Missionary Renegade: Amid Celebration, Mourning - The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 27 November 2015

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Amid Celebration, Mourning - The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 27 November 2015

Amid Celebration, Mourning - The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 27 November 2015

Friday, November 27, 2015
Dear Reader,
Even as our community looked forward to and enjoyed Thanksgiving this year, news of and reflections on Ezra Schwartz, the young student killed in the West Bank last week, were the most read items on our website.
International
U.S. Teen’s Murder Posing Dilemma For Modern Orthodox
Sense of resolve mixed with reservations about West Bank in wake of terror attack.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer

“Ezra loved Israel,” a classmate said of slain 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz, above. Twitter via JTAFor Modern Orthodox Jews this week, an irresistible force — their passionate love of the Jewish state — is running headlong into an immoveable object — their deep concern for the safety of their children pursuing Torah studies in an increasingly dangerous Israel.
In the wake of the brazen murder last week of an 18-year-old Massachusetts gap-year yeshiva student at a notorious West Bank junction, it appears too soon to tell which would budge.
The death of Ezra Schwartz, a graduate of the Maimonides Academy in Boston who was studying for the year at Yeshivat Ashreinu in Jerusalem, was a tragedy all lovers of Israel mourned. But it poses a particularly excruciating dilemma for a segment of the community whose post-high school one- and two-year programs of religious study have become increasingly popular. To scuttle them would be seen as akin to the community’s turning its back on Israel. But questions are being raised about security concerns when it comes to both schools in the West Bank and school-sponsored trips there.
The director of Israel programs at the Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for girls in Teaneck, N.J., Leah Herzog, stands at the pivot point of the dilemma, between students and parents here and the gap-year yeshivas in Israel.
“Parents are nervous and heartbroken, but we’re going to keep sending our children,” said Herzog, who is also the parent of two children who have or will be spending a gap year in Israel. Nearly all of Ma’ayanot’s students spend a gap year in Israel.
Herzog and her co-Israel guidance counselor Suzanne Cohen told The Jewish Week that while parents are still supporting gap-year programs, there is some reservation now about sending students to schools in the Gush Etzion bloc in the West Bank. (Schwartz was killed at a junction in the Gush by a Palestinian terrorist after a school trip to the area.) Cohen described one parent who expressed serious reservations about sending her daughter to Migdal Oz, a prominent Orthodox girls seminary in Gush Etzion, despite her daughter’s fierce desire to attend.
“The parent was more nervous than the student,” said Cohen.
In response to the level of concern, the S. Daniel Abraham Israel program, Yeshiva University’s Israel branch, is organizing a special conference call and online conversation next week for parents of children currently taking their gap-year in Israel. According to a Y.U. representative, the webinar will focus on methods of dealing with anxiety. Parents of 2,000-plus American gap-year students currently studying at YU-affiliated institutions will be able to text in questions and concerns.
For Nati Faber, a 17-year-old day school student from Detroit on the brink of his gap year, security has become a major factor in selecting a school — at least for his mother.
“I really like [one yeshiva in the West Bank], but with the murders outside of Alon Shvut, my parents don’t know how they feel about it,” wrote Faber in a Facebook message, preferring to keep the name of the school anonymous as he’s still in the decision process. In his high school grade of 17 students, 14 are planning to spend a gap year in Israel after graduation.
“For sure with a lot of my friends, although they are scared, the situation has motivated us to look even more forward to going to a gap year. And in a sense I believe that holds true with their parents as well,” he wrote.
While there have been other American students who have been killed in terrorist attacks in Israel — including Alisa Flatow, a Jewish American student killed in a bus bombing in 1995 — the reaction to Schwartz’s murder, fueled by the immediacy of social media, seemed different. In Israel, American gap-year students said the proximately of the attack — and the likeness of Schwartz to themselves — made it different.
“When Ezra was killed, it made me rethink everything,” wrote Gavi Shleifer, a 19-year-old American student originally from Atlanta, in a Facebook message. “He is my circle, he was a gap year student who just wanted to do good, and was killed while doing good.” Despite the strained security situation and her parents worrying, Shleifer, currently in her second year abroad at a seminary in Jerusalem, plans on making aliyah and remaining in Israel. “I’m not coming back to the states and will fight my parents if they want me to,” she wrote.
Aaron Eckstein, a 19-year-old gap year student from Passaic, N.J., told The Jewish Week that “helicopter parenting” — something he sees quite often among his peers — won’t work during the Israel trip abroad.
“A lot of yeshivas are asking parents to confirm that their kids can go to the Gush — in my opinion, these type of hard-stop rules are a big joke,” said Eckstein, who plans to join a combat unit in the Israel Defense Forces after completing his yeshiva study. The weekend after Schwartz was killed, Eckstein traveled to Efrat, a large settlement in the Gush, to visit friends.
“Parents need to realize that saying their kids can’t go here and can’t go there won’t change the situation.”
No doubt that adolescent attitude adds to parental worries, feeling less able to direct their children’s comings and goings from 6,000 miles away.
Maya Silver, an American student spending her gap year at a seminary in Jerusalem, wrote a letter to her worried parents back home describing her reaction to Schwartz’s murder.
“This attack is like a punch in the stomach,” she wrote, describing her subsequent confusion, anger, and numbness. “It was so tragic walking through the Rova [the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem] and knowing that every person you saw under a certain age was feeling a deep, indescribable pain… One of us has died.” She ended the letter by telling her parents not to worry about her “too much”… “I’m not in the Gush!”
Rabbi Seth Linfield, executive director of Yeshiva of Flatbush, a large Modern Orthodox high school in Brooklyn, said that while parents are “anxious,” the school expects to send a similar or slightly higher number of students to Israel for a gap-year this coming fall. In an average graduating class of 180 students, about 40 students go to Israel for the year, several attending yeshivot and seminaries in the West Bank.
“The gap year has always been a complicated topic, but there’s been no spike in the conversation after last week’s attacks,” he told The Jewish Week. The parent of a graduating high school senior who is considering spending her gap year at Migdal Oz, Rabbi Linfield said that “depriving” his daughter and other graduating seniors of the gap-year experience would be “giving terrorists a victory without firing a shot.”
Rabbi Linfield declined to comment on whether or not Schwartz’s death resulted partially from a lapse of sound security practices on the part of his yeshiva. He said he has not yet heard those concerns voiced by parents.
“When we, as a school and as parents, send our children to institutions in Israel, we sent them with confidence that the institutions will invoke the highest standards of safety and security,” he said.
Young Judea, a pluralistic Zionist youth group best known for its post-high school year course, specifies on its website that its participants are not allowed to enter the West Bank without permission of the director of the course and parental consent communicated to the director within 48 hours of expected travel. The Jewish Week was unable to speak with a Young Judea representative directly.
Peninah Kaplansky, co-founder and director of Here Next Year, a nonprofit that helps American gap-year students extend their stay in Israel by joining the army or enrolling in an Israeli university, said that in the days directly after Schwartz’s death she saw an uptick in the number of students inquiring about staying in Israel next year.
“In the past few days we’ve received dozens of e-mails asking about our programming and resources,” said Kaplansky, 24, originally from West Hempstead and currently studying at Bar-Ilan University in Jerusalem. “On one hand, students are saying ‘that could have been me’— on the other hand, it’s emboldening for them. We’ve been hurt, but we’re going to respond by asking how can we have the greatest impact on Israel.”
For Schwartz’s fellow students at Yeshivat Ashreinu, the question of how to move forward is still raw.
“As the days continue to pass by, and the death of one of my best friends continues to become more real, all I can think about is what would Ezra want,” Aryeh Sunshine, 18, a classmate of Schwartz’s, told The Jewish Week in a Facebook message. Originally from Cleveland and with plans to attend Ohio State University next year, he has no intention to cut his gap year short, despite the blow.
“Ezra loved Israel and enjoyed every second that he spent in this beautiful country. Although there continues to be attacks on innocent Israeli and Jewish civilians, instead of being scared and tempted to leave Israel, Ezra would want the complete opposite. …The best thing we, the Jewish people can do right now, is stick together.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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Readers were drawn to Hannah Dreyfus' piece about the dilemma Ezra's killing poses for the Modern Orthodox community, which sends many of its young people to Israel for a year to study after high school and before college.
Our Israel correspondent, Josh Mitnick, covers the investigation of the incident, which raised many questions about the security measures taken on behalf of these students.
Israel News
Security Measures Questioned In Teen’s Murder
Masa inquiry underway over yeshiva trip to Gush Etzion junction.
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor

Protesters this week in Gush Etzion holding a poster of Israelis killed in terrorist attacks. Ben Sales/JTATel Aviv — The murder of Massachusetts native Ezra Schwartz in a terrorist shooting last week has shaken Israel’s overseas educational programs as they scramble to handle worried parents, upset participants, and review security precautions for trips to high-risk locations in the country.
An inquiry is currently underway into what safety measures were taken last Thursday before Schwartz, 18, and a group of other gap-year students at Yeshivat Ashreinu visited the Gush Etzion junction in the West Bank, said an official for the government agency that subsidizes the yeshiva’s gap-year program.
Critics complained that youths without sufficient protection were allowed to visit a location frequently targeted by Palestinian terrorists. Others contend that there is no true safe place in Israel amid a wave of terrorist stabbings and shootings and that the yeshiva did its best to protect its students.
“There is a lot to sort through, and all of the questions are now being asked; it is too early to draw any conclusions at this stage,” said Sara Eisen, communications director at Masa Israel Journey, an umbrella organization run jointly by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and the Jewish Agency that subsidizes and oversees hundreds of gap-year program affiliates like Yeshivat Ashreinu.
“We are working through the facts of the situation and have no answers yet to the many understandable concerns.”
Potentially at risk from the fallout from Schwartz’s death are participation levels in programs that bring thousands of Jewish youths to Israel each year, as well as international tourism, a major Israeli industry. The killing also highlights the challenges faced by overseas programs that want to allow participants to see the country but must balance the freedom with security precautions.
Michael Jankelowitz, a former Jewish Agency spokesperson, worried the killing would have a “major” effect on participation for all educational travel to Israel, and complained that the teens should have been traveling in an armored, bulletproof vehicle, given the danger at the Gush Etzion junction.
Laura Kam, a public relations consultant who lives in Jerusalem and whose son is doing army service on guard in the West Bank, wondered why “a group of completely unprotected teens” was in “an area so unsafe.” She told The Jewish Week, “I know folks will say that two people were killed in Tel Aviv the same day. But in fact, the road where Ezra died is highly problematic and everyone knows it. Let’s keep our young visitors safe.” (Despite published reports, the yeshiva denies the trip included food delivery to soldiers, a common practice to bolster the spirits among the IDF.)
Located on the heavily traveled Highway 60, the Gush Etzion junction is a busy intersection south of Jerusalem that connects the capital city to the affluent bloc of suburban settlements that include Efrat and Alon Shvut, and also settlements around Hebron. A tunnel road bypass around Bethlehem was built in the late 1990s to link Gush Etzion (known simply as the Gush) to Jerusalem, and it was reinforced with walls to protect Israeli drivers. Highway 60 is also used as a shortcut to Jerusalem for those living inside of Israel. A supermarket at the junction serves both Israelis and Palestinians shoppers and employs both as well.
In recent days, however, the government has been discussing ways to separate Israelis and Palestinians and boost security. Hundreds of Gush-area residents held a demonstration at the junction on Monday to demand tighter protection.
Before the attack on Schwartz, the intersection had been targeted seven times by Palestinian attackers since the beginning of October, leaving four civilians injured and one soldier wounded. Like many road junctions around the West Bank, in recent weeks the Israeli army has deployed groups of soldiers at Gush Etzion junction that stand behind concrete barriers to protect pedestrian commuters.
In the attack, which killed Schwartz and two others, a Palestinian terrorist with a machine gun sprayed bullets into a line of cars at the intersection. Since the Thursday afternoon attack, another Israeli was killed at the junction.
Jankelowitz pointed out that “all the public transportation that goes to Gush Etzion goes in armored buses.” He added that Jewish Agency guidelines require Board of Governors members to use armored vehicles when making site visits in the West Bank. “I think there needs to be an inquiry, by the Jewish Agency and the government.”
Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, said that Schwartz and the other teens weren’t involved in high-risk activities. “He wasn’t hitch-hiking and he wasn’t waiting. He didn’t go to the road junction to stand and see what happens. ... The junction itself is a dangerous place because it’s been targeted.”
Tragically, Schwartz had been visiting the Gush Etzion junction to do landscaping at a roadside memorial — dubbed “Oz v’Gaon” or “bravery and genuis” (or honorable scholars) — to three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists at a spot just a few hundred feet away in June 2014.
Rabbi Akiva Naiman, who oversees the community service programs at Yeshivat Ashreinu, said Schwartz was also spending time coaching underprivileged kids in basketball and raising money for the Israel Cancer Association. He was drawn to work at the memorial site because “it felt like you are really building the land. He was so inspired by that.”
Rabbi Naiman said that Ezra and a group of other boys were visiting the site weekly in a van hired by a local taxi company in Beit Shemesh, where the yeshiva is located. He said there was no accompanying guard. In the days after the murder, the yeshiva has been caught up in making the funeral arrangements and looking after the needs of the remaining participants.
The yeshiva will return to its normal study schedule later this week and hasn’t made any decisions about trip security or locations, the rabbi said. He did say that the yeshiva is receiving donations to pay for an armored van.
Echoing other officials handling youth programs, Rabbi Naiman noted that on the same day Schwartz was killed at the Gush Etzion junction, two people were stabbed to death in south Tel Aviv.
“All the safety precautions were met,” he said.
Officials at overseas programs said that security measures for group trips throughout Israel are coordinated through a special hotline overseen by the Education Ministry and the Society for the Protection of Nature that gives out daily updates on the situation in any given location.
A statement from the Education Ministry said that groups on trips in the West Bank must ride in an armored vehicle on the roadways designated by the IDF, and travel with one guard for every 50 students. It also said that for trips on foot in the West Bank, groups must be accompanied by an armed guard with a “long weapon.”
Eisen, the Masa official, said that the umbrella group seeks to set an “industry standard” for strict security guidelines among its affiliate programs, including daily coordination with Israel’s security authorities, as well as security chiefs at Masa and the Jewish Agency. She said it is up to the individual affiliated organizations to implement the guidelines with the support of Masa.
It is believed that costly armored vans are a rarity among Jewish institutions in the region.
The shock of the murder has rippled to other overseas programs. At the Jerusalem-based Young Judea Year Course, trauma counselors were brought in to discuss participants’ reactions.
“It’s been a hard one for everyone,” said Kate Brody Nachman, director of the Young Judea Year Course. She noted that some of the Young Judea youngsters knew Ezra and went to Camp Yavne [in New England] with him. “They felt more connected, and it feels more real. There’s a greater sense that ‘it could have been me.’”
After an emotional weekend of singing, prayer, memory, and grief counseling, students at Yeshivat Ashreinu spent part of this week on a trip to the Dead Sea. Rabbis at the yeshiva are trying to focus on easing the participants back into a routine of study later in the week.
Despite the tragedy, Rabbi Yechiel Weisz, who is in charge of morning studies at the yeshiva, said that the majority of the 31 participants had elected to continue on. “The boys are shocked; it was devastating. But we came out very strong. Unfortunately, if there is anything that makes people come together, it’s a tragedy,” he said. “We’re trying to get back on schedule. Some of the boys are not ready.”
It was too early, yeshiva officials said, to say whether or not the program would continue at the memorial site.
Students at Ashreinu created a website this week to raise charity in memory of Ezra. More than $24,000 from 475 people was donated in the first four days. The URL is gofundme.com/ezrafund.
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And Editor & Publisher Gary Rosenblatt wrote "What Ezra Schwartz Means To Us."
Gary Rosenblatt
What Ezra Schwartz Means To Us
Emulating Israelis, families like his allow faith to trump fear in their calculations about what’s best for their children.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher

gary rosenblattThe tragic death of Ezra Schwartz, the 18-year-old native of Sharon, Mass., who was spending his gap year at a yeshiva in Israel, hit about as close to home as possible in the Modern Orthodox community in the U.S.
Described as warm, witty and caring, he was all of our sons and daughters — the children we send off to Israel with a mix of great pride and profound anxiety.
Over the last several decades the post-high school year in Israel, with its emphasis on religious study for boys and girls, has become the norm for many in the Orthodox community.
As parents, our greatest hope is that the youngsters will not only increase their Torah knowledge but come to love and appreciate the land and people of Israel, find lasting mentors and friends and reach a higher level of maturity and responsibility.
Our darkest nightmare is that the violence that has pursued Israeli society for more than six decades will touch the lives of our children personally.
Why do we do it — send our children to live for a school year in one of the world’s most volatile regions? For many, it is a mixture of faith, love of Israel, commitment to Zionist ideals, a rationalization that harm can come to us anywhere, and an element of denial.
As a parent whose three children each spent a gap year at a yeshiva in Israel, I can still recall the tearful goodbyes at the airport, the efforts to keep in touch across the months and miles, and the pleasure in visiting and welcoming home a more mature teenager.
My older son was a classmate and friend at Brandeis University of Alisa Flatow, who was killed by a suicide bomber in April 1995 when she and two friends studying in Israel took a bus to the beach in Gush Katif. She was 20 years old.
My daughter was in Israel at that time and during a number of other suicide bombings.
My younger son, like Ezra Schwartz, studied at a yeshiva in Gush Etzion, a West Bank community, in 2000. A few days before Yom Kippur he urged me to join him for the holiest day of the year, eager for me to experience the joyous, spirited davening (prayer services) at the yeshiva. I arrived just as the second intifada was breaking out in force. Over the four days of my visit I felt the highs and lows of life in Israel, from the transcendental moments of the community’s passionate prayer to the dreaded awareness that a new wave of Palestinian violence was gaining momentum, aimed at breaking the resolve of the Jewish nation.
No doubt there will be questions among American parents about why Israeli yeshivas permit or encourage their children to travel in harm’s way, and there is talk of encouraging yeshivas catering to gap-year students to be based in relatively safe cities rather than Jerusalem or the West Bank.
The agonizing decisions every family makes about whether or not to send a son or daughter to Israel for an academic year at the tender age of 17 or 18 will be even more fraught with concern in the coming months.
For now, though, the outpouring of grief and the efforts to bring comfort to the Schwartz family are inspiring. Though Ezra attended day school and summer camps in New England, the Modern Orthodox community is a tight-knit group with few degrees of separation. Many people I have spoken to tell me of their connections to Ezra through their friends, their children or their friends’ children. Local area day schools and synagogues have arranged trips to Boston for a shiva visit to the Schwartz family, as did a woman in Teaneck who put out the word on social media that she had arranged for a 57-seat bus to make the trip this week. She encouraged others to join her “to show the Schwartz family our sympathy and support and to let them know that they are not alone.”
Such acts of chesed (kindness) are all the more impressive when they come from people who never met the Schwartzes but feel such a strong affinity with them.
It is no secret that there is an increasing divide between the Orthodox and liberal streams of our community, with the Orthodox dramatically more conservative politically and far less threatened by disaffiliation among the young. But perhaps the biggest gap is in attitudes toward Israel. While most American Jews are either opposed to or deeply ambivalent about Israeli settlements, for instance, the issue is rarely debated in Orthodox circles, where so many people have friends and family living in Jewish communities in the West Bank.
Similarly, it is the Orthodox community that has led the way in sending their children to Israel for extended stays, like the gap-year programs. Emulating the Israelis themselves, these families have allowed faith to trump fear in their calculations about what’s best for their children. While we all pray that calm will be restored to Israel and that parents need no longer make potential life-and-death decisions on a daily basis about their families — which shops to avoid, which street to walk on — we pay tribute to all those who refuse to let terror dictate their lives, even as they appreciate the need for caution. That delicate balancing act is the Israeli condition, the miracle of building a thriving, vibrant and dynamic society in the midst of constant threats from enemies who hate.
May the brief but vital life of Ezra Schwartz, who by all accounts thrived during his time in Israel, be remembered with tenderness, and may his family — and the family of Israel — know no more sadness.
gary@jewishweek.org
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Shabbat Shalom,
Helen Cherikoff
Web Director
THE ARTS

“I’m looking at the idea of how culture and tradition survive time,” says Hofesh Shechter. Jake Walters

Anatevka Dancing, '2.0'

Israeli-born choreographer enhances Jerome Robbins’ iconic steps.

Lonnie Firestone

Special To The Jewish Week

Bartlett Sher, who is directing the “Fiddler on the Roof” revival now on Broadway, is a master of interpreting classics, having reworked “South Pacific,” which earned him a Tony Award in 2008, and Clifford Odets’ boxing drama “Golden Boy.” For his “Fiddler” interpretation, he has tapped the Israeli-born, London-based modern dance choreographer Hofesh Shechter to tweak Jerome Robbins’ original choreography. The Robbins Estate has granted more freedom to this revival than to most other productions of the musical, offering Shechter new creative opportunities within Robbins’ choreography.

Shechter founded his company in 2008, and he has won the UK’s Critic’s Circle National Dance Award for Best Choreography. A multifaceted artist, Shechter began piano at age 6 and dance at age 12, studying with an Israeli folk dance company and later with Batsheva Dance Company under acclaimed choreographer Ohad Naharin. Shechter’s choreography is marked by a high-energy, propulsive style, making use of a company of supremely athletic dancers; many of his works are set to music, often throbbing electronica, that he composed himself.

“Fiddler” marks his first experience on Broadway, but his innate connection to the material helped him acclimate quickly. Unlike Robbins, who had distanced himself from his Jewish identity and first experienced an appreciation for it through his work on “Fiddler,” Shechter has known it his whole life and admits, “Jewish culture is in my blood.”

The choreographer spoke to The Jewish Week recently during a rehearsal break about his process balancing tradition with contemporary choreography.

You worked with director Bart Sher in 2013 on a production of “Two Boys” at the Metropolitan Opera. What are the similarities and differences between working on that opera and working together on “Fiddler?”

It’s completely different. In the opera we were under immense pressure of time. The opera was set and choreography was made into it. Here the structure is set as well, but Bart is working as I’m working the choreography, so it’s a very harmonious and organic process. It gels together. Also this cast is amazing. Of course, Danny [Burstein] and Jessica [Hecht]. There’s a real sense of tribe. We had a Shabbat dinner together as a cast. You can feel it in the room — we’re really building something together. Everyone’s putting in their whole self.

Bart Sher is known to spend a great deal of time researching early versions of the shows he directs. How does that impact your choreography?

He digs deep. Bart is really aware that dance can be influenced by research but that it also works on a different level. He will put that information in front of me and it will inspire imagery and words, but at the end of the day, I have to connect to the music. I work with energy. In a way, I feel like my job is to remain connected to my instinct, to the music and the moment. What Bart is doing is bringing all the background and history in front of the whole cast. So it’s in the back of our minds. That’s what I like about Bart. The playground is very wide.

I imagine that when you work on a production that has a specific cultural setting like this one, you build a toolbox of movements that typify the people of Anatevka, for example. There are so many culturally chasidic movements, like the twisting of wrists while dancing.

I think it’s exactly that. In my folk dancing experience we did a lot of Russian dancing and also chasidic dancing. I’ve been at many weddings that were Orthodox. You see the madness. It’s wild. I remember seeing that and thinking, ‘These are the same guys who walk humbly in their coats.’ The toolbox is my history. When I listen to the music [of “Fiddler”], I feel a natural connection to it. And contemporary dance gives me freedom to play with it, to widen it.

There’s a moment in Alisa Solomon’s book “Wonder of Wonders” where she writes about Jerome Robbins’ first experience watching chasidic dancing at a wedding. “It was a strength I never knew,” he said, “an explosive foot thrust to the floor that shook the room that said, ‘Yes, I am here.’”

Yeah, it’s the wildness that also took me by surprise. They really let go.

Are there elements of Robbins’ choreography that you’re leaving untouched?

There are elements that I leave very much respected, like the bottle dance. We’re sort of doing bottle dance 2.0. We developed it because of the athleticism of the dancers today. For people who know the bottle dance well, it’ll be a nice surprise for them. People who don’t know it will just enjoy it.

One of the other signature movements in “Fiddler” is Tevye shaking his arms upwards when he sings “If I Were a Rich Man.” What is your take on that scene?

I actually haven’t touched it yet. I’ve watched Danny do it and he’s so brilliant. It’s absolutely authentic. I don’t think I’ll touch it. Danny just has it.

What is it like having the freedom to enhance Jerome Robbins’ dances?

I have to say, a lot of people ask do I feel pressure. The comparison is inevitable, and I’m not really going there. I have my history, which is folk dancing in Israel when I was very young. So I have that beginning and then I went into contemporary dance. For me, I’m just connecting to the music and to what I take from my culture, but I also look at it that I live in a different time. So I’m looking at the idea of how culture and tradition survive time.

editor@jewishweek.org

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FOOD & WINE

La Fille du Boucher. Via facebook.com

'The Butcher's Daughter'

French kosher cuisine is as good as you'd expect it to be.
Joshua E. London and Lou Marmon
Online Jewish Week Columnists

Jews have been a vibrant part of French society for centuries. Immigrants from all over the Ashkenazic and Sephardic world — the Middle East, the Iberian Peninsula, Central and Eastern Europe — have each contributed their own special energy and traditions into creating a lively and dynamic culture that also incorporates a French perspective. This includes food, where inventive cooks have adapted typical French dishes, which largely depends on non-kosher ingredients and mixtures, and thereby created a unique culinary tradition compatible with the strictest rabbinic standards. The results can be experienced in many of the fine kosher restaurants found in Paris.

One example is La Fille du Boucher, or The Butcher’s Daughter, located in the 17th arrondissement. Known for its grilled meats, the menu includes such delights as steak tartare, foie gras, hamburger, Entrecôte and “Le steak mignon sauce béarnaise.” It opened in 2011 with an ambiance (including a zinc bar) meant to evoke a brassiere of the 1930’s, and the meat is sourced from the family butcher shop.

Recently, we got a chance to taste the restaurant’s house wine, a Bordeaux blend. The Butcher’s Daughter Reserve 2012 ($18) is medium-bodied with notable but not overwhelming tannins that give it the structure to, not surprisingly, pair well with steak, brisket and other such fare. It opens with blueberry and cassis aromas that extend nicely into blackberry, raspberry and bits of chocolate with some interesting spice and vanilla during the finish. Very quaffable.

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Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Four Old Jewish Ladies Suspected Of 'Crak' Activity

Gambling games to watch out for this Chanukah
Maya Klausner
Editor

Raymond Babbit, Nicky Santoro, Le Chiffre … And now four elderly Jewish women. A quartet of female geriatrics is the latest coterie to join the hardened scamsters from film lores listed above — except these women are real-life Jewish grandmas.

When it comes to placing bets, it seems nothing is off the table – for law enforcement, that is. The cops will find you as they found this band of bubbes that was holding its weekly game of mah jong in the Orlando suburb of Altamonte Springs, Fla.

The group of miscreants — Bernice Diamond, Zelda King, Lee Delnick and Helen Greenspan, ages 87 to 95 — was enjoying its weekly tradition at the Escondido Condominium clubhouse, when the cops received a phone call from an alleged “trouble maker” in the building who contacted the authorities on the suspicion of illegal gambling.

Mah jong, otherwise known as the game with lots of tiny tiles popular among sweet, old ladies, and commonly played with sugar cookies and chamomile tea present, is typically a low-stakes game, in which players ante up with as little cash as a penny.

To confuse matters more, when the authorities appeared on the scene, police could hear the women discussing what sounded like a series of drug deals.

“I’ll take that two crak!” exclaimed one of the ladies. Said another: “Three bam!” Then a third joined the interaction, “Eight dot!” Finally the fourth came in with, “I need the white dragon and chrysanthemum.”

As it turns out, craks, bams, dots, white dragons and chrysanthemums are all names of pieces used in the game, similar to suits in a deck of cards, like a two of diamonds or a four of hearts.

The women were instructed to “lay low” by the Escondido property manager until the incident sorted itself out. Since then, The Heritage Florida Jewish News has reported that Florida’s gambling laws allow games wherein a winner collects $10 or less.

Coming in at four bucks, the mahjong matrons were safe.

In light of the recent mahjong mishap, one can’t help but be concerned that other seemingly innocent entertaining activities may be at risk for legal scrutiny.

Playing dreidel is one of the most beloved traditions of Chanukah, which is less than two weeks away. The family game, often enjoyed most by young children, involves the players each spinning a small top. These toys can be made of plastic or wood and can range in size from a thimble to a clementine. Each of the four sides bears a Hebrew letter, each correlating to a different value ranging from zero to a quarter to half to all.

After the spinning dreidel lands, the side facing up instructs how much the spinner takes from the pot.

Commonly the pot consists of gelt, a coin made of milk or dark chocolate wrapped in either silver or gold foil. People may even play with nuts or raisins or on occasion, buttons. But sometimes the pot can contain money.

While even the most talented dreidel players in the most high-stakes of games typically don’t generate more than a few bucks, or a handful of metallic-tasting candy, families should be aware of any litigious neighbors with a vendetta to settle. And parents should take caution not to boast too loudly in the halls of their son or daughter’s earnings.

Another festive and, until now, innocuous aspect of Chanukah, is the giving of gifts. While hiding the gift is not a formal tradition, parents will sometimes put the present under a pillow or behind a couch to create more excitement and fun for the children.

Twisting a game such as “hide and seek” into something sinister, let alone illegal, is a difficult thing to pull off, but it is technically an exchange of goods or bartering: the children’s time and energy in exchange for material gain. So, again, families should take caution when debating hiding Snuggies and stuffed animals around the house.

For those on the lookout for potential gambling in unsuspecting places, Passover is the next holiday to watch out for. That’s because of the hunting of the afikoman, when a piece of matzah wrapped in a cloth or paper towel is hidden somewhere in the home on the first night of the holiday.

When the child has found the hidden matzah (the seder isn’t considered complete unless it’s found), he or she is often rewarded with a small sum of money or a present. Beyond the implications of an illicit exchange of goods, engaging in the time-honored tradition may also fall into the folds of bribery.

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The JW Q&A
Taking Up The Torch At AJWS
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer

AJWS’ new head Robert Bank will follow in the footsteps of an icon, Ruth Messinger.

American Jewish World Service, the 30-year-old nonprofit organization that supports human rights and anti-poverty activism in the developing world and educates the American Jewish community about global justice, recently announced that in July, Robert Bank, executive vice president, will succeed Ruth Messinger as president. Messinger has headed AJWS since 1998.

Bank, a native of South Africa, moved to New York to study piano at Juilliard. He went on to study law at the City University of New York Law School and worked for the New York City Law Department and Gay Men’s Health Crisis before joining AJWS in 2009.
We caught up with Bank by phone earlier this month.
Q: You lead a prominent Jewish organization that has “Jewish” in its title but a mission of Tikkun Olam to the wider, non-Jewish world. How do you reach a balance between Jewish and general values?
A: The mission of AJWS since 1985 has been to serve as proud Jews who stand as Jews to repair the world for those who are poorest and most oppressed. Everything we do at American Jewish World Service is deeply embedded in Jewish values. We draw from the lessons of Jewish history, from the tzelim elokim [being created in God’s image], the inherent dignity of every human being, tikkun olam [repairing the world] and tzedakah [charity]. We give American Jews the tremendous opportunity to support some of the poorest and most oppressed people in the world today. These are the strangers of today that our Jewish tradition teaches us about.
We have a seminal Jewish program called the Global Justice Fellowship, which connects American Jews to the work of our partners in the developing world by taking them to the developing world and teaching them together with rabbis.
The millennial generation, according to anecdotal and statistical evidence, is increasingly divorced from specifically religious — in our case, Jewish — values. They may see AJWS as “too Jewish.” How do you make the work of AJWS service attractive to them?
Young American Jews are enormously attracted to the global justice work that American Jewish World Service offers. We are at that intersection between global justice and Judaism; young American Jews that may not be that connected to Judaism find a home at AJWS.
How has your background, growing up in South Africa in the last years of apartheid and as an out-of-the-closet gay man, sensitized you to the work of AJWS?
Deeply. Both my experience of growing up in a racist regime, my experience of growing up in a Jewish minority in the diaspora, and my experience of being gay at a time when it was very difficult to be out of the closet and open about who I was has encouraged me to pursue justice for those who are discriminated against, persecuted and treated poorly.
The coverage of your appointment at AJWS hardly mentioned your gay identity. Have we reached a point — at least in parts of the Jewish community — that one’s gayness does not play a role in a candidate’s fitness for a leadership position, or in outsiders’ reactions to the appointment?
I am deeply proud of being an openly gay man who is serving in this role, as I’m deeply proud to be Jewish, South African, an immigrant, a lawyer and an activist. I feel very gratified that the Jewish community is more embracing of LGBT people and particularly gratified by the recent decision by the Reform movement to embrace people who are transgender.
You’re following an iconic figure, Ruth Messinger, who has largely defined what AJWS has become. How do you follow in the footsteps of such a person, carving out your own identity while keeping faithful to her vision?
Ruth is one of my heroes. She has been my mentor and my partner in the work. I have worked very, very closely with her in the past six and a half years, and we have together devised a strategy for the organization going forward.
steve@jewishweek.org
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Featured on Fresh Ink For Teens
An American Jewish Holiday
by Deena Abittan
My family celebrated Thanksgiving with fresh baked challah and an elaborate meal in the dining room.

My great-grandmother, Shirley Honig Goldman, was a defender of Thanksgiving. Pictured is her wedding portrait with husband Harry Goldman. Courtesy of Deena Abittan In 1789 George Washington proclaimed November 26 as a national holiday, “to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” Although Washington was not a Jewish leader, Thanksgiving has its roots in the inherently Jewish concept of hakarat hatov, appreciating one’s good fortune. By celebrating Thanksgiving, Jews show their appreciation to America for providing them with the religious freedom to openly practice their faith.
As a third-generation, Orthodox, Jewish American, my family takes Thanksgiving quite seriously. My great-grandmother Shirley Honig Goldman, an immigrant from Poland, used to bake challah and make a feast every year for Thanksgiving. The meal, as described by my mother and grandmother, was cooked by my great-grandmother wearing her apron and house slippers. Thanksgiving was the only time my family was allowed to eat in the dining room.
My great-grandmother honored Thanksgiving as if it was a Jewish holiday. She made the same menu every year — half a grapefruit for each guest, chopped liver, pea soup with frankfurters, candied sweet potatoes topped with gooey marshmallows, canned cranberry sauce and her prized item: the turkey. She cooked it in a paper bag and always forgot to slice the turkey before bringing it to the table. Her elaborate meal was rare and difficult for her to execute as she worked outside the home as a social worker and later a teacher. She took offense to Jews who did not celebrate Thanksgiving; she felt they were ignoring the blessing of religious freedom that this country grants its citizens.

In 1945 The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York City, Congregation Shearith Israel, published a pamphlet titled, “Service for Thanksgiving Day.” (The cover is pictured at left.) My father, a collector of old religious books, found this pamphlet in his father’s shul, The Sephardic Congregation of Long Beach, N.Y., and was fascinated by the congregation’s devotion to celebrating a national holiday. Included in this pamphlet are the prayers of Hallel, praises to God recited on the first day of a new Jewish month; the prayer that we say today for the American government; and Psalm 100, a psalm of thanksgiving.
The publication of this booklet showed Congregation Shearith Israel’s commitment to observing the national holiday. Halacha, Jewish law, prohibits the recitation of unnecessary prayers. Clearly, the rabbis of this congregation viewed Thanksgiving as an important national, and Jewish, celebration that warranted the extra prayers. This pamphlet showed me that although not a Jewish holiday, Thanksgiving is one Jews should celebrate as it is an opportunity for us to show our appreciation for the religious freedoms of the United States.
As the winter holiday season approaches and most Jews are left by the red and green sidelines of Christmas, Thanksgiving is the perfect time to identify as proud Americans, yet still comply with Jewish law. Celebrating Thanksgiving presents no halachic issues as it is a nondenominational holiday that does not include any religious traditions. Jews can celebrate like other Americans. In a sense, Thanksgiving is a unifying holiday for Christians, Jews, Muslims and other faiths because everyone puts their differences aside and focuses on the blessings they have received by simply being an American.
Thanksgiving is meaningful to me as my entire family gets together for the meal, as we would with any Jewish holiday. While eating our favorite bread stuffing and other treats, my family and I recount the blessings that America has provided to my family in our religious observance and in the sustenance of the Jewish community as a whole.

Missionary Renegade

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Amid Celebration, Mourning - The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 27 November 2015

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