Thursday, October 8, 2015
Dear Reader,
Under pressure from critics, the Department of Education says it will investigate allegations that chasidic yeshivas for boys offer inadequate secular education. Deputy Managing Editor Amy Sara Clark reports that DOE officials will visit schools, but advocates for the probe remain skeptical.
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.
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.
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.orgReporting from Jerusalem, Israel Correspondent Michele Chabin describes the increasing concerns about security among Israelis as a wave of Palestinian violence escalates. Self-defense classes, for example, are becoming more popular.
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.orgMy column offers a rare interview with Les Wexner, the billionaire philanthropist whose Wexner Foundation recently marked its 30th anniversary. He offers a critique of the Jewish Establishment for focusing more on fundraising than leadership training, which is at the core of his various programs.
Gary Rosenblatt
Where Are Tomorrow’s Leaders?
Les Wexner has an Establishment critique, and an answer.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Major philanthropic foundations play a central role in American Jewish life today, but it wasn’t always so.
The Wexner Foundation, initiated and still led by Columbus, Ohio, businessman Les Wexner, began three decades ago with a specific goal that remains at the core of its now diverse portfolio: to identify and train future Jewish leaders.
In many ways it remains the model for other Jewish foundations, known for its emphasis on excellence in professional staff and educational experiences, its commitment to diversity and inclusion and to fostering what Larry Moses, a former president of the foundation, calls a “culture of collaboration” among its lay and professional alumni.
This past spring, a two-day celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the foundation was held in Columbus, attracting (many at their own expense) some 1,500 alumni of the various Wexner programs who came to show their appreciation for what many described as the gift of being a Wexner fellow. Also in attendance at the program, under the leadership of foundation president Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, were a number of scholars and Jewish professionals who teach in the program, and dignitaries, including former Israeli President Shimon Peres.
In keeping with the nature of Wexner programs, the event featured Torah study sessions, addresses on various aspects of leadership by alumni who are now prominent in a variety of fields, and late-night conversations on topics ranging from the environment to social justice, philanthropy, Jewish life on campus, and innovations in Jewish education.
In a recent (and rare) interview with The Jewish Week, Wexner, 78, perhaps best known as the founder, chairman and CEO of The Limited (now L Brands), reflected on his vision of creating “a sacred society,” his mentors, his pride in the foundation’s accomplishments, his ongoing frustration with the Jewish Establishment, and his advice on how to secure a strong future for the community.
Early on in his involvement with Jewish organizations, while in his 30s, Wexner sensed “a real leadership void,” he told me. “I thought that they were into funding, and no one focused on leadership and strategy. We didn’t do it as a community. And if there is success in our foundation it is that we stayed close to our core: develop leaders.”
While Wexner and his wife, Abigail, whom he married in 1993, remain major supporters of federations, their primary focus in Jewish philanthropy is the foundation, in which they have invested nearly $1 billion.
Since 1985, when the first Wexner Heritage class of 16 potential lay leaders was formed in Columbus, nearly 2,000 young men and women, carefully chosen and screened, have completed the two-year program from almost 100 cohorts in 33 different communities in the U.S. They have been taught and guided by some of the finest Jewish scholars and professionals from the U.S. and Israel whose goal is to provide a deeper Jewish knowledge base and inspire their charges to take on leadership roles in Jewish life, however the participants choose to do so.
Around the same time Wexner, addressing a need for leadership in Jewish professional life, launched a fellowship program for future rabbis, cantors, academics, educators and others in graduate school fields that strengthen Jewish community. Twenty students a year are chosen, and in addition to funding for tuition, they are offered mentoring and peer networks. Close to 500 people are alumni or current students in the program, which now partners with the William Davidson Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation.
In 1989, the Wexner Israel Fellowship program was created, offering mid-level Israeli public officials a year of study for a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. More than 240 Israeli public leaders have completed the program. And in the last two years Wexner has founded a leadership program at the Kennedy School for potential and senior Israeli leaders, and a service corps for Jewish teens in Columbus, an initiative of the Wexners’ daughters, Hannah and Sarah.
Although Les Wexner is a self-made global business leader with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $7.7 billion, he keeps a relatively low profile in Jewish life and comes across in conversation as modest, and a bit shy, a product of his Midwestern roots.
He spoke of his deep appreciation for the staff, educators and alumni involved in the foundation’s programs, and the gratitude he felt on being with the 1,500 participants at the anniversary celebration a few months ago.
“Abigail and I have got more than we’ve given, and certainly energy from you,” he told the assembled at the closing ceremony last spring.
It is clear that Wexner’s approach to philanthropy is based on his success in business, which is credited with originating the concept of specialized retailing. (Thus, the launching of “The Limited” when others were establishing department stores selling a wide variety of products.)
“As a businessman I knew that any enterprise is only as strong as the vision and talent of its leadership,” he says. “The same is true within the Jewish community and its institutions.”
Wexner mentioned Max Fisher, who died at 97 in 2005, the Detroit businessman and senior Jewish statesman who was a major donor to the Republican Party, as a major influence. “He cared, he was thoughtful and he was consistent; he was always there,” he said. “Leaders can’t get up [when they’re upset] and march out of the room. Max was patient, with a sense of rethinking and renewal.”
Rabbi Herbert Friedman, who died at 90 in 2008, was the first president of the foundation, a man with grand ideas and the ability to fulfill them. It was Rabbi Friedman who created the young leadership program and missions to Israel for national UJA when he was CEO, and was instrumental in doing the same at Wexner. Three decades ago, “it was a landmark decision” to hire a professional like Rabbi Friedman to run a Jewish foundation, Wexner recalled, and soon others followed.
Harvard professor and administrator Henry Rosovsky is credited with advising Wexner to “never compromise on quality” and to build his foundation slowly, being willing to stay with a project for the long term. “We are patient,” Wexner said of his philanthropic, and business, approach.
The only time in our conversation when he sounded impatient was when he described the national Jewish organizations’ resistance to leadership development and experimentation.
“It’s nonsense to say that federations can’t experiment, and it’s stupid to give them more money than they’re giving themselves,” Wexner said, adding that he was never approached, in the early years, to provide matching funds for federation projects. “Everyone was too busy raising money” to focus on the need for next-generation leadership.
For all of his major support of national Jewish groups, Wexner noted that “big organizations are hard to change and renew.” He believes that reinvention starts with local communities, not from the top down, and that the need for a fresh approach and experimentation is constant; otherwise established institutions — businesses or Jewish organizations — “will become obsolete,” he said.
Wexner is an advocate of a positive approach, in business and in Jewish life, especially at a time when there is much concern about a diminished American Jewish future. He said that when one is “on a low floor on the mood elevator, it seems there is no hope, all is lost, and you become the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Optimism, he asserted, should be based on a strong sense of values, solid research and a culture of bold leadership.
“The trends today point to intermarriage and assimilation, but everyone knew it 30 years ago,” Wexner said. “You need process to find strengths and weaknesses” and a commitment to apply thoughtful policies.
A lifelong reader, he requires business associates to read books on leadership and discuss them, and he would like to see Jewish groups training leaders from within, ensuring that they live up to the group’s values.
“We should be calling on strategic thinkers, but we get immobilized and paralyzed. We should be doing rather than waiting for Godot or the Messiah.”
Someone, he said, will come up with the right idea, but when that happens, “our institutions need the flexibility to change.”
Wexner hopes that his growing networks of talented, influential and committed alumni will overlap and interact with each other, working in concert to find solutions to the problems of the day.
“There’s no utility being a pessimist,” he said. “We as a people have a 5,000-year history of navigating” between realism and idealism.
As for his own legacy, he said he doesn’t think about it. “Nonsense — I worry about what I do today.” It’s “the good institutions that endure,” he said confidently.
His track record, entering a fourth decade through the foundation, remains a template for efforts to educate and inspire tomorrow’s leaders today.
Gary@jewishweek.orgAlso this week, the rabbi who makes the pope laugh; a Brooklyn woman sues Lucille Roberts fitness center for banning her working out in a full-length skirt; Nathan Jeffay on Bibi's missed chance at the UN; and a review of a powerful and controversial film at the New York Film Festival, "Son Of Saul," on the rebellion of Sonderkommando Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz.
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.org
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.
Letter From Israel
Bibi’s Missed Chance At UN
With fresh violence well underway, he should have pivoted more quickly from Iran deal to Israel’s terror fight.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
Nathan Jeffay
The sense of tragedy in Israel last weekend was stifling. On Friday, a young couple was laid to rest after being murdered in front of their four children, and by Saturday night there were further victims of this spate of terror that is gripping Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Friday’s attack was a highway shooting; Saturday’s was a stabbing, and both were incidents of unmentionable cruelty. The result was the same — lives cut off in their primes, and families and communities grappling with the senseless, pointless loss.
It’s still not an intifada, but with the intensity of terror, it certainly has echoes of one. And that is exactly what many on the Palestinian side want — including Saturday’s attacker, judging by a recent message he posted on Facebook championing the notion that a third intifada has begun.
Whether or not the new round of violence becomes an intifada, what is clear is that Israel is facing an extremely serious assault on the security of its citizens, and that defending them is a major challenge.
And so, when the country’s prime minister addressed the United Nations General Assembly for his annual speech last Thursday, he should have used it as an opportunity to assert Israel’s rights to fight this terror. He could have strengthened Israel’s legitimacy to deal with this over the coming months.
But predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu spent most of his speech focused on Iran. He talked about an agreement that is deeply problematic — but one that, as far as most of his audience was concerned, is a done deal.
It sounded like a speech in which he was desperately telling the public back home that he is still relevant, that the world may have laughed in his face at his pleas to shelve the Iran deal, but he’s not taking it lying down. He won’t stop telling the truth as he sees it, and warning of the doom that the deal can bring. And he won’t be intimidated by the big world powers — he will stand up and scold them, and decry the UN’s “obsessively hostile” stance toward Israel.
Except for kudos in his own country, it’s hard to see what Netanyahu gained from the speech.
Even though Netanyahu spoke before the latest two deadly attacks, the growing terror in Jerusalem and the West Bank was already a major issue. It was already clear that fighting this terror is going to necessitate increased security operations by Israel in Palestinian areas, and when Israel steps up security operations, tensions flare and Israel becomes the focus of increased criticism and controversy. The lower the sympathy internationally for Israel’s objectives, the louder the criticism.
Unless something changes unexpectedly, six months down the line, we will all be having some familiar conversations — about what seems to be a new wave of criticism against Israel after it conducts some operations to counter terror in Jerusalem and the West Bank and the operations become the subject of intense criticism internationally.
“The world doesn’t understand,” Israel’s supporters around the world will be posting on Facebook. “Israel has been acting in self-defense. Citizens don’t feel safe.” Bibi could have been ahead of the game.
On the Palestinian side, they are already working to drum up international outrage against Israel measures. “The collective punishment that the Palestinian people have suffered over the past 48 hours … proves that the Israeli government is deliberately creating a situation of violence and instability that threatens to spiral out of control,” claimed the Palestinian politician Hanan Ashwari, an ally of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on Tuesday.
She is already trying to galvanize all the opposition to Israeli policies that she managed to put together during the second intifada. “This government is thereby attempting to create the conditions for a new “Defensive Shield” operation similar to that of 2002 in which the Israeli Army carried out the senseless destruction of Palestinian lives, infrastructure and institutions,” Ashwari argued.
Why didn’t Netanyahu stand up at the UN and tell his audience that they know his stance on Iran and he’s not backing down or softening, but there are also other challenges facing Israel, and Israeli citizens deserve the world to understand about the terror rearing its head in and around Jerusalem? He could have then discussed the impact of this violence on Israelis and the steps that Israel needs to take — reluctantly — in order to fight it, and showed openness to taking steps to de-escalate. He would have needed to approach the subject carefully, in order to ensure that his comments were constructive rather than adding flames to the fire, but it could have been done, even before Ashwari got on her soapbox.
The invitation to the Palestinians to return to negotiations was there in Netanyahu’s speech — to “immediately resume direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority without any preconditions whatsoever.” He needed to say more on this; to discuss in general terms Israeli preparedness to make difficult concessions for peace, if indeed he is ready to make difficult concessions. And then he would have been in a position to tell the UN that Israel is going all-out to address the conflict with the Palestinians — hoping for an end to violence through negotiations, but with legitimacy to confront the rising terror if this opportunity isn’t embraced in Ramallah.
Bibi loves to be the international statesman, the one who knows what the West needs better than the West. “Stand with Israel because Israel is not just defending itself,” he told the UN. “More than ever, Israel is defending you.” But there are times when he needs to resist the opportunity to cast himself in this role, and instead go modestly but assertively to the international community and say that his small state is facing major challenges and wants the world’s understanding — and the Palestinians’ hand in peace.
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice a month.
New York
Orthodox Woman Sues Fitness Chain For Bias
Brooklyn teacher says she was banned from Lucille Roberts for working out in a knee-length skirt.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Is a skirt a hazard? The Lucille Roberts fitness chain expelled an Orthodox woman for wearing modest dress.
For a young chasidic woman intent on getting in a workout, there was no skirting this issue.
Yosefa Jalal had been working out peacefully for several months at the Kings Highway branch of Lucille Roberts until, in October of 2013, when, the 25-year-old teacher said, she was “targeted, harassed, screamed at, and banned” for exercising in a fitted, knee-length skirt.
Last week, she exercised her First Amendment rights by filing a lawsuit against the fitness chain Friday in Manhattan federal court.
In court papers, Jalal claims “repeated religious discrimination,” and asks for an injunction against her membership revocation as well as unspecified damages.
“I want to go back. What they did was wrong,” Jalal, who prefers to exercise in a women-only environment, told The Jewish Week. She said she knows of several other Orthodox women who also have been ordered to leave Lucille Roberts locations for the same reason.
Her lawsuit is the latest example of religious freedom clashes, a topic that has drawn increased notice in the past year. Several fundamentalist Christians, both public officials and owners of private businesses, have drawn criticism in some circles for such actions as refusing requests by same-sex couples for such items as marriage certificates and wedding cakes.
In a related case, a District Court judge last week ordered the Village of Pomona, in Rockland County, to explain why it has denied a Jewish group permission to build and operate a rabbinical school.
The Long Island native, who is currently earning a master’s in education at Hofstra University, began wearing clothing that covers her elbows and knees after adopting a Torah-observant lifestyle four years ago.
She said she worked out in a skirt for several months at the Lucille Roberts branch on Kings Highway in the Flatbush neighborhood until an employee shouted at her for wearing a skirt and, implying it was a safety hazard, was told she would have to leave unless she took it off.
She returned to the Kings Highway branch soon after, and continued to work out without incident for a year, when a manager at the Kings Highway branch kicked her out again.
She switched her to the Flatbush Avenue branch in Downtown Brooklyn and worked out peacefully for eight months, but over the summer of 2015, she was kicked out twice, with an employee telling her the second that her membership “has been revoked,” she was “trespassing,” and that “the police are on the way.”
Jalal said she explained each time that she was wearing a skirt for religious reasons, to no avail. She has not returned to a Lucille Roberts gym since then, but works out on her own in her cramped Crown Heights apartment, she said.
“Ms. Jalal wants to work out, be fit, take classes and be allowed to attend Lucille Roberts in peace, without sacrificing her religious beliefs,” states the complaint, which was filed by the Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady firm. “At the gym, Ms. Jalal would always wear a knee-length, fitted but comfortable skirt. Given its length and fit, the skirt could not possibly interfere with any gym equipment … if anything, the skirt was safer to use on Lucille Roberts’ gym equipment than a pair of knee-length, baggy shorts, or a sweatshirt tied around the waist.
“The skirt did not violate Lucille Roberts’ “Dress Code,” which discourages gymwear (e.g., sweatpants),” the complaint continues. “But apparently, Ms. Jalal’s Jewish modesty did offend Lucille Roberts’ self-image of a health club filled with ‘strong, sexy and confident women.’”
According to the fitness chain’s “Member Rules and Regulations,” women are advised to “dress appropriately. Flannel may be making a comeback this fall, but is still inappropriate gym attire. This also goes for denim and street clothes. This may be a ladies gym but you should still look your best.”
A Lucille Roberts spokesperson has not responded to a request for an interview made by The Jewish Week last week, but issued a statement denying that employees were discriminating against Jalal.
“Here at Lucille Roberts we take the safety of our members very seriously. Our decision to uphold a dress policy, consistent with industry standards and equipment manufacturers, is not an attempt to hinder any personal religious beliefs,” the statement said. “Lucille Roberts is dedicated to providing a safe and healthy exercise environment for all our members.”
Several sports equipment manufacturers contacted by The Jewish Week said they don’t think wearing a knee-length skirt while using their machines is a safety hazard and the websites of several national health club chains contained no dress code baring such clothing.
Attorney Ilann Maazel, who has also filed a complaint with the state’s Commissioner of Human Rights, argued in court papers that Jalal is not the only “observant Jewish women” to be harassed and kicked out and that the company is “systematically discriminating against modest, observant Jewish women, for no defensible reason” and that it should pay punitive damages for “Jalal’s loss of membership, as well as embarrassment, shame, fear, and other emotional harm ... [caused by the company’s] reckless indifference to Ms. Jalal’s civil rights.”
steve@jewishweek.orgPlus much more, so enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Our website is always there for you with breaking news and exclusive videos, blogs, opinion columns and a variety of features. Check it out.
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BETWEEN THE LINES
Gary Rosenblatt
Where Are Tomorrow's Leaders?
Major philanthropic foundations play a central role in American Jewish life today, eclipsing federations in terms of dollars spent on a variety of creative projects. But it wasn't always so.
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Gary Rosenblatt
Where Are Tomorrow’s Leaders?
Les Wexner has an Establishment critique, and an answer.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Major philanthropic foundations play a central role in American Jewish life today, but it wasn’t always so.
The Wexner Foundation, initiated and still led by Columbus, Ohio, businessman Les Wexner, began three decades ago with a specific goal that remains at the core of its now diverse portfolio: to identify and train future Jewish leaders.
In many ways it remains the model for other Jewish foundations, known for its emphasis on excellence in professional staff and educational experiences, its commitment to diversity and inclusion and to fostering what Larry Moses, a former president of the foundation, calls a “culture of collaboration” among its lay and professional alumni.
This past spring, a two-day celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the foundation was held in Columbus, attracting (many at their own expense) some 1,500 alumni of the various Wexner programs who came to show their appreciation for what many described as the gift of being a Wexner fellow. Also in attendance at the program, under the leadership of foundation president Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, were a number of scholars and Jewish professionals who teach in the program, and dignitaries, including former Israeli President Shimon Peres.
In keeping with the nature of Wexner programs, the event featured Torah study sessions, addresses on various aspects of leadership by alumni who are now prominent in a variety of fields, and late-night conversations on topics ranging from the environment to social justice, philanthropy, Jewish life on campus, and innovations in Jewish education.
In a recent (and rare) interview with The Jewish Week, Wexner, 78, perhaps best known as the founder, chairman and CEO of The Limited (now L Brands), reflected on his vision of creating “a sacred society,” his mentors, his pride in the foundation’s accomplishments, his ongoing frustration with the Jewish Establishment, and his advice on how to secure a strong future for the community.
Early on in his involvement with Jewish organizations, while in his 30s, Wexner sensed “a real leadership void,” he told me. “I thought that they were into funding, and no one focused on leadership and strategy. We didn’t do it as a community. And if there is success in our foundation it is that we stayed close to our core: develop leaders.”
While Wexner and his wife, Abigail, whom he married in 1993, remain major supporters of federations, their primary focus in Jewish philanthropy is the foundation, in which they have invested nearly $1 billion.
Since 1985, when the first Wexner Heritage class of 16 potential lay leaders was formed in Columbus, nearly 2,000 young men and women, carefully chosen and screened, have completed the two-year program from almost 100 cohorts in 33 different communities in the U.S. They have been taught and guided by some of the finest Jewish scholars and professionals from the U.S. and Israel whose goal is to provide a deeper Jewish knowledge base and inspire their charges to take on leadership roles in Jewish life, however the participants choose to do so.
Around the same time Wexner, addressing a need for leadership in Jewish professional life, launched a fellowship program for future rabbis, cantors, academics, educators and others in graduate school fields that strengthen Jewish community. Twenty students a year are chosen, and in addition to funding for tuition, they are offered mentoring and peer networks. Close to 500 people are alumni or current students in the program, which now partners with the William Davidson Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation.
In 1989, the Wexner Israel Fellowship program was created, offering mid-level Israeli public officials a year of study for a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. More than 240 Israeli public leaders have completed the program. And in the last two years Wexner has founded a leadership program at the Kennedy School for potential and senior Israeli leaders, and a service corps for Jewish teens in Columbus, an initiative of the Wexners’ daughters, Hannah and Sarah.
Although Les Wexner is a self-made global business leader with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $7.7 billion, he keeps a relatively low profile in Jewish life and comes across in conversation as modest, and a bit shy, a product of his Midwestern roots.
He spoke of his deep appreciation for the staff, educators and alumni involved in the foundation’s programs, and the gratitude he felt on being with the 1,500 participants at the anniversary celebration a few months ago.
“Abigail and I have got more than we’ve given, and certainly energy from you,” he told the assembled at the closing ceremony last spring.
It is clear that Wexner’s approach to philanthropy is based on his success in business, which is credited with originating the concept of specialized retailing. (Thus, the launching of “The Limited” when others were establishing department stores selling a wide variety of products.)
“As a businessman I knew that any enterprise is only as strong as the vision and talent of its leadership,” he says. “The same is true within the Jewish community and its institutions.”
Wexner mentioned Max Fisher, who died at 97 in 2005, the Detroit businessman and senior Jewish statesman who was a major donor to the Republican Party, as a major influence. “He cared, he was thoughtful and he was consistent; he was always there,” he said. “Leaders can’t get up [when they’re upset] and march out of the room. Max was patient, with a sense of rethinking and renewal.”
Rabbi Herbert Friedman, who died at 90 in 2008, was the first president of the foundation, a man with grand ideas and the ability to fulfill them. It was Rabbi Friedman who created the young leadership program and missions to Israel for national UJA when he was CEO, and was instrumental in doing the same at Wexner. Three decades ago, “it was a landmark decision” to hire a professional like Rabbi Friedman to run a Jewish foundation, Wexner recalled, and soon others followed.
Harvard professor and administrator Henry Rosovsky is credited with advising Wexner to “never compromise on quality” and to build his foundation slowly, being willing to stay with a project for the long term. “We are patient,” Wexner said of his philanthropic, and business, approach.
The only time in our conversation when he sounded impatient was when he described the national Jewish organizations’ resistance to leadership development and experimentation.
“It’s nonsense to say that federations can’t experiment, and it’s stupid to give them more money than they’re giving themselves,” Wexner said, adding that he was never approached, in the early years, to provide matching funds for federation projects. “Everyone was too busy raising money” to focus on the need for next-generation leadership.
For all of his major support of national Jewish groups, Wexner noted that “big organizations are hard to change and renew.” He believes that reinvention starts with local communities, not from the top down, and that the need for a fresh approach and experimentation is constant; otherwise established institutions — businesses or Jewish organizations — “will become obsolete,” he said.
Wexner is an advocate of a positive approach, in business and in Jewish life, especially at a time when there is much concern about a diminished American Jewish future. He said that when one is “on a low floor on the mood elevator, it seems there is no hope, all is lost, and you become the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Optimism, he asserted, should be based on a strong sense of values, solid research and a culture of bold leadership.
“The trends today point to intermarriage and assimilation, but everyone knew it 30 years ago,” Wexner said. “You need process to find strengths and weaknesses” and a commitment to apply thoughtful policies.
A lifelong reader, he requires business associates to read books on leadership and discuss them, and he would like to see Jewish groups training leaders from within, ensuring that they live up to the group’s values.
“We should be calling on strategic thinkers, but we get immobilized and paralyzed. We should be doing rather than waiting for Godot or the Messiah.”
Someone, he said, will come up with the right idea, but when that happens, “our institutions need the flexibility to change.”
Wexner hopes that his growing networks of talented, influential and committed alumni will overlap and interact with each other, working in concert to find solutions to the problems of the day.
“There’s no utility being a pessimist,” he said. “We as a people have a 5,000-year history of navigating” between realism and idealism.
As for his own legacy, he said he doesn’t think about it. “Nonsense — I worry about what I do today.” It’s “the good institutions that endure,” he said confidently.
His track record, entering a fourth decade through the foundation, remains a template for efforts to educate and inspire tomorrow’s leaders today.
Gary@jewishweek.org
MUSINGS
Rabbi David Wolpe
The Adult We've Become
Not long ago, I was sent a picture of myself at a very young age. As it was just before Yom Kippur, I began to wonder about the person in that picture - what would he think of the adult he had become?
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Musings
The Adult We’ve Become
David Wolpe
David Wolpe
Not long ago, I was sent a picture of myself at a very young age. As it was just before Yom Kippur, I began to wonder about the person in that picture — what would he think of the adult he had become?
When we are young we have aspirations and assumptions about life. Some are confirmed, some denied and still others hang uncertainly just before us in the path of life. But it is worthwhile to think back on what we believed about ourselves when we began.
The child, wrote Wordsworth, is father to the man. We grow out of what we have been, and the buds are still visible in the branches. The Torah provides many examples: Moses is saved in a basket — “tevah” — the same word used for Noah’s Ark, and he ends up saving his people, just as the word foreshadows. We first encounter David as a young shepherd, leading the flock as later he will lead Israel.
We examine our childhood psychologically, but we should also think of it spiritually. What sort of people did we admire? Did we become that sort of person? If not, there is still time to make the child we were happy with the adult we have become.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.
“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.orgReporting from Jerusalem, Israel Correspondent Michele Chabin describes the increasing concerns about security among Israelis as a wave of Palestinian violence escalates. Self-defense classes, for example, are becoming more popular.
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.orgMy column offers a rare interview with Les Wexner, the billionaire philanthropist whose Wexner Foundation recently marked its 30th anniversary. He offers a critique of the Jewish Establishment for focusing more on fundraising than leadership training, which is at the core of his various programs.
Gary Rosenblatt
Where Are Tomorrow’s Leaders?
Les Wexner has an Establishment critique, and an answer.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Major philanthropic foundations play a central role in American Jewish life today, but it wasn’t always so.
The Wexner Foundation, initiated and still led by Columbus, Ohio, businessman Les Wexner, began three decades ago with a specific goal that remains at the core of its now diverse portfolio: to identify and train future Jewish leaders.
In many ways it remains the model for other Jewish foundations, known for its emphasis on excellence in professional staff and educational experiences, its commitment to diversity and inclusion and to fostering what Larry Moses, a former president of the foundation, calls a “culture of collaboration” among its lay and professional alumni.
This past spring, a two-day celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the foundation was held in Columbus, attracting (many at their own expense) some 1,500 alumni of the various Wexner programs who came to show their appreciation for what many described as the gift of being a Wexner fellow. Also in attendance at the program, under the leadership of foundation president Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, were a number of scholars and Jewish professionals who teach in the program, and dignitaries, including former Israeli President Shimon Peres.
In keeping with the nature of Wexner programs, the event featured Torah study sessions, addresses on various aspects of leadership by alumni who are now prominent in a variety of fields, and late-night conversations on topics ranging from the environment to social justice, philanthropy, Jewish life on campus, and innovations in Jewish education.
In a recent (and rare) interview with The Jewish Week, Wexner, 78, perhaps best known as the founder, chairman and CEO of The Limited (now L Brands), reflected on his vision of creating “a sacred society,” his mentors, his pride in the foundation’s accomplishments, his ongoing frustration with the Jewish Establishment, and his advice on how to secure a strong future for the community.
Early on in his involvement with Jewish organizations, while in his 30s, Wexner sensed “a real leadership void,” he told me. “I thought that they were into funding, and no one focused on leadership and strategy. We didn’t do it as a community. And if there is success in our foundation it is that we stayed close to our core: develop leaders.”
While Wexner and his wife, Abigail, whom he married in 1993, remain major supporters of federations, their primary focus in Jewish philanthropy is the foundation, in which they have invested nearly $1 billion.
Since 1985, when the first Wexner Heritage class of 16 potential lay leaders was formed in Columbus, nearly 2,000 young men and women, carefully chosen and screened, have completed the two-year program from almost 100 cohorts in 33 different communities in the U.S. They have been taught and guided by some of the finest Jewish scholars and professionals from the U.S. and Israel whose goal is to provide a deeper Jewish knowledge base and inspire their charges to take on leadership roles in Jewish life, however the participants choose to do so.
Around the same time Wexner, addressing a need for leadership in Jewish professional life, launched a fellowship program for future rabbis, cantors, academics, educators and others in graduate school fields that strengthen Jewish community. Twenty students a year are chosen, and in addition to funding for tuition, they are offered mentoring and peer networks. Close to 500 people are alumni or current students in the program, which now partners with the William Davidson Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation.
In 1989, the Wexner Israel Fellowship program was created, offering mid-level Israeli public officials a year of study for a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. More than 240 Israeli public leaders have completed the program. And in the last two years Wexner has founded a leadership program at the Kennedy School for potential and senior Israeli leaders, and a service corps for Jewish teens in Columbus, an initiative of the Wexners’ daughters, Hannah and Sarah.
Although Les Wexner is a self-made global business leader with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $7.7 billion, he keeps a relatively low profile in Jewish life and comes across in conversation as modest, and a bit shy, a product of his Midwestern roots.
He spoke of his deep appreciation for the staff, educators and alumni involved in the foundation’s programs, and the gratitude he felt on being with the 1,500 participants at the anniversary celebration a few months ago.
“Abigail and I have got more than we’ve given, and certainly energy from you,” he told the assembled at the closing ceremony last spring.
It is clear that Wexner’s approach to philanthropy is based on his success in business, which is credited with originating the concept of specialized retailing. (Thus, the launching of “The Limited” when others were establishing department stores selling a wide variety of products.)
“As a businessman I knew that any enterprise is only as strong as the vision and talent of its leadership,” he says. “The same is true within the Jewish community and its institutions.”
Wexner mentioned Max Fisher, who died at 97 in 2005, the Detroit businessman and senior Jewish statesman who was a major donor to the Republican Party, as a major influence. “He cared, he was thoughtful and he was consistent; he was always there,” he said. “Leaders can’t get up [when they’re upset] and march out of the room. Max was patient, with a sense of rethinking and renewal.”
Rabbi Herbert Friedman, who died at 90 in 2008, was the first president of the foundation, a man with grand ideas and the ability to fulfill them. It was Rabbi Friedman who created the young leadership program and missions to Israel for national UJA when he was CEO, and was instrumental in doing the same at Wexner. Three decades ago, “it was a landmark decision” to hire a professional like Rabbi Friedman to run a Jewish foundation, Wexner recalled, and soon others followed.
Harvard professor and administrator Henry Rosovsky is credited with advising Wexner to “never compromise on quality” and to build his foundation slowly, being willing to stay with a project for the long term. “We are patient,” Wexner said of his philanthropic, and business, approach.
The only time in our conversation when he sounded impatient was when he described the national Jewish organizations’ resistance to leadership development and experimentation.
“It’s nonsense to say that federations can’t experiment, and it’s stupid to give them more money than they’re giving themselves,” Wexner said, adding that he was never approached, in the early years, to provide matching funds for federation projects. “Everyone was too busy raising money” to focus on the need for next-generation leadership.
For all of his major support of national Jewish groups, Wexner noted that “big organizations are hard to change and renew.” He believes that reinvention starts with local communities, not from the top down, and that the need for a fresh approach and experimentation is constant; otherwise established institutions — businesses or Jewish organizations — “will become obsolete,” he said.
Wexner is an advocate of a positive approach, in business and in Jewish life, especially at a time when there is much concern about a diminished American Jewish future. He said that when one is “on a low floor on the mood elevator, it seems there is no hope, all is lost, and you become the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Optimism, he asserted, should be based on a strong sense of values, solid research and a culture of bold leadership.
“The trends today point to intermarriage and assimilation, but everyone knew it 30 years ago,” Wexner said. “You need process to find strengths and weaknesses” and a commitment to apply thoughtful policies.
A lifelong reader, he requires business associates to read books on leadership and discuss them, and he would like to see Jewish groups training leaders from within, ensuring that they live up to the group’s values.
“We should be calling on strategic thinkers, but we get immobilized and paralyzed. We should be doing rather than waiting for Godot or the Messiah.”
Someone, he said, will come up with the right idea, but when that happens, “our institutions need the flexibility to change.”
Wexner hopes that his growing networks of talented, influential and committed alumni will overlap and interact with each other, working in concert to find solutions to the problems of the day.
“There’s no utility being a pessimist,” he said. “We as a people have a 5,000-year history of navigating” between realism and idealism.
As for his own legacy, he said he doesn’t think about it. “Nonsense — I worry about what I do today.” It’s “the good institutions that endure,” he said confidently.
His track record, entering a fourth decade through the foundation, remains a template for efforts to educate and inspire tomorrow’s leaders today.
Gary@jewishweek.orgAlso this week, the rabbi who makes the pope laugh; a Brooklyn woman sues Lucille Roberts fitness center for banning her working out in a full-length skirt; Nathan Jeffay on Bibi's missed chance at the UN; and a review of a powerful and controversial film at the New York Film Festival, "Son Of Saul," on the rebellion of Sonderkommando Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz.
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.org
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.
Letter From Israel
Bibi’s Missed Chance At UN
With fresh violence well underway, he should have pivoted more quickly from Iran deal to Israel’s terror fight.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
Nathan Jeffay
The sense of tragedy in Israel last weekend was stifling. On Friday, a young couple was laid to rest after being murdered in front of their four children, and by Saturday night there were further victims of this spate of terror that is gripping Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Friday’s attack was a highway shooting; Saturday’s was a stabbing, and both were incidents of unmentionable cruelty. The result was the same — lives cut off in their primes, and families and communities grappling with the senseless, pointless loss.
It’s still not an intifada, but with the intensity of terror, it certainly has echoes of one. And that is exactly what many on the Palestinian side want — including Saturday’s attacker, judging by a recent message he posted on Facebook championing the notion that a third intifada has begun.
Whether or not the new round of violence becomes an intifada, what is clear is that Israel is facing an extremely serious assault on the security of its citizens, and that defending them is a major challenge.
And so, when the country’s prime minister addressed the United Nations General Assembly for his annual speech last Thursday, he should have used it as an opportunity to assert Israel’s rights to fight this terror. He could have strengthened Israel’s legitimacy to deal with this over the coming months.
But predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu spent most of his speech focused on Iran. He talked about an agreement that is deeply problematic — but one that, as far as most of his audience was concerned, is a done deal.
It sounded like a speech in which he was desperately telling the public back home that he is still relevant, that the world may have laughed in his face at his pleas to shelve the Iran deal, but he’s not taking it lying down. He won’t stop telling the truth as he sees it, and warning of the doom that the deal can bring. And he won’t be intimidated by the big world powers — he will stand up and scold them, and decry the UN’s “obsessively hostile” stance toward Israel.
Except for kudos in his own country, it’s hard to see what Netanyahu gained from the speech.
Even though Netanyahu spoke before the latest two deadly attacks, the growing terror in Jerusalem and the West Bank was already a major issue. It was already clear that fighting this terror is going to necessitate increased security operations by Israel in Palestinian areas, and when Israel steps up security operations, tensions flare and Israel becomes the focus of increased criticism and controversy. The lower the sympathy internationally for Israel’s objectives, the louder the criticism.
Unless something changes unexpectedly, six months down the line, we will all be having some familiar conversations — about what seems to be a new wave of criticism against Israel after it conducts some operations to counter terror in Jerusalem and the West Bank and the operations become the subject of intense criticism internationally.
“The world doesn’t understand,” Israel’s supporters around the world will be posting on Facebook. “Israel has been acting in self-defense. Citizens don’t feel safe.” Bibi could have been ahead of the game.
On the Palestinian side, they are already working to drum up international outrage against Israel measures. “The collective punishment that the Palestinian people have suffered over the past 48 hours … proves that the Israeli government is deliberately creating a situation of violence and instability that threatens to spiral out of control,” claimed the Palestinian politician Hanan Ashwari, an ally of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on Tuesday.
She is already trying to galvanize all the opposition to Israeli policies that she managed to put together during the second intifada. “This government is thereby attempting to create the conditions for a new “Defensive Shield” operation similar to that of 2002 in which the Israeli Army carried out the senseless destruction of Palestinian lives, infrastructure and institutions,” Ashwari argued.
Why didn’t Netanyahu stand up at the UN and tell his audience that they know his stance on Iran and he’s not backing down or softening, but there are also other challenges facing Israel, and Israeli citizens deserve the world to understand about the terror rearing its head in and around Jerusalem? He could have then discussed the impact of this violence on Israelis and the steps that Israel needs to take — reluctantly — in order to fight it, and showed openness to taking steps to de-escalate. He would have needed to approach the subject carefully, in order to ensure that his comments were constructive rather than adding flames to the fire, but it could have been done, even before Ashwari got on her soapbox.
The invitation to the Palestinians to return to negotiations was there in Netanyahu’s speech — to “immediately resume direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority without any preconditions whatsoever.” He needed to say more on this; to discuss in general terms Israeli preparedness to make difficult concessions for peace, if indeed he is ready to make difficult concessions. And then he would have been in a position to tell the UN that Israel is going all-out to address the conflict with the Palestinians — hoping for an end to violence through negotiations, but with legitimacy to confront the rising terror if this opportunity isn’t embraced in Ramallah.
Bibi loves to be the international statesman, the one who knows what the West needs better than the West. “Stand with Israel because Israel is not just defending itself,” he told the UN. “More than ever, Israel is defending you.” But there are times when he needs to resist the opportunity to cast himself in this role, and instead go modestly but assertively to the international community and say that his small state is facing major challenges and wants the world’s understanding — and the Palestinians’ hand in peace.
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice a month.
New York
Orthodox Woman Sues Fitness Chain For Bias
Brooklyn teacher says she was banned from Lucille Roberts for working out in a knee-length skirt.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Is a skirt a hazard? The Lucille Roberts fitness chain expelled an Orthodox woman for wearing modest dress.
For a young chasidic woman intent on getting in a workout, there was no skirting this issue.
Yosefa Jalal had been working out peacefully for several months at the Kings Highway branch of Lucille Roberts until, in October of 2013, when, the 25-year-old teacher said, she was “targeted, harassed, screamed at, and banned” for exercising in a fitted, knee-length skirt.
Last week, she exercised her First Amendment rights by filing a lawsuit against the fitness chain Friday in Manhattan federal court.
In court papers, Jalal claims “repeated religious discrimination,” and asks for an injunction against her membership revocation as well as unspecified damages.
“I want to go back. What they did was wrong,” Jalal, who prefers to exercise in a women-only environment, told The Jewish Week. She said she knows of several other Orthodox women who also have been ordered to leave Lucille Roberts locations for the same reason.
Her lawsuit is the latest example of religious freedom clashes, a topic that has drawn increased notice in the past year. Several fundamentalist Christians, both public officials and owners of private businesses, have drawn criticism in some circles for such actions as refusing requests by same-sex couples for such items as marriage certificates and wedding cakes.
In a related case, a District Court judge last week ordered the Village of Pomona, in Rockland County, to explain why it has denied a Jewish group permission to build and operate a rabbinical school.
The Long Island native, who is currently earning a master’s in education at Hofstra University, began wearing clothing that covers her elbows and knees after adopting a Torah-observant lifestyle four years ago.
She said she worked out in a skirt for several months at the Lucille Roberts branch on Kings Highway in the Flatbush neighborhood until an employee shouted at her for wearing a skirt and, implying it was a safety hazard, was told she would have to leave unless she took it off.
She returned to the Kings Highway branch soon after, and continued to work out without incident for a year, when a manager at the Kings Highway branch kicked her out again.
She switched her to the Flatbush Avenue branch in Downtown Brooklyn and worked out peacefully for eight months, but over the summer of 2015, she was kicked out twice, with an employee telling her the second that her membership “has been revoked,” she was “trespassing,” and that “the police are on the way.”
Jalal said she explained each time that she was wearing a skirt for religious reasons, to no avail. She has not returned to a Lucille Roberts gym since then, but works out on her own in her cramped Crown Heights apartment, she said.
“Ms. Jalal wants to work out, be fit, take classes and be allowed to attend Lucille Roberts in peace, without sacrificing her religious beliefs,” states the complaint, which was filed by the Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady firm. “At the gym, Ms. Jalal would always wear a knee-length, fitted but comfortable skirt. Given its length and fit, the skirt could not possibly interfere with any gym equipment … if anything, the skirt was safer to use on Lucille Roberts’ gym equipment than a pair of knee-length, baggy shorts, or a sweatshirt tied around the waist.
“The skirt did not violate Lucille Roberts’ “Dress Code,” which discourages gymwear (e.g., sweatpants),” the complaint continues. “But apparently, Ms. Jalal’s Jewish modesty did offend Lucille Roberts’ self-image of a health club filled with ‘strong, sexy and confident women.’”
According to the fitness chain’s “Member Rules and Regulations,” women are advised to “dress appropriately. Flannel may be making a comeback this fall, but is still inappropriate gym attire. This also goes for denim and street clothes. This may be a ladies gym but you should still look your best.”
A Lucille Roberts spokesperson has not responded to a request for an interview made by The Jewish Week last week, but issued a statement denying that employees were discriminating against Jalal.
“Here at Lucille Roberts we take the safety of our members very seriously. Our decision to uphold a dress policy, consistent with industry standards and equipment manufacturers, is not an attempt to hinder any personal religious beliefs,” the statement said. “Lucille Roberts is dedicated to providing a safe and healthy exercise environment for all our members.”
Several sports equipment manufacturers contacted by The Jewish Week said they don’t think wearing a knee-length skirt while using their machines is a safety hazard and the websites of several national health club chains contained no dress code baring such clothing.
Attorney Ilann Maazel, who has also filed a complaint with the state’s Commissioner of Human Rights, argued in court papers that Jalal is not the only “observant Jewish women” to be harassed and kicked out and that the company is “systematically discriminating against modest, observant Jewish women, for no defensible reason” and that it should pay punitive damages for “Jalal’s loss of membership, as well as embarrassment, shame, fear, and other emotional harm ... [caused by the company’s] reckless indifference to Ms. Jalal’s civil rights.”
steve@jewishweek.orgPlus much more, so enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Our website is always there for you with breaking news and exclusive videos, blogs, opinion columns and a variety of features. Check it out.
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BETWEEN THE LINES
Gary Rosenblatt
Where Are Tomorrow's Leaders?
Major philanthropic foundations play a central role in American Jewish life today, eclipsing federations in terms of dollars spent on a variety of creative projects. But it wasn't always so.
Read More
Gary Rosenblatt
Where Are Tomorrow’s Leaders?
Les Wexner has an Establishment critique, and an answer.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Major philanthropic foundations play a central role in American Jewish life today, but it wasn’t always so.
The Wexner Foundation, initiated and still led by Columbus, Ohio, businessman Les Wexner, began three decades ago with a specific goal that remains at the core of its now diverse portfolio: to identify and train future Jewish leaders.
In many ways it remains the model for other Jewish foundations, known for its emphasis on excellence in professional staff and educational experiences, its commitment to diversity and inclusion and to fostering what Larry Moses, a former president of the foundation, calls a “culture of collaboration” among its lay and professional alumni.
This past spring, a two-day celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the foundation was held in Columbus, attracting (many at their own expense) some 1,500 alumni of the various Wexner programs who came to show their appreciation for what many described as the gift of being a Wexner fellow. Also in attendance at the program, under the leadership of foundation president Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, were a number of scholars and Jewish professionals who teach in the program, and dignitaries, including former Israeli President Shimon Peres.
In keeping with the nature of Wexner programs, the event featured Torah study sessions, addresses on various aspects of leadership by alumni who are now prominent in a variety of fields, and late-night conversations on topics ranging from the environment to social justice, philanthropy, Jewish life on campus, and innovations in Jewish education.
In a recent (and rare) interview with The Jewish Week, Wexner, 78, perhaps best known as the founder, chairman and CEO of The Limited (now L Brands), reflected on his vision of creating “a sacred society,” his mentors, his pride in the foundation’s accomplishments, his ongoing frustration with the Jewish Establishment, and his advice on how to secure a strong future for the community.
Early on in his involvement with Jewish organizations, while in his 30s, Wexner sensed “a real leadership void,” he told me. “I thought that they were into funding, and no one focused on leadership and strategy. We didn’t do it as a community. And if there is success in our foundation it is that we stayed close to our core: develop leaders.”
While Wexner and his wife, Abigail, whom he married in 1993, remain major supporters of federations, their primary focus in Jewish philanthropy is the foundation, in which they have invested nearly $1 billion.
Since 1985, when the first Wexner Heritage class of 16 potential lay leaders was formed in Columbus, nearly 2,000 young men and women, carefully chosen and screened, have completed the two-year program from almost 100 cohorts in 33 different communities in the U.S. They have been taught and guided by some of the finest Jewish scholars and professionals from the U.S. and Israel whose goal is to provide a deeper Jewish knowledge base and inspire their charges to take on leadership roles in Jewish life, however the participants choose to do so.
Around the same time Wexner, addressing a need for leadership in Jewish professional life, launched a fellowship program for future rabbis, cantors, academics, educators and others in graduate school fields that strengthen Jewish community. Twenty students a year are chosen, and in addition to funding for tuition, they are offered mentoring and peer networks. Close to 500 people are alumni or current students in the program, which now partners with the William Davidson Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation.
In 1989, the Wexner Israel Fellowship program was created, offering mid-level Israeli public officials a year of study for a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. More than 240 Israeli public leaders have completed the program. And in the last two years Wexner has founded a leadership program at the Kennedy School for potential and senior Israeli leaders, and a service corps for Jewish teens in Columbus, an initiative of the Wexners’ daughters, Hannah and Sarah.
Although Les Wexner is a self-made global business leader with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $7.7 billion, he keeps a relatively low profile in Jewish life and comes across in conversation as modest, and a bit shy, a product of his Midwestern roots.
He spoke of his deep appreciation for the staff, educators and alumni involved in the foundation’s programs, and the gratitude he felt on being with the 1,500 participants at the anniversary celebration a few months ago.
“Abigail and I have got more than we’ve given, and certainly energy from you,” he told the assembled at the closing ceremony last spring.
It is clear that Wexner’s approach to philanthropy is based on his success in business, which is credited with originating the concept of specialized retailing. (Thus, the launching of “The Limited” when others were establishing department stores selling a wide variety of products.)
“As a businessman I knew that any enterprise is only as strong as the vision and talent of its leadership,” he says. “The same is true within the Jewish community and its institutions.”
Wexner mentioned Max Fisher, who died at 97 in 2005, the Detroit businessman and senior Jewish statesman who was a major donor to the Republican Party, as a major influence. “He cared, he was thoughtful and he was consistent; he was always there,” he said. “Leaders can’t get up [when they’re upset] and march out of the room. Max was patient, with a sense of rethinking and renewal.”
Rabbi Herbert Friedman, who died at 90 in 2008, was the first president of the foundation, a man with grand ideas and the ability to fulfill them. It was Rabbi Friedman who created the young leadership program and missions to Israel for national UJA when he was CEO, and was instrumental in doing the same at Wexner. Three decades ago, “it was a landmark decision” to hire a professional like Rabbi Friedman to run a Jewish foundation, Wexner recalled, and soon others followed.
Harvard professor and administrator Henry Rosovsky is credited with advising Wexner to “never compromise on quality” and to build his foundation slowly, being willing to stay with a project for the long term. “We are patient,” Wexner said of his philanthropic, and business, approach.
The only time in our conversation when he sounded impatient was when he described the national Jewish organizations’ resistance to leadership development and experimentation.
“It’s nonsense to say that federations can’t experiment, and it’s stupid to give them more money than they’re giving themselves,” Wexner said, adding that he was never approached, in the early years, to provide matching funds for federation projects. “Everyone was too busy raising money” to focus on the need for next-generation leadership.
For all of his major support of national Jewish groups, Wexner noted that “big organizations are hard to change and renew.” He believes that reinvention starts with local communities, not from the top down, and that the need for a fresh approach and experimentation is constant; otherwise established institutions — businesses or Jewish organizations — “will become obsolete,” he said.
Wexner is an advocate of a positive approach, in business and in Jewish life, especially at a time when there is much concern about a diminished American Jewish future. He said that when one is “on a low floor on the mood elevator, it seems there is no hope, all is lost, and you become the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Optimism, he asserted, should be based on a strong sense of values, solid research and a culture of bold leadership.
“The trends today point to intermarriage and assimilation, but everyone knew it 30 years ago,” Wexner said. “You need process to find strengths and weaknesses” and a commitment to apply thoughtful policies.
A lifelong reader, he requires business associates to read books on leadership and discuss them, and he would like to see Jewish groups training leaders from within, ensuring that they live up to the group’s values.
“We should be calling on strategic thinkers, but we get immobilized and paralyzed. We should be doing rather than waiting for Godot or the Messiah.”
Someone, he said, will come up with the right idea, but when that happens, “our institutions need the flexibility to change.”
Wexner hopes that his growing networks of talented, influential and committed alumni will overlap and interact with each other, working in concert to find solutions to the problems of the day.
“There’s no utility being a pessimist,” he said. “We as a people have a 5,000-year history of navigating” between realism and idealism.
As for his own legacy, he said he doesn’t think about it. “Nonsense — I worry about what I do today.” It’s “the good institutions that endure,” he said confidently.
His track record, entering a fourth decade through the foundation, remains a template for efforts to educate and inspire tomorrow’s leaders today.
Gary@jewishweek.org
MUSINGS
Rabbi David Wolpe
The Adult We've Become
Not long ago, I was sent a picture of myself at a very young age. As it was just before Yom Kippur, I began to wonder about the person in that picture - what would he think of the adult he had become?
Read More
Musings
The Adult We’ve Become
David Wolpe
David Wolpe
Not long ago, I was sent a picture of myself at a very young age. As it was just before Yom Kippur, I began to wonder about the person in that picture — what would he think of the adult he had become?
When we are young we have aspirations and assumptions about life. Some are confirmed, some denied and still others hang uncertainly just before us in the path of life. But it is worthwhile to think back on what we believed about ourselves when we began.
The child, wrote Wordsworth, is father to the man. We grow out of what we have been, and the buds are still visible in the branches. The Torah provides many examples: Moses is saved in a basket — “tevah” — the same word used for Noah’s Ark, and he ends up saving his people, just as the word foreshadows. We first encounter David as a young shepherd, leading the flock as later he will lead Israel.
We examine our childhood psychologically, but we should also think of it spiritually. What sort of people did we admire? Did we become that sort of person? If not, there is still time to make the child we were happy with the adult we have become.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.
The idyllic harbor in Grenada. Wikimedia Commons
TRAVEL
A Scent Of Paradise
Hilary Danailova
It's hurricane season in the Atlantic! That's plain to anyone suffering through a wet, dreary East Coast fall. With the onset of chilly nights, it's time to think about a winter escape.
Here's one that few Americans consider: the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, an under-the-radar spot that - by virtue of its relative obscurity - all but guarantees a low-key vacation.
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Travel
A Scent Of Paradise
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
The idyllic harbor in Grenada. Wikimedia Commons
It’s hurricane season in the Atlantic! That’s plain to anyone suffering through a wet, dreary East Coast fall. With the onset of chilly nights, it’s time to think about a winter escape.
Here’s one that few Americans consider: the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, an under-the-radar spot that — by virtue of its relative obscurity — all but guarantees a low-key vacation.
Direct flights on JetBlue run around $500 and take about five hours to St. George’s, the country’s capital city. Once in Grenada, you’ll find stunning white-sand beaches, snorkel-ready coves and pretty pastel towns that cling to green hillsides. Even the most tourist-heavy beach — Grand Anse, in a hotel zone south of the capital — feels gloriously unspoiled, like an Old Master’s depiction of paradise.
The largest and eponymous isle in the Grenadine chain, Grenada lies in the southeast Caribbean near the Venezuelan coast. Many Americans associate the name with a controversial Reagan-era military invasion, but today Grenada is best known for the St. George’s University School of Medicine, which trains legions of U.S. doctors.
Grenada’s status as a French colony until the late 18th century is a legacy that lingers in the oft-heard patois and in place names like St Cyr. But the island’s contemporary culture has a distinctly Anglo imprint from 200 years of British rule, which ended in the mid-’70s when the island gained independence and became a British Commonwealth realm (yes, that’s Queen Elizabeth II on the banknotes).
Grenada’s Jewish presence is considerably less historic, particularly in contrast to that in better-known islands like Curaçao and St. Thomas. But like my mom says, where you find doctors, you frequently find Jews — and at least in St. George’s, that’s true. Chabad, which arrived on the island just last year, estimates the St. George’s Jewish medical student population at roughly 500; an additional two dozen Jewish families live in the area, mostly relocated professionals and university personnel.
As Chabad’s fledgling synagogue takes shape — and more than 100 people regularly turn up for Shabbat services — these groups form the core of a 21st-century community. So while Grenada isn’t a Jewish heritage destination, its capital is eager to welcome Jewish visitors. The Chabad synagogue serves free, no-reservations services with a free Shabbat meal afterward, holiday celebrations, and up-to-date kosher dining information (posted on the Chabad website).
Wherever you go, wintry spices waft on the trade winds, lending an incongruous whiff of Thanksgiving. Markets are fragrant with nutmeg (Grenada is the world’s second-largest producer, with the fruit pictured on the flag), cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and allspice. Long known as the “Spice Island,” the country has lately promoted an eco-friendly approach to its harvest, pioneering organic cocoa production and inviting visitors to tour its sustainable farms.
The best loved of these is Belmont Estate in the provincial town of St. Patrick. As with most Grenada excursions, Belmont requires either a driver or a rental car (recommended) for the hour-long ride into the lush hills where chocolate is born. This 300-year-old working plantation has evolved into an emblem of modern Grenada — a sustainably run, eco-conscious agritourism mecca.
Spread over 450 rolling acres, Belmont offers enough sensory stimulation to fill a day. Wander through orchid and sugarcane gardens, stroll amid monkeys and parrots, tour the goat farm and dairy, and shop for local artisan wares at the craft cooperative. The plantation houses a museum that documents the society, traditions and decorative arts of colonial Grenada; several restaurants and cafés serve Caribbean buffets and fresh fruit drinks, while the outdoor produce stall tempts with just-picked papaya. You can learn everything you ever wanted to know about cocoa farming, and then sample the final product at its source.
As long as you’re roaming, the world’s oldest rum distillery is just a seven-minute drive away. The River Antoine Rum Distillery has been in continuous operation since 1785, churning out vats of fiery alcohol — up to 150 proof! — that gives new meaning to the word intoxicant. Tours are available of the picturesque moldering machinery, much of which looks as though it hasn’t been replaced since the pirate era.
Like so much of this region, Grenada is a paradise for nature lovers, with endless virgin beaches and rainforests to explore. The landscape is particularly beguiling at Annandale Falls — a scenic waterfall set amid fragrant herb gardens, with a swimmer-friendly pool below. Annandale makes an easy excursion from St. George’s; its popularity with tourists has created a cottage industry of locals who leap off the waterfall for a splashy donation.
Grenada evenings are best spent along the harbor at St. George’s, which has to be among the prettiest towns in the Caribbean. In the sultry twilight, those pastel-dotted hillsides could almost be Italy; the soft lilt of reggae drifting from cafés says otherwise.
Regardless, the shores of Grenada are a solid bet for the winter-weary.
editor@jewishweek.org
Wikimedia Commons
Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Seinfeld's Holy Visit
Maya Klausner
Editor
It may not be the Meshiach, but a powerful force is coming to the Holy Land.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is making his Israel stand up debut on December 19 at the Mivtachim Menorah Arena in Tel Aviv, according to JTA.
Read More
Seinfeld’s Holy Visit
Wikimedia Commons
Jerry Seinfeld will perform in Israel, making a lot of people happy pappys
Maya Klausner
Editor
Comedy
It may not be the Meshiach, but a powerful force is coming to the Holy Land.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is making his Israel stand up debut on December 19 at the Mivtachim Menorah Arena in Tel Aviv, according to JTA.
Star of the seminal sitcom that shares his last name and a long time top comic in the industry, Seinfeld, who is a member of the tribe, will be doing the show as part of his world tour.
This will be Seinfeld's first trip to Israel since 2007, when he visited to promote “The Bee Movie,” fittingly in the land of milk and honey.
Now he will be bringing his legendary stand up to the many faraway fans awaiting ticket sales, which start tomorrow, ranging from $65 to $234.
This is sure to be a festivus for the rest of us. Giddyup!
Jerry SeinfeldSeinfeldcomedystand upisraelstand up comedy
TOP STORIES
Israelis' New Normal Means Jiu-Jitsu, Pepper Spray
Michele Chabin
Contributing Editor
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.
Read More
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.orgReversing Course, DOE Vows To Broaden Yeshiva Probe
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
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.
Read More
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.
It may not be the Meshiach, but a powerful force is coming to the Holy Land.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is making his Israel stand up debut on December 19 at the Mivtachim Menorah Arena in Tel Aviv, according to JTA.
Star of the seminal sitcom that shares his last name and a long time top comic in the industry, Seinfeld, who is a member of the tribe, will be doing the show as part of his world tour.
This will be Seinfeld's first trip to Israel since 2007, when he visited to promote “The Bee Movie,” fittingly in the land of milk and honey.
Now he will be bringing his legendary stand up to the many faraway fans awaiting ticket sales, which start tomorrow, ranging from $65 to $234.
This is sure to be a festivus for the rest of us. Giddyup!
Jerry SeinfeldSeinfeldcomedystand upisraelstand up comedy
TOP STORIES
Israelis' New Normal Means Jiu-Jitsu, Pepper Spray
Michele Chabin
Contributing Editor
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.
Read More
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.orgReversing Course, DOE Vows To Broaden Yeshiva Probe
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
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.
Read More
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.
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.
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.orgOrthodox Woman Sues Fitness Chain For Bias
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
For a young chasidic woman intent on getting in a workout, there was no skirting this issue.
Yosefa Jalal had been working out peacefully for several months at the Kings Highway branch of Lucille Roberts until, in October of 2013, when, the 25-year-old teacher said, she was "targeted, harassed, screamed at, and banned" for exercising in a fitted, knee-length skirt.
Read More
New York
Orthodox Woman Sues Fitness Chain For Bias
Brooklyn teacher says she was banned from Lucille Roberts for working out in a knee-length skirt.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Is a skirt a hazard? The Lucille Roberts fitness chain expelled an Orthodox woman for wearing modest dress.
For a young chasidic woman intent on getting in a workout, there was no skirting this issue.
Yosefa Jalal had been working out peacefully for several months at the Kings Highway branch of Lucille Roberts until, in October of 2013, when, the 25-year-old teacher said, she was “targeted, harassed, screamed at, and banned” for exercising in a fitted, knee-length skirt.
Last week, she exercised her First Amendment rights by filing a lawsuit against the fitness chain Friday in Manhattan federal court.
In court papers, Jalal claims “repeated religious discrimination,” and asks for an injunction against her membership revocation as well as unspecified damages.
“I want to go back. What they did was wrong,” Jalal, who prefers to exercise in a women-only environment, told The Jewish Week. She said she knows of several other Orthodox women who also have been ordered to leave Lucille Roberts locations for the same reason.
Her lawsuit is the latest example of religious freedom clashes, a topic that has drawn increased notice in the past year. Several fundamentalist Christians, both public officials and owners of private businesses, have drawn criticism in some circles for such actions as refusing requests by same-sex couples for such items as marriage certificates and wedding cakes.
In a related case, a District Court judge last week ordered the Village of Pomona, in Rockland County, to explain why it has denied a Jewish group permission to build and operate a rabbinical school.
The Long Island native, who is currently earning a master’s in education at Hofstra University, began wearing clothing that covers her elbows and knees after adopting a Torah-observant lifestyle four years ago.
She said she worked out in a skirt for several months at the Lucille Roberts branch on Kings Highway in the Flatbush neighborhood until an employee shouted at her for wearing a skirt and, implying it was a safety hazard, was told she would have to leave unless she took it off.
She returned to the Kings Highway branch soon after, and continued to work out without incident for a year, when a manager at the Kings Highway branch kicked her out again.
She switched her to the Flatbush Avenue branch in Downtown Brooklyn and worked out peacefully for eight months, but over the summer of 2015, she was kicked out twice, with an employee telling her the second that her membership “has been revoked,” she was “trespassing,” and that “the police are on the way.”
Jalal said she explained each time that she was wearing a skirt for religious reasons, to no avail. She has not returned to a Lucille Roberts gym since then, but works out on her own in her cramped Crown Heights apartment, she said.
“Ms. Jalal wants to work out, be fit, take classes and be allowed to attend Lucille Roberts in peace, without sacrificing her religious beliefs,” states the complaint, which was filed by the Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady firm. “At the gym, Ms. Jalal would always wear a knee-length, fitted but comfortable skirt. Given its length and fit, the skirt could not possibly interfere with any gym equipment … if anything, the skirt was safer to use on Lucille Roberts’ gym equipment than a pair of knee-length, baggy shorts, or a sweatshirt tied around the waist.
“The skirt did not violate Lucille Roberts’ “Dress Code,” which discourages gymwear (e.g., sweatpants),” the complaint continues. “But apparently, Ms. Jalal’s Jewish modesty did offend Lucille Roberts’ self-image of a health club filled with ‘strong, sexy and confident women.’”
According to the fitness chain’s “Member Rules and Regulations,” women are advised to “dress appropriately. Flannel may be making a comeback this fall, but is still inappropriate gym attire. This also goes for denim and street clothes. This may be a ladies gym but you should still look your best.”
A Lucille Roberts spokesperson has not responded to a request for an interview made by The Jewish Week last week, but issued a statement denying that employees were discriminating against Jalal.
“Here at Lucille Roberts we take the safety of our members very seriously. Our decision to uphold a dress policy, consistent with industry standards and equipment manufacturers, is not an attempt to hinder any personal religious beliefs,” the statement said. “Lucille Roberts is dedicated to providing a safe and healthy exercise environment for all our members.”
Several sports equipment manufacturers contacted by The Jewish Week said they don’t think wearing a knee-length skirt while using their machines is a safety hazard and the websites of several national health club chains contained no dress code baring such clothing.
Attorney Ilann Maazel, who has also filed a complaint with the state’s Commissioner of Human Rights, argued in court papers that Jalal is not the only “observant Jewish women” to be harassed and kicked out and that the company is “systematically discriminating against modest, observant Jewish women, for no defensible reason” and that it should pay punitive damages for “Jalal’s loss of membership, as well as embarrassment, shame, fear, and other emotional harm ... [caused by the company’s] reckless indifference to Ms. Jalal’s civil rights.”
steve@jewishweek.orgRabbi With A 'Catholic' Sense Of Humor
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
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.
Read More
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.org
_____________________________
The Jewish Week
“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.orgOrthodox Woman Sues Fitness Chain For Bias
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
For a young chasidic woman intent on getting in a workout, there was no skirting this issue.
Yosefa Jalal had been working out peacefully for several months at the Kings Highway branch of Lucille Roberts until, in October of 2013, when, the 25-year-old teacher said, she was "targeted, harassed, screamed at, and banned" for exercising in a fitted, knee-length skirt.
Read More
New York
Orthodox Woman Sues Fitness Chain For Bias
Brooklyn teacher says she was banned from Lucille Roberts for working out in a knee-length skirt.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Is a skirt a hazard? The Lucille Roberts fitness chain expelled an Orthodox woman for wearing modest dress.
For a young chasidic woman intent on getting in a workout, there was no skirting this issue.
Yosefa Jalal had been working out peacefully for several months at the Kings Highway branch of Lucille Roberts until, in October of 2013, when, the 25-year-old teacher said, she was “targeted, harassed, screamed at, and banned” for exercising in a fitted, knee-length skirt.
Last week, she exercised her First Amendment rights by filing a lawsuit against the fitness chain Friday in Manhattan federal court.
In court papers, Jalal claims “repeated religious discrimination,” and asks for an injunction against her membership revocation as well as unspecified damages.
“I want to go back. What they did was wrong,” Jalal, who prefers to exercise in a women-only environment, told The Jewish Week. She said she knows of several other Orthodox women who also have been ordered to leave Lucille Roberts locations for the same reason.
Her lawsuit is the latest example of religious freedom clashes, a topic that has drawn increased notice in the past year. Several fundamentalist Christians, both public officials and owners of private businesses, have drawn criticism in some circles for such actions as refusing requests by same-sex couples for such items as marriage certificates and wedding cakes.
In a related case, a District Court judge last week ordered the Village of Pomona, in Rockland County, to explain why it has denied a Jewish group permission to build and operate a rabbinical school.
The Long Island native, who is currently earning a master’s in education at Hofstra University, began wearing clothing that covers her elbows and knees after adopting a Torah-observant lifestyle four years ago.
She said she worked out in a skirt for several months at the Lucille Roberts branch on Kings Highway in the Flatbush neighborhood until an employee shouted at her for wearing a skirt and, implying it was a safety hazard, was told she would have to leave unless she took it off.
She returned to the Kings Highway branch soon after, and continued to work out without incident for a year, when a manager at the Kings Highway branch kicked her out again.
She switched her to the Flatbush Avenue branch in Downtown Brooklyn and worked out peacefully for eight months, but over the summer of 2015, she was kicked out twice, with an employee telling her the second that her membership “has been revoked,” she was “trespassing,” and that “the police are on the way.”
Jalal said she explained each time that she was wearing a skirt for religious reasons, to no avail. She has not returned to a Lucille Roberts gym since then, but works out on her own in her cramped Crown Heights apartment, she said.
“Ms. Jalal wants to work out, be fit, take classes and be allowed to attend Lucille Roberts in peace, without sacrificing her religious beliefs,” states the complaint, which was filed by the Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady firm. “At the gym, Ms. Jalal would always wear a knee-length, fitted but comfortable skirt. Given its length and fit, the skirt could not possibly interfere with any gym equipment … if anything, the skirt was safer to use on Lucille Roberts’ gym equipment than a pair of knee-length, baggy shorts, or a sweatshirt tied around the waist.
“The skirt did not violate Lucille Roberts’ “Dress Code,” which discourages gymwear (e.g., sweatpants),” the complaint continues. “But apparently, Ms. Jalal’s Jewish modesty did offend Lucille Roberts’ self-image of a health club filled with ‘strong, sexy and confident women.’”
According to the fitness chain’s “Member Rules and Regulations,” women are advised to “dress appropriately. Flannel may be making a comeback this fall, but is still inappropriate gym attire. This also goes for denim and street clothes. This may be a ladies gym but you should still look your best.”
A Lucille Roberts spokesperson has not responded to a request for an interview made by The Jewish Week last week, but issued a statement denying that employees were discriminating against Jalal.
“Here at Lucille Roberts we take the safety of our members very seriously. Our decision to uphold a dress policy, consistent with industry standards and equipment manufacturers, is not an attempt to hinder any personal religious beliefs,” the statement said. “Lucille Roberts is dedicated to providing a safe and healthy exercise environment for all our members.”
Several sports equipment manufacturers contacted by The Jewish Week said they don’t think wearing a knee-length skirt while using their machines is a safety hazard and the websites of several national health club chains contained no dress code baring such clothing.
Attorney Ilann Maazel, who has also filed a complaint with the state’s Commissioner of Human Rights, argued in court papers that Jalal is not the only “observant Jewish women” to be harassed and kicked out and that the company is “systematically discriminating against modest, observant Jewish women, for no defensible reason” and that it should pay punitive damages for “Jalal’s loss of membership, as well as embarrassment, shame, fear, and other emotional harm ... [caused by the company’s] reckless indifference to Ms. Jalal’s civil rights.”
steve@jewishweek.orgRabbi With A 'Catholic' Sense Of Humor
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
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.
Read More
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.org
_____________________________
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, New York 10036 United States
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