Friday, July 10, 2015
Dear Reader,
Every summer has a quiet movie that's a surprise blockbuster; here at The Jewish Week, we've got an article about the humble Catskills bungalow that's attracting thousands of readers: Jonathan Mark's piece about an anti-bungalow backlash and zoning codes. Read it so you know what to talk about around the water cooler on Monday. NEW YORK
A Serpent In Catskills’ ‘Garden?’
As an anti-bungalow backlash flares, critics and zoning codes say ‘enough is enough.’
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
A colony in the rain: A summer tradition is threatened by zoning and resentment. Courtesy of Vos Iz Neias
Woodbourne, N.Y. — Summer comes to the Catskills like Creation itself, each day a revelation: The Neversink River flows to waterfalls. A moon rises over ice caves. There are salamanders in the grass, bears in the forest, a bald eagle in the sky. In the Sullivan County hamlet of Callicoon, just prior to the solstice, farmers parade 260 tractors. One trucker for Balford Farms, driving along the Delaware River on a June morning, spied a wounded bald eagle in a ditch, saving its life.
“Just to live in the country is a full-time job,” wrote E.B. White. “You don’t have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself.” In that spirit, Jews return each summer to “the country,” where there’s nothing much to do but “living itself.”
And yet, there’s a serpent in the “Garden,” some say. Last October, the Town of Fallsburg passed zoning laws aimed at stifling the bungalows: a colony can now only build on less than 15 percent of its lot; new replacement cabins can’t be larger than the old; there now must be 31 feet of grass between cabins, and 250 feet between the cabins and the road (an increase of 75 feet). Similar codes to Fallsburg’s have been enacted recently across the county, in Liberty, Thompson, Mamakating and Bethel — site of the Woodstock festival, “the garden,” Joni Mitchell called it, made possible by the hospitality of Max Yasgur, a local Jewish dairy farmer.
The Fallsburg zoning legislation is less charming: “It is the intent of the Town of Fallsburg to not promote the expansion of bungalow colonies.”
One Jew, a year-round resident of Fallsburg who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, told The Jewish Week, “There’s a distinct attitude — the town wishes someone else would come.” Someone who isn’t Orthodox. “That’s actually been voiced to me” by people on the town’s planning board. “Without any embarrassment, they say that. I stopped going to the planning board because I’m kind of disgusted.”
Murray Goldwag, who winters in Jerusalem, returns to South Fallsburg every summer, where he is the proprietor of the famous Kosher Sox. “I’ve been schlepping to the mountains for 39 years,” he tells us. “Nothing’s changed. The goyim don’t want the Jewish interference.”
There are 77,547 residents in Sullivan County (roughly 10 percent are Jewish), but in summer the population nearly quadruples — mostly Jews returning to second homes, to the predominantly Orthodox bungalow colonies, and to nearly 100 Orthodoxsummer camps. The summer population “can reach 300,000 at its peak,” according to the county’s Economic Development Corporation.
One summer directory, an Orthodox yellow pages of sorts, is now almost 500 pages long. Some Catskill hamlets have 15 Orthodox minyans each weekday morning, a new minyan every 20 minutes, and again at night; and at least 11 mikvahs, as well.
On Saturday nights in the hamlet of Woodbourne, every head is covered, other than the fellow pumping gas, or the Orthodox girls, their arms akimbo, their denim skirts grazing pale ankles, watching Woodbourne’s post-Havdalah midnight promenade, the sidewalks illuminated by the glow from kosher food shops.
But Woodbourne empties in winter. In October, Monticello attorney Steve Kurlander, writing in The Huffington Post, threw down the challenge: “Say goodbye to bungalows,” forever. Yes, they contribute to the economy but when the summer folks go home? “Drive down … Woodbourne’s main street,” Kurlander writes, and witness the post-summer residue of “that seasonal bungalow mentality. A decrepit-looking business district that once serviced local residents and tourists alike remains empty of year-round stores, a basic ghost town 10 months a year.”
It would be better to “attract new middle-class families with good, affordable year-round housing,” people who would “commute to New York City instead of just visiting for the summer.” And, say the critics, the wooden bungalows are fire hazards, and hardly aesthetic. “There are enough bungalows in the Catskills as it is,” writes the attorney. “Enough is enough.”
Such antagonism has been noted in recent years by Barry Lewis, editor of the Times Herald-Record, who writes, “summer in Sullivan County must be near. Our mountain air is starting to fill with the sounds of intolerance. You’d have to be practically deaf not to hear the hate. … [The] venom is often aimed at the tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews.”
A few miles away, in Bloomingburg, there’s another zoning fight, not about bungalows but the permanent housing the county supposedly wants. In Bloomingburg, a Jewish developer wants to build 125 homes (some expect that to double) for the Orthodox. Newsweek, sensing that this went beyond the usual zoning dispute, sent a national reporter to the scene.
A non-Jewish resident of the area told Newsweek: “You know what this is all about? All these chasids have their own private places around here. They’ve got their own camps and s---t…. and they pull off their drug deals. And the state police can’t go on the properties because they’re ‘religious.’ That’s where all the f------ deals take place. You know what I’m saying?”
One Fallsburg real estate agent, in defense of Jewish bungalows and housing, told The Jewish Week: In an economically depressed county, “The Orthodox community, that’s who’s buying. They pay taxes, even though they don’t use the schools, or any facilities other than water and sewer. They pay a lot of money into the town, so why give them a hard time?”
Some locals say they only shop on Saturdays, when the Orthodox don’t. On Sundays, the roads are jammed, to everyone’s annoyance, but every driver carries a wallet, to the economy’s delight. Tax revenues swell by more than a million dollars in summer; 18 percent of the workforce is employed in what’s called the “tourism” sector. “People would be surprised by how much Orthodox groups contribute,” the Sullivan County treasurer told the Times Herald-Record. “Yes,” says Goldwag of Kosher Sox, but what Orthodox Jews add to the economy, he tells us, is appreciated “only by the people with a businesses. Many locals couldn’t care less.”
Goldwag has one of the larger emporiums, selling everything from blechs to bathing suits to, well, socks. But “the locals are afraid to come into my store,” says Goldwag. Kosher Sox? “They don’t know what it means.” Goldwag explains, when he first bought the store, decades ago, a new sign cost $900, so he bought a used sign from a kosher store. Goldwag liked “kosher,” and kept it, but “socks” didn’t fit. Goldwag replaced the “c-k-s” with an “x.” And there you have it, he says laughing: “Kosher Sox.”
When talk turns to the local problems, the laughter stops. “Nothing new,” says Goldwag. “Nah, it’s just the standard ‘We hate the Jews who come up here.’ Why? Well, in one shot, you move Williamsburg and Borough Park into the Catskills. They’ll triple-park anywhere, speed through crosswalks, pick up hitchhikers in the middle of the road, make U-turns on Route 42 — chutzpadik and dangerous. People don’t act responsibly. Clearly, many do but others are not respectful of the locals. You can’t say all the people hate the Jews, that’s not true, but there’s a lot of frustration, so you hear [when the season begins], ‘Oh, they’re coming back again.’”
This summer as in recent summers, a notice circulated among the Orthodox: “It is a warm feeling watching the mountains fill up with dear fellow Jews … . Please be aware that there are thousands of people who live here all year-round that are not accustomed to the heimishe [homey] city way of life. They are used to a quiet, country atmosphere, and are not overly excited about the changes that the summer brings. They are not aware of the sweetness of the Torah way, and when they look at us, they have no way of seeing the inner beauty of a Torah Jew… We are quick to be branded as unwelcome intruders… Whether driving, shopping, out at the park … let’s not leave room to be accused of anything improper … . Nobody wants — chas v’sholom [may it never happen] — to make a chillul Hashem [a desecration of God’s name], but without a little precaution it is often automatic … . Sincerely, your fellow Ohave Torah [lover of Torah].”
jonathan@jewishweek.org
After an Israeli minister's disparaging comments this week about Reform Jews, readers will be especially interested in our opinion piece about the Rabbinate's possible decision to not renew the appointment of the American-born Rabbi Riskin as the chief rabbi of Efrat. The "Riskin Row" is a crossroads for Modern Orthodoxy, the writers say.OPINION
The Riskin Row: Crossroads For Modern Orthodoxy?
Dov S. Zakheim and Steven Bayme
Special To The Jewish Week
Dov S. Zakheim, left; Steven Bayme
Consider the following public statements:
“The International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF), an Orthodox rabbinic organization with over 180 members, is appalled … by media reports that the Chief Rabbinate of Israel is threatening to not renew Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s appointment as Chief Rabbi of Efrat. At a time when American Jewish communities of all denominations are growing increasingly pessimistic about the rigidity and narrowness of the rabbinate and its policies, Rabbi Riskin remains one of the few reasons to be hopeful that a more inclusive and humane approach to halacha is still possible in the State.”
And this:
“While the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) does not agree with every action of the Chief Rabbinate, we support the Chief Rabbinate as the official religious body of Israel. We are certain that, together with Rabbi Riskin, that we will find a way to support his continued work as Chief Rabbi of Efrat.”
Both statements emanate from American Modern Orthodox rabbinical organizations. Both profess to admire Rabbi Riskin greatly, no doubt for his more than five decades of spiritual leadership here and in Israel as a voice for human compassion within Jewish law. But only the first condemns unequivocally the prospect of his forced retirement. The other, in contrast, is mealy-mouthed, expressing the flaccid and pious hope that the matter may be resolved, but at the same time staunchly defending the Chief Rabbinate as the halachic authority for the State of Israel.
The casual observer may easily become confused. In Israel, Modern Orthodox groups such as Tzohar and Ne’emanei Torah Ve’Avodah have leapt to the defense of Rabbi Riskin and embraced his cause as their own. The charedi-dominated Chief Rabbinate opposes him, particularly because of his more flexible stance on conversion and the role of women. Unsurprisingly the IRF sides with Riskin. But why does the RCA, which theoretically embraces Riskin’s vision of an inclusive Orthodoxy, offer such a tepid, pareve response?
One clue may be found by listening to those RCA voices that have spoken out. Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, for example, a prominent member of the RCA Executive, cautions that Riskin’s approach to conversion will wreak havoc by undermining the uniform standard the Chief Rabbinate maintains for personal Jewish status questions in Israel. Moreover, Rabbi Pruzansky fears that Rabbi Riskin’s initiative for educating women as halachic decisors will dilute Jewish tradition and undermine Orthodoxy’s achievements in advancing complete adherence to halacha. Similarly, Rabbi Gil Student, editor of the widely read blog Torah Musings, writes that Rabbi Riskin acts without consulting the leading halachic authorities of the day and has “created surprisingly unorthodox institutions entirely on his own initiative.” Neither Rabbi Pruzansky nor Rabbi Student calls for Rabbi Riskin’s ouster. Like the RCA, both defer to the Chief Rabbinate for a final ruling. By contrast, the IRF, recognizing Rabbi Riskin as courageous leader of Modern Orthodoxy, is “appalled” that the Chief Rabbinate would seek to fire him.
Beyond the facts of the case, this divergence between two rabbinic organizations illustrates the split within Modern Orthodoxy that has been brewing for a generation and has become increasingly acute over the past decade. The RCA, long considered the leading organization of Modern Orthodox clergy, has increasingly lost its self-confidence and forfeited its independence on a wide range of communal issues, including conversion and women’s equality.
And the RCA appears increasingly out of touch with its own constituents. Rabbi Riskin remains an iconic figure among Modern Orthodox Jews. He is justly hailed for his educational and outreach work, which has enhanced the lives of tens of thousands for over five decades in Israel and America. His leadership on issues of personal status responds to the reality that Russian immigrants of questionable halachic status pose a great challenge for Jewish continuity, as does mixed marriage in the diaspora, and that creative solutions in the area of conversion are necessary. Unfortunately, the restrictive conversion guidelines of the Chief Rabbinate and the RCA are of little help. To the obvious dismay of Rabbi Student, Rabbi Riskin has not kowtowed to the intellectual ascendency of the charedi right, but has rather created his own widely admired institutions of higher learning staffed by faculty who share his vision of an inclusive and humane Orthodoxy.
In fact, the split within Modern Orthodoxy transcends Rabbi Riskin. Over the past generation new institutions — Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat, JOFA and the IRF — have emerged as counterweights to the rightward and isolationist drift within Orthodoxy. Their numbers are small but growing, and their intellectual heft is great. Most important, they uphold a vision of Orthodoxy willing to engage the modern world and work alongside non-Orthodox allies for the collective benefit of the Jewish people.
The current controversy is but one skirmish in a prolonged battle for the soul of Modern Orthodoxy. Given the increasing importance of Orthodoxy in Jewish communal life, in terms of its numbers and vitality, much depends on the battle’s outcome. Let us hope that Rabbi Riskin’s supporters succeed and that his detractors will come to recognize that they are maligning an individual who brings great credit not only to Modern Orthodoxy but to all of Judaism.
Dov S. Zakheim and Steven Bayme serve respectively as chair and director of the Contemporary Jewish Life Commission at the American Jewish Committee.
Also widely read on our site this week: a small business owner who sells kosher packaged goods chose an image of heckshered rainbow cookies to celebrate the SCOTUS decision legalizing gay marriage. Hate e-mail ensues.
NATIONAL
Kosher Company Celebrates Marriage Equality, Causing Kerfuffle
Challah Connection owner Jane Moritz stands by decision to link cookies and SCOTUS decision despite backlash.
Talia Lakritz
Editorial Intern
Some found associating kosher rainbow cookies with same-sex marriage offensive. Courtesy of Jane Moritz
When Challah Connection featured rainbow cookies on the front page of their website to celebrate same-sex marriage becoming legal nationwide, a few consumers lost their appetite, but owner Jane Moritz won’t apologize for supporting equality.
Challah Connection offers gift baskets of kosher goodies for a variety of occasions, including Jewish holidays, birthdays, and shiva calls. Shortly after learning of the Obergefell v. Hodges verdict, Moritz and her team advertised rainbow cookies on the website’s front page with the message “Never had these treasured cookies had such meaning,” a message some kosher-keeping customers didn’t appreciate.
“Within moments I got one, and then within an hour I got 2 more what I call ‘hate emails,'” Moritz tells The Jewish Week. “Literally, hate emails. People saying what was wrong with me, how could I be a Jew, how could I be supporting gay marriage, saying that they were never going to order from my company again and they were going to make sure that no one else ordered from my company again.”
The incident foils that of an Oregon bakery refusing to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple in 2013, resulting in a lawsuit that found Sweet Cakes by Melissa liable for $135,000 worth of damages. Then again, Moritz encountered similar expressions of discontent nearly 10 years ago, when she advertised orange and black cookies in October.
“There were some people very offended that I was talking about Halloween,” she says.
After some “soul searching” about how she should react, Moritz responded politely, but firmly. On a Yeshiva World News message board thread entitled “Challah Connection Supports Toeiva Marriage,” a user identified only as “feivel” reposted Moritz’s reply to his complaint, which Moritz confirms.
“If that's the case, so be it,” she wrote. “We stand firm in the Jewish values that implore upon us to show compassion and kindness to all beings.”
Moritz ultimately kept the rainbow cookies on the Challah Connection’s home pagealong with “Buy Now” inside a rainbow heart, but removed the accompanying message as a compromise.
“I’m not sorry that I did this,” she says. “I’m proud, to be honest. We’re a celebration of Judaism, a [touchstone] for Jews and non-Jews to find out more about Judaism and connect with their own Judaism. I hear a lot of stories about people’s Judaism, and I do not make judgments about what they do, what they don’t do. It’s not my place and I don’t think it’s any of our places.”
Moritz’s own story is as colorful as the cookies she sells. Half Ashkenazi and half Sephardic, she was raised in a Conservative household, had a bat mitzvah in an Orthodox synagogue, and continues to observe Jewish holidays “in my own soulful, creative ways” while running a Jewish business and raising her 3 sons to be mindful of their Jewish identities.
Despite the vitriol of the initial messages she received, Moritz says conversations on social media have been more supportive, with Facebook comments such as “Cookies should be available to all people, not just some,” and “This world needs more tolerance, not less. Kudos Challah Connection.”
And despite the kerfuffle, “We did get a lot of orders for rainbow cookies.”
editor@jewishweek.org
Shabbat Shalom,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
THE ARTS
Wander in his studio: "Writing, burning, writing it again." Courtesy of David Wander
Drawing The Tradition
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture EditorDavid Wander makes books that might be 50 feet long, illustrating biblical and other stories with great artistic skill, creativity and appreciation of the text and its layers of meaning. One page leads to the next, and the handmade books fold up like accordians.
“Visualizing the Bible: Works by David Wander” at the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica at Temple Emanu-El is a gem of an exhibition, not to be missed this summer. It is made up of eight books that seem inspired by Renaissance artists who illuminated manuscripts with spectacular imagery, as well as by contemporary creators of stylized graphic novels, who also tell a story in a frame.
“There’s a concept that everyone should write their own Torah. If they can, well, great, but everyone has to deal with what Judaism means to them and how to make it theirs,” the New York artist says in an interview.
In black-and-white and somber tones, his “Eicha,” Lamentations — read later this month on Tisha b’Av — powerfully captures the mood of the day, with images of skulls in the streets of Jerusalem, chains suggesting captivity, people walking in the dark in a maze and jackals.
His treatment of the text mirrors the book’s themes of destruction. Wander wrote the letters with white ink on black, then ripped and burned some of the text, then rewrote those letters and affixed the repaired, burnt fragments of text to the pages.
“Writing, burning, writing it again,” Wander says. “It’s why we’re here — to keep telling.”
Each of the narratives — which might take a year to create — is in a distinctive style, whether resembling an African story quilt, like “Megillat Esther” or a dreamscape, like “The Jonah Drawings.”
Warren Klein, curator of the museum, says that this is the institution’s first exhibition featuring a living artist and also its first show featuring biblical and religious texts. One of the challenges of the exhibit was displaying the books in full, so the presenters came up with a system of showing most, but not all, of the pages.
Born in New York City, Wander is the son of a printer and photo engraver who became a painter. David studied at Pratt, the School of Visual Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design, and later worked as a fine art printmaker here and in Europe (including work for the Picasso family). A cousin commissioned him to create an illustrated Haggadah linking together themes of the seder and the Shoah, in memory of relatives who perished. Working in Jerusalem, he completed The Wolloch Haggadah in 1985 — a 300-copy edition that was shown at Yad Vashem, with copies now in the permanent collection at JTS, Harvard and other institutions.
On exhibit here is a page showing the four sons of the text. Wander’s version features four books: One open with black letters, one on fire, one with blank pages and one closed.
Through the Haggadah project, he met David Kraemer of JTS, and they began a biweekly chevruta, or study session, in which they look at texts along with midrash, or commentary. The two men have been learning together for eight years. The ideas generated in their sessions animate these works, which Kraemer, the Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian and professor of Talmud, describes as “a kind of midrash on the midrash.”
“David does something that not’s radically new,” Kraemer says, “but the continuation of a tradition. This is a very old tradition that most people who work with traditional texts don’t know much about. People often make comments about how new it is for Jews to be producing images, and it’s just not true — Jews have been doing so all along. It hasn’t been studied, except by specialists — it’s not that it hasn’t been done.”
Wander’s “Book of Judith,” with a style inspired by ancient Greek terra cotta pottery, includes no text, but a dramatic rendering of the biblical story in bold illustration done in acrylic and colored rice papers. At the end, Judith, with her expressive eyes and long gray hair, appears as a wise figure.
“The Golem of Prague,” which also has no text, is a retelling of the 16th-century tale in a richly colored panorama. Wander traveled to Prague to sketch the city’s monuments, which appear floating in the background, along with kabbalistic symbols and flying angels carrying stones. According to legend, the stones from Prague’s Altneu Shul, built from the remnants of the Second Temple, will be returned by angels to Jerusalem with the coming of the Messiah.
Set in contemporary times, “Ruth” highlights social issues that are still current. The text is English, in a comics font. But the story of honor, love, loyalty and the possibility of redemption — with stirrings of the Messiah — moves from right to left. The title character wears a little black dress, black pumps and pearls as she goes to meet Boaz.
Wander, who teaches art at SAR High School in Riverdale, also paints landscapes and streetscapes, and has shown that work widely. His books invite repeated viewing and a return to the text itself to see it anew.
“Visualizing the Bible: Works by David Wander” is on display at the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica, Congregation Emanu-El, One E. 65th St., Manhattan, through Oct. 18.
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FOOD & WINE
Some found associating kosher rainbow cookies with same-sex marriage offensive. Courtesy of Jane Moritz
Over The Rainbow
Talia Lakritz
Editorial Intern
Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Help Wanted: Sukkah Sleeper
10 Jewish jobs as classified ads
Maya Klausner
EditorProud members of the LGBTQ community were not the only ones dressed up in elaborate costumes at the New York gay pride parade. Paid protestors, some of who were Mexican laborers, dressed in Orthodox Jewish garb, as they rallied against same-sex marriage on behalf of a Jewish group. In light of the recent, unusual event here are some ads for other Jewish tasks that could be delegated to willing workers outside of the faith.
1. Sukkah Sleeping (Great Neck)
Currently seeking a man to sleep inside of a sukkah for the holiday of Sukkot.
The position involves living inside of a hut made of leaves and twigs for the duration eight days.
Principle responsibilities include sleeping, eating, learning from biblical texts and reflecting on one’s soul.
Heavy sleeper a plus.
Thick skull a plus (decorative fruits may drop on sleeper’s head in the middle of the night.)
Other duties include becoming familiar with the outdoors and feeling closer to God.
$50 for the night
2. Chametz Removal/Passover Cleaning Needed (Upper West Side)
Role: Eliminator of unholy breadcrumbs
Duties include:
Identifying, locating and removing all leavened substances from cabinets, refrigerator, shelves and wherever else one might find foods such as cereal, crackers, pasta and cookies.
(In some instances this requires going into the bedroom and checking the nightstand for leftover snacks and/or searching in cracks of couch cushions.) Bonus compensation can be discussed.
Other requirements:
Must be available in the evening (specifically at sundown.)
Willing to toss contraband carbohydrates into a body of water while repenting.
Comfortable around open flames a plus.
Please include if you are already in possession of a yarmulke from past jobs or if you will require one.
$15/hour
This is a part-time position.
3. Lulav Shaker/Etrog Smeller (Washington Heights)
In need of a lulav/etrog coordinator.
Qualifications:
Confident sense of direction is a must, (specifically, eastward, southward, westward and northward.) As well as up and down.
Some light shaking and heavy smelling will be involved.
Ability to work remotely.
Lulav, etrog, myrtle branch and willow branch will be provided.
This is a part-time position.
$18/hour
4. Mikvah Goer (Flatbush)
Seeking female to complete ritual bathing immersion.
Position available only one week a month, but work is regular.
Must feel comfortable on hidden camera (privacy not guaranteed.)
Requirements:
Candidate must use a structure that has been built into the ground.
Candidates who attempt to use Jacuzzis, bathtubs, kiddie pools or large puddles will not be compensated.
$36 per dip
5. NOW HIRING! Wedding Ringer/Wedding Guest Stand-In (Midwood)
Responsibilities:
Attending a high volume of weddings in a three-week period.
Duties include arriving in time for the ceremony and nodding vigorously and/or chanting when appropriate.
Job Qualifications:
Strong-build required.
Must be confident with flinging frail, elderly people in the air while waving them over your head in a collapsible folding chair.
A degree in conga dancing or equivalent is preferred.
Must be a team player and work well under stress.
Must follow company standard dress code.
Compensation based on performance. Part-time for high-volume season with the potential for full time hire.
6. Freelance Faster (Oceanside)
Seeking individual who does not eat food.
Requirements:
Candidate must ignore impulse to eat or drink for periods of 24 hours.
Other duties include not brushing teeth or accidentally swallowing a bug.
Background in cleanses a plus.
Fainting is OK.
$20/hour
7. Minyan Director (Roslyn Heights)
Role: Group Project Manager
Primary Responsibilities:
Recruiting no fewer than 10 Jewish males for daily spiritual meeting.
Must work well under pressure and meet daily deadline (sunset.)
Qualifications:
Strong networking skills.
Experience with social media.
Must work well with others but also know how to delegate.
This is a full-time position with possibility of benefits (free tefillin and parking space outside of Costco.)
8. Staying up all night on Shavuot
Seeking a non-sleeper to learn Torah.
Duties include not falling asleep while continuously reading from the Old Testament and other Talmudic texts,
Coffee and kosher red bull are provided.
Candidates who suffer from chronic insomnia will get preference.
This is a part-time position.
$15/hour
9. NOW HIRING! Spiritual Leaders In Isolated, Faraway Territories (Arkhangelsk, Russia)
Qualifications:
Ability to lead congregants into joyous learning who may suffer from acute depression due to where they live.
Requirements:
Must be willing to relocate to the Arctic Circle.
$30/hour plus airfare and relocation costs
10. Spiritual Solicitor (Variety of Street Corners)
Must work well with frequent rejection.
Duties include ambushing passersby and imploring them to:
Light ceremonial candles.
Wrap leather ropes around their forearms and heads.
Shake long, green plants in various directions.
Call their mothers.
Some light training required.
Ability to bounce back from nasty looks, stony silence and streams of obscenities highly valued.
$10/hour
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BLOGS
THE NEW NORMAL
New Online Inclusion Guide Helps Camp Prepare For All Campers
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
Families at a Tikvah Shabbaton at Ramah New England. Courtesy of Camp Ramah
Editor's Note: It's summer camp season! We will be sharing voices from a wide range of Jewish camps throughout the summer.
As more Jewish camps across the country expand their programs to welcome campers of all abilities, a new online resource has been created in a partnership between the Foundation For Jewish Camp and the Ramah Camping Movement. The “Inclusion Training Guide for Jewish Summer Camps” is a comprehensive guide that camps are able to download and use for staff training.
It contains overviews of different types of disabilities, philosophies of inclusion and practical strategies for working with campers of all abilities. It also includes sample programs of how to teach inclusion to a whole camp — making every camper aware that disabilities can be both visible and invisible and helping to make camp culture more sensitive to differences among campers.
Howard Blas, Director of the Tikvah program at Ramah New England and also Director of Ramah’s Tikvah Network, was instrumental in writing and putting together the guide based on his years of experience at Tikvah and in training camps around the country. "The guide doesn’t sugar coat the hard work that goes into making inclusion work," he says. "It focuses on practical strategies and advice that can be applied not only to camps, but also to youth groups, Hebrew school and other settings that are working to become more inclusive.”
Lisa Tobin of the Foundation for Jewish Camp stresses that this training guide is something that she has known has been missing. “There are camps across the country that have a desire for trainings on inclusion but haven’t had a place to turn to. We knew that Ramah has been doing this work for years so they were a natural place to turn to share what they are doing with other camps.”
Tobin notes that for many camps that have not yet had inclusion programs in place, even knowing where to start is a challenge. “Camp directors wonder how to effectively talk to their board members, parents and staff about the importance of inclusion…in the guide we have tools that they can use to help move their desire for inclusion forward.”
The online guide is accessible to anyone and everyone—and includes resources such as text studies and a bibliography that can be used in a variety of settings. For more information on working on inclusion of people with disabilities at your camp, contact Lisa Tobin at lisa@jewishcamp.org.
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Jews, Israel Face Widening Rift
Douglas Bloomfield
Conservative and Reform Jews have far more freedom to practices their religion in the United States than in the Jewish state. Especially if they're women.
Let a woman try to wear a tallit or tfillin and pray from a Torah at the Wall in Jerusalem and she could wind up in jail. To Azoulay that's not prayer but "provocation," and he has vowed to roll back whatever meager progress has been made in recent years.
Michael Oren, who has just published a hyper partisan memoir about his years as ambassador to the United States, said one of the reasons the relationship is unraveling is that American Jews don't understand Israelis. As for the clashes with Women of the Wall, he said, what Israeli officials see as a matter of law and order and status quo agreements, Americans see as issues of freedom of religion, women's rights and free speech.
For a guy who grew up as a conservative Jew in New Jersey, Oren seems to have lost his understanding of the pluralistic approach to religion. What he appears to be saying is successive Israeli governments have made a Faustian bargain, trading away those principles for the votes of the ultra-religious. Israeli law may guarantee freedom of religion for all, but it doesn't work that way in practice because an extremist minority is able to impose its rule on the rest of the population and no prime minister is about to challenge that.
It may sound like heresy, but if you're not an Orthodox Jew and you want to practice your Judaism as you see fit and follow the Reform or Conservative stream, America may be your Golden Medina. The separation of church and state as enshrined in the Bill of Rights is unknown in Israel, where the religious establishment is a branch of the government with considerable and often intrusive power. Moreover, the religious establishment has become increasingly right wing in both religious and political influence.
A Rabbinate hostile to the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism and backed by a political leadership indifferent, at best, to Diaspora concerns is a major factor in the growing rift.
As long as pubic officials like Religious Services Minister David Azoulay say the branches of Judaism followed by the majority of American Jews are a "disaster" for Israel the rift will continue to grow.
Click here to read more about the rift in my Washington Watch column.
Read More
The Jewish Week
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
THE ARTS
Wander in his studio: "Writing, burning, writing it again." Courtesy of David Wander
Drawing The Tradition
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture EditorDavid Wander makes books that might be 50 feet long, illustrating biblical and other stories with great artistic skill, creativity and appreciation of the text and its layers of meaning. One page leads to the next, and the handmade books fold up like accordians.
“Visualizing the Bible: Works by David Wander” at the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica at Temple Emanu-El is a gem of an exhibition, not to be missed this summer. It is made up of eight books that seem inspired by Renaissance artists who illuminated manuscripts with spectacular imagery, as well as by contemporary creators of stylized graphic novels, who also tell a story in a frame.
“There’s a concept that everyone should write their own Torah. If they can, well, great, but everyone has to deal with what Judaism means to them and how to make it theirs,” the New York artist says in an interview.
In black-and-white and somber tones, his “Eicha,” Lamentations — read later this month on Tisha b’Av — powerfully captures the mood of the day, with images of skulls in the streets of Jerusalem, chains suggesting captivity, people walking in the dark in a maze and jackals.
His treatment of the text mirrors the book’s themes of destruction. Wander wrote the letters with white ink on black, then ripped and burned some of the text, then rewrote those letters and affixed the repaired, burnt fragments of text to the pages.
“Writing, burning, writing it again,” Wander says. “It’s why we’re here — to keep telling.”
Each of the narratives — which might take a year to create — is in a distinctive style, whether resembling an African story quilt, like “Megillat Esther” or a dreamscape, like “The Jonah Drawings.”
Warren Klein, curator of the museum, says that this is the institution’s first exhibition featuring a living artist and also its first show featuring biblical and religious texts. One of the challenges of the exhibit was displaying the books in full, so the presenters came up with a system of showing most, but not all, of the pages.
Born in New York City, Wander is the son of a printer and photo engraver who became a painter. David studied at Pratt, the School of Visual Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design, and later worked as a fine art printmaker here and in Europe (including work for the Picasso family). A cousin commissioned him to create an illustrated Haggadah linking together themes of the seder and the Shoah, in memory of relatives who perished. Working in Jerusalem, he completed The Wolloch Haggadah in 1985 — a 300-copy edition that was shown at Yad Vashem, with copies now in the permanent collection at JTS, Harvard and other institutions.
On exhibit here is a page showing the four sons of the text. Wander’s version features four books: One open with black letters, one on fire, one with blank pages and one closed.
Through the Haggadah project, he met David Kraemer of JTS, and they began a biweekly chevruta, or study session, in which they look at texts along with midrash, or commentary. The two men have been learning together for eight years. The ideas generated in their sessions animate these works, which Kraemer, the Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian and professor of Talmud, describes as “a kind of midrash on the midrash.”
“David does something that not’s radically new,” Kraemer says, “but the continuation of a tradition. This is a very old tradition that most people who work with traditional texts don’t know much about. People often make comments about how new it is for Jews to be producing images, and it’s just not true — Jews have been doing so all along. It hasn’t been studied, except by specialists — it’s not that it hasn’t been done.”
Wander’s “Book of Judith,” with a style inspired by ancient Greek terra cotta pottery, includes no text, but a dramatic rendering of the biblical story in bold illustration done in acrylic and colored rice papers. At the end, Judith, with her expressive eyes and long gray hair, appears as a wise figure.
“The Golem of Prague,” which also has no text, is a retelling of the 16th-century tale in a richly colored panorama. Wander traveled to Prague to sketch the city’s monuments, which appear floating in the background, along with kabbalistic symbols and flying angels carrying stones. According to legend, the stones from Prague’s Altneu Shul, built from the remnants of the Second Temple, will be returned by angels to Jerusalem with the coming of the Messiah.
Set in contemporary times, “Ruth” highlights social issues that are still current. The text is English, in a comics font. But the story of honor, love, loyalty and the possibility of redemption — with stirrings of the Messiah — moves from right to left. The title character wears a little black dress, black pumps and pearls as she goes to meet Boaz.
Wander, who teaches art at SAR High School in Riverdale, also paints landscapes and streetscapes, and has shown that work widely. His books invite repeated viewing and a return to the text itself to see it anew.
“Visualizing the Bible: Works by David Wander” is on display at the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica, Congregation Emanu-El, One E. 65th St., Manhattan, through Oct. 18.
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FOOD & WINE
Some found associating kosher rainbow cookies with same-sex marriage offensive. Courtesy of Jane Moritz
Over The Rainbow
Talia Lakritz
Editorial Intern
When Challah Connection featured rainbow cookies on the front page of their website to celebrate same-sex marriage becoming legal nationwide, a few consumers lost their appetite, but owner Jane Moritz won’t apologize for supporting equality.
Challah Connection offers gift baskets of kosher goodies for a variety of occasions, including Jewish holidays, birthdays, and shiva calls. Shortly after learning of the Obergefell v. Hodges verdict, Moritz and her team advertised rainbow cookies on the website’s front page with the message “Never had these treasured cookies had such meaning,” a message some kosher-keeping customers didn’t appreciate.
“Within moments I got one, and then within an hour I got 2 more what I call ‘hate emails,'” Moritz tells The Jewish Week. “Literally, hate emails. People saying what was wrong with me, how could I be a Jew, how could I be supporting gay marriage, saying that they were never going to order from my company again and they were going to make sure that no one else ordered from my company again.”
The incident foils that of an Oregon bakery refusing to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple in 2013, resulting in a lawsuit that found Sweet Cakes by Melissa liable for $135,000 worth of damages. Then again, Moritz encountered similar expressions of discontent nearly 10 years ago, when she advertised orange and black cookies in October.
“There were some people very offended that I was talking about Halloween,” she says.
After some “soul searching” about how she should react, Moritz responded politely, but firmly. On a Yeshiva World News message board thread entitled “Challah Connection Supports Toeiva Marriage,” a user identified only as “feivel” reposted Moritz’s reply to his complaint, which Moritz confirms.
“If that's the case, so be it,” she wrote. “We stand firm in the Jewish values that implore upon us to show compassion and kindness to all beings.”
Moritz ultimately kept the rainbow cookies on the Challah Connection’s home page along with “Buy Now” inside a rainbow heart, but removed the accompanying message as a compromise.
“I’m not sorry that I did this,” she says. “I’m proud, to be honest. We’re a celebration of Judaism, a [touchstone] for Jews and non-Jews to find out more about Judaism and connect with their own Judaism. I hear a lot of stories about people’s Judaism, and I do not make judgments about what they do, what they don’t do. It’s not my place and I don’t think it’s any of our places.”
Moritz’s own story is as colorful as the cookies she sells. Half Ashkenazi and half Sephardic, she was raised in a Conservative household, had a bat mitzvah in an Orthodox synagogue, and continues to observe Jewish holidays “in my own soulful, creative ways” while running a Jewish business and raising her 3 sons to be mindful of their Jewish identities.
Despite the vitriol of the initial messages she received, Moritz says conversations on social media have been more supportive, with Facebook comments such as “Cookies should be available to all people, not just some,” and “This world needs more tolerance, not less. Kudos Challah Connection.”
And despite the kerfuffle, “We did get a lot of orders for rainbow cookies.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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Help Wanted: Sukkah Sleeper
10 Jewish jobs as classified ads
Maya Klausner
EditorProud members of the LGBTQ community were not the only ones dressed up in elaborate costumes at the New York gay pride parade. Paid protestors, some of who were Mexican laborers, dressed in Orthodox Jewish garb, as they rallied against same-sex marriage on behalf of a Jewish group. In light of the recent, unusual event here are some ads for other Jewish tasks that could be delegated to willing workers outside of the faith.
1. Sukkah Sleeping (Great Neck)
Currently seeking a man to sleep inside of a sukkah for the holiday of Sukkot.
The position involves living inside of a hut made of leaves and twigs for the duration eight days.
Principle responsibilities include sleeping, eating, learning from biblical texts and reflecting on one’s soul.
Heavy sleeper a plus.
Thick skull a plus (decorative fruits may drop on sleeper’s head in the middle of the night.)
Other duties include becoming familiar with the outdoors and feeling closer to God.
$50 for the night
2. Chametz Removal/Passover Cleaning Needed (Upper West Side)
Role: Eliminator of unholy breadcrumbs
Duties include:
Identifying, locating and removing all leavened substances from cabinets, refrigerator, shelves and wherever else one might find foods such as cereal, crackers, pasta and cookies.
(In some instances this requires going into the bedroom and checking the nightstand for leftover snacks and/or searching in cracks of couch cushions.) Bonus compensation can be discussed.
Other requirements:
Must be available in the evening (specifically at sundown.)
Willing to toss contraband carbohydrates into a body of water while repenting.
Comfortable around open flames a plus.
Please include if you are already in possession of a yarmulke from past jobs or if you will require one.
$15/hour
This is a part-time position.
3. Lulav Shaker/Etrog Smeller (Washington Heights)
In need of a lulav/etrog coordinator.
Qualifications:
Confident sense of direction is a must, (specifically, eastward, southward, westward and northward.) As well as up and down.
Some light shaking and heavy smelling will be involved.
Ability to work remotely.
Lulav, etrog, myrtle branch and willow branch will be provided.
This is a part-time position.
$18/hour
4. Mikvah Goer (Flatbush)
Seeking female to complete ritual bathing immersion.
Position available only one week a month, but work is regular.
Must feel comfortable on hidden camera (privacy not guaranteed.)
Requirements:
Candidate must use a structure that has been built into the ground.
Candidates who attempt to use Jacuzzis, bathtubs, kiddie pools or large puddles will not be compensated.
$36 per dip
5. NOW HIRING! Wedding Ringer/Wedding Guest Stand-In (Midwood)
Responsibilities:
Attending a high volume of weddings in a three-week period.
Duties include arriving in time for the ceremony and nodding vigorously and/or chanting when appropriate.
Job Qualifications:
Strong-build required.
Must be confident with flinging frail, elderly people in the air while waving them over your head in a collapsible folding chair.
A degree in conga dancing or equivalent is preferred.
Must be a team player and work well under stress.
Must follow company standard dress code.
Compensation based on performance. Part-time for high-volume season with the potential for full time hire.
6. Freelance Faster (Oceanside)
Seeking individual who does not eat food.
Requirements:
Candidate must ignore impulse to eat or drink for periods of 24 hours.
Other duties include not brushing teeth or accidentally swallowing a bug.
Background in cleanses a plus.
Fainting is OK.
$20/hour
7. Minyan Director (Roslyn Heights)
Role: Group Project Manager
Primary Responsibilities:
Recruiting no fewer than 10 Jewish males for daily spiritual meeting.
Must work well under pressure and meet daily deadline (sunset.)
Qualifications:
Strong networking skills.
Experience with social media.
Must work well with others but also know how to delegate.
This is a full-time position with possibility of benefits (free tefillin and parking space outside of Costco.)
8. Staying up all night on Shavuot
Seeking a non-sleeper to learn Torah.
Duties include not falling asleep while continuously reading from the Old Testament and other Talmudic texts,
Coffee and kosher red bull are provided.
Candidates who suffer from chronic insomnia will get preference.
This is a part-time position.
$15/hour
9. NOW HIRING! Spiritual Leaders In Isolated, Faraway Territories (Arkhangelsk, Russia)
Qualifications:
Ability to lead congregants into joyous learning who may suffer from acute depression due to where they live.
Requirements:
Must be willing to relocate to the Arctic Circle.
$30/hour plus airfare and relocation costs
10. Spiritual Solicitor (Variety of Street Corners)
Must work well with frequent rejection.
Duties include ambushing passersby and imploring them to:
Light ceremonial candles.
Wrap leather ropes around their forearms and heads.
Shake long, green plants in various directions.
Call their mothers.
Some light training required.
Ability to bounce back from nasty looks, stony silence and streams of obscenities highly valued.
$10/hour
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BLOGS
THE NEW NORMAL
New Online Inclusion Guide Helps Camp Prepare For All Campers
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
Families at a Tikvah Shabbaton at Ramah New England. Courtesy of Camp Ramah
Editor's Note: It's summer camp season! We will be sharing voices from a wide range of Jewish camps throughout the summer.
As more Jewish camps across the country expand their programs to welcome campers of all abilities, a new online resource has been created in a partnership between the Foundation For Jewish Camp and the Ramah Camping Movement. The “Inclusion Training Guide for Jewish Summer Camps” is a comprehensive guide that camps are able to download and use for staff training.
It contains overviews of different types of disabilities, philosophies of inclusion and practical strategies for working with campers of all abilities. It also includes sample programs of how to teach inclusion to a whole camp — making every camper aware that disabilities can be both visible and invisible and helping to make camp culture more sensitive to differences among campers.
Howard Blas, Director of the Tikvah program at Ramah New England and also Director of Ramah’s Tikvah Network, was instrumental in writing and putting together the guide based on his years of experience at Tikvah and in training camps around the country. "The guide doesn’t sugar coat the hard work that goes into making inclusion work," he says. "It focuses on practical strategies and advice that can be applied not only to camps, but also to youth groups, Hebrew school and other settings that are working to become more inclusive.”
Lisa Tobin of the Foundation for Jewish Camp stresses that this training guide is something that she has known has been missing. “There are camps across the country that have a desire for trainings on inclusion but haven’t had a place to turn to. We knew that Ramah has been doing this work for years so they were a natural place to turn to share what they are doing with other camps.”
Tobin notes that for many camps that have not yet had inclusion programs in place, even knowing where to start is a challenge. “Camp directors wonder how to effectively talk to their board members, parents and staff about the importance of inclusion…in the guide we have tools that they can use to help move their desire for inclusion forward.”
The online guide is accessible to anyone and everyone—and includes resources such as text studies and a bibliography that can be used in a variety of settings. For more information on working on inclusion of people with disabilities at your camp, contact Lisa Tobin at lisa@jewishcamp.org.
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Jews, Israel Face Widening Rift
Douglas Bloomfield
Conservative and Reform Jews have far more freedom to practices their religion in the United States than in the Jewish state. Especially if they're women.
Let a woman try to wear a tallit or tfillin and pray from a Torah at the Wall in Jerusalem and she could wind up in jail. To Azoulay that's not prayer but "provocation," and he has vowed to roll back whatever meager progress has been made in recent years.
Michael Oren, who has just published a hyper partisan memoir about his years as ambassador to the United States, said one of the reasons the relationship is unraveling is that American Jews don't understand Israelis. As for the clashes with Women of the Wall, he said, what Israeli officials see as a matter of law and order and status quo agreements, Americans see as issues of freedom of religion, women's rights and free speech.
For a guy who grew up as a conservative Jew in New Jersey, Oren seems to have lost his understanding of the pluralistic approach to religion. What he appears to be saying is successive Israeli governments have made a Faustian bargain, trading away those principles for the votes of the ultra-religious. Israeli law may guarantee freedom of religion for all, but it doesn't work that way in practice because an extremist minority is able to impose its rule on the rest of the population and no prime minister is about to challenge that.
It may sound like heresy, but if you're not an Orthodox Jew and you want to practice your Judaism as you see fit and follow the Reform or Conservative stream, America may be your Golden Medina. The separation of church and state as enshrined in the Bill of Rights is unknown in Israel, where the religious establishment is a branch of the government with considerable and often intrusive power. Moreover, the religious establishment has become increasingly right wing in both religious and political influence.
A Rabbinate hostile to the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism and backed by a political leadership indifferent, at best, to Diaspora concerns is a major factor in the growing rift.
As long as pubic officials like Religious Services Minister David Azoulay say the branches of Judaism followed by the majority of American Jews are a "disaster" for Israel the rift will continue to grow.
Click here to read more about the rift in my Washington Watch column.
Read More
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