Friday, July 31, 2015
Dear Reader,
The most popular story on our website this week revealed that an activist working to improve secular education in yeshivas is suing the city in order to advance his cause. "From age 13, most boys do not receive any English instruction," the suit says. New York
Bid For Better Secular Ed For Yeshivas Heats Up
Activist Naftuli Moster hires prominent attorney Norman Siegel to press his case for reform.
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
A billboard put up last year by Moster's advocacy organization, Yaffed, near Brooklyn's Prospect Expressway. Courtesy of Yaffed
Yeshiva education reform activist Naftuli Moster, who grew up as one of 17 children in a haredi family in Borough Park, has hired civil rights attorney Norman Siegel to help in his fight for better secular education for chasidic boys.
On Monday, Siegel sent a letter to city and state officials on behalf of Moster’s nonprofit Yaffed (Young Advocates for Fair Education), charging that yeshiva boys get only about 90 minutes a day of secular education while government officials have knowingly looked the other way. Public school students generally receive about five hours of instruction a day.
“In many of these yeshivas, English and mathematics are taught from around age 7 to age 13 for an average combined time of only 90 minutes and on only four days a week,” the letter said. “Apparently, other required subjects are not taught at all, let alone taught in English. From age 13, most boys do not receive any English instruction.”
For most of the boys in question, Yiddish is their native tongue.
Siegel, a former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, is no stranger to the chasidic community. He’s represented chasidic victims of sexual abuse as well as Ehud Halevi, a chadisic man who received a $100,000 settlement from the city in May after a surveillance video filmed two Crown Heights police officers beating him in 2012.
A secular Jew, Siegel grew up in Borough Park, attending school just blocks away from Moster's yeshiva.
“On a personal level it struck home,” Siegel said. “But more important, I am a lawyer. When I am presented with facts that raise a serious issue I try to hold people accountable. That’s what lawyers do, they hold people accountable.”
Moster, 28, and pursuing a masters degree in social work from Hunter College, told The Jewish Week that hiring Siegel reflects a change in strategy for Yaffed, which Moster founded in 2011 to hold New York to its stated commitment to provide nonpublic schools with a curriculum “substantially equivalent to that provided in the public schools.” Moster says it does not.
First he tried to create change from within chasidic communities, but was branded a troublemaker. Then he contacted city and state officials, to little effect.
So Moster hired Siegel to take on the cause, and on Monday the law firm of Siegel, Teitelbaum and Evans sent a letter to a number of city and state officials, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina. It asked them to make sure the city’s yeshivas comply with state educational standards.
Moster became passionate about improving secular education in chasidic yeshivas when he discovered how woefully unprepared for college his own yeshiva education had left him. He completed the yeshiva equivalent of high school not knowing how to do long division or write an essay. He didn’t know there were three branches of the U.S. government, had never heard of the American Revolution or the human circulation system.
“There’s this whole atmosphere [within some chasidic communities] that non-Jewish education doesn’t matter,” he told The Jewish Week in an interview Monday. Most of the kids treated the secular education period as “90 minutes of recess.” And nobody stopped them — unlike during the rest of the day when discipline was strictly enforced.
“We would do anything not to have to learn English and math,” he said.
Rabbi David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, which advocates on behalf of charedi and other Orthodox communities, said the amount of secular education provided by chasidic schools varied greatly but that most yeshivas offer a very good education that gives children “strong reading and textual skills.” Such skills, he said, prepared him well for law school.
Government officials understand that, Rabbi Zwiebel said. “Recognizing in fact that the Orthodox yeshivas have a highly rigorous program, there has been a lot of flexibility that has been shown to these schools in the past,” he said.
“Most of the children who grow up within the school network become responsible, successful adults who are able to function in society, able to earn a living and become successful businessmen,” he said. “I think that Naftali Moster’s experience is the exception to the rule.”
Moster, though, said he gets reports from people familiar with schools across the city and in Rockland County and that the problem is widespread.
“I’m talking across the board. Borough Park, Williamsburg, Monsey, New Square and Kiryas Joel. We’re talking about tens of thousands of boys. This is not a small number,” he said.
Moster is focusing on boys’ education because he said chasidic girls get a much better secular education. “I would be happy to take on the issue of the girls education, but it’s not as pressing. Most girls schools do meet the minimum requirements.”
Moster said if the Siegel letter is unsuccessful in bringing about change, Yaffed will move on to legal action.
In response to the letter, the New York City Department of Education sent a statement saying that Moster met with superintendents from two heavily chasidic districts, 15 and 20.
“However,” the statement read, “he did not lay out concerns about a specific school, and there are over 250 Jewish day schools in New York City. Without a specific issue, it’s neither reasonable nor appropriate for superintendents to visit every nonpublic school in their district. Superintendents cannot just show up at private schools for random inspections without a reason.”
“While the DOE will look into any complaints that arise about specific private schools,” the statement later continued, “in the end, the State Education Department, who authorizes these schools, has the final authority.”
A spokesman for Attorney General Schneiderman declined to comment because the issue might “be the subject of future litigation.” The New York State Department of Education referred the matter to New York City’s Education Department. As of Tuesday evening, Cuomo’s office had not yet responded to a request for comment.
This story was amended on July 27, 2015 to correct the neighborhood in which Norman Siegel grew up.
amyclark@jewishweek.orgAlso widely read: a piece about the Iran deal that throws some doubt on both supporters' and critics' certainties about the pact. The 'truth' about the deal is quite complicated.Opinion
The ‘Truth’ About The Iran Deal
A former U.S. Mideast negotiator throws some doubt on supporters’ and critics’ certainties about the pact.
Aaron David Miller
Special To The Jewish Week
Aaron Miller
One thing that critics and defenders of the Iran nuclear agreement seem to have in common is the certainty, conviction and authority with which they present their views. It’s an historic breakthrough; no, it’s an historic catastrophe; it’s this agreement or war; and my favorite — this deal sucks; negotiations, more sanctions or threat of military force could have produced an infinitely superior one. The latter is simply unknowable. Indeed, it’s at times like these that I’m reminded of Tennyson’s wonderful quip that “there lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”
Here are five supposed verities that, well, may or not be true.
The deal will stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
No it won’t. At best it’s an arms control agreement not a disarmament accord. And over time, some of its most important restrictions on core issues, such as advanced research on centrifuges and enrichment capacity, will end. The fact is Iran is already a nuclear weapons threshold state. And this accord will leave Tehran with an industrial-size nuclear infrastructure and the option to break out or even weaponize should it choose to do so. Will its leaders go that route? The decision that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence say they haven’t yet made is anyone’s guess.
The U.S. got fleeced.
Yes and no. That was Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker’s colorful way of describing how the U.S. fared in the Iran talks. Iran clearly didn’t get everything it wanted, including immediate sanctions relief. And the Iranian nuclear program will be slower, smaller and more easily monitored for at least a decade. And that’s really no small accomplishment given where the Iranian nuclear program appeared to be headed. But make no mistake, Iran got the better part of the deal. In exchange for a nuclear weapon Iran doesn’t even possess, Tehran will reap billions in sanctions relief, new-found legitimacy in the international community and still be able to maintain a large enough nuclear infrastructure to remain a nuclear weapons threshold state. Mick Jagger was wrong. You really can get what you want. The U.S. got what it needed; Iran actually did get what it wanted.
War was the only alternative to a deal.
Not so fast. Even if Congress should override a presidential veto, there’s no inexorable march to war. The United Nations Security Council resolution that the U.S. voted on could still be implemented even if U.S. oil and banking sanctions couldn’t be lifted. And Iran would reap significant political and economic benefits in such a move — blaming the U.S. and splitting the P5 + 1 (China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany). The Germans already have sent a trade delegation to Tehran. Nor is it a forgone conclusion that Iran would try to break out or sneak out to a bomb right now. What’s the point of inviting an Israeli or American attack? Better for Tehran to weigh its options and to see what it could gain by playing the political game.
The agreement will over time produce a kinder and gentler Iran.
How much time do you have? Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, didn’t endorse this accord because he saw it as a way of compromising the Iranian revolution; on the contrary it was done to preserve it and maintain control. The Iranian public wanted economic relief, and unhappy, alienated and restless people are dangerous forces for authoritarian powers. China, the former Soviet Union and Vietnam are examples of states that could open up economically and still maintain tight control. Cuba may prove to be the same way. And that’s most likely the path Iran will follow too. Don’t expect an internal Persian spring in terms of loosening up on freedoms and respect for individual rights anytime soon. And that’s also the case for Iran’s support for its bad actor friends like Assad in Syria, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militias.
There was a realistic and better alternative to this agreement.
We’ll simply never know for sure. Perhaps had a credible use of force been put on the table sooner and the Obama administration really challenged Iran’s regional policies in Syria and Lebanon, the Iranians would have been more pliant. But that would have required a much more risk-ready president when it came to the use of force and coalition partners who were also on board. At best both the Russians and the Chinese never saw the Iranian nuclear program in as dire terms as the U.S. did. And the Germans were eager to resume their trade ties with Iran as well. Israel was reluctant to use force on its own. And the Iranian regime would have continued on its resistance economy — pain notwithstanding — unless it could justify a good deal for itself. In a galaxy far away, a better deal might have been possible, but not here on planet Earth and not under these circumstances.
Aaron David Miller is vice president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator, and author of “The End of Greatness: Why American Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President” (St. Martin’s Press).Jewish Week Editor and Publisher Gary Rosenblatt also criticizes the over-zealous in his column, in which he recommends that opponents of the deal stop venting, accept reality and figure out how to keep working for a tougher deal.Gary Rosenblatt
How Not To Influence Friends In Congress
‘Stop Iran Now’ rally was great theater, but mocking our national leaders is not the way to go.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
“Senator Schumer, I’m looking at you,” conservative talk radio personality Monica Crowley announced defiantly during last Wednesday’s grassroots “Stop Iran Now” rally in Times Square. She was figuratively addressing Chuck Schumer, the key New York politician who could help reverse U.S. approval of the nuclear agreement with Iran.
“We all know you would walk over your grandmother to be Senate Democratic leader,” she said. “Here’s your chance to earn the leadership that you so definitely desire” by voting against the deal.
The crowd of thousands, scattered over several blocks in the midst of rush-hour traffic and, by appearance, largely Orthodox, cheered mightily. I had a fleeting thought that Dale Carnegie, the 20th century behavioral guru and author of “How To Win Friends and Influence People,” would have winced at Crowley’s approach: Persuasion through public humiliation.
She was not alone, though, among the many rally speakers in both demonizing and demanding.
Although the organizers of the rally told me in advance that the speakers had been warned against personal attacks on President Obama and were urged to emphasize a bipartisan message, they didn’t seem to get the message. Whenever the names of President Obama, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton were mentioned, boos rang out for blocks.
Calling these Democratic officials cowards, charlatans and fools may have been emotionally satisfying for the orators — and red meat for the right-wing crowd. But if the practical goal was to convince at least 13 Democratic senators to put principle over politics and resist the president by striking down the Iran deal as immoral, ineffective and a clear danger to the values and security of the United States, mocking our national leaders was not the way to go.
In truth, the approach mirrored that of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier this year when he chose to defy Obama and publicly attack the president’s Iran policy in the halls of Congress. Great theater, but it had the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than drawing enough congressional Democrats — especially Jewish ones — to block the president, it drove them to defend him instead. And in the process they blamed Netanyahu for forcing them to choose between their commitment to Israel and loyalty to their own country and commander in chief.
Although I oppose the Iran deal, as I’ve written often in these pages, I was disappointed — but not surprised — by the highly partisan tone of the rally, which was primarily sponsored by right-of-center and Orthodox groups. This was an event for venting, not for convincing.
Maybe that’s just human nature. It takes time to get past the frustration over this Iran nuclear deal and reach the point of facing reality, deciding how best to live with it. Maybe I’m not there yet either.
The most frustrating aspect of the president’s deal is that its strongest point — that Tehran might only be a few months away from a nuclear bomb if Congress rejects the agreement — is the direct result of America’s infuriatingly weak negotiating tactics.
It didn’t have to be this way. There could have been a diplomatic resolution that reflected the muscle of the United States in confronting the revolutionary regime in Iran, the world’s leading exporter of terrorism. Coercive diplomacy lets your enemy know that you are prepared to take military action if the negotiations don’t meet your goals. In addition, the Iran talks should have focused on, rather than ignored, the fact that the nuclear issue was part of a broader and deeper concern about Iran’s murderous behavior across the Middle East, and beyond — part of a religious and ideological mandate to spread its Islamic hegemony.
The White House decision to narrow the negotiations to the nuclear issue, and no other, while Iran’s supreme leader and Revolutionary Guard remain intent on defeating our way of life, is still galling to me. What if the U.S. had made a deal with Hitler during World War II that added to his war chest and allowed the crematoriums to burn on, in return for, say, staying out of the rest of Western Europe?
Immoral? Pragmatic? Both?
Once President Obama removed the stick but kept the carrot in the Iran negotiations and indicated over and over again that he wanted this deal more than our Iranian enemies, we were left with an agreement that legitimizes and guarantees Iran as a nuclear threshold state. It also unfreezes up to $150 billion to enable Tehran to accelerate its murderous goals, made clear through its chants: “Death to America and Death to Israel.”
Freeing an aging and ill Jonathan Pollard after 30 years in jail doesn’t begin to compensate for putting the Middle East, and ultimately America, in grave danger. And the plan to offer more arms to Israel so it can protect itself from the missiles of Hezbollah and Hamas — the very proxies of Iran whose arsenals the U.S. is helping to boost — seems like a cross between chutzpah and Chelm.
While Bibi Netanyahu is locked into continuing his condemnation of the deal so as not to betray the Republicans he revved up to oppose it, and while our national Jewish leaders contemplate the risks of sponsoring a major protest in Washington in September, fearful that not enough of us will show up, it’s time to step back and re-evaluate the situation.
Yes, the president promised us “no containment,” and now we face containing rather than preventing a nuclear Iran. Yes, the U.S. negotiators backed away from many of their red lines along the way. But we have to get past the emotional frustration of what could have/should have been in negotiating with Iran, and deal with the new reality in two distinct ways.
For the next six weeks that means keeping the spotlight and pressure on our local senators and other key Democratic leaders in Congress. Let them know our future support depends on their actions now, that it’s not too late to insist on a tougher deal, and that we’re watching closely.
But for ethical, political and practical reasons, let’s do it with dignity.
At the same time, though, we need to prepare for the likely outcome that the Iran deal, approved by America’s five world-power partners, is already done. That makes it all the more important for Jerusalem to lick its wounds, repair its relations with the U.S. and work together to respond when — not if — Iran violates the agreement.
Gary@jewishweek.orgShabbat Shalom,
Helen ChernikoffWeb Editor
BOOKS
Siegel, a former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, is no stranger to the chasidic community. He’s represented chasidic victims of sexual abuse as well as Ehud Halevi, a chadisic man who received a $100,000 settlement from the city in May after a surveillance video filmed two Crown Heights police officers beating him in 2012.
A secular Jew, Siegel grew up in Borough Park, attending school just blocks away from Moster's yeshiva.
“On a personal level it struck home,” Siegel said. “But more important, I am a lawyer. When I am presented with facts that raise a serious issue I try to hold people accountable. That’s what lawyers do, they hold people accountable.”
Moster, 28, and pursuing a masters degree in social work from Hunter College, told The Jewish Week that hiring Siegel reflects a change in strategy for Yaffed, which Moster founded in 2011 to hold New York to its stated commitment to provide nonpublic schools with a curriculum “substantially equivalent to that provided in the public schools.” Moster says it does not.
First he tried to create change from within chasidic communities, but was branded a troublemaker. Then he contacted city and state officials, to little effect.
So Moster hired Siegel to take on the cause, and on Monday the law firm of Siegel, Teitelbaum and Evans sent a letter to a number of city and state officials, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina. It asked them to make sure the city’s yeshivas comply with state educational standards.
Moster became passionate about improving secular education in chasidic yeshivas when he discovered how woefully unprepared for college his own yeshiva education had left him. He completed the yeshiva equivalent of high school not knowing how to do long division or write an essay. He didn’t know there were three branches of the U.S. government, had never heard of the American Revolution or the human circulation system.
“There’s this whole atmosphere [within some chasidic communities] that non-Jewish education doesn’t matter,” he told The Jewish Week in an interview Monday. Most of the kids treated the secular education period as “90 minutes of recess.” And nobody stopped them — unlike during the rest of the day when discipline was strictly enforced.
“We would do anything not to have to learn English and math,” he said.
Rabbi David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, which advocates on behalf of charedi and other Orthodox communities, said the amount of secular education provided by chasidic schools varied greatly but that most yeshivas offer a very good education that gives children “strong reading and textual skills.” Such skills, he said, prepared him well for law school.
Government officials understand that, Rabbi Zwiebel said. “Recognizing in fact that the Orthodox yeshivas have a highly rigorous program, there has been a lot of flexibility that has been shown to these schools in the past,” he said.
“Most of the children who grow up within the school network become responsible, successful adults who are able to function in society, able to earn a living and become successful businessmen,” he said. “I think that Naftali Moster’s experience is the exception to the rule.”
Moster, though, said he gets reports from people familiar with schools across the city and in Rockland County and that the problem is widespread.
“I’m talking across the board. Borough Park, Williamsburg, Monsey, New Square and Kiryas Joel. We’re talking about tens of thousands of boys. This is not a small number,” he said.
Moster is focusing on boys’ education because he said chasidic girls get a much better secular education. “I would be happy to take on the issue of the girls education, but it’s not as pressing. Most girls schools do meet the minimum requirements.”
Moster said if the Siegel letter is unsuccessful in bringing about change, Yaffed will move on to legal action.
In response to the letter, the New York City Department of Education sent a statement saying that Moster met with superintendents from two heavily chasidic districts, 15 and 20.
“However,” the statement read, “he did not lay out concerns about a specific school, and there are over 250 Jewish day schools in New York City. Without a specific issue, it’s neither reasonable nor appropriate for superintendents to visit every nonpublic school in their district. Superintendents cannot just show up at private schools for random inspections without a reason.”
“While the DOE will look into any complaints that arise about specific private schools,” the statement later continued, “in the end, the State Education Department, who authorizes these schools, has the final authority.”
A spokesman for Attorney General Schneiderman declined to comment because the issue might “be the subject of future litigation.” The New York State Department of Education referred the matter to New York City’s Education Department. As of Tuesday evening, Cuomo’s office had not yet responded to a request for comment.
This story was amended on July 27, 2015 to correct the neighborhood in which Norman Siegel grew up.
amyclark@jewishweek.orgAlso widely read: a piece about the Iran deal that throws some doubt on both supporters' and critics' certainties about the pact. The 'truth' about the deal is quite complicated.Opinion
The ‘Truth’ About The Iran Deal
A former U.S. Mideast negotiator throws some doubt on supporters’ and critics’ certainties about the pact.
Aaron David Miller
Special To The Jewish Week
Aaron Miller
One thing that critics and defenders of the Iran nuclear agreement seem to have in common is the certainty, conviction and authority with which they present their views. It’s an historic breakthrough; no, it’s an historic catastrophe; it’s this agreement or war; and my favorite — this deal sucks; negotiations, more sanctions or threat of military force could have produced an infinitely superior one. The latter is simply unknowable. Indeed, it’s at times like these that I’m reminded of Tennyson’s wonderful quip that “there lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”
Here are five supposed verities that, well, may or not be true.
The deal will stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
No it won’t. At best it’s an arms control agreement not a disarmament accord. And over time, some of its most important restrictions on core issues, such as advanced research on centrifuges and enrichment capacity, will end. The fact is Iran is already a nuclear weapons threshold state. And this accord will leave Tehran with an industrial-size nuclear infrastructure and the option to break out or even weaponize should it choose to do so. Will its leaders go that route? The decision that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence say they haven’t yet made is anyone’s guess.
The U.S. got fleeced.
Yes and no. That was Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker’s colorful way of describing how the U.S. fared in the Iran talks. Iran clearly didn’t get everything it wanted, including immediate sanctions relief. And the Iranian nuclear program will be slower, smaller and more easily monitored for at least a decade. And that’s really no small accomplishment given where the Iranian nuclear program appeared to be headed. But make no mistake, Iran got the better part of the deal. In exchange for a nuclear weapon Iran doesn’t even possess, Tehran will reap billions in sanctions relief, new-found legitimacy in the international community and still be able to maintain a large enough nuclear infrastructure to remain a nuclear weapons threshold state. Mick Jagger was wrong. You really can get what you want. The U.S. got what it needed; Iran actually did get what it wanted.
War was the only alternative to a deal.
Not so fast. Even if Congress should override a presidential veto, there’s no inexorable march to war. The United Nations Security Council resolution that the U.S. voted on could still be implemented even if U.S. oil and banking sanctions couldn’t be lifted. And Iran would reap significant political and economic benefits in such a move — blaming the U.S. and splitting the P5 + 1 (China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany). The Germans already have sent a trade delegation to Tehran. Nor is it a forgone conclusion that Iran would try to break out or sneak out to a bomb right now. What’s the point of inviting an Israeli or American attack? Better for Tehran to weigh its options and to see what it could gain by playing the political game.
The agreement will over time produce a kinder and gentler Iran.
How much time do you have? Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, didn’t endorse this accord because he saw it as a way of compromising the Iranian revolution; on the contrary it was done to preserve it and maintain control. The Iranian public wanted economic relief, and unhappy, alienated and restless people are dangerous forces for authoritarian powers. China, the former Soviet Union and Vietnam are examples of states that could open up economically and still maintain tight control. Cuba may prove to be the same way. And that’s most likely the path Iran will follow too. Don’t expect an internal Persian spring in terms of loosening up on freedoms and respect for individual rights anytime soon. And that’s also the case for Iran’s support for its bad actor friends like Assad in Syria, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militias.
There was a realistic and better alternative to this agreement.
We’ll simply never know for sure. Perhaps had a credible use of force been put on the table sooner and the Obama administration really challenged Iran’s regional policies in Syria and Lebanon, the Iranians would have been more pliant. But that would have required a much more risk-ready president when it came to the use of force and coalition partners who were also on board. At best both the Russians and the Chinese never saw the Iranian nuclear program in as dire terms as the U.S. did. And the Germans were eager to resume their trade ties with Iran as well. Israel was reluctant to use force on its own. And the Iranian regime would have continued on its resistance economy — pain notwithstanding — unless it could justify a good deal for itself. In a galaxy far away, a better deal might have been possible, but not here on planet Earth and not under these circumstances.
Aaron David Miller is vice president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator, and author of “The End of Greatness: Why American Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President” (St. Martin’s Press).Jewish Week Editor and Publisher Gary Rosenblatt also criticizes the over-zealous in his column, in which he recommends that opponents of the deal stop venting, accept reality and figure out how to keep working for a tougher deal.Gary Rosenblatt
How Not To Influence Friends In Congress
‘Stop Iran Now’ rally was great theater, but mocking our national leaders is not the way to go.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
“Senator Schumer, I’m looking at you,” conservative talk radio personality Monica Crowley announced defiantly during last Wednesday’s grassroots “Stop Iran Now” rally in Times Square. She was figuratively addressing Chuck Schumer, the key New York politician who could help reverse U.S. approval of the nuclear agreement with Iran.
“We all know you would walk over your grandmother to be Senate Democratic leader,” she said. “Here’s your chance to earn the leadership that you so definitely desire” by voting against the deal.
The crowd of thousands, scattered over several blocks in the midst of rush-hour traffic and, by appearance, largely Orthodox, cheered mightily. I had a fleeting thought that Dale Carnegie, the 20th century behavioral guru and author of “How To Win Friends and Influence People,” would have winced at Crowley’s approach: Persuasion through public humiliation.
She was not alone, though, among the many rally speakers in both demonizing and demanding.
Although the organizers of the rally told me in advance that the speakers had been warned against personal attacks on President Obama and were urged to emphasize a bipartisan message, they didn’t seem to get the message. Whenever the names of President Obama, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton were mentioned, boos rang out for blocks.
Calling these Democratic officials cowards, charlatans and fools may have been emotionally satisfying for the orators — and red meat for the right-wing crowd. But if the practical goal was to convince at least 13 Democratic senators to put principle over politics and resist the president by striking down the Iran deal as immoral, ineffective and a clear danger to the values and security of the United States, mocking our national leaders was not the way to go.
In truth, the approach mirrored that of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier this year when he chose to defy Obama and publicly attack the president’s Iran policy in the halls of Congress. Great theater, but it had the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than drawing enough congressional Democrats — especially Jewish ones — to block the president, it drove them to defend him instead. And in the process they blamed Netanyahu for forcing them to choose between their commitment to Israel and loyalty to their own country and commander in chief.
Although I oppose the Iran deal, as I’ve written often in these pages, I was disappointed — but not surprised — by the highly partisan tone of the rally, which was primarily sponsored by right-of-center and Orthodox groups. This was an event for venting, not for convincing.
Maybe that’s just human nature. It takes time to get past the frustration over this Iran nuclear deal and reach the point of facing reality, deciding how best to live with it. Maybe I’m not there yet either.
The most frustrating aspect of the president’s deal is that its strongest point — that Tehran might only be a few months away from a nuclear bomb if Congress rejects the agreement — is the direct result of America’s infuriatingly weak negotiating tactics.
It didn’t have to be this way. There could have been a diplomatic resolution that reflected the muscle of the United States in confronting the revolutionary regime in Iran, the world’s leading exporter of terrorism. Coercive diplomacy lets your enemy know that you are prepared to take military action if the negotiations don’t meet your goals. In addition, the Iran talks should have focused on, rather than ignored, the fact that the nuclear issue was part of a broader and deeper concern about Iran’s murderous behavior across the Middle East, and beyond — part of a religious and ideological mandate to spread its Islamic hegemony.
The White House decision to narrow the negotiations to the nuclear issue, and no other, while Iran’s supreme leader and Revolutionary Guard remain intent on defeating our way of life, is still galling to me. What if the U.S. had made a deal with Hitler during World War II that added to his war chest and allowed the crematoriums to burn on, in return for, say, staying out of the rest of Western Europe?
Immoral? Pragmatic? Both?
Once President Obama removed the stick but kept the carrot in the Iran negotiations and indicated over and over again that he wanted this deal more than our Iranian enemies, we were left with an agreement that legitimizes and guarantees Iran as a nuclear threshold state. It also unfreezes up to $150 billion to enable Tehran to accelerate its murderous goals, made clear through its chants: “Death to America and Death to Israel.”
Freeing an aging and ill Jonathan Pollard after 30 years in jail doesn’t begin to compensate for putting the Middle East, and ultimately America, in grave danger. And the plan to offer more arms to Israel so it can protect itself from the missiles of Hezbollah and Hamas — the very proxies of Iran whose arsenals the U.S. is helping to boost — seems like a cross between chutzpah and Chelm.
While Bibi Netanyahu is locked into continuing his condemnation of the deal so as not to betray the Republicans he revved up to oppose it, and while our national Jewish leaders contemplate the risks of sponsoring a major protest in Washington in September, fearful that not enough of us will show up, it’s time to step back and re-evaluate the situation.
Yes, the president promised us “no containment,” and now we face containing rather than preventing a nuclear Iran. Yes, the U.S. negotiators backed away from many of their red lines along the way. But we have to get past the emotional frustration of what could have/should have been in negotiating with Iran, and deal with the new reality in two distinct ways.
For the next six weeks that means keeping the spotlight and pressure on our local senators and other key Democratic leaders in Congress. Let them know our future support depends on their actions now, that it’s not too late to insist on a tougher deal, and that we’re watching closely.
But for ethical, political and practical reasons, let’s do it with dignity.
At the same time, though, we need to prepare for the likely outcome that the Iran deal, approved by America’s five world-power partners, is already done. That makes it all the more important for Jerusalem to lick its wounds, repair its relations with the U.S. and work together to respond when — not if — Iran violates the agreement.
Gary@jewishweek.orgShabbat Shalom,
Helen ChernikoffWeb Editor
BOOKS
THE ARTS
Alice Hoffman's Impressionist Novels
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
FOOD & WINE
The brine for these pickles will put you in touch with your roots. Lauren Rothman/JW
OMG Green Market: Zucchini Pickles
Lauren Rothman
Jewish Week Online Columnist
Alice Hoffman's Impressionist Novels
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Covering 30 square miles, the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean is a place of lush beauty, fragrant with jasmine, surrounded by blue-green water. This seeming paradise was a refuge for Jews fleeing the Inquisition, crossing the ocean from Spain and Portugal. Alice Hoffman sets her latest novel “The Marriage of Opposites” (Simon and Schuster) on the island, where a synagogue rebuilt in the early 1800s has a sand floor — even as its walls were covered with fine mahogany and a crystal chandelier was hung in its center — to remind congregants of an earlier time, in other places, when they’d have to muffle the sounds of their prayer gatherings for fear of being discovered.
The bestselling novelist and author of more than 30 works of fiction, Hoffman was inspired by the life of the leading Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who was born Jacobo Camille Pizzarro in 1830 on what was then the Danish colony of St. Thomas. She saw an exhibit of his work in the Berkshires and was surprised to learn that he was Jewish. Subsequent research led her to his mother, Rachel Pomie Pizzarro, an extraordinary figure who was born on St. Thomas in 1795 to parents who fled a nearby island. On St. Thomas, the King of Denmark outlawed new slavery and gave Jews the same rights as others, including practicing their religion freely. Hoffman stays as close to the facts of Rachel’s life as possible, creating a story infused by the island’s radiance and folklore, and the comfortable but still anxious situation of the small Jewish community.
Some said that everything on the island tasted of molasses, which along with rum was one of the two main exports). Some of the Europeans who traveled there for business couldn’t abide the heat and intense, bright light, and weeping could be heard in darkened homes of French wives who accompanied their husbands. The Jewish women, who spent their afternoons visiting one another and sipping tea, might have appeared delicate, but they were hardy: most could climb up on their roofs and bolt the windows closed in times of heavy storms.
Rachel was willful, exuberant and rule-breaking, drawn to the mysteries of the island as a young girl, with considerable loyalty and compassion; she was as wise in the ways of business as any man, although she had no standing as a woman. Pomie, her father’s name, recalls the family’s apple orchards in France.
While growing up, Rachel dreamed of seeing Paris, and at night would sneak into her father’s library and read his leather-bound volumes and look at his maps by candlelight. While her father wanted her to be educated, hoping the laws of inheritance would change so that she would be able to run the family business, her mother did not. The two women shared a relationship colder than anything on the sun-drenched island. Rachel’s dreaming was cut short when she agreed to an arranged marriage with a widower twice her age with three children, who would become her father’s business partner. They had four more children, the last born after his sudden death; she took to being a mother in ways that surprised her. But with seven children, she felt even more stuck on the island. When Frederic, a young cousin of her late husband’s is sent from France to manage the business, the two find great love together, even as the community considers their marriage scandalous as they are considered relatives. They live in dignity, yet they and their children are initially treated as outcasts, which later informs the artist’s worldview.
From a young age, Jacobo Camille, a son of Rachel and Frederic, was clever and dreamy, wanting his freedom. Preferring the harbor to school, he studied the waves, sand, birds and light; the landscape was his library. He got out of bar mitzvah lessons by giving his tutor a bottle of rum from the family store and instead would wander in the mountains with his sketchbook. He was Rachel’s favored son, and he shared her determination.
Hoffman’s books are known for their inventive, compelling storytelling. “The Marriage of Opposites” unfolds through multiple voices, and long-held secrets are revealed through confidences shared. This is her third successive novel with a dramatic narrative on a Jewish theme. “The Dove Keepers,” which was made into a two-part television film that aired earlier this year, was set in ancient Israel, and “The Museum of Ordinary Things” took place in a Coney Island neighborhood of immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century. T
“I write to learn more about where I came from, what my stories were,” Hoffman says. She tends to do projects in threes, so this is the last of her Jewish-themed historical novels, at least for now.
Hoffman, who grew up on Long Island, links her interest in Jewish stories to her strong connection to her grandmother Lillie, an immigrant from Russia who ran her own sewing shop in the Bronx (keeping a hammer nearby in case of thieves), and never gave up, volunteering at a nursing home well into her 80s. Her grandmother split her retirement check with Hoffman, enabling her to become a writer. Hoffman wrote her first novel “Property Of” at 21, while in graduate school, and published it shortly after, beginning her distinguished career.
Alice Hoffman will read from “The Marriage of Opposites” at the first event in this year’s Jewish Week Literary Summer on Monday, Aug. 3 at
7 p.m. She will discuss the novel in conversation with Alice Eve Cohen, author of “The Year My Mother Came Back,” at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, 7 W. 83rd St. The event is free, but reservations are recommended, events@jewishweek.org.
Read More FOOD & WINE
The brine for these pickles will put you in touch with your roots. Lauren Rothman/JW
OMG Green Market: Zucchini Pickles
Lauren Rothman
Jewish Week Online Columnist
A glut of zucchini inspires one home cook to keep cool.
BACK OF THE BOOKCulture View
Bikel’s Gift As An Actor
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
George Robinson
Last week YIVO sent out a very special e-mail. It contained a link to Theodore Bikel’s last public performance, at the organization’s 13th Annual Heritage Luncheon on June 18. Bikel was the principle honoree, recipient of YIVO’s lifetime achievement award, and in a video clip (which can be seen on YouTube) he sits very erect in his wheelchair, guitar on his lap, singing “Di zun vet aruntergeyn/The Sun Soon Will Be Setting.” The song is a collaboration between the great Yiddish poet Moishe Leib Halpern and composer Ben Yomen, but the English adaptation is by Bikel himself, who sings at one point, “we’ll fly/Leaving earth far below/To a land where all longing does go.”
The voice is not as booming as it once was, there is just the slightest tremor, but it is unmistakably Bikel’s and, as always, he doesn’t just sing the song, he inhabits it.
That’s what great actors do with a text. And Bikel, make no mistake about it, was a great actor.
Of course Bikel was a central figure in the folk-music movement of the ’50s and early ’60s. Unlike the other movers and shakers in the folkie world, he didn’t limit himself to simplified versions of American forms; he sang in 23 different languages, songs from Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Zulu, English, Scots Gaelic, German and Yiddish. Before there was something called “world music,” he was world music.
Yiddish, however, always had a special, personal place in his heart and his repertoire.
Towards the end of 2013, Bikel told The Jewish Week, “I’d like to be remembered for the fact that I am passionate about the survival of Yiddish as a language, as poetry, as literature, as the haimish, homebound language of my people.”
As delightful as his many recordings are, as pivotal as his advocacy for the mamaloshen was, it is as an actor, I think, that Bikel leaves a particular mark. The parts weren’t always large. His film career is a compendium of supporting roles, the kind of character parts that inevitably become the lot of someone who has an accent, is too stocky to be a romantic figure, and too unconventional-looking, even if he spent hours in the gym getting ripped. On stage and, to an extent, on television, Bikel moved up to character leads like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” And, of course, Captain von Trapp, the role he originated in “The Sound of Music,” might be considered a romantic lead, although the romance is perhaps the most antiseptic in any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
But his lot was that of a character actor, whether he’s the “bad” German officer in “The Enemy Below” or “The African Queen,” the crafty Southern sheriff in “The Defiant Ones” or the sympathetic Russian submarine commander in “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” or any of the countless urban (and often urbane) denizens of New York streets in TV shows like “Naked City” and “Law and Order.”
Like so many character actors of his generation, Bikel got his chance to shine in golden-age TV drama series like “Play of the Week,” where he had the lead in “The Dybbuk”; “Studio One in Hollywood,” which gave him an opportunity to play Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; or most tellingly in a superb Sam Peckinpah version of “Noon Wine” opposite Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland, on the short-lived “ABC Stage 67.”
What unites this oddly assorted gallery of schemers, dreamers and ordinary guys is the core of basic integrity and decency that Bikel brings to almost every role he assumed. It’s the same intent, focused emotional intelligence and nuance that he brought to every song he sang in all those languages. During that 2013 interview, I asked him if he approached playing heavies any differently than heroes, and his answer was telling.
“An actor plays what an actor plays,” he replied. “Sometimes they’re heroes, sometimes they’re villains; you do whatever comes down the pike. You try to do it with as much expertise as you’re capable of, to let your skills as an actor take over.”
It was Theodore Bikel’s particular gift to do just that, to get inside a part, no matter its size, and live there. He brought the same enthusiasm to his life.
“The secret is, don’t hold back,” he told Jewish Week. “Live fully. Don’t treat yourself with kid gloves and don’t treat life that way either. Just live.”
George Robinson writes about music and film for the paper.Read More
BLOGSWell Versed
Dancing To A Different Beat
Eva L. Weiss
Courtesy Noga Dance Company
Noga, Israel’s first modern dance company to give the stage to religious women performers, brings to life the dance between Jewish spirituality and contemporary choreography.
They recently presented two new pieces created by prominent Israeli choreographers at the Gerard Behar Theater in Jerusalem and the program will be repeated at the annual Karmiel Dance Festival later this month.
Noga is an all-women troupe founded in 2009 under the auspices of Orot Teacher’s College, which established Israel’s first academic dance program in 2007 dedicated to cultivating the artistic talents of religiously observant women. Noga dancers adhere to the strictures of religious observance, and eschew many aspects of the discipline often associated with a “secular” career in dance, such as the intense focus on physique and the deferral of motherhood to later years. Noga performs in front of women-only audiences and costumes reflect a deliberate balance between an appreciation of the female form and a culture of physical modesty.
The program, “Racing Heart” (Merotz Halev) offered two original works by Israeli choreographers, with seven dancers from the troupe. In the first piece, “The Women’s Section” (Ezrat Nashim), created by Dafi Altabeb, the dancers interpreted the space of women’s prayer through fluid and abrupt movements. They performed solo, in pairs and as a troupe with steps and rhythms that expressed their strivings to connect with themselves, one another and God.
The second piece, “Geometry of Transcendence" (Hitalut shel Geometria), created by Sharona Florsheim, was inspired by a verse from the biblical book of Isaiah and offered a physical interpretation of the Hebrew letters and words and their meaning.
The two pieces offered musings on religious experiences from a feminine perspective. Sharona Florsheim, artistic director of Noga, notes that the “Racing Heart” program was an exception in that most original Noga works are created by the religious members of the company. Often, they reflect the dancers’ interpretations of universal themes of life and nature (and not solely religious themes).
The choreography is most often inspired by contemporary European expressionism and provides few traces of Jewish folk dance or music. This challenges the audience to cipher passionate, religiously inspired dance in unfamiliar modern and postmodern forms. The Noga Dance Company is clearly charting unfamiliar territory, but they take the creative leap with a valiant energy that strikes a receptive chord with their female audiences.
Performers who combine spiritual inspiration with their art are gaining ground on the Israeli cultural scene. A religious men’s dance troupe (Kol Atzmotai Tomarna, “All my bones will call out”) has created its own public profile and other religious women’s dance troupes are following in Noga’s steps. This summer, at Israel’s annual Karmiel Dance Festival (July 28-30) there will be a locale devoted to dance studios and workshops for women only on July 29, and a repeat performance of “Racing Heart.”
Eva L. Weiss is a writer and editor who lives in Jerusalem; she is the author of a newly released children’s book, “I am Israeli.
We’re nearly at the peak of summer, and for gardeners everywhere that means one thing: armfuls, overflowing buckets, even wheelbarrows full of zucchini and summer squash. Born of highly productive plants, these fruits range in shape and color from the recognizable slender, dark green variety to a host of yellow and pale green patty pan types. They’re a blessing and a curse for farmers, and by extension, home cooks. It’s a wonderful thing to reap such a full harvest, but, on the other hand, everybody else has to figure out how to use up all that zucchini before it goes bad.
For those of that like to do our shopping at the greenmarket, or who receive a weekly CSA share, our refrigerators are more than likely to be play host to quite a few types of squash over the coming weeks. Luckily, they’re an infinitely versatile ingredient: when small, they’re lovely shaved thin and tossed into a delicate salad; simmered with onions and garlic and then pureed with cool yogurt, they make an excellent chilled soup; and they stand up well to the heat of the summer grill. But for cooks who are tired of figuring out new ways to cook zucchini, I’d like to offer a novel suggestion: Don’t cook them. Pickle them.
Jews and pickles go together like pastrami and rye: I’m willing to bet quite a few of you have jars in your refrigerator right now. Most of us tend to buy our pickles, but the good news I’d like to relay is that it’s shockingly easy — plus cost-effective and fun — to make them at home. And while cucumber pickles are definitely the most well known and widely available, you can pickle most any fruit or vegetable, and zucchini pickles make an unusual and refreshing summertime complement to all manner of picnics and outdoor meals. Best of all, they’re ready in just a couple of days.
The recipe I’m sharing here relies on a saltwater, not a vinegar-based, brine. We Jews know saltwater pickles well: that’s how our beloved sours and half-sours are made. Historically speaking, vinegar pickles are a relatively recent invention, while salt pickling dates back to the beginning of recorded history (and likely before). It’s the most age-old method of keeping food fresh, predating, obviously, canning, refrigeration and freezing, and is certainly the method our ancestors used to create their dill pickles.
The use of zucchini, rather than cukes, gives this recipe for dill half- or full-sours — your choice, depending on how long the pickles ferment. Those options are a modern update, as is the use of mild green garlic, also omnipresent in greenmarkets right now. But if you can’t find it, can you can sub in traditional garlic. And the method couldn’t be simpler: cut zucchini, layer into a glass jar with flavorings, pour the brine over and let it sit. In two to four days, you’ll have delicious homemade pickles you’ll want to eat alongside a cold sandwich and some salty chips all summer long. Happily, this recipe is easily doubled or tripled. And don’t worry if your pickle brine turns cloudy, with gray particles floating around in it. This is a natural result of lactic acid fermentation.
Hide Servings & Times
Yield:
1-quart jar
Active Time:
15 min
Total Time:
Over Night
Hide Ingredients
Special Equipment Needed:
1-quart (approx. 30 ounces) glass mason jar with screw-on lid; Pickle weight (see steps)
Water
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
3 medium zucchini or summer squash of uniform size, washed and quartered lengthwise
Small handful fresh dill, rinsed of any grit
2 cloves green garlic, peeled and smashed, or substitute ordinary garlic
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dill seeds
Hide Steps
1. Sterilize your jar: in a pot, boil 1 quart water. Carefully pour the water into the glass jar, dribbling a little over the mouth of the jar to sterilize the whole thing. Let stand 30 seconds; pour out water. Set jar aside on a clean towel.
2. Prepare the brine: Bring 1/2 quart water to a boil with kosher salt. Turn off heat and add remaining 1/2 quart water to cool the mixture down.
3. Carefully insert zucchini spears into clean glass jar. When jar is about halfway full of zucchini, layer in the dill, red pepper and dill seeds. Continue to fill jar with zucchini spears until they fit snugly inside.
4. Pour cooled brine into jar, leaving 1/4 inch of space at the top. Weight the pickles down so they don’t float to the top of the jar: I use a heavy stone the size of the mouth of the jar that I have boiled. Cover lid of jar with a square of cheesecloth or paper towel and secure with a rubber band. Store jar in a cool, dark place such as a cabinet or a pantry.
5. After 2 days, taste pickles for sourness; if ready, wash the jar lid with hot, soapy water and rinse, then seal pickles and place in refrigerator. Pickles can be left to ferment for an additional few days to achieve desired sourness. Once stored in the fridge, eat within 2 months.
Read More BACK OF THE BOOKCulture View
Bikel’s Gift As An Actor
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
George Robinson
Last week YIVO sent out a very special e-mail. It contained a link to Theodore Bikel’s last public performance, at the organization’s 13th Annual Heritage Luncheon on June 18. Bikel was the principle honoree, recipient of YIVO’s lifetime achievement award, and in a video clip (which can be seen on YouTube) he sits very erect in his wheelchair, guitar on his lap, singing “Di zun vet aruntergeyn/The Sun Soon Will Be Setting.” The song is a collaboration between the great Yiddish poet Moishe Leib Halpern and composer Ben Yomen, but the English adaptation is by Bikel himself, who sings at one point, “we’ll fly/Leaving earth far below/To a land where all longing does go.”
The voice is not as booming as it once was, there is just the slightest tremor, but it is unmistakably Bikel’s and, as always, he doesn’t just sing the song, he inhabits it.
That’s what great actors do with a text. And Bikel, make no mistake about it, was a great actor.
Of course Bikel was a central figure in the folk-music movement of the ’50s and early ’60s. Unlike the other movers and shakers in the folkie world, he didn’t limit himself to simplified versions of American forms; he sang in 23 different languages, songs from Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Zulu, English, Scots Gaelic, German and Yiddish. Before there was something called “world music,” he was world music.
Yiddish, however, always had a special, personal place in his heart and his repertoire.
Towards the end of 2013, Bikel told The Jewish Week, “I’d like to be remembered for the fact that I am passionate about the survival of Yiddish as a language, as poetry, as literature, as the haimish, homebound language of my people.”
As delightful as his many recordings are, as pivotal as his advocacy for the mamaloshen was, it is as an actor, I think, that Bikel leaves a particular mark. The parts weren’t always large. His film career is a compendium of supporting roles, the kind of character parts that inevitably become the lot of someone who has an accent, is too stocky to be a romantic figure, and too unconventional-looking, even if he spent hours in the gym getting ripped. On stage and, to an extent, on television, Bikel moved up to character leads like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” And, of course, Captain von Trapp, the role he originated in “The Sound of Music,” might be considered a romantic lead, although the romance is perhaps the most antiseptic in any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
But his lot was that of a character actor, whether he’s the “bad” German officer in “The Enemy Below” or “The African Queen,” the crafty Southern sheriff in “The Defiant Ones” or the sympathetic Russian submarine commander in “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” or any of the countless urban (and often urbane) denizens of New York streets in TV shows like “Naked City” and “Law and Order.”
Like so many character actors of his generation, Bikel got his chance to shine in golden-age TV drama series like “Play of the Week,” where he had the lead in “The Dybbuk”; “Studio One in Hollywood,” which gave him an opportunity to play Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; or most tellingly in a superb Sam Peckinpah version of “Noon Wine” opposite Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland, on the short-lived “ABC Stage 67.”
What unites this oddly assorted gallery of schemers, dreamers and ordinary guys is the core of basic integrity and decency that Bikel brings to almost every role he assumed. It’s the same intent, focused emotional intelligence and nuance that he brought to every song he sang in all those languages. During that 2013 interview, I asked him if he approached playing heavies any differently than heroes, and his answer was telling.
“An actor plays what an actor plays,” he replied. “Sometimes they’re heroes, sometimes they’re villains; you do whatever comes down the pike. You try to do it with as much expertise as you’re capable of, to let your skills as an actor take over.”
It was Theodore Bikel’s particular gift to do just that, to get inside a part, no matter its size, and live there. He brought the same enthusiasm to his life.
“The secret is, don’t hold back,” he told Jewish Week. “Live fully. Don’t treat yourself with kid gloves and don’t treat life that way either. Just live.”
George Robinson writes about music and film for the paper.Read More
BLOGSWell Versed
Dancing To A Different Beat
Eva L. Weiss
Courtesy Noga Dance Company
Noga, Israel’s first modern dance company to give the stage to religious women performers, brings to life the dance between Jewish spirituality and contemporary choreography.
They recently presented two new pieces created by prominent Israeli choreographers at the Gerard Behar Theater in Jerusalem and the program will be repeated at the annual Karmiel Dance Festival later this month.
Noga is an all-women troupe founded in 2009 under the auspices of Orot Teacher’s College, which established Israel’s first academic dance program in 2007 dedicated to cultivating the artistic talents of religiously observant women. Noga dancers adhere to the strictures of religious observance, and eschew many aspects of the discipline often associated with a “secular” career in dance, such as the intense focus on physique and the deferral of motherhood to later years. Noga performs in front of women-only audiences and costumes reflect a deliberate balance between an appreciation of the female form and a culture of physical modesty.
The program, “Racing Heart” (Merotz Halev) offered two original works by Israeli choreographers, with seven dancers from the troupe. In the first piece, “The Women’s Section” (Ezrat Nashim), created by Dafi Altabeb, the dancers interpreted the space of women’s prayer through fluid and abrupt movements. They performed solo, in pairs and as a troupe with steps and rhythms that expressed their strivings to connect with themselves, one another and God.
The second piece, “Geometry of Transcendence" (Hitalut shel Geometria), created by Sharona Florsheim, was inspired by a verse from the biblical book of Isaiah and offered a physical interpretation of the Hebrew letters and words and their meaning.
The two pieces offered musings on religious experiences from a feminine perspective. Sharona Florsheim, artistic director of Noga, notes that the “Racing Heart” program was an exception in that most original Noga works are created by the religious members of the company. Often, they reflect the dancers’ interpretations of universal themes of life and nature (and not solely religious themes).
The choreography is most often inspired by contemporary European expressionism and provides few traces of Jewish folk dance or music. This challenges the audience to cipher passionate, religiously inspired dance in unfamiliar modern and postmodern forms. The Noga Dance Company is clearly charting unfamiliar territory, but they take the creative leap with a valiant energy that strikes a receptive chord with their female audiences.
Performers who combine spiritual inspiration with their art are gaining ground on the Israeli cultural scene. A religious men’s dance troupe (Kol Atzmotai Tomarna, “All my bones will call out”) has created its own public profile and other religious women’s dance troupes are following in Noga’s steps. This summer, at Israel’s annual Karmiel Dance Festival (July 28-30) there will be a locale devoted to dance studios and workshops for women only on July 29, and a repeat performance of “Racing Heart.”
Eva L. Weiss is a writer and editor who lives in Jerusalem; she is the author of a newly released children’s book, “I am Israeli.
Read More 
Win Or Lose, Iran Tops AIPAC’s Agenda
Douglas Bloomfield
AIPAC, which is spending upwards of $20 million to block the Iranian nuclear deal, is not about to take no for an answer.
Whatever the outcome of the vote in September on the agreement, AIPAC isn't going to drop its bread-and-butter issue. Not even throttle back.
Iran has been the group's raison d'être for over two decades, and it doesn't know what else to do; its troops are trained to attack Iran and to write checks, and the lobby can't afford to admit failure lest it lose their support.
Iran has been an enormously lucrative fundraiser for AIPAC; just look at what it is spending on this campaign alone. As long as AIPAC, Bibi Netanyahu and Republicans can keep the focus on Iran they believe – hope – they can avoid dealing with making peace with the Palestinians. That’s what their big givers want.
Look for AIPAC to go into oversight mode with resolutions, letters, amendments, new sanctions, hearings, investigations, talking points, and every other gimmick to keep the issue alive, the troops motivated and the donations coming in.
They and their Republican partners will try to make this a top issue for 2016, painting Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats as anti-Israel for supporting the Iran deal.
This week hundreds of AIPAC activists are flying in to Washington to lobby Members of Congress before they leave town on summer recess. Lawmakers who aren't junketing abroad somewhere on the taxpayers' dime during the August break will also be visited by constituents and contributors.
AIPAC is actually the second largest pro-Israel lobby. Number one is, the evangelical Christians United for Israel. Led by former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer and Pastor John Hagee, it boasts more than 2 million members, about 20 times the size of AIPAC. The Washington Post has called CUFI America’s “largest and most dependable pro-Israel group.”
CUFI speaks for evangelical Christians and AIPAC claims to speak for the Jewish community, but a recent study by the Jewish People Policy Institute poll showed increasing numbers of Jews are moving away from AIPAC’S hardline pro-Likud point of view out of a growing “doubt that Israel truly wishes to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians,” according to the study’s author, Shmuel Rosner.
And a poll by the Los Angeles Jewish Journal showed American Jews support the Iran agreement by a wide margin. But for now the opponents of the agreement have a large advantage in terms of money and organization. One thing is certain, the fight won’t end after the Congress votes in September, it will only move to the next phase.
Win Or Lose, Iran Tops AIPAC’s Agenda
Douglas Bloomfield
AIPAC, which is spending upwards of $20 million to block the Iranian nuclear deal, is not about to take no for an answer.
Whatever the outcome of the vote in September on the agreement, AIPAC isn't going to drop its bread-and-butter issue. Not even throttle back.
Iran has been the group's raison d'être for over two decades, and it doesn't know what else to do; its troops are trained to attack Iran and to write checks, and the lobby can't afford to admit failure lest it lose their support.
Iran has been an enormously lucrative fundraiser for AIPAC; just look at what it is spending on this campaign alone. As long as AIPAC, Bibi Netanyahu and Republicans can keep the focus on Iran they believe – hope – they can avoid dealing with making peace with the Palestinians. That’s what their big givers want.
Look for AIPAC to go into oversight mode with resolutions, letters, amendments, new sanctions, hearings, investigations, talking points, and every other gimmick to keep the issue alive, the troops motivated and the donations coming in.
They and their Republican partners will try to make this a top issue for 2016, painting Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats as anti-Israel for supporting the Iran deal.
This week hundreds of AIPAC activists are flying in to Washington to lobby Members of Congress before they leave town on summer recess. Lawmakers who aren't junketing abroad somewhere on the taxpayers' dime during the August break will also be visited by constituents and contributors.
AIPAC is actually the second largest pro-Israel lobby. Number one is, the evangelical Christians United for Israel. Led by former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer and Pastor John Hagee, it boasts more than 2 million members, about 20 times the size of AIPAC. The Washington Post has called CUFI America’s “largest and most dependable pro-Israel group.”
CUFI speaks for evangelical Christians and AIPAC claims to speak for the Jewish community, but a recent study by the Jewish People Policy Institute poll showed increasing numbers of Jews are moving away from AIPAC’S hardline pro-Likud point of view out of a growing “doubt that Israel truly wishes to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians,” according to the study’s author, Shmuel Rosner.
And a poll by the Los Angeles Jewish Journal showed American Jews support the Iran agreement by a wide margin. But for now the opponents of the agreement have a large advantage in terms of money and organization. One thing is certain, the fight won’t end after the Congress votes in September, it will only move to the next phase.
Read More
____________________________
The Jewish Week
____________________________
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, New York 10036 United States
____________________________
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment