Friday, October 23, 2015
Dear Reader,
Hard by New York City, the Hillels at four Westchester colleges are struggling to gain a foothold against anti-Israel sentiment and apathy.
New York
On Leafy Campuses, Hillel Struggles For A Foothold
At four small Westchester colleges, Jewish students battle apathy, anti-Israel sentiment.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Andi Cantor, a Jewish student leader at Sarah Lawrence College. Hannah Dreyfus/JW
As the fall semester neared, Andi Cantor, a Jewish student leader at Sarah Lawrence College, was afraid to go back to campus. After inviting an Israeli soldier to speak at the Bronxville school last spring, she’d become the subject of virulent Facebook posts, angry email chains and threatening stares and whispers.
Sarah Friedson, a senior at Pace University in Pleasantville and a professional dancer, is fond of wearing “I Love Israel” T-shirts to class. Along with five Jewish peers, she worked to reboot the dormant campus Hillel last year. Now, the Pace Hillel is an official campus club, and the six students have big plans going forward.
Mellysa Stiel, a psychology major at Manhattanville College in Purchase, faces overwhelming apathy from fellow Jewish students as she tries to spearhead beginner-friendly Jewish events. Given a certain amount of ignorance about Jewish life on the part of the student body in general, Stiel and her Hillel board are working to craft a response as they confront blunt misinformation about Israel and anti-Semitic incidents.
In the shadows of Columbia University, NYU and the CUNY schools, universities with booming Hillels and equally vocal Palestinian student groups, four campuses in leafy Westchester County are engaged in battles of their own. Though mere miles from New York City, these campuses — Sarah Lawrence, Pace and Manhattanville, as well as Purchase College — face a unique set of challenges as newly minted campus Hillels fight to make inroads with Jewish students, and combat growing anti-Israel sentiment in the wider student body.
Tucked into a green corner of southern Westchester, Sarah Lawrence College, the private liberal arts school known for its steep price tag and individualized courses of study, seems to be a collegiate paradise. On a warm day in September, students sat in small groups at tables outside a dining hall talking and laughing, some typing on sleek MacBooks. Elegant brick buildings and sprawling, manicured lawns completed the picture.
But for Cantor, a senior studying writing and literature, the scene is far from peaceful.
“I’ve become a persona non grata to some,” she said, sitting on a park bench outside one of the study halls.
As the president of the campus Hillel and one of few openly pro-Israel students at a school (where nearly a third of the students are Jewish), she’d grown accustomed to threatening messages on social media, listserv discussions that single her out by name, and icy stares and purposeful whispers when she passes by.
“I didn’t want to come back this semester, and my mom really didn’t want me to come back,” said Cantor, 21, who was out on sick leave during 2015’s spring semester.
Wearing casual black leggings and an off-the-shoulder black top, Cantor did not stand out visually from others on campus, and showed no sign that she felt deeply estranged from her fellow students. But, she said, “If I had known what I would face here, I would not have signed up.”
She referred to an event last semester in April that piqued student anger. As Hillel’s Israel intern, a position that no longer exists at the school, Cantor invited an Israeli soldier to speak on campus about his army service. The move spurred an outpouring of protest on campus and online as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group that protests Israel’s “apartheid regime,” according to its online description, petitioned the administration to cancel the event.
Virulent posts such as “This is disgusting, I can’t believe Sarah Lawrence would invite a terrorist to our campus” flooded the Facebook page where the event was posted. Another student posted a video of herself crying, claiming she was having nightmares because of the imminent event.
“The anger, the hate was so real,” said Cantor, who described the days leading up the event as “hysteria.” Friends who had nothing to do with the event unfriended her on Facebook, and many stopped talking to her in person. “I felt isolated and alone.”
Despite protests, the soldier came and spoke. According to Cantor, who did not attend the event herself because she was out on sick leave, the IDF soldier was interrupted several times during his presentation by the student moderator, who felt the need to check that everyone in the audience still felt “safe.” His presentation was followed by boos, accusations and some shouting, according to one student who attended the event but preferred to remain anonymous.
Neither the dean of student affairs at Sarah Lawrence nor representatives of the college’s SJP chapter responded to requests for comment. According to a source close to the situation, the administration is said to be investigating claims of cyberbullying surrounding the event.
“I didn’t want this to mean the end of Hillel, but there was no going back,” Cantor said. “Some things you can’t un-see, and you definitely can’t un-feel. The campus showed its true colors, and people stopped putting on a façade of being polite and accepting. But I had to come back. If I’m not going to represent Israel on this campus, who will?”
------♦------
At the close of the 2014-15 academic year, the question was not hypothetical. After the turbulent year of student protests spearheaded by SJP and intimidation on social media, not one student volunteered to be on the Hillel board at Sarah Lawrence. Being associated with the Jewish, pro-Israel group was “too much of a risk,” said one formerly involved student (who also asked to remain anonymous).
“It was a sobering low,” said Rachel Klein, executive director of Hillels of Westchester, which serves 1,300 Jewish students at Purchase, Pace and Manhattanville, all with Jewish populations of about 10 percent, as well as Sarah Lawrence. “There was a moment last semester when I said to myself ‘there might not be a Hillel this year.’”
Though the Sarah Lawrence chapter persevered (Cantor recruited new board members one by one), a recent visit to all four Westchester Hillels showed that serious challenges persist for Jewish students.
“The blatant ignorance about simple Jewish life is shocking,” said Friedson, 25, a Pace senior and secretary of the campus Hillel. At the Pace Hillel board meeting, she arrived a bit late, wearing black leggings under her “I Love Israel” T-shirt.
“Our role at Hillel is to educate the student body, more than anything else,” Friedson said. She described one incident in which a campus newspaper printed a yellow Jude star, the cloth patch Nazis forced Jews to sew on teir garments as a badge of shame, to wish Jewish students a happy Chanukah. She contacted the editorial staff and asked them to remove the offensive image. The image was removed. “We want students to know what ‘Shabbat’ is, let alone come to a dinner.”
Given the high volume of synagogues and Jewish organizations in Westchester County, the ignorance of the largely commuter student body about Jewish life is mystifying, said Klein. “When we first introduce ourselves as Hillel, students don’t even know we’re a Jewish group,” she said. “We’re building up from scratch.”
And apparently having some success. At Pace, Hillel was dormant for the last decade. Only in the past year did the group reapply for official club status, a step that must be completed before a club can begin programming. With six board members, they are the only functioning Jewish organization on campus.
“It’s become a safe haven for Jewish students,” said Emily Weiss, 20, a junior and a Hillel board member who said she’s been looking for her place on campus since freshman year.
------♦------
Among the four campuses, Purchase boasts the most established Hillel; it has become a retreat for Jewish and non-Jewish students alike. Unlike the other Westchester Hillels, Purchase Hillel has a room on campus that is reserved for its activities. It operates on a larger budget (both from Hillel and the student government) and often serves as the meeting ground for Hillel members from the other campuses.
Rick Redlon, a senior at Purchase, is a non-Jewish member of the Hillel board. “I joined for the food,” he quipped, before explaining that the community service element of the club drew him in. “Selling food to raise money for those in need — that’s something anyone can relate to, no matter their background,” he said, referring to Challah For Hunger, a Hillel-wide initiative to bake and sell challah to raise money for a variety of causes. (Nearly a quarter of the students who participate in Hillel events across the four campuses are not Jewish, Klein said.)
About 15 Purchase students milled around in the generous space filled with couches, chairs and tables. An adjoining kosher kitchen hummed with student activity, the freezer always stocked with frozen bagels.
Still, despite the general ease and calm, some incidents there have raised alarm. In March, swastikas were scrawled in three Purchase dormitories. One of the swastikas was etched onto the door of a Jewish student.
“It was disturbing,” said Emet Tauber, a junior at Purchase. A wheelchair-bound, transgender student with colorful eye makeup, Tauber described the tight-knit support system he’d found through Hillel, but added that challenges to the group’s Jewish identity are disheartening. “It automatically made me reflect on what it means to be a Jew.”
Part of that reflection includes The Israel Conversation, said Tauber. The lines between Jewish identity and one’s position on Israel often blur uncomfortably, he said.
“For me, it’s an internal struggle. If you’re critical of Israel, people will jump on you and be like, ‘What side are you on anyway?’ But it’s complicated.” He finds it frustrating that his opinions about Israel “automatically reflect on who I am as a Jew.”
Still, Hillel’s goal on the Purchase campus is to ensure that all students feel comfortable expressing their opinions, no matter how diverse those opinions are, said Becky Nussbaum, president of the Purchase Hillel. A junior who has been on the Hillel board since her freshman year, Nussbaum spoke briskly and directly.
“This is an open space — it’s a place for discussion,” she said, “We don’t close the door to anyone.”
That open-door policy includes Palestinian students and sympathizers, said Nussbaum, though few have taken the club up on the offer. Students for Justice in Palestine is not currently active at Purchase, but Palestinian student activists have applied several times for official club status. Their application has been repeatedly denied. According to Hillel students, this is because their “anti-Israel agenda” has been too blatant.
“They weren’t proposing any pro-Palestinian content, just anti-Israel,” said Nussbaum. “SJP can feel free to apply again — they haven’t done so.”
Politics aside, a celebration of Israeli culture is apparently something most students can agree on, Nussbaum said. Last semester, Hillel’s “A Night in Tel Aviv” event drew the biggest crowd of any event in the chapter’s history. Five hundred Jewish and non-Jewish students partied the night away to Israeli music with blue and white flags waving.
“It was a rare moment when we all looked at each other and said, ‘wow, we really pulled off a hot event’ — and it had to do with Israel!” said Nussbaum, the board bobbing their heads in agreement.
------♦------
The Manhattanville Hillel, though not as prolific as Purchase when it comes to putting on events, benefits from the committed leadership of Mellysa Stiel and Jen Weintraub, who together revived the club two years ago. Prior to their leadership, the Hillel, previously the Jewish Students Association, received little attention from students. Stiel, a senior, is also an Emerson Fellow, a prestigious one-year fellowship sponsored by the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs, that recruits and trains college students to spearhead educational Israel programming.
With short bleached-blonde hair and wearing, like so many college students, all black, Stiel described Manhattanville as the “most apathetic campus in Westchester.”
“Getting students to care about anything is an uphill battle,” she said. A straightforward Shabbat dinner is an undertaking, let alone an event involving Israel, she added.
Evelyn Obertnaya, another member of the Manhattanville board, said that the “disrespect and ignorance” she has faced as a Jewish student is “hard to believe.”
“We’re in Westchester — it’s not like we’re far from Jewish life,” she said.
In one particularly offensive incident, Obertnaya described how she was working a table for Hillel at a club fair when a student, upon hearing that the group was Jewish, threw a penny on the ground to see if she would “go pick it up.”
“Deep-rooted stereotypes about Jews still exist here, on a liberal arts campus only a train-ride away from New York City,” she said.
Weintraub, the co-president, said the ignorance includes Israel as well. “Most [students] just assume that the narrative they hear in mainstream media is the way it is — Israel as the oppressor,” she said. Challenging these notions often compels her to speak up in class, even to contradict the professor. She described one class in which the professor used “Israel” and “apartheid” interchangeably.
“I stood up and said, ‘that’s not right, and I find your wording offensive,” said Weintraub.
A college spokeswoman said the college would never condone “any comment like that” and that it is “hard for me to believe a professor would be that outspoken.” The college has students from “all religious backgrounds” and promotes social justice and community-service, she said, adding that she was “deeply upset” to learn of the incident.
Weintraub’s passion for Israel was fueled by a March of the Living trip to Eastern Europe and Israel she participated in after her freshman year.
Though animus towards Israel does exist on campus, misinformation, confusion and basic ignorance are far more rampant, student leaders said.
“They [students] don’t mean any harm when they call Israel ‘Palestine,’ they just don’t know better,” student leaders said. Apparent ignorance among professors is less excusable, she said. “If I don’t stand up for Israel in the classroom, no one else will.”
------♦------
Back at Sarah Lawrence, Cantor said her goal this semester is to focus on her studies and enjoy her last months as an undergraduate. In her renewed role as Hillel president and with a fresh board of 10 members by her side, she aims to build up Hillel as a place where Jewish students can comfortably celebrate their cultural identity — or “just being Jews,” as she put it.
“No more controversies, no more Facebook hate — for now, let’s just celebrate Jewish food and holidays and Shabbat dinner,” she said. For the moment, events dealing with Israeli politics will have to take a back seat. “This is not the Hillel of last year. If people are going to protest free hummus, let them.”
Still, as neutral as she aims to be, Cantor is aware that her return to campus, and Hillel’s refusal to fold, is itself a statement. “If I let fear prevent me from being here, I let them win,” she said, her quiet voice difficult to hear amid the laughter from surrounding tables and rustle of autumn leaves. “They can turn their backs on me, glare at me, whisper about me, but I’m not going away.”
hannah@jewishweek.orgRabbi David Wolpe also takes up questions of community and connection. In this week's column, he explores the question of why "it takes a minyan."
Musings
It Takes A Minyan
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David Wolpe
Why do the central prayers of Judaism require a minyan, a quorum of 10? That is true of the Kedusha in the Amidah and the Kaddish, among others.
Such a central question has no single answer. One response is that human beings are in God’s image, and for some experiences you require as many images of God around you as possible — for comfort, and sometimes for inspiration. Another answer is that Judaism emphasizes community, and so wishes to ensure that Jews will always seek out community, since there will always be a need for prayer.
In addition there is an important symbolic statement Judaism makes to each of us. There are many central tasks of life that can never be accomplished alone. It is not an issue of effort, or intelligence — the greatest scholar in Judaism may not recite the Kedusha alone either. Rather, the nature of God’s world requires we do certain things together. Cooperation and community are not only comforts. You cannot be a full Jew alone on a mountaintop; to reach the heights you need others, pulling and pushing and climbing with you. God exists alone. For us, as the old saying goes — it takes a minyan.
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.On a lighter note, Managing Editor Rob Goldblum reveals the meaty subtext behind the Jewish deli.
New York
Sex And The City Deli
Robert Goldblum
Managing Editor
Author of new history of the N.Y. deli suggests a meaty symbolism lurks within places like Katz’s. Wikimedia Commons
Who knew that the delicatessen was actually a man cave, one filled to overflowing with potent symbols of male virility?
In a talk Wednesday evening at the Mid-Manhattan Library, Ted Merwin, author of the just-released “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli” (NYU Press), made the case that sex and deli go together like, well, pastrami and seeded rye bread. What were Jewish families doing when they would “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army,” as the World War II ad for Katz’s Delicatessen urged? Merwin laughed knowingly and said, “They were sending a phallic symbol,” a symbol of potency for their sons to gain strength to fight the enemy.
And those 1950s-era ads from Hebrew National and Zion Kosher with scantily clad, buxom models with necklaces, belts and headpieces made of all sizes of wieners? Well, you get the erotic picture.
And the overstuffed, skyscraper pastrami and corned beef sandwiches that became the standard, iconic fare of the New York deli? They were stand-ins for the aspirations and appetites of the Jewish male as he made his food-rich journey from the Lower East Side to the gilded suburbs, and from the margins of American life to the very center of it, with a wallet that may have been overstuffed as well. Holding one of those meaty sandwiches in your paws (“There’s something about men and beef,” Merwin quipped), was like holding the American Dream.
But the deli wasn’t only about sex, of course. Merwin argues that, in important ways, the deli came to replace the synagogue as the central address for Jewish life as Jews became more secularized, more assimilated and increasingly unmoored from the traditions of the Old Country. Like the Irish pub, the Italian social hall and the African-American barbershop, the deli, which was largely a male domain, Merwin said, was a place to recharge your Jewish batteries with your fellow landsmen.
Interestingly the deli, a recreation of the meat palaces in Paris and Munich, didn’t take off in the early days of the Jewish immigrant experience on the Lower East Side. Few Jews had enough money to eat out, Merwin pointed out. But in a generation, Jews had gained a foothold in American society and were decamping to the outer boroughs. It was there, in Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx, where the delis flourished. Jewish influence in the theater industry gave the deli a show-biz glitz as actors, comics and agents gathered at the Stage and Carnegie delis in the theater district. (Merwin writes about theater for The Jewish Week.) An average Jew could get a mile-high sandwich named for Al Jolson or Eddie Cantor — a brush with fame, with a side of coleslaw.
But sex was never far from the menu. When Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) courts Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), he takes her — where else? — to a Midtown deli. It’s a setting, Merwin said, where he’s in his element, “he’s in control” of the dating situation. And he can only shrug and look quizzically as she orders a pastrami on white bread with lettuce and tomato.
And then there’s that unforgettable “I’ll have what she’s having” orgasm scene in Katz’s Deli from “When Harry Met Sally.” In the ultimate gender switcheroo, Merwin explained, the man cave of the deli had morphed, been crashed, so to speak, by a woman — and a non-Jewish one at that. The story of the deli, then, which moves from the provincial corners of Jewish life in New York to Middle American pop culture, had climaxed.
editor@jewishweek.orgHave a great weekend, everybody,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
THE ARTS
Sonny Fox on _Wonderama._ Courtesy of Sonny Fox
From Brooklyn To Broadway, And Back Again
Rivka Hai
Editorial Intern
During my interview with Sonny Fox, he broke out into song. While reminiscing about his Brooklyn childhood, he described Friday night dinners, which he remembers as frenzied and warm.
"Grandpa would come home late from the synagogue with other old men with nicotine stained teeth. We would sing and the tables would bounce - we would pound on the table. This is what the young Jews grew up with," Fox said, and proceeded to break into a traditional Jewish niggun, a wordless melody.
Read More
New York
From Brooklyn To Broadway, And Back Again
“Wonderama” star Sonny Fox returns to Flatbush school for an evening of anecdotes and reflections on the songwriters behind the show tunes.
Rivka Hia
Editorial Intern
Sonny Fox on "Wonderama." Courtesy of Sonny Fox
During my interview with Sonny Fox, he broke out into song. While reminiscing about his Brooklyn childhood, he described Friday night dinners, which he remembers as frenzied and warm.
“Grandpa would come home late from the synagogue with other old men with nicotine stained teeth. We would sing and the tables would bounce — we would pound on the table. This is what the young Jews grew up with,” Fox said, and proceeded to break into a traditional Jewish niggun, a wordless melody.
On Saturday, the former “Wonderama” host, war correspondent and German prisoner of war, returns to the old neighborhood to headline an evening celebrating the songwriters and lyricists of 20th-century Broadway.
“From Broadway to Brooklyn,” to be held at his alma mater, P.S. 217, will raise money for arts programs at the school. During the evening Fox will share personal stories from his work on Broadway and show excerpts from The Songwriters, the series he produced for CBS Cable. Featuring such Broadway icons as Alan J. Lerner, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Charles Strouse, Sheldon Harnick, Burton Lane, and Yip Harburg, Fox will offer a window into the lives and minds of the people who pioneered the uniquely American art form of musical theater.
Irwin “Sonny” Fox is best known for the award-winning children’s program “Wonderama,” which he hosted from 1959-1967. Last year, after the publication of his book “But You Made the Front Page: Wonderama, War, and a Whole Bunch of Life,” the 90-year-old Los Angeles grandpa made what he called “His Farewell Tour,” visiting childhood haunts.
It was during that trip that he hopped the Q-train to Flatbush and stopped by P.S. 217, where he hadn’t stepped foot since 1938. But some teachers remembered him from their own “Wonderama” years, and soon they were introducing him to students and showing him around the school. Not long after the visit, Fox offered to do a performance to help the school raise money.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Jewish Week, Fox reminisced about his Depression-era childhood, his professional life and highlights of Saturday’s show. He also explained why the show focuses on Broadway songwriters, rather than his “Wonderama” years.
“I want to make people appreciate the potent power the creative people had,” Fox said.
Writing lyrics for a musical is harder than it may seem, he said. “When you write a score every song has to have a purpose. It has to introduce you to a character, deepen the emotional impact of what’s going on. It has to fit in context of the developing plot,” he said. Shows also have to be true to the time period in which it is set, but also made relevant for a contemporary audience.“If you want to write Gigi in turn-of-the-century France, you have to write anew,” he said.
Through storytelling, Fox said he hopes to impart to the audience “a deeper sense of what opera is to the Italians” — a feeling of pride in America’s homegrown theatrical form, and through hearing about what the composers and lyricists have done, he hopes audience members will “not only be enthralled, but have a deeper sense of appreciation” for the people behind some of Broadway’s most iconic shows.
Fox spent his childhood on East 9th Street between Foster Avenue and Avenue H. He celebrated his bar mitzvah at Young Israel of Flatbush and graduated from P.S. 217 in 1938.
He fondly recalls his “Farewell Tour’ from last year, where he returned to places from his childhood. Getting off at Newkirk Plaza, Fox recounts the experience of seeing his old house as a parking lot. In his mind, the street still echoes with memories of playing hockey and stickball, pausing for cars and — and horse-drawn wagons — to pass through.
A lot has changed in the eight decades since. “The most striking difference is that when I went to P.S. 217 the neighborhood was half Irish and half Jewish,” he said. Fox’s old neighborhood, now called Kensington, hosts large populations of immigrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as a growing contingent of black-hat and chasidic Jews moving over from nearby Borough Park. The student body also includes children of Caribbean, Latino and East Asian immigrants from nearby Ditmas Park. School notices are printed in English, Spanish, Urdu, Bengali, Tajiki and Uzbek; more than 30 languages are spoken in the students’ homes.
“That’s what’s so wonderful about New York. I was a child of immigrants, these are new children of immigrants in the same situation. I think of schools as Laundromats taking them through the cycles of education and making them American. It keeps regenerating,” he said.
In “Broadway Comes to Brooklyn,” every one of the lyricists and composers featured is Jewish. What’s the connection between Jews and musicals? Fox says that the musical inclinations of so many children of Ashkenazi immigrants is due to “the religious fervor of that time — the fervent music that was part of the joy of Eastern Europe.”
Fox’s own family is in that mold: His grandparents continued the traditions — and recipes — of the Old World in Brooklyn.
“I can remember going to my grandma’s house for Friday night dinner. She was one of the worst cooks in the world,” he said. Fox described always having challah and Sabbath candles at his family’s house.
“Zeyde [grandpa] always wanted to be the president of the synagogue. If they didn’t make him president he would make a new storefront synagogue,” he said. Fox remembers carrying the Torah around the synagogues with his grandfather.
Fox explained that music was one sector not closed to Jews, unlike many professions and Ivy League schools, which had caps on how many Jews they would take. “This was a time where Harvard had a Jewish admissions quota. This brought us Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein, and Alan Jay Lerner, all those wondrous people were Jews,” he said.
In explaining his selection of the composers and lyricists for his talk, Fox said, “I didn’t pick them because they were Jews, I picked them because they were the best.”
When asked if Fox had any hopes for the future of P.S. 217, he said, “my hopes are getting up in the morning,” he quipped.
“It’s a far better school than when I was there, much more interesting and exciting,” he said, referring to the new arts programs at the school.
Fox was asked to join the board of Friends of P.S. 217, a nonprofit formed to raise money to support the school's academic and enrichment efforts. But he turned the position down.
“I’m 90. I’m not joining any board any more,” he said. Fox hopes this fundraiser can help raise P.S. 217’s profile.Fox said that the experience of writing a memoir changed the way he perceives his whole life. “When I started writing, I didn’t think I would write so much about my life in Brooklyn. Brooklyn was so bloody vivid, I wanted to recreate what it was like to grow up there, lower middle class, in that part of the world,” he said.
Fox said that nothing that happened in his professional life was anything he planned. “It was as if there was a hand that said “you’re not going there, you’re going here,”” he said, referring to how fate had led him down certain educational and professional paths. After graduating from Madison High School (Midwood High School hadn’t existed yet, Fox joked), Fox said he had no ambition or self-confidence. He matriculated at North Carolina State University, “the big textile college in the country.”
“Because I had a pushy Jewish mother, when the teachers said I wasn’t doing the work I was capable of, she said I was bored.” Fox said that he skipped three grades, not, perhaps, the best move, to be several years younger than his high school peers. “I knew nothing about long division — or girls,” he said.
After graduating high school in January instead of June, North Carolina State told Fox he had to wait for the fall to matriculate. Fox didn’t want to wait for six months “doing nothing,” and decided to go to NYU and get transferrable credits. “Fate picked me up and said this is what you’re going to do. The phone would ring and my life would change,” he said. Fox ended up getting his career start from that one semester of radio classes at NYU. Fox said, “My feeling about life is don’t make any plans about life.”
Fox described "Wonderama" as “a four-hour show with no real production budget.” The show had a four-hour block on Sundays. While he felt that other people on the channel were good performers who “did characters and threw pies,” Fox does not consider himself a performer.
“It took me a while to discover what my asset was. I realized the kids were my asset,” he said. Fox began to engage with children. “I understood what a fascinating prospect it was. If you could get them to trust you, if you could listen to them, they have so much to offer,” he said.
“They have a great interior life you don’t know anything about,” he said. “If you ask kids about God (Fox noted that it would make a great column for this writer), kids don’t speak in abstracts,” he said. Fox remembers asking one child, “How tall is God?” “One kid said 5'8, one said 5'11. I remember saying to a 10 year-old boy: “You keep saying he, what if god is a girl?”
“You can see something flicker over his face as he deals with that question,” he said. Fox said that the thing he learned from kids is you have to be able to get them to feel you respect them. He said, “You have to let the silences hang in the air. If you stop and stay with him or her and let the silence go for [a while] they will go again and give you more great stuff.” Fox said these were conversations he “bets they don’t have with their parents,” and noted that by talking to children, “you will discover how fervent their lives are.”
"Wonderama" is still warmly remembered by the Baby Boomer generation. There's a 750-member Facebook group dedicated to Fox's "Wonderama" days.As for “From Brooklyn to Broadway,” he makes a passionate pitch:
“Come and see the show you’ll have a lot of fun,” he said. “The audiences end up laughing, cheering and crying. These people can do that to you. When Sheldon Harnick talks about his song “Do You Love Me” from “Fiddler on the Roof”, it’s emotionally rousing and funny,” he said.
Then, like any good Jewish parent he adds a touch of guilt, “Don’t miss this, I’m not going to be around much longer,” he said. “It could be my farewell performance."
Tickets to the P.S. 217 fundraiser cost $25. A limited number of VIP tickets will be available for $100 and will include a private reception with Fox before the show as well as a signed copy of “But You Made the Front Page.” Tickets may be purchased through The Friends of P.S. 217 website at www.fo217.org.FOOD & WINE
‘No Schnitzel Left Behind’
New York native Joseph Gitler_ left_ founded an Israeli organization that provides the needy with the food gleaned from restaurants.
New York native Joseph Gitler_ left_ founded an Israeli organization that provides the needy with the food gleaned from restaurants.
One third of Israeli children live below the poverty line.
'No Schnitzel Left Behind'
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
CULTURE VIEW
Jews, Blacks And Deli
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Ted Merwin
When the Anglo-Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill, in his popular 1908 drama, “The Melting Pot,” invented the term that became a major metaphor for how we view the ethnic life of New York, he wasn’t talking about food. Zangwill’s idea was that Old World European immigrants were being amalgamated with other immigrants in a divine “crucible” to form a sturdier, more self-reliant kind of person. But the reality, then as today, is that cultures do meet through food; Americans (beginning with the colonists and the Native Americans, as we celebrate at Thanksgiving) liberally sample each other’s dishes, often adopting them as their own.
Walk into Lenny’s Deli in Owings Mills, Md. (just outside Baltimore) and take a look at the menu, which includes not just corned beef sandwiches and knishes, but fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. The owners are Jewish, but almost all of the employees are black, and the clientele is a mixture of blacks and Jews. The two cultures are presented side by side, united through the foods that they eat.
Every culture has its soul food, to which the members of that culture go to seek a sense of comfort, consolation, and connection to their ancestors. For Jewish Americans, it is often the Eastern European-derived food of the delicatessen — peppery pastrami, succulent corned beef, and matzah ball dumplings with chicken soup. For African-Americans, it is often the food of the South — crispy fried chicken, glossy collard greens, and creamy sweet potato pie.
Somewhere along the way, blacks discovered Jewish food too, and made it their own. As Marcie Cohen Ferris wrote in her book, “Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South” (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), black Southern cooks who worked in Jewish homes brought the flavors of the bayou to their preparation of Jewish dishes, using beef stock and Creole spices in their matzah ball soup and frying green tomatoes in matzah ball batter. When African-Americans migrated to the North after the First World War, they continued eating Jewish food, and they found Jewish delis to be more welcoming than other types of white-owned restaurants. (This was not universally true, though; a Depression-era deli in Baltimore required that black patrons bring their own plates, and Charles Lebedin, the owner of Leb’s Delicatessen in Atlanta, was the target of a famous sit-in during the civil rights era.)
Lyon’s Deli, on Maxwell Street in Chicago, was sold in 1973 by owner Ben Lyon to one of his African-American countermen, Nate Duncan, who continued for two decades to sell corned beef, pickled herring and gefilte fish to the neighborhood’s predominantly African-American population. (It’s a setting in the 1980 film, “The Blues Brothers,” where it’s called the Soul Food Café.)
And in one of his classic 1970s “On the Road” episodes, journalist Charles Kuralt profiled Jerry Meyers, the volatile, high-pressure owner of Jerry’s Deli on Chicago’s Grand Avenue; Meyer’s son, Michael, quoted by Kuralt, calls Jerry’s “the most integrated store in the world,” praising his father for “liking black and white the same.” Little wonder that when Barack Obama was running for his first term as president, he made a highly publicized stop at Manny’s, a Jewish deli in Chicago’s South Loop.
Blacks are certainly not the only non-Jews to prize deli food. Brent’s Deli, in the Northridge section of Los Angeles, seemed, on the basis of a visit last week, to have more Asian and Latino customers than Jewish ones. Langer’s, which Nora Ephron thought had the best pastrami sandwich in the country, is in Westlake, a Central L.A. neighborhood that is now predominantly Latino. Delis in New York, from Katz’s to the 2nd Avenue Deli, are destination restaurants for non-Jewish tourists from all over the country and all over the world.
But African-Americans certainly developed a special fondness for the deli, as symbolized by a 1960s ad for Levy’s Rye Bread (“You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy’s Real Jewish Rye”) featuring a black boy eating a deli sandwich; Malcolm X liked it so much that he famously had his own picture taken alongside the ad. Bayard Rustin, the black civil rights activist, was eating a knish on a New York street corner in 1970 when he was spotted by Robert M. Morgenthau, a Jewish politician who had just lost the race for governor. “I’m eating the reason why you’re not governor,” Rustin told him, referring to the fact that one of Morgenthau’s opponents, Nelson Rockefeller, had campaigned more frequently in delis.
Michael Twitty is an African-American chronicler of Southern foodways who converted to Judaism in 2002. He speculated that African-Americans “got a taste for a reasonably inexpensive, novel, tasty meal,” with a “similar taste profile” to Southern cooking. “After all,” he said, “if you grew up eating country ham on a biscuit, then it wasn’t too far to go to eating pastrami on rye.”
Ted Merwin, who writes about theater for the paper, is the author of “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli” (NYU Press). He teaches religion at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.Read More
Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Hitler Claims "I Did Nothing Wrong"
Maya Klausner
Editor
Benjamin Netanyahu's speech comes too late to save Hitler's singing career.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YHtSUcw4q4M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
BLOGS
THE NEW NORMAL
Autism, A Roll Of Tape And Ways To Make Classroom Inclusion Real
Rachel Lissy
Editor's Note: This blog originally appeared in e-Jewish philanthropy.
In my work as a coach and trainer at Ramapo for Children I partner with hundreds of schools, community organizations, agencies and synagogues to create inclusive environments for the broadest range of children to become successful.
Recently I observed a classroom in a Brooklyn synagogue where “Ethan,” a 9-year-old boy on the autism spectrum, was struggling to fit in with his peers. Ethan squirmed while sitting on the rug, often moving uncomfortably close to his classmates. He tried to dominate classroom conversations and gave long, sometimes rambling answers when the teacher called on him. His peers seems confused by his behavior and alternated between avoiding him and provoking him by telling him his favorite TV show was for babies. Ethan escalated quickly and would yell and threaten in response. His teacher intervened by telling his classmates to “be nice” and “leave Ethan alone.” She seemed unclear about how to respond to Ethan or his peers.
Ramapo for Children is an organization committed to improving the quality of life for children like Ethan whose behaviors put them at risk of being marginalized from their schools, communities and families. Inclusion is about fostering integration, within a structured environment, where diversity is valued and respected. We help organizations serving people with all abilities to strengthen their programs on inclusion and effectively build their programs to serve all of their constituents. Inclusion is the philosophy that all people have the right to be involved with their peers in age-appropriate activities throughout their lives and this happens when programs adapt to the individual needs of participants and people with challenging behaviors live, learn, work and play side by side.
The most common response I hear to the challenge of inclusion is this: “What about the other young people in my group or class? Won’t they be upset if they don’t get to get special rewards, take breaks or have an adapted schedule?”
That’s a very important concern that we need to address if we are going to create inclusive communities. We need to teach children that fair is not the same thing as equal. Fair is everyone getting what they need to be successful, which may not be the same as everyone getting the same thing. As an example, if one of us had a cut, would I need to give a Band-Aid to everyone in order to be fair? This is a concept you can teach to young people. Everyone has things they are working on. We get what we need to be successful. Create an environment that is compassionate and young people will support each other’s adaptations. If a young person is resistant to this idea it may be because they are concerned about getting what they need. Find out if there’s a behavior or skill that they would like to work on and create a plan for this young person as well. Or, provide adaptations for that young person and perhaps it will allow them to be more successful.
In Ethan’s synagogue in Brooklyn, the process looked like this: We began by identifying the unmet needs and lagging skills behind Ethan’s behavior. In particular, we focused on the immensely complicated skills that are required for reading social cues and making friends. We decided on a few strategies to help Ethan be more successful. First, we used masking tape to mark off squares on the rug so it would be easier for Ethan to recognize personal boundaries. Next we made plans to develop a non-verbal cue (a “secret signal”) that the teacher could use to remind Ethan to listen to others, share the stage and not interrupt. Finally, we created a “break box” with some point sensory objects and one of Ethan’s favorite comics for Ethan to use when he was feeling angry or overstimulated. In addition, we also discussed how to cultivate chesed (kindness) and compassion for Ethan from his classmates. The teacher spoke with her students about how we are all “learning how to make friends.” The class brainstormed words and phrases to use when they got frustrated or annoyed with each other that would help their peers learn how to be better friends.
At Ramapo for Children, our underlying belief is that behavior is communication, and that the behaviors adults consider “difficult” are often the result of students communicating their unmet needs and lagging social and emotional skills. In all synagogues, programs and classrooms, some young people come with unmet needs; for movement, for freedom, for fun and, in some cases, for food. Others come with lagging social or emotional skills. Perhaps they struggle with transitions in adapting their behavior to two widely different settings. Or they do not know how to calm their voices and slow their bodies down, a frequently observed challenge at services in synagogues across the city. Successful teachers or program leaders create environments that recognize unmet needs and teach, promote and reinforce social and emotional skills for positive behaviors like coping, self-calming and resilience.
A few weeks later when I returned, the scene I observed was much different. Ethan still squirmed on the carpet but he stayed within his designated boundaries. He participated in the conversation but, with reminders, let others talk as well. Posted around the room were examples of behaviors that “good friends” do, like: “Good friends listen,” “Good friends take turns,” “Good friends say ‘please stop’ when they don’t like what you’re doing."
In our synagogues, just like in our schools, it is vitally important that we strive for radical inclusion and acceptance of all children, particularly those on the margins. Adults and educators often require a new lens with which to view challenging behaviors and a toolbox of skills and strategies to bring to bear on situations when the behavior of young people is at odds with their own opportunities for success.
As the Senior Program Officer for Ramapo for Children, Rachel ensures that Ramapo’s direct service and professional development programs work on behalf of young people whose challenging behaviors put them at risk of being relegated to the margins of their schools or communities. In this capacity, Rachel has worked with Jewish summer camps, synagogues and day schools to provide educators and youth workers with practical tools for promoting positive behaviors and creating safe, supportive and productive environments. Rachel has a doctorate in Social and Cultural Studies in Education from the University of California at Berkeley.Read More
WELL VERSED
A New York Night With Idan Raichel
Caroline Lagnado
Idan Raichel. Courtesy City Winery
Over the sound of clinking wine glasses and hushed conversation in Hebrew, Idan Raichel performed a solo show at City Winery in Tribeca this past Friday night.
This concert was an opportunity for the Israeli superstar to “play the songs as they were written at home, on my piano in my living room,” Raichel said to the audience in between songs.
But “I don’t have a grand piano in my living room. I also don’t have so many people in my living room,” he quipped.
Though it was billed as a solo piano concert, Raichel controlled a machine with his feet that added electronic percussion. A gifted singer and pianist, his songs, mostly ballads, some with lines and themes lifted from the Song of Songs, are most powerful when simply accompanied by a piano; the machine did not enhance the performance.
The concert was markedly less of a “performance” than past Idan Raichel Collective shows. Unlike past concerts there were no additional singers save for two guests who joined Raichel for a couple of songs each, Ada Pasternak, an American violinist and singer, and Senegalese guitarist and singer Pape Armand Boye.
Raichel played his hits “Im Telech (If You Go), “Boi,” (Come), and “Mimaamakim” (From the Depths) and used the intimate setting to play a new song called “Maagalim,” or Circles, which was about lifecycles.
He wore his typical outfit of black shirt, cargo pants, and blazer with a black turban atop his head; his signature dreadlocks have been recently shorn to please “his lady.”
A small group of about 30 formed outside the venue to protest Raichel’s performance, part of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, holding signs and heckling attendees. Though they were restrained by metal barricades they were a noisy bunch; it was possible to hear their chants and horn blowing towards the beginning of the concert and one could see them through the venue’s back window. They were mostly gone by the time Raichel finished performing.
Raichel remarked that his concerts around the world are often met with protests, and said, “I definitely think that the voices of artists all over the world should be heard.”
He dedicated the song “Mechaka” or Waiting, a song about calm and inner change, to his protestors as well as to his audience, which was comprised mostly of Israelis.
In tribute to late Yemenite-Israeli singer (and sometimes collaborator) Shoshana Damari, Raichel ended the concert (during his second encore) with a song she sang called “Hayu Haleilot,” (There Were Nights), because this was, he said, a night to remember.
Caroline Lagnado writes about culture.Read More
The Jewish Week
'No Schnitzel Left Behind'
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
A Washington Heights native who trained here as a lawyer, and made aliyah in 2000, Joseph Gitler attended a family friend’s bris ceremony while back in the New York area last week. At the end of the simcha, Gitler thought to himself, what’s going to happen with all the food?
On the tables Gitler saw lox and bagels and fruit and pastries, a “typical” spread. Some of it would probably be thrown away, he feared.
Gitler needn’t have feared, had the bris taken place in Israel — there, in 2003 he had launched a national organization that collects leftover food and brings it to organizations that feed the needy.
A graduate of Yeshiva University and Fordham University Law School, Gitler worked as director of sales and marketing for a family software business in the first few years after moving to Israel.
Then two things happened: a new study indicated that one third of Israeli children live below the poverty line; and the second intifada of Arab violence against Jews kept tourists away, weakening the national economy and reducing investments in high-tech ventures.
Gitler said he noticed the situation at his family’s home in Ra’anana. “Many, many more people were knocking on our door,” asking for a handout.
Curious about the extent of the need, he took time off from his job to embark on a three-month-long self-education project, traveling around the country, meeting the leaders of places where food is made, and where food is consumed. Everywhere he went, he learned that food was going to waste, that there was no coordinated national effort to save such food and bring it to the people who needed it, and that the responsible people were willing to donate the food.
A large network of Israeli organizations feed people in the traditional way, by buying the needed supplies. But the food rescue movement, characterized in New York City by City Harvest, a 33-year-old initiative that annually collects 55 million pounds of excess food items from restaurants, grocers, bakeries, manufacturers and farms, had reached Israel only on a piecemeal basis. “This piece was missing,” Gitler said.
He went to Canada to study the operations of Second Harvest, a national food bank. He saw how a food rescue effort was done on a national level, and decided to duplicate this in Israel, raising a little money from his circle of friends and making pickups and deliveries with his own car.
The result was the Leket Israel Food Bank, an independent organization that Gitler called “the largest initiative of its sort in the world. It’s a feel-good story from Israel.”
The unofficial motto of Leket Israel (it merged in 2010 with the Table to Table organization) is “No schnitzel left behind.”
Leket is one of the biblically commanded types of gleanings, the agricultural produce a farms leaves for the poor.
“I think that at a very basic level, it’s a very Jewish value to be appalled by food waste,” said Gitler, 40, who was here last week to raise money and awareness. Most of the organization’s annual $10 million budget comes from the eight trips he makes to the United States each year.
While the Israeli economy is booming, many Israelis are struggling, he said. “The situation is far worse than when Israel was a poor country with socialist values.” Since the capitalist-oriented Likud party first came to power in 1977, Israel has increasingly veered towards a market economy, leaving “a lot of people” with limited incomes behind, he said. For many Israelis, Israel is “a First World country with Second World wages.”
He described a growing economic gap between the people plugged into Israel’s start-up nation ethos, and the less fortunate. Such expenses as food and housing have risen steadily over the last few decades, while many peoples’ salaries have not, Gitler said.
Leket Israel has grown from a one-man operation to the country’s largest food rescue organization, with 11 refrigerated trucks, ten other vehicles, a tractor, 100 employees; most of it 60,000 volunteers work in the fields, literally collecting the gleanings. Other volunteers pick up and collect the donated items, prepare sandwiches for schools, and deliver seminars on nutrition.
Last year the organization “rescued and distributed over 25 million lbs. of produce and perishable goods,” according to its website (leket.org).
Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon let Leket Israel volunteers pick oranges from his orchard near Kfar Saba.
Leket Israel brings its donated food to 190 organizations — schools, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, senior centers and other social service organizations — that distribute the food.
Tourists often pitch in during their free time in Israel, Gitler said, and 20 Arab women are paid to assist in the picking.
It’s a “24/6” organization, said Gitler, who is Orthodox.
The recent violence in Israel has not slowed down the organization’s work, he said.
About 140,000 people, including Druze, Bedouins and Christians, benefit each week from Leket Israel’s largesse, Gitler said. “This is an Israeli organization. We work with all sectors of Israeli society. We’re specifically a coexistence organization. We’re not specifically an environmental organization.” (Though Leket helps the environment by reducing the amount of garbage and rotting food in fields.)
What would happen without Leket Israel?
A lot of food would be wasted, Gitler said. “No one would be starving,” but, “people would be skipping meals. People would be getting less-nutritious meals. They might go to bed hungry.”
His goal is to participate in the feeding of 500,000 people by 2020.
While also working now for an unspecified family business, his main responsibilities as chairman of Leket Israel are marketing and fundraising.
His five children know not to waste food, Gitler said. At home, “I’m a maniac” about this. His family helps in the collection and distribution of food not eaten at their meals. “Everyone is part of it.”
steve@jewishweek.org
Read More CULTURE VIEW
Jews, Blacks And Deli
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Ted Merwin
When the Anglo-Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill, in his popular 1908 drama, “The Melting Pot,” invented the term that became a major metaphor for how we view the ethnic life of New York, he wasn’t talking about food. Zangwill’s idea was that Old World European immigrants were being amalgamated with other immigrants in a divine “crucible” to form a sturdier, more self-reliant kind of person. But the reality, then as today, is that cultures do meet through food; Americans (beginning with the colonists and the Native Americans, as we celebrate at Thanksgiving) liberally sample each other’s dishes, often adopting them as their own.
Walk into Lenny’s Deli in Owings Mills, Md. (just outside Baltimore) and take a look at the menu, which includes not just corned beef sandwiches and knishes, but fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. The owners are Jewish, but almost all of the employees are black, and the clientele is a mixture of blacks and Jews. The two cultures are presented side by side, united through the foods that they eat.
Every culture has its soul food, to which the members of that culture go to seek a sense of comfort, consolation, and connection to their ancestors. For Jewish Americans, it is often the Eastern European-derived food of the delicatessen — peppery pastrami, succulent corned beef, and matzah ball dumplings with chicken soup. For African-Americans, it is often the food of the South — crispy fried chicken, glossy collard greens, and creamy sweet potato pie.
Somewhere along the way, blacks discovered Jewish food too, and made it their own. As Marcie Cohen Ferris wrote in her book, “Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South” (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), black Southern cooks who worked in Jewish homes brought the flavors of the bayou to their preparation of Jewish dishes, using beef stock and Creole spices in their matzah ball soup and frying green tomatoes in matzah ball batter. When African-Americans migrated to the North after the First World War, they continued eating Jewish food, and they found Jewish delis to be more welcoming than other types of white-owned restaurants. (This was not universally true, though; a Depression-era deli in Baltimore required that black patrons bring their own plates, and Charles Lebedin, the owner of Leb’s Delicatessen in Atlanta, was the target of a famous sit-in during the civil rights era.)
Lyon’s Deli, on Maxwell Street in Chicago, was sold in 1973 by owner Ben Lyon to one of his African-American countermen, Nate Duncan, who continued for two decades to sell corned beef, pickled herring and gefilte fish to the neighborhood’s predominantly African-American population. (It’s a setting in the 1980 film, “The Blues Brothers,” where it’s called the Soul Food Café.)
And in one of his classic 1970s “On the Road” episodes, journalist Charles Kuralt profiled Jerry Meyers, the volatile, high-pressure owner of Jerry’s Deli on Chicago’s Grand Avenue; Meyer’s son, Michael, quoted by Kuralt, calls Jerry’s “the most integrated store in the world,” praising his father for “liking black and white the same.” Little wonder that when Barack Obama was running for his first term as president, he made a highly publicized stop at Manny’s, a Jewish deli in Chicago’s South Loop.
Blacks are certainly not the only non-Jews to prize deli food. Brent’s Deli, in the Northridge section of Los Angeles, seemed, on the basis of a visit last week, to have more Asian and Latino customers than Jewish ones. Langer’s, which Nora Ephron thought had the best pastrami sandwich in the country, is in Westlake, a Central L.A. neighborhood that is now predominantly Latino. Delis in New York, from Katz’s to the 2nd Avenue Deli, are destination restaurants for non-Jewish tourists from all over the country and all over the world.
But African-Americans certainly developed a special fondness for the deli, as symbolized by a 1960s ad for Levy’s Rye Bread (“You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy’s Real Jewish Rye”) featuring a black boy eating a deli sandwich; Malcolm X liked it so much that he famously had his own picture taken alongside the ad. Bayard Rustin, the black civil rights activist, was eating a knish on a New York street corner in 1970 when he was spotted by Robert M. Morgenthau, a Jewish politician who had just lost the race for governor. “I’m eating the reason why you’re not governor,” Rustin told him, referring to the fact that one of Morgenthau’s opponents, Nelson Rockefeller, had campaigned more frequently in delis.
Michael Twitty is an African-American chronicler of Southern foodways who converted to Judaism in 2002. He speculated that African-Americans “got a taste for a reasonably inexpensive, novel, tasty meal,” with a “similar taste profile” to Southern cooking. “After all,” he said, “if you grew up eating country ham on a biscuit, then it wasn’t too far to go to eating pastrami on rye.”
Ted Merwin, who writes about theater for the paper, is the author of “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli” (NYU Press). He teaches religion at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.Read More
Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Hitler Claims "I Did Nothing Wrong"
Maya Klausner
Editor
Benjamin Netanyahu's speech comes too late to save Hitler's singing career.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YHtSUcw4q4M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
On Oct. 21, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the World Zionist Congress that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was the true mastermind behind Germany's extermination of the Jews, according to Haaretz. Hitler only wanted to expel them.
These statements incited a social media uproar. But no one is more angry about the mix up than Hitler himself.
Read More BLOGS
THE NEW NORMAL
Autism, A Roll Of Tape And Ways To Make Classroom Inclusion Real
Rachel Lissy
Editor's Note: This blog originally appeared in e-Jewish philanthropy.
In my work as a coach and trainer at Ramapo for Children I partner with hundreds of schools, community organizations, agencies and synagogues to create inclusive environments for the broadest range of children to become successful.
Recently I observed a classroom in a Brooklyn synagogue where “Ethan,” a 9-year-old boy on the autism spectrum, was struggling to fit in with his peers. Ethan squirmed while sitting on the rug, often moving uncomfortably close to his classmates. He tried to dominate classroom conversations and gave long, sometimes rambling answers when the teacher called on him. His peers seems confused by his behavior and alternated between avoiding him and provoking him by telling him his favorite TV show was for babies. Ethan escalated quickly and would yell and threaten in response. His teacher intervened by telling his classmates to “be nice” and “leave Ethan alone.” She seemed unclear about how to respond to Ethan or his peers.
Ramapo for Children is an organization committed to improving the quality of life for children like Ethan whose behaviors put them at risk of being marginalized from their schools, communities and families. Inclusion is about fostering integration, within a structured environment, where diversity is valued and respected. We help organizations serving people with all abilities to strengthen their programs on inclusion and effectively build their programs to serve all of their constituents. Inclusion is the philosophy that all people have the right to be involved with their peers in age-appropriate activities throughout their lives and this happens when programs adapt to the individual needs of participants and people with challenging behaviors live, learn, work and play side by side.
The most common response I hear to the challenge of inclusion is this: “What about the other young people in my group or class? Won’t they be upset if they don’t get to get special rewards, take breaks or have an adapted schedule?”
That’s a very important concern that we need to address if we are going to create inclusive communities. We need to teach children that fair is not the same thing as equal. Fair is everyone getting what they need to be successful, which may not be the same as everyone getting the same thing. As an example, if one of us had a cut, would I need to give a Band-Aid to everyone in order to be fair? This is a concept you can teach to young people. Everyone has things they are working on. We get what we need to be successful. Create an environment that is compassionate and young people will support each other’s adaptations. If a young person is resistant to this idea it may be because they are concerned about getting what they need. Find out if there’s a behavior or skill that they would like to work on and create a plan for this young person as well. Or, provide adaptations for that young person and perhaps it will allow them to be more successful.
In Ethan’s synagogue in Brooklyn, the process looked like this: We began by identifying the unmet needs and lagging skills behind Ethan’s behavior. In particular, we focused on the immensely complicated skills that are required for reading social cues and making friends. We decided on a few strategies to help Ethan be more successful. First, we used masking tape to mark off squares on the rug so it would be easier for Ethan to recognize personal boundaries. Next we made plans to develop a non-verbal cue (a “secret signal”) that the teacher could use to remind Ethan to listen to others, share the stage and not interrupt. Finally, we created a “break box” with some point sensory objects and one of Ethan’s favorite comics for Ethan to use when he was feeling angry or overstimulated. In addition, we also discussed how to cultivate chesed (kindness) and compassion for Ethan from his classmates. The teacher spoke with her students about how we are all “learning how to make friends.” The class brainstormed words and phrases to use when they got frustrated or annoyed with each other that would help their peers learn how to be better friends.
At Ramapo for Children, our underlying belief is that behavior is communication, and that the behaviors adults consider “difficult” are often the result of students communicating their unmet needs and lagging social and emotional skills. In all synagogues, programs and classrooms, some young people come with unmet needs; for movement, for freedom, for fun and, in some cases, for food. Others come with lagging social or emotional skills. Perhaps they struggle with transitions in adapting their behavior to two widely different settings. Or they do not know how to calm their voices and slow their bodies down, a frequently observed challenge at services in synagogues across the city. Successful teachers or program leaders create environments that recognize unmet needs and teach, promote and reinforce social and emotional skills for positive behaviors like coping, self-calming and resilience.
A few weeks later when I returned, the scene I observed was much different. Ethan still squirmed on the carpet but he stayed within his designated boundaries. He participated in the conversation but, with reminders, let others talk as well. Posted around the room were examples of behaviors that “good friends” do, like: “Good friends listen,” “Good friends take turns,” “Good friends say ‘please stop’ when they don’t like what you’re doing."
In our synagogues, just like in our schools, it is vitally important that we strive for radical inclusion and acceptance of all children, particularly those on the margins. Adults and educators often require a new lens with which to view challenging behaviors and a toolbox of skills and strategies to bring to bear on situations when the behavior of young people is at odds with their own opportunities for success.
As the Senior Program Officer for Ramapo for Children, Rachel ensures that Ramapo’s direct service and professional development programs work on behalf of young people whose challenging behaviors put them at risk of being relegated to the margins of their schools or communities. In this capacity, Rachel has worked with Jewish summer camps, synagogues and day schools to provide educators and youth workers with practical tools for promoting positive behaviors and creating safe, supportive and productive environments. Rachel has a doctorate in Social and Cultural Studies in Education from the University of California at Berkeley.Read More
WELL VERSED
A New York Night With Idan Raichel
Caroline Lagnado
Idan Raichel. Courtesy City Winery
Over the sound of clinking wine glasses and hushed conversation in Hebrew, Idan Raichel performed a solo show at City Winery in Tribeca this past Friday night.
This concert was an opportunity for the Israeli superstar to “play the songs as they were written at home, on my piano in my living room,” Raichel said to the audience in between songs.
But “I don’t have a grand piano in my living room. I also don’t have so many people in my living room,” he quipped.
Though it was billed as a solo piano concert, Raichel controlled a machine with his feet that added electronic percussion. A gifted singer and pianist, his songs, mostly ballads, some with lines and themes lifted from the Song of Songs, are most powerful when simply accompanied by a piano; the machine did not enhance the performance.
The concert was markedly less of a “performance” than past Idan Raichel Collective shows. Unlike past concerts there were no additional singers save for two guests who joined Raichel for a couple of songs each, Ada Pasternak, an American violinist and singer, and Senegalese guitarist and singer Pape Armand Boye.
Raichel played his hits “Im Telech (If You Go), “Boi,” (Come), and “Mimaamakim” (From the Depths) and used the intimate setting to play a new song called “Maagalim,” or Circles, which was about lifecycles.
He wore his typical outfit of black shirt, cargo pants, and blazer with a black turban atop his head; his signature dreadlocks have been recently shorn to please “his lady.”
A small group of about 30 formed outside the venue to protest Raichel’s performance, part of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, holding signs and heckling attendees. Though they were restrained by metal barricades they were a noisy bunch; it was possible to hear their chants and horn blowing towards the beginning of the concert and one could see them through the venue’s back window. They were mostly gone by the time Raichel finished performing.
Raichel remarked that his concerts around the world are often met with protests, and said, “I definitely think that the voices of artists all over the world should be heard.”
He dedicated the song “Mechaka” or Waiting, a song about calm and inner change, to his protestors as well as to his audience, which was comprised mostly of Israelis.
In tribute to late Yemenite-Israeli singer (and sometimes collaborator) Shoshana Damari, Raichel ended the concert (during his second encore) with a song she sang called “Hayu Haleilot,” (There Were Nights), because this was, he said, a night to remember.
Caroline Lagnado writes about culture.Read More
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, New York 10036, United States
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment