split on whether they would succeed by next Tuesday’s supposedly final deadline.
“It is likely they will reach a deal in early July — within the next week or so – a comprehensive deal,” said Matthew Kroenig, an associate professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
“If they get a deal and Iran abides by it, Iran will not be able to build nuclear weapons,” he said. “This deal would cap Iran’s [uranium] enriching program and force Iran to redo its plutonium reactor at Arak.”
But Robert Einhorn, a former special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control at the State Department during the Obama administration, said he is “skeptical” a deal would be reached.
He cited last week’s speech by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in which he called for an immediate end to all economic and diplomatic sanctions on his country by the U.S. and the United Nations. He also proclaimed that no Iranian military sites would be subject to international inspections, and he insisted that Iran would never agree to a long-term freeze on nuclear research.
In a draft agreement announced in April, Iran had agreed to those terms.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who is heading the U.S. negotiating team, reportedly told the Iranians that the world powers are holding firm on the draft agreement and would not agree to backing off from it.
The world powers involved in the talks are the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.
The main differences reportedly now being negotiated involve the timing of sanctions relief for Iran in return for curbing its nuclear program – Iran wants immediate relief on signing -- and the nature of the monitoring mechanisms to ensure Tehran does not cheat on any agreement.
In a conference call Monday with the Endowment for Middle East Truth, Kroenig, who is also a senior fellow in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at The Atlantic Council, noted that the Obama administration has said there would be “intrusive inspections” and monitoring of Iran to ensure its compliance with the agreement.
Although it would be a 10-year agreement, Kroenig said “the administration says it can maintain pressure after 10 years” by “snapping back sanctions” on Iran that are due to be lifted or eased with the agreement’s ratification.
“At the end of the day, the U.S. still has a military option 10 years from now,” he observed, referring to a U.S. military strike on Iran’s nuclear construction facilities.
“My contacts in the administration say it would be better if there was no [uranium] enrichment [by Iran as part of the agreement], but this deal is better than war,” Kroenig added.
Nevertheless, he said, “It was a mistake to go back on the zero enrichment demand. … [because] scientists understand that fuel can be produced for peace or war. … The U.S. says [such a deal] is better than the alternatives, but I think there is a better way forward — give Iran a choice. It can have a peaceful nuclear program in which it would ship [spent fuel] rods to another country in return for sanctions relief, or we would increase sanctions and set clear military red lines” on its nuclear program.
Kroenig said he does not believe “snap back sanctions” would work, and noted that Iran is developing an intercontinental ballistic missile “whose only purpose is to deliver a nuclear warhead.”
Kroenig was also critical of the U.S. decision to negotiate Iran’s nuclear program in a vacuum, ignoring its human rights abuses at home and record of supporting and fomenting terrorism worldwide.
Einhorn told The Jewish Week that he can “only speculate” on the motives of the ayatollah for making his speech last week.
“One explanation is that he said it for bargaining leverage in the hope the Iranians will get a somewhat better deal – but that assumes they are prepared to fall back to what they had essentially agreed to.
“Another explanation is that he is being a domestic critic and he will retreat. And a third explanation is that he has decided to redraw the red lines and take an uncompromising position on critical issues. If that is the explanation, I think Iran will be responsible for sabotaging the agreement because I don’t see anyway the U.S. could abide by the supreme leader’s unreasonable red lines.”
Einhorn is one of 18 prominent American security advisers – including five former Obama administration officials – who signed a letter last week detailing what the Iranian nuclear deal must include. Otherwise, they said, it would “fall short of meeting the administration's own standard of a 'good' agreement.’"
Among the other signatories were Dennis Ross, a former Obama adviser on Iran and the Middle East; David Petraeus, former CIA director and U.S. commander in Iraq; retired U.S. General James Cartwright, and David Makovsky, who had been part of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East negotiating team. The letter was Makovsky’s idea.
“My dream was to get a bipartisan panel close to the Obama team on Iran to come forward with a clear yardstick of how to measure it [an agreement],” he told The Jewish Week. “What we tried to do was to take consensus issues and say these are the standards by which to judge the agreement. Then you can compare what is versus what should be and assess it.”
Among the minimal conditions the experts said are needed in the agreement are timely access to any sites in Iran: an investigation of nuclear weaponization activities; strict limits on advanced centrifuge research; and sanctions relief based on Iran’s performance of its obligations, which would be restored if it cheats.
Read More
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite. 505
New York, New York 10036 United States
____________________________
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment