Friday, October 9, 2015
Dear Reader,
A Jewish Week story about the inferior quality of secular education at yeshivas got lots of people talking, but activists said the resulting Department of Education investigation didn't go far enough. Now reporter Amy Clark has learned that the department is expanding its probe to include school visits.
New York
Reversing Course, DOE Vows To Broaden Yeshiva Probe
Chancellor says officials to look into quality of secular ed by visiting schools — but as "supporters" not "inspectors."
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
In Williamsburg, chasidic boys study long hours each day, but all but 90 minutes are spent on Jewish texts. Michael Datikash/JW
Following sharp criticism by education activists that the city’s plan to investigate complaints of subpar secular education at dozens of chasidic yeshivas didn’t go far enough, a city official told The Jewish Week that the probe has been expanded to include school visits.
Department of Education (DOE) officials promised the initial probe after receiving a much-publicized letter signed by 52 yeshiva graduates, teachers and parents alleging that chasidic boys at dozens of yeshivas in Brooklyn received so little secular education that most were graduating barely able to read and write English or do math beyond fractions.
The July 27 letter named 38 boys’ yeshivas in Brooklyn — mostly in Borough Park and Williamsburg — and one in Queens that provide students with just 90 minutes of English and math per day (and none on Fridays). There are no science or history classes at all, the letter said, and secular education stops altogether when students are about 13 so they can study Jewish texts full time.
Initially, the DOE probe was going to rely solely on documents provided by the schools themselves, such as class schedules.
Secular education advocates decried the lack of school visits and student interviews, and the City Council’s education chair, Daniel Dromm, in a story first reported by The Jewish Week in partnership with WNYC, said that if the city wasn’t going to do a thorough probe, his committee would do an independent investigation.
Now, DOE officials appear to be reversing course.
At a roundtable discussion with reporters last week, Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack said that superintendents would, in fact, be visiting the yeshivas as part of an approach “to partner with those programs, to learn more about what they’re doing” and “offer support.”
Throughout the discussion, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña stressed that her office is looking at the investigation as more of a partnership than a probe.
“We’re seeing really strong compliance, in yeshivas and Catholic schools, with the UPK program,” she said, referring to the mayor’s expanded universal preschool program, in which many chasidic yeshivas participate. Schools taking part follow a city-mandated curriculum and have access to DOE resources and support.
“They’re thrilled with it,” Fariña continued, “they like it, they find it very useful. So our first approach is going to be: How do you take what you learned in pre-K and move it to kindergarten? It’s all about listening. It’s all about reading and writing and how do we help teachers in all schools in the city.
“We’re not coming in as chief inspectors, we’re coming in as chief supporters, and I think that’s where we can do something,” Fariña continued, adding that “parents make choices to send their kids to these schools. This is not a Band-Aid [to a lack of public school seats]; it’s a family choice.”
The DOE hasn’t responded to questions about whether all 39 schools cited in the letter would be visited, and whether the visits would be scheduled or unannounced. However, it did send The Jewish Week a statement reiterating that the city “takes its responsibility to address any complaint seriously,” is “reviewing” schools according to “protocol,” and if any schools are found deficient, the DOE said it will “work to support these schools to ensure they can provide the appropriate education their students need to thrive.”
Reactions from activists about the DOE’s new approach to its yeshiva probe ranged from cautious optimism to outright anger.
“To me, it’s just plain infuriating,” said Naftuli Moster, founder of Young Advocates for Fair Education, aka Yaffed, which spearheaded the letter to the DOE.
While he called the inclusion of school visits “encouraging,” he doesn’t understand how DOE officials can conduct a “real investigation” without talking to anyone from his organization.
Norman Siegel, Yaffed’s attorney, was more encouraged about the news that the probe would include school visits — as long as they’re unannounced.
“The news, if accurate, is encouraging,” he said. “It’s the right thing for DOE to do, and so I’m cautiously optimistic now that this investigation will be the kind of investigation we’ve been asking for.”
Most political observers agree that the vast majority of elected officials are hesitant to go up against chasidic communities for fear of losing their ironclad bloc votes. Besides Dromm, not a single elected official contacted by The Jewish Week — including progressive politicians like Public Advocate Letitia James and Councilmen Brad Lander and Stephen Levin, who represent parts of Borough Park and Williamsburg, respectively — would discuss the issue.
Mayor Bill de Blasio also has close ties with chasidic leaders, winning multiple endorsements and fulfilling such campaign promises as getting the health department to drop the parental consent form for metzitzah b’peh, a circumcision ritual that can transmit herpes, and streamlining the reimbursement process for special education, an issue for which the Orthodox community spent years lobbying.
As of Wednesday, no politicians have joined Dromm in calling for a more in-depth investigation. And neither the DOE nor the city’s Department of Investigation have responded to his letters urging officials to include in the probe school visits, student interviews and a meeting with Yaffed. (Dromm also urged the DOE to “provide an immediate response” to The Jewish Week’s Freedom of Information Law requests for documents related to the investigation, which have been delayed for more than six months).
“I don’t really get it. I feel like, morally, we’re obliged to speak out,” he said. But, he said, the fear of going against chasidic communities is just too widespread.
“It’s like the third rail of politics,” he said. “Don’t touch the issue.”
amyclark@jewishweek.orgOver here, the talk is of whether the current violence in Israel is actually a third intifada. Over there, the semantics matter less than the tachlis: people are signing up for self-defense courses, and toting pepper spray. Contributing Editor Michele Chabin writes from the street.
Israel News
Israelis’ New Normal Means Jiu-Jitsu, Pepper Spray
Third intifada or not, the mood on the street is anxious.
Michele Chabin
Contributing Editor
Near the Old City of Jerusalem a member of the Israeli Border Police asks an Arab to show them his ID card. Michele Chabin/JW
Jerusalem — During the past couple of weeks, as the violence in and around Jerusalem and the West Bank has escalated, Roi Walther, a Jerusalem-based martial arts instructor in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, a form of Brazilian self-defense, has noticed a big uptick in interest in his already popular classes.
“I lead women’s groups, men’s groups and teen groups in self-defense in Jerusalem, and due to the latest incidents many more people are querying me by phone and Facebook,” Walther said. “People want to protect themselves, to feel more self-confident. They’re asking whether fighting off a stabbing is part of the syllabus. Our classes aren’t to train people for competitions. We specialize in self-defense.”
More than a year of sporadic Palestinian attacks against Israelis in east Jerusalem and the West Bank had already left many Israelis feeling vulnerable, but the most recent Palestinian terror attacks have put their fear in overdrive.
The Oct. 1 shooting death of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin, a West Bank couple whose four children watched in horror; and the stabbings of three adults (Aharon Bennett and Nehemia Lavi died) and a toddler in the Old City of Jerusalem have prompted many Israelis to take precautions.
Some no longer travel on Jerusalem’s light rail line, the target of East Jerusalem stone-throwers; others are avoiding East Jerusalem or the city altogether. Shop owners report an increase in the sale of pepper spray, and many people are changing their driving habits.
The violence has prompted Julie Waldman, who lives in a West Bank settlement close to Jerusalem, to drive only when it’s light outside.
“I’m trying not to drive home after dark for now. I’ve heard they are throwing lots of rocks near Beitar, on my way home, and have poured gasoline on the road. I was planning on starting a diet program tonight but will find one to go to during the day when its safer,” Waldman said.
Writing in Haaretz, columnist Nir Hasson said, “there is no way to know whether this is the start of a third intifada, but it seems clear that the violence in Jerusalem will continue. … And we Israelis, like the Palestinians, will have to adapt to it.”
Seth J. Frantzman, a political analyst and op-ed editor of the Jerusalem Post, told The Jewish Week that the current violence doesn’t constitute an intifada — yet.
“What remains to be seen is whether the Palestinian-Israeli clashes in Israeli cities like Jaffa and Nazareth could create a critical mass in the West Bank and inside the Green Line that spirals out of control.”
Frantzman doubts most Palestinians have the will to stage an all-out uprising.
“While many Palestinians I’ve spoken with support a third intifada, they want someone else to carry it out. There is a great inertia against a mass civil uprising, and the Palestinians in the West Bank remain ill-prepared to take on the Israeli security forces. There may be more protests and lone wolf-style terror attacks, but it seems unlikely major sustained violence will break out.”
Daniel Nisman is a political analyst and president of the Levantine Group, a Tel Aviv-based geopolitical risk consultancy firm.
“Now that the holiday period, which is marked by an increase in the number of Jews who visit the Temple and rumors that Israel is about to change the status quo, is over,” he said, “it will be a test to see whether [Palestinian President] Abbas will be in control. Until now he allowed the violence to happen. Now he’s called on Palestinians to rein in the violence.”
What’s still unknown, Nisman said, is whether the Palestinians’ rage is too deep to dissipate.
“Are the conditions ripe for de-escalation? Is the Palestinian street doing this because there is true boiling anger and hopelessness, or is this more a reaction to events? If it’s something deeper — a reaction to Jewish settler attacks, and there have been many, to perceived Israeli violations at Al Aqsa or [to] the Palestinian police becoming weaker, this is the time to measure how strong the Palestinians’ resolve is.”
Nisman thinks Abbas’ UN speech, where he declared the Oslo Accord dead, was “more a stunt” than a decision to dissolve the Palestinian Authority or end security cooperation with Israel.
“When Yasir Arafat wanted an intifada, he literally ordered attacks against Israelis. He literally orchestrated the uprising. Abbas says one thing, but the same night tells his police to arrest Hamas militants. He has to hold on to the Palestinian street but at the same time not instigate an intifada. He has political and financial interests at stake and does not want a complete destabilization of the West Bank.”
Although the violence is far from the level of the first and second intifadas, when thousands of Israeli troops battled Palestinians, “we’re moving in a bad direction,” Nisman said. “Every single day Palestinians are talking about their holy places being ‘invaded by settlers.’ They think it’s justified when a Jew is killed.”
Nisman said the Israeli media covers attacks on Jews but not the “many Palestinians being admitted to hospitals after being attacked by settlers. The violence is widespread and under-reported in Israel. They see settlers as rampaging monsters. It’s a deeply entrenched narrative.”
That narrative could be heard over and over again in the Arab shuk in the Old City of Jerusalem. Arab shopkeepers there bemoaned the dearth of tourists, which they blamed on the “Israeli takeover” of the Al Aqsa mosque and on the tightened security measures the Israeli government imposed after Saturday night’s fatal stabbings.
“Business is down 90 percent,” said a shopkeeper named Rami, who asked that his last name not be published. “Earlier this morning the police closed the Jaffa Gate,” the most popular entry point for tourists into the Old City, “and there were no tourists. The police told tourists to walk through the Armenian Quarter in order to bypass our businesses.”
The storeowner shook his head when asked whether the stabbing might have scared off some tourists.
Instead he blamed the violence on “settlers” trying to take over Al Aqsa.
“Al Aqsa is for the Muslim people. Jews have their own holy places. Mixing the two will bring on the next intifada.”
editor@jewishweek.orgOn a lighter note, the Pope's official funny guy is a rabbi. No joke! Rabbi Bob Alper won the pope's joke contest, beating out 4,000 contestants, including Jimmy Fallon.
New York
Rabbi With A ‘Catholic’ Sense Of Humor
Jokester Bob Alper captures Church-sponsored contest in connection with Pope Francis’ visit.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Papal approval of joke contest. Getty Images
During Pope Francis’ recent visit to New York, there was over-the-top media reverence for the humble servant of God, there was ecumenical spirit at an interfaith service at the Sept. 11 Memorial Museum and there was sheer joy as the pontiff cruised through Central Park in his stylish Fiat.
What there wasn’t, it seemed, was humor.
Turns out, the Vatican had the sense to make humor part of their greater mission.
On the eve of Pope Francis’ U.S. trip, an organization of the Catholic Church launched jokewiththepope.org, a website that announced a competition to decide the title of Honorary Comedic Advisor to the Pope. Interested men and women were invited to submit — via videos, or typed-out jokes — clean humor that would reflect the Vatican’s standards and values.
More than 4,000 people from 47 countries participated.
The winner: a rabbi from Vermont with a catholic sense of humor.
No joke!
Rabbi Bob Alper, who was ordained in 1972 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and has worked for the last 27 years as a stand-up comic after 14 years as a full-time pulpit rabbi, received an email with the surprising news on Monday from the American branch of the Pontifical Missions Societies (PMS), which sponsored the joke contest.
The 70-year-old rabbi, who lives in East Dorset, Vt., said he “was kind of shocked and delighted” after hearing the news.
Rabbi Bob Alper is a veteran of ecumenical performing, having appeared in comedy shows for more than a decade with Muslim and Protestant colleagues. In his 27-second video, the rabbi makes a mild joke that pokes fun at himself.
“I’ve been married for 46 years, and my wife and I are on the same wavelength. At the same time that I got a hearing aid, she stopped mumbling,” he said.
“The joke is one of the best I’ve ever written,” Rabbi Alper told The Jewish Week in a telephone interview. “It’s reality. It’s something with which people can identify. It exemplifies the Pope’s values, which are family, humor, warmth.”
The contest was an extension of the Vatican’s increasing use of social media and a reflection of Francis’ accessible personality, said Father Andrew Small, national director of PMS.
He said the idea of the competition came to him in a dream, as a means to spread joy and to promote a new digital app about church missionary work. The contest’s website features three church missions — in Ethiopia, Argentina and Kenya.
“I have [humor] in my cultural DNA,” said Fr. Small, a native of Liverpool, England, known for its “rip-roaring sense of humor.”
When he “shopped the idea around” in church circles some people were nervous that it would be perceived as disrespectful to the Pope, he said. Then Francis, who had heard about the proposal, sent a letter of approval in his native Spanish. “ I like to laugh — a lot. It helps me to feel closer to God and closer to other people in my life,” the Pope wrote. “I invite you to share your happiness, your joy and your laughter with one another and with the whole world. Share your jokes and your funny stories: the world will be better, the Pope will be happy and God will be the happiest of all.”
That was all the imprimatur that Fr. Small needed.
He promoted the contest through local dioceses, and implored such celebrities as Bill Murray and David Copperfield to enter. Guideline: “the sort of joke you would feel comfortable telling the Pope, with your mother present.” In other words, squeaky clean. But hip.
Entries were posted online. People could vote for their favorite, but an interfaith panel of humor mavens chose the winner.
How did a rabbi make the final cut?
“We picked the person who fitted the role” as the Pope’s humor advisor, Fr. Small said. He called Rabbi Alper’s joke “original … situational … gentle … [and] self-effacing.” And it is family-focused, just like the Pope, who. Fr. Small said, “was talking all the time about the family.”
Besides the honor of being named to the honorary position, the winner has no official duties. A meeting with the Pope is not a prize, but, said Fr. Small, “I don’t think it’s crazy at all. The Lord works in mysterious ways — Rabbi Bob has a bright and holy future in front of him.”
Humor is a bridge between religions, Fr. Small said.
Rabbi Alper agreed, saying that the apparent anomaly of a rabbi winning a Catholic-sponsored contest shows that all faiths share an appreciation for humor. “It goes to the idea that a refined sense of humor is important for any spiritual leadership,” he said.
Rabbi Alper said one of his Muslim colleagues has told him that “Mohammed had a good sense of humor.”
Similarly, said Father James Martin, editor-at-large of America – The National Catholic Review, “I follow a rabbi who had a good sense of humor. Jesus had a great sense of humor, but we [today] don’t understand the humor of 1st century Palestine.”
Fr. Martin, author of “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life” (HarperOne, 2012), also entered the papal joke competition.
He said he thinks “it’s fantastic” that a rabbi won the contest. “My response is, ‘mazel tov.’”
Rabbi Alper’s only official prize will be two tickets to the Tonight Show, whose host, Jimmy Fallon, also entered a joke. Other well-known contestants include Conan O’Brien, former Tonight Show host, and Today show weatherman Al Roker.
Rabbi Alper performs mostly in Jewish venues and on college campuses, but aspires, like most stand-up comics, to appear on the Tonight Show. He said winning the contest has brought him nearly there.
“I want to be on the Tonight Show. I’ll be at the Tonight Show,” he quipped. “It’s just a prepositional change.”
steve@jewishweek.orgShabbat Shalom,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
THE ARTS
Geza Rohrig as Auschwitz Sonderkommando Saul Auslander in "Son of Saul." Courtesy of NY Film Festival
Inside A Sonderkommando's Shoes
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
Death may not be, to borrow Paul Celan's famous construction, "a master from Germany," but for Jewish filmmakers of a certain age, the ashen shadow of the crematoria is never far away. More than other filmmakers, perhaps, they are acutely aware that close behind them are the beating wings of the angel of death.
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Film
Inside A Sonderkommando’s Shoes
‘Son of Saul’ places the audience ‘in the middle of the killing machine’; Nuremberg documentary, ‘The Memory of Justice,’ restored after 40 years.
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
Geza Röhrig as Auschwitz Sonderkommando Saul Ausländer in “Son of Saul.” Courtesy of N.Y. Film Festival
Death may not be, to borrow Paul Celan’s famous construction, “a master from Germany,” but for Jewish filmmakers of a certain age, the ashen shadow of the crematoria is never far away. More than other filmmakers, perhaps, they are acutely aware that close behind them are the beating wings of the angel of death.
Through an unfortunate chain of circumstances, this year’s New York Film Festival, which ends on Oct. 11, carries a more vivid reminder of the sound of those beating wings than usual. Yes, three of the Jewish-made and -themed films in the event are about the Shoah: “Son of Saul,” “The Memory of Justice” and “No Home Movie.” That’s not so unusual. But as this issue was going to press, it was announced that Chantal Akerman, director of “No Home Movie” and many other ground-breaking films, died in Paris at 65. (I will write about her enormous influence and the last film next week.)
“Son of Saul,” a first feature by László Nemes, was already famously controversial before it made the trans-Atlantic journey here. A fiction film based on the writings of members of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, it is set in the very heart of the killing machinery. The Sonderkommando were predominantly Jewish prisoners selected by the camp personnel to do the actual dirty work of the death camps, helping herd the victims from the trains to the gas chambers, sorting through the belongings of the dead, cleaning the blood and excrement from the killing rooms, filling the crematoria with bodies and then disposing of the ashes. In exchange for this most awful labor, they were given better food and sleeping arrangements than the other prisoners. Every few months, the entire group would be killed and replaced. They were, after all, among the very few witnesses to the murders being methodically committed in the death camps.
In October 1944 the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz organized a short-lived, violent rebellion. They dynamited one of the crematoria, fought the SS with smuggled and improvised weapons. Around this time, they also managed to take a handful of photos of the gas chambers and the victims, the only visual documentation extant.
“Son of Saul” is set during the 48 hours surrounding these events. From its opening shot of Saul Ausländer (Geza Röhrig) working in the ordinary turmoil of a shift at the gas chambers, we are only occasionally aware of the larger picture. Rather, Nemes literally focuses our attention on Saul, almost always in close-up, his heavy brow often obscuring his penetrating, dark eyes, an impassive observer so inured to the nightmare around him that he seems utterly dehumanized. Nemes uses long takes and a perpetually moving camera combined with very shallow focus, with the result that we are only vaguely aware of the ghastly sights around Saul, as dimly aware as he seems to be. He is truly an ausländer, an outsider, a stranger, even to his own feelings. The constant motion serves to numb Saul (and the audience) to the (sur)reality around him.
All that changes when, in the process of emptying one of the gas chambers, the Sonderkommando find a boy who seems to have survived the gas. A Nazi doctor examines him, quietly chokes him to death and orders another doctor, one of the prisoners, to perform an autopsy. Saul sees all this, then believes that he recognizes the boy as his son. He becomes obsessed with the idea of providing a Jewish burial for the boy, and begins almost immediately to search for a rabbi in the camp with disastrous results for all.
In the Q&A that followed the press screening of the film, Nemes said that he didn’t want to make a film with a “distant point-of-view, but one that would place the audience in the shoes of one person in the middle of the killing machine.” The formal choices he has made succeed admirably in that goal. The long takes, the roaming camera, the unrelenting close-ups all combine to give a moviegoer the extraordinarily disturbing sensation of being trapped inside Saul’s head. Nemes’ refusal to show us the usual horror-porn images, obscuring them through shallow focus and the refusal to budge from the faces of the men, blunts the easy sensationalism that mars too many films about the Shoah.
He also eschews the primary visual trope of the genre, desaturated color. Inevitably the film has a muted palette that renders the visual field drab, but his choice of natural color pays powerful dividends towards the end of the film when events take us outside the camp into a birch-tree forest whose greenery seems almost liberatingly vivid.
It is much too soon to know how well “Son of Saul” will hold up on repeated viewings and over time. It is, I think, more fully realized than Tim Blake Nelson’s admirable “The Grey Zone,” and vastly preferable to all but a very few films set in the death camps. Of this I am certain: it is unlike any other fiction film about the Shoah, and it is a grueling experience.
One might say the same of Marcel Ophuls’ 1976 documentary “The Memory Justice.” Like his more famous “The Sorrow and the Pity,” Ophuls’ film is a four-hour-plus rumination on war guilt, built from interviews with participants and victims in the Nazis’ crimes. His focus in this film, which was screened in a newly restored version in one of the festival sidebars, is on the Nuremburg principles, the workings of the war-crimes trial and the applicability of these precepts to Algeria and Vietnam. At the heart of the film are two wildly different men, Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and planning mastermind, perhaps the highest-ranking Nazi seemingly to accept and to acknowledge his own guilt, and Telford Taylor, former U.S. general, one of the prosecutors at Nuremburg and a staunch opponent of the Vietnam War.
They make a startling contrast, one that underlines the many complexities of the issues at stake here. Both men are handsome, articulate and urbane, possessed of both gravitas and a sense of humor. Yet one feels throughout that Speer is telling Ophuls what he thinks the filmmaker wants to hear, while Taylor is saying what he knows needs to be said. When the film premiered nearly 40 years ago, I cried at several key points; while he may not have his legendary father Max Ophuls’ sense of elegance, Marcel Ophuls has a similarly skillful sense of control and tone. In 2015, that skill still rules and I found myself yet again in tears. And in 2015, as well, the issues explored in “The Memory of Justice” are still on the front page every day.
The New York Film Festival runs through Oct. 11 at Lincoln Center. For information, go to filmlinc.com. For George Robinson’s review of Frederick Wiseman’s superb “In Jackson Heights,” which also played this year’s festival, see Culture View column on page 50. “Son of Saul” opens theatrically at Film Forum (filmforum.org) and Lincoln Plaza Cinema (lincolnplazacinema.com) on Dec. 18 for an open-ended run.
FOOD & WINE
Thinking Inside The Box
Joshua E. London
Jewish Week Online Correspondent
Kosher wine has always made more sense on the dinner table than the picnic blanket, but that's about to change. Now, you can get the hekshered stuff in a box.
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Thinking Inside The Box
The box wine trend has reached the kosher market.
Joshua E. London
Jewish Week Online Columnist
Kosher wine has always made more sense on the dinner table than the picnic blanket, but that’s about to change. Now, you can get the hekshered stuff in a box.
First out was the Italian “To Life Box Wine by L’Chaim,” both a red and a white in a 3-liter box (the equivalent of four bottles). This is a joint project between Ralph Mizraji, a Miami-based entrepreneur, and Enovation Brands, Inc., the U.S. presence of Enoitalia SpA, Italy’s largest volume wine producer.
The competition, rolling out now: the Z(in) and Chen(in) California box wines from Herzog’s Royal Wine Corp. The new “(in)” brand is a venture Royal is releasing in both regular bottles and in a 1.5-liter box.
“I think quality box wine is an important step to integrating casual wine consumption into the kosher lifestyle,” said industry expert Andrew Breskin, a wine lawyer, importer, former sommelier and proprietor of Liquid Kosher, a merchant of high-end kosher fine wines. “The majority of wine will still be enjoyed over Shabbat and holidays,” he explains, so “the culture of casual wine consumption in the kosher market still has a way to go.”
Mizraji launched the “To Life” wines in the box wine format not only because he “didn’t want to compete with thousands and thousands of bottles,” but also because he “wanted to do something more modern, young, sophisticated and up-to-date.” His idea was for a kosher wine that works as a jovial accompaniment to any social gathering, with the new-fangled packaging to give it an edge.
Similarly, Royal sees their “(in)” brand as an effort to “tap a trend from the wider market while bringing it to the kosher consumer,” Mordy Herzog, CEO of Royal Wine and KayCo, their kosher food and speciality division, said.
Box wine is also known as “bag-in-box” because it consists of a wine-filled, deflatable, metallized film or plastic bladder seated inside a corrugated fiberboard box, and mounted with a plastic spigot. As of last year box wine sales in the US represented 7 percent of all wine by value and 17.5 percent of all wine sold by volume, with 16 brands surpassing the elusive $1 million sales mark, and another five getting close, according to data collected by Nielsen Holdings N.V., an American-based global information and measurement company. The category has doubled its share of the U.S. market since 2009, according to Nielsen.
Box wine does well in the mainstream market because it’s typically inexpensive, costing $16 to $20 for 3 liters or about $4 to $5 per “bottle.” Further, box wine is more portable; it doesn't break like bottles, and you don't need a corkscrew. Box wine is also lighter and easier to ship, which not only holds down the cost, but makes it more environmentally friendly than bottles. Even better, while an open bottle needs drinking relatively quickly to be maximally enjoyed before oxidation sets in, an opened box wine can last anywhere from four to eight weeks, and perhaps even longer if you keep it in the refrigerator.
“Boxed wine is an exciting first for kosher wine,” says Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz, who directed the OU certification of the To Life Box Wine by L’Chaim.
Here is the lineup so far:
To Life Wine Box by L’Chaim, Kosher Italian Premium White Wine Blend (3 liters; $25; OU certified, non mevushal): A surprisingly aromatic and tasty Italian blend of Trebbiano and Chardonnay, offering floral aromas and stone fruit flavors with a touch of honey and minerals. Value-priced, food friendly, and exceedingly drinkable.
To Life Wine Box by L’Chaim, Kosher Italian Premium Red Wine Blend (3 liters; $25; OU certified, non mevushal): A straightforward light and tasty Italian blend of Sangiovese and Merlot, offering simple plum and bittersweet cherry fruits and some pleasing herby, earthy notes, with decent acidity and tannin, and a pleasing mouthfeel. Value-priced, food friendly, and exceedingly drinkable.
Chen(in), Baron Herzog Wine Cellars, California, 2014 (1.5 liters; $15.99; also available in 750ml bottle format at $9.99; OU certified, mevushal): Sourced from Clarksburg grapes, but made in a different, drier style from the more familiar Baron Herzog brand, this is bright, crisp, frisky and fruity yet dry with simple, pleasing aromas and flavors of green apple, honeysuckle, and sweet grapefruit. Eminently enjoyable.
Z(in), Baron Herzog Wine Cellars, California, 2014 (1.5 liters; $15.99; also available in 750ml bottle format at $9.99; OU certified, mevushal): sourced from Lodi grapes, but distinctly different from the more familiar Baron Herzog Old Vine Zin, this is light, dry and plush with jammy berry fruits, ripe plums, and a very slight sweetness that rounds off the edges and perks up the flavors. Very drinkable.
Slideshow
Back of the Book
Democracy, Jackson Heights Style
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
Midway through its three-hour running time, there is a scene in Frederick Wiseman's new documentary, "In Jackson Heights," in which we see a few minutes of a typical workday in the office of Councilman Daniel Dromm. Two members of Dromm's staff are fielding irate calls from constituents. We hear only their side of the conversations, so it takes a moment before it becomes clear what very local issue the callers are discussing. But it is impossible to miss the interplay of exasperation, concern and slowly eroding patience in the faces of Dromm's long-suffering staffers.
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Culture View
Democracy, Jackson Heights Style
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
George Robinson
Midway through its three-hour running time, there is a scene in Frederick Wiseman’s new documentary, “In Jackson Heights,” in which we see a few minutes of a typical workday in the office of Councilman Daniel Dromm. Two members of Dromm’s staff are fielding irate calls from constituents. We hear only their side of the conversations, so it takes a moment before it becomes clear what very local issue the callers are discussing. But it is impossible to miss the interplay of exasperation, concern and slowly eroding patience in the faces of Dromm’s long-suffering staffers.
In that single scene, Wiseman encapsulates brilliantly the microphysics of democracy, the fact that there is a personal side of the political. I can’t think of another filmmaker working in either dramatic features or non-fiction films who better understands this reality or conveys it more succinctly.
“In Jackson Heights,” which played the New York Film Festival this week and opens at Film Forum (filmforum.org) on Nov. 4, is a marvel, a complex interweaving of multiple themes — the multicultural mosaic of New York as seen through a neighborhood in which 167 different languages are spoken; the rising power of the LGBT community; the terrible vulnerability of immigrant workers; the ongoing commitment to social justice of a shrinking Jewish community — formally unified by a series of delightful live music performances and the brightest, most colorful palette of any film in Wiseman’s long career.
The film’s structure is remarkably subtle and supple. With its multiple ethnic communities — Colombian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Mexican, Indian, Ashkenazi Jewish, Chinese, Peruvian, to name a few — the Queens neighborhood is marked by a dizzying range of small stores and street vendors who impart to the area a wildly variegated display of bright colors, whether in the form of sales banners, bountiful produce, fashion or, in the summer of 2014 when the film was shot, World Cup football jerseys and decorations.
This kaleidoscopic variety is under threat from the same market forces that transformed Williamsburg and many other neighborhoods from vibrant locally driven urban villages into repositories for giant chain stores and condos for the very wealthy. The vivid life on the streets of Jackson Heights, as the film’s structuring streetscape shots remind us, will be lost if the machinations of the large real estate investors behind a proposed business improvement district succeed.
Wiseman has always been fascinated by the interplay between the personal and the institutional, as it occurs in a democracy. From early works like “High School” and “Welfare” to his most recent films, notably “National Gallery” and “In Jackson Heights,” he has been our most incisive cinematic analyst of how our society works at the most personal level. His own interplay with John Davey, who has shot nearly 20 of Wiseman’s films, is a reflection of that kind of interaction at its most fruitful; Davey, who has been working with him since 1987, brought a calm and detachment to their films that has complemented Wiseman’s own growing inclination towards a critical distance from his subjects.
In the new film, the result is a sort of serenity; the film creates a sublime balance between the sense of urgency we feel watching a transgender woman at a small street demonstration shout her rage at a local restaurant’s allegedly discriminatory practices, or the impassioned explanation of the workings of the BID (Business Improvement District) manipulators by a businessman-activist whose stands to lose a business he has owned for a quarter century, and the sheer joy of local musicians performing in a laundromat, or the simple profusion of colors in a bodega’s sidewalk flower display.
In a strange but deeply moving way, that balance becomes most fully felt in one of the last scenes of the film, a Holocaust memorial service at the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights, a hub of community activism and one of the key locations for the film. There are no more than a dozen worshippers in attendance, perhaps none of them younger than 50, and time has taken an additional toll on the passion of the Jews present. But there is still a stern and earnest will for justice and remembrance at work in these men and women.
The message of the scene and, by extension, of the film, is clear. The road of tikkun olam is a long one, it must be traveled slowly but steadfastly, but it is not traveled alone. n
(In recognition of the theatrical premiere of “In Jackson Heights,” the Museum of the Moving Image will be showing nine of Frederick Wiseman’s New York-set films Oct. 9-Nov. 7. For information, go to movingimage.us.)
George Robinson covers film for the paper.
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Howard Stern Rips Roger Waters Over BDS support
JTA
(JTA) - Radio personality Howard Stern ripped Roger Waters, the founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd, for his support of the boycott Israel movement.
"What is with Roger Waters and the Jews?" Stern asked Tuesday at the beginning of a seven-minute rant on Sirius XM Radio during which he implied that Waters is an anti-Semite.
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Howard Stern Rips Roger Waters Over BDS support
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Radio personality gets Stern about Israel
JTA
This Week
(JTA) — Radio personality Howard Stern ripped Roger Waters, the founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd, for his support of the boycott Israel movement.
“What is with Roger Waters and the Jews?” Stern asked Tuesday at the beginning of a seven-minute rant on Sirius XM Radio during which he implied that Waters is an anti-Semite.
The rant was motivated by an open letter that Waters published in Salon criticizing rocker Jon Bon Jovi for performing in Tel Aviv on Oct. 3.
“The Palestinians are these Arabs that could live in Egypt; they could live in Saudi Arabia, but guess what? Those countries don’t want them either,” Stern, who is Jewish, said on his show. “Israel has a little tiny country, and it bugs the s*** out of Roger Waters. He can’t f***in’ deal with it.
“Where do you want the Jews to go, Roger? You want them just to go back to the concentration camps? What is it you want, f***head?”
“Jews, go to the dark side of moon and live,” he said, referring to a popular Pink Floyd album.
A recording of the rant has been removed from YouTube, citing a copyright claim by Sirius XM.
During his concert, in an apparent swipe at Waters, Bon Jovi announced: “I’ll come here any time you want.”
In the letter to Bon Jovi, Waters accused the singer of standing “shoulder to shoulder” with “the settler who burned the baby,” referring to the arsonists, thought to be Jewish extremists, who firebombed a Palestinian home in August, killing a toddler and several family members. The act was condemned by Israel’s leaders.
Waters in his letter listed seven other Israelis who perpetrated attacks on Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists. He said Bon Jovi had forfeited the opportunity to stand “on the side of justice,” listing pro-Palestinian activists and Palestinians whom Waters regards as heroes or victims.
The letter does not mention any Palestinian terrorist attacks or Israeli terror victims, including the two parents killed in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank.
Waters backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel for its policies concerning the Palestinians.
Howard SternRoger WatersBDSBon Jovi
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POLITICAL INSIDER
Benghazi'd
The Republicans' repeated and fruitless Benghazi investigations backfired today when they brought down their own speaker-in-waiting instead of the Democratic presidential frontrunner they spent many millions of tax dollars trying to shoot down.
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Benghazi'd
Douglas Bloomfield
The Republicans' repeated and fruitless Benghazi investigations backfired today when they brought down their own speaker-in-waiting instead of the Democratic presidential frontrunner they spent many millions of tax dollars trying to shoot down.
In a stunning move Thursday noon, Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy dropped out of the race to succeed John Boehner as speaker of the House. His quest for the top job on Capitol Hill was done in by a serious self-inflicted wound.
He committed the serious sin of telling the truth and that cost him his dream job.
His candid admission on Fox News that the Benghazi hearings were not really about the September 11, 2012, Libyan attack that killed four American diplomats but a subterfuge for a plan to damage Hillary Clinton's poll numbers in her run for president.
For a good analysis of the GOP's Benghazi strategy click here.
A New York Times editorial Wednesday called on Republicans to "shut down the Benghazi committee."
McCarthy admitted, as reported by the Political Insider here earlier, the latest Benghazi investigation was intended to undermine Clinton's credibility and brand her "untrustable."
His subsequent efforts to explain that he may have said that but it's not what he meant didn't wash. Like so many in Washington, his ambitions were crippled by shooting himself in both feet while they were planted in his mouth.
McCarthy's withdrawal was a major victory for the party's extreme right wing that announced it had about 40 votes in the 247-member Republican caucus; it takes 218 votes to elect a Speaker. That's is not enough to put one of their own in that post but enough to undermine and intimidate the leadership, and they have Boehner's resignation as proof.
The new leadership team that will be crafted by the end of the month, when Boehner said he will leave, is expected to lean even father to the right and raise serious questions about whether this Congress can accomplish anything in the coming year. Meanwhile, the party is doing a good impression of a circular firing squad.
The Tea Party movement seems to be calling the shots these days, and its followers believe compromise is a mortal sin. Not just compromise with Democrats but apparently compromise with their own party's traditional conservatives as well.
The extreme right, which has no clear leader in the House, is greatly influenced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and, unlike Boehner, are willing to shut down the government in their zeal to block funding for Planned Parenthood and prevent raising the federal debt limit.
WELL VERSED
This Week: Don't Miss Daniel Cainer's Musical Journey
Songwriter Daniel Cainer has made a cabaret career of exploring his British Jewish roots, with an original blend of humor, musical virtuosity, inspired rhyming and juxtapositions, and serious ideas. By extension, viewers of his new show "21st Century Jew," now off-Broadway at the Soho Playhouse, will be stirred to think anew about their own identity.
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