Jewish Groups Plan Trump Protests At AIPAC
Stewart Ain
National
National
Jewish Groups Plan Trump Protests At AIPAC
From stony stares to custom buttons to walkouts, organizations mull the best way to condemn candidate's 'naked appeals to bigotry.'
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Members of MoveOn.org stand outside the studios of 'Good Morning America' Wednesday to protest Donald Trump. Getty Images
Will there be anyone be in the room when Donald Trump speaks at the AIPAC Policy Conference on Monday?
Several Jewish groups are weighing the best way to show their disapproval of Trump when he speaks at the massive pro-Israel gathering. Last year roughly 16,000 people attended the annual conference.
Leaders of the Reform movement plan to stage a protest, but aren't sure yet what form it will take. They issued a statement condemning the Trump campaign’s “naked appeals to bigotry” and “offensive” remarks about “women, people of color and other groups.” They promised to “engage with Mr. Trump at the AIPAC Policy Conference in a way that affirms our nation's democracy and our most cherished Jewish values. ... [and] will find an appropriate and powerful way to make our voices heard.”
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the URJ’s Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, told The Jewish Week that there would be thousands of Reform Jews in attendance at the Washington, D.C., event who will want to send a message to Trump that Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry are not acceptable.
Asked how they planned to communicate that, Rabbi Pesner said, “I don’t know – we’ll see. … We’re trying to balance living out our values and making them clear in a respectful environment to advance the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Another Jewish group criticizing Trump, Ameinu, called on delegates to the AIPAC event to “raise a collective voice of Jewish outrage and make an unequivocal denunciation of Donald Trump’s bigotry.”
A third organization, Come Together Against Hate, which said in a press release that it represents rabbis, cantors and Jewish leaders who hope to convince thousands of attendees to stage a silent walkout before Trump speaks and then gather at a separate location for a discussion about human rights and dignity.
But a member of the group, Rabbi Irwin Zeplowitz of the Community Synagogue in Port Washington, L.I., said he disagrees with that approach and believes attendees should just sit in silence when Trump speaks.
“We can quietly protest about what he said about women, Mexicans, Muslims and reporters – whom he hates as much as Mexicans,” he said. “He wants to change the libel laws in America, which is something that should make us tremble as Americas.”
Yet another group, the Workmen’s Circle, is circulating a petition calling upon AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to withdraw its invitation to Trump. AIPAC has extended an invitation to all presidential candidates and Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Ted Cruz have also accepted.
The Workmen’s Circle petition, which had nearly 800 signatures by Thursday afternoon, pointed out Trump’s “deeply disturbing pattern of hate speech, alongside explicit calls to violence over the past several months.”
“If Trump were denouncing Jews in the same terms as he has used over and over in denouncing Muslims, Latinos, and #BlackLivesMatter activists, is there even the slightest possibility that he would have been invited to the annual AIPAC Policy Conference?” the petition asks.
Although supporters of AIPAC’s invitation to Trump defend his right to free speech, Ann Toback, executive director of the Workmen’s Circle, rejected that argument.
“No one is suggesting denying the right to express oneself,” she explained. “Trump has ample opportunity to make his views known, on Israel or any other topic. That does not mean that prominent Jewish organizations need to provide the platform.”
It is not known whether Trump will take the opportunity in speaking before a Jewish audience to respond to the calls of various Jewish groups to apologize and clarify several comments he has made, including his equivocal repudiation of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He has also been asked by the Anti-Defamation League to address the comments of televangelist Mark Burns, who said at one of Trump’s rallies Monday that Sen. Bernie Sanders “doesn’t believe in God …. [and] got to have a ‘coming to Jesus’ meeting.”
Rabbi Zeplowitz said there is a “big debate among rabbis as to what to do [at the conference].”
“Some say silence is consent — that if you walk out, that is silence,” he said. “In this case, I take the words of the Rambam, who says silence is the rampart of wisdom.
“There will be some 18,000 people there. I work with a sacred community — a synagogue — and I’m going to try to convince as many delegates as I can to sit and not applaud. Imagine the press the next day — yes, he spoke and the Jewish community greeted him with absolute silence. I think it would be more effective to be in the room rather than walk out.
“The truth is, there is probably not any right way. Clearly we, as rabbis, recognize the dangers of attacking those who are ‘the other’ — because ultimately it will be a challenge to us as Jews. … What will be the best approach that will be heard the day after? Yelling? Walking out? Those things have happened before and only given him energy. I want a different path.”
Rabbi Zeplowitz added that Trump’s remarks Monday will come just three days before Purim and the reading of the Book of Esther, which tells the story of someone who is unhappy with “one individual and says let’s get rid of them all. … Ultimately, if no one stands up for ... [one group that is attacked], there will be an attack against the Jews.”
The founders of Come Together Against Hate, Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky, said in a statement that they plan not only to walk out, but to also distribute thousands of stickers and flyers at the AIPAC conference condemning “the bigotry, racism, xenophobia, and misogyny expressed by Mr. Trump, and violence promoted by him.” They said their aim is to ensure that Trump’s “hateful message” does not become part of the conference and to make clear that he “does not speak for us or represent us, and his values are not AIPAC’s values.”
Hundreds of college students are expected to be in attendance. One of them, Zach Reizes, posted on his Facebook page that he plans to stage his own form of protest.
“When Donald Trump walks to the podium, I will stand in silence with my head lowered,” he wrote. “I will then silently exit the room, where I hope to encounter many of you and perhaps some members of the media.”
AIPAC policy, as stated on all delegate badges for the past four years, is that the organization “reserves the right to deny access to participants who behave in a manner AIPAC deems disruptive.”
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin of Hollywood, Fla., and an organizer of the rabbinic group that plans to walk out in advance of Trump entering said he expects several hundred Reform and Conservative rabbis to participate.
Asked if he could speculate how many of all the delegates would stage some form of protest, he replied: “When you combine all of the people who are critical of Trump’s positions, it is hard to know. But it is fair to predict there will be significant static over Trump’s presence.”

FBI Fraud Probe Extends To NYC Yeshivas
Julie Wiener
National
Jewish Groups Plan Trump Protests At AIPAC
From stony stares to custom buttons to walkouts, organizations mull the best way to condemn candidate's 'naked appeals to bigotry.'
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Members of MoveOn.org stand outside the studios of 'Good Morning America' Wednesday to protest Donald Trump. Getty Images
Will there be anyone be in the room when Donald Trump speaks at the AIPAC Policy Conference on Monday?
Several Jewish groups are weighing the best way to show their disapproval of Trump when he speaks at the massive pro-Israel gathering. Last year roughly 16,000 people attended the annual conference.
Leaders of the Reform movement plan to stage a protest, but aren't sure yet what form it will take. They issued a statement condemning the Trump campaign’s “naked appeals to bigotry” and “offensive” remarks about “women, people of color and other groups.” They promised to “engage with Mr. Trump at the AIPAC Policy Conference in a way that affirms our nation's democracy and our most cherished Jewish values. ... [and] will find an appropriate and powerful way to make our voices heard.”
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the URJ’s Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, told The Jewish Week that there would be thousands of Reform Jews in attendance at the Washington, D.C., event who will want to send a message to Trump that Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry are not acceptable.
Asked how they planned to communicate that, Rabbi Pesner said, “I don’t know – we’ll see. … We’re trying to balance living out our values and making them clear in a respectful environment to advance the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Another Jewish group criticizing Trump, Ameinu, called on delegates to the AIPAC event to “raise a collective voice of Jewish outrage and make an unequivocal denunciation of Donald Trump’s bigotry.”
A third organization, Come Together Against Hate, which said in a press release that it represents rabbis, cantors and Jewish leaders who hope to convince thousands of attendees to stage a silent walkout before Trump speaks and then gather at a separate location for a discussion about human rights and dignity.
But a member of the group, Rabbi Irwin Zeplowitz of the Community Synagogue in Port Washington, L.I., said he disagrees with that approach and believes attendees should just sit in silence when Trump speaks.
“We can quietly protest about what he said about women, Mexicans, Muslims and reporters – whom he hates as much as Mexicans,” he said. “He wants to change the libel laws in America, which is something that should make us tremble as Americas.”
Yet another group, the Workmen’s Circle, is circulating a petition calling upon AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to withdraw its invitation to Trump. AIPAC has extended an invitation to all presidential candidates and Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Ted Cruz have also accepted.
The Workmen’s Circle petition, which had nearly 800 signatures by Thursday afternoon, pointed out Trump’s “deeply disturbing pattern of hate speech, alongside explicit calls to violence over the past several months.”
“If Trump were denouncing Jews in the same terms as he has used over and over in denouncing Muslims, Latinos, and #BlackLivesMatter activists, is there even the slightest possibility that he would have been invited to the annual AIPAC Policy Conference?” the petition asks.
Although supporters of AIPAC’s invitation to Trump defend his right to free speech, Ann Toback, executive director of the Workmen’s Circle, rejected that argument.
“No one is suggesting denying the right to express oneself,” she explained. “Trump has ample opportunity to make his views known, on Israel or any other topic. That does not mean that prominent Jewish organizations need to provide the platform.”
It is not known whether Trump will take the opportunity in speaking before a Jewish audience to respond to the calls of various Jewish groups to apologize and clarify several comments he has made, including his equivocal repudiation of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He has also been asked by the Anti-Defamation League to address the comments of televangelist Mark Burns, who said at one of Trump’s rallies Monday that Sen. Bernie Sanders “doesn’t believe in God …. [and] got to have a ‘coming to Jesus’ meeting.”
Rabbi Zeplowitz said there is a “big debate among rabbis as to what to do [at the conference].”
“Some say silence is consent — that if you walk out, that is silence,” he said. “In this case, I take the words of the Rambam, who says silence is the rampart of wisdom.
“There will be some 18,000 people there. I work with a sacred community — a synagogue — and I’m going to try to convince as many delegates as I can to sit and not applaud. Imagine the press the next day — yes, he spoke and the Jewish community greeted him with absolute silence. I think it would be more effective to be in the room rather than walk out.
“The truth is, there is probably not any right way. Clearly we, as rabbis, recognize the dangers of attacking those who are ‘the other’ — because ultimately it will be a challenge to us as Jews. … What will be the best approach that will be heard the day after? Yelling? Walking out? Those things have happened before and only given him energy. I want a different path.”
Rabbi Zeplowitz added that Trump’s remarks Monday will come just three days before Purim and the reading of the Book of Esther, which tells the story of someone who is unhappy with “one individual and says let’s get rid of them all. … Ultimately, if no one stands up for ... [one group that is attacked], there will be an attack against the Jews.”
The founders of Come Together Against Hate, Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky, said in a statement that they plan not only to walk out, but to also distribute thousands of stickers and flyers at the AIPAC conference condemning “the bigotry, racism, xenophobia, and misogyny expressed by Mr. Trump, and violence promoted by him.” They said their aim is to ensure that Trump’s “hateful message” does not become part of the conference and to make clear that he “does not speak for us or represent us, and his values are not AIPAC’s values.”
Hundreds of college students are expected to be in attendance. One of them, Zach Reizes, posted on his Facebook page that he plans to stage his own form of protest.
“When Donald Trump walks to the podium, I will stand in silence with my head lowered,” he wrote. “I will then silently exit the room, where I hope to encounter many of you and perhaps some members of the media.”
AIPAC policy, as stated on all delegate badges for the past four years, is that the organization “reserves the right to deny access to participants who behave in a manner AIPAC deems disruptive.”
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin of Hollywood, Fla., and an organizer of the rabbinic group that plans to walk out in advance of Trump entering said he expects several hundred Reform and Conservative rabbis to participate.
Asked if he could speculate how many of all the delegates would stage some form of protest, he replied: “When you combine all of the people who are critical of Trump’s positions, it is hard to know. But it is fair to predict there will be significant static over Trump’s presence.”
FBI Fraud Probe Extends To NYC Yeshivas
Julie Wiener
New York
New York
FBI Fraud Probe Extends To NYC Yeshivas
Julie Wiener
JTA

FBI agents and police officers conducted a series of raids in Ramapo, New York. JTA
The FBI raided charedi Orthodox yeshivas and technology vendors that serve them in Brooklyn and in New York’s Rockland County, but declined to state publicly the details of the investigations.
In a large operation Wednesday afternoon, dozens of FBI agents, search warrants in hand, entered multiple yeshivas and vendors’ offices in Rockland County, demanding they account for technology purchases for which they billed the federal government, according to The Journal News. Agents were seen walking out with boxes of documents and computer hard drives.
The FBI confirmed to JTA that it also searched a handful of yeshivas in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn Wednesday afternoon. Those included two locations of Bais Ruchel d’Satmar, a girls school affiliated with the Satmar chasidic sect and possibly one location that was not a school.
The raids in Rockland are believed to be part of a larger investigation of fraud in the federal government’s E-rate program, which funds the purchase of technology equipment and Internet service by schools and libraries. A 2013 investigative report in the New York Jewish Week (co-written by this reporter) found that charedi Orthodox yeshivas, particularly chasidic ones, in Rockland County and Brooklyn disproportionately benefit from the program even though few offer their students or teachers Internet access.
A spokeswoman at the FBI’s New York office told JTA that the Brooklyn action were “searches” and “not raids,” and that they were part of an “ongoing investigation.” She would not confirm whether the investigation was related to the E-rate program, and said the Rockland and Brooklyn searches were not related, but were two separate investigations.
Bais Ruchel d’Satmar featured prominently in The Jewish Week’s 2013 articles, which noted that the school had been cited for noncompliance, yet continued to be approved for millions of dollars of services through E-rate. In 2011, it was approved for more E-rate funds than any other Jewish school in New York State, and in 2013 it applied for, but never received, $1.2 million for “internal connections” and “internal connections maintenance” provided by a nearby company called Computer Corner.
In a statement reported in the Journal News Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said: “Today, the FBI, working with our office, conducted searches in connection with an ongoing fraud investigation. If and when charges are filed, they will eventually become public. This remains an ongoing matter, and we are unable to provide any additional information at this time.”
More than 300 agents and officers were involved in Wednesday’s raid, authorities said, adding that no arrests had been made and none were expected that day.
In a potentially related development, The Journal News reported Wednesday that the FBI had used an Orthodox Jewish radio program and a charedi Orthodox informant in a sting operation that led to the conviction of several Rockland County officials in a corruption scandal.
The 2013 Jewish Week report found that charedi Orthodox schools that publicly eschew the Internet were awarded millions of dollars for tech equipment and Internet wiring.
In 2011, for example, Jewish schools — the vast majority of them charedi Orthodox — were awarded 22 percent of the E-rate funds in New York State, even though they enroll only 4 percent of the state’s students.
That year, of the $30 million approved for E-rate purchases at almost 300 New York Jewish schools participating in the program, nearly $9 million went to 10 schools — all but one chasidic. Those schools, among them United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, which was reportedly raided Wednesday, were collectively awarded nearly $9 million in E-rate-funded services.
In the E-rate program, money does not go directly to schools but to the vendors, called “service providers,” who sell the tech equipment and services. The charedi Orthodox yeshivas largely work with small Jewish-owned companies whose E-rate contracts are almost exclusively in charedi schools. In 2013, the Jewish Week reported that many of these companies lacked websites or storefronts, and that some had overlapping owners.
Hashomer Alarm Systems, one of the Rockland County vendors raided Wednesday, was, according to the Jewish Week’s 2013 reporting, one of the largest E-rate service providers in the Jewish community. In 2011 Hashomer was awarded more than $3 million in E-rate contracts, largely for Jewish clients, and did more business in the Jewish sector than Verizon, Sprint and Nextel combined.
According to the Journal News, officials said Wednesday that both Hashomer and its owner, Peretz Klein, were targets of their investigation. Klein declined the Journal News’ requests for comment.
Since its creation in 1998, the E-rate program, which is administered for the Federal Communication Commission by the Universal Service Administrative Company, has struggled with fraud. Two General Accounting Office reports have noted problems with the nonprofit’s “internal controls,” and several multi-million-dollar fraud cases involving the company have been exposed.
Read The Jewish Week's 3-part, investigation here:
Part 1: Haredi Schools Reap Millions In Federal Tech Funds
Part 2: How Do Haredi Schools Get All That Money?
Part 3: E-Rate Program Dogged By Concerns
Q&A with Malcolm Hoenlein 'Shifts Taking Place' In Egypt, Turkey
On his visit with with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan; and more.
Stewart Ain
Features
The JW Q&A
‘Shifts Taking Place’ In Egypt, Turkey
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Malcolm Hoenlein: Egyptian schools have begun teaching about the Camp David Accords with Israel.
Malcolm Hoenlein is the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He returned recently from the group’s 42nd annual Leadership Mission to Israel, which was attended by more than 100 leaders from the conference’s 53 member organizations. Before the group landed in Israel, some of them visited Turkey and Egypt and met with the leadership of both countries.
Q.: Your meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is another signal of the warm relationship the Egyptian leadership has developed with Israeli leaders, one that is not shared by the Egyptian people. Were you aware of that?
A.: We are aware of the divide, which is not unique to Egypt. The same is true with Jordan — even Morocco — where you have large segments of the population expressing hostile views not to Jews but to reconciliation with Israel. … Anti-Israel sentiment in Jordan is also held by about 90 percent of the population, which tells us how much work has to be done. There is not going to be an instant change, but the change at the top helps set the tone for a change in society over time.
There are shifts taking place and there are opportunities. We met Egyptians in our hotel and people in the shuk in Turkey — where there has also been incitement against Israel — and everybody greeted us. They obviously knew we were Jewish and they could not have been friendlier. … Trade between Israel and Turkey has increased each year since tensions arose between the two countries in 2010. And the number of flights between Israel and Turkey on a daily basis is incredible.
We’re hearing that Israel and the Palestinians don’t have to sign a peace treaty to ease the hostility among the populace, but rather just begin talks.
Yes, but today they are no longer putting the onus on Israel alone. They are saying the Palestinians too are responsible, and many express great frustration ... [believing that] the money given in aid goes to people’s pockets and not the Palestinian people. And they say that [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas has not taken advantage of the opportunities he has had to make peace. At the same time, they believe that were Israel to make peace, it would remove an obstacle to the normalization of relations.
These countries look at Israel differently than they used to. They see it as a force against Iran and they do not think they can rely on the West. Many feel alienated by the withdrawal of the West [from the Mideast], and look to Israel as a source of stability in the region.
There are reports that Egypt has for the first time begun teaching school children about the Camp David Peace Accords signed 38 years ago between Israel and Egypt.
Removing the incitement [against Israel] in textbooks is something we called for a long time ago. Now, the books say the signing of the agreement ended the state of war between Israel and Egypt. It is an important development and it was reflected in Sisi’s public comments on television about looking at Israel anew — and making other positive comments. It will take a long time to root out generations of hatred that people have been indoctrinated with. And some of it still continues, not only from the Palestinians but also from some Egyptian media.
On the other hand, there are courageous people in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world who cooperate with Israel, and there are those in Saudi Arabia who have written articles about it. … Egypt is working to close Hamas tunnels – they have closed 1,100 tunnels and they are very committed to it. Sisi told us that when [former Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat visited Israel [in 1977 to start the peace process], no one would have believed the level of cooperation taking place today between the two countries.
There are reports that Egypt would like to join the consortium Israel has formed with Greece and Cyprus. Is that true?
We raised it in our meeting with Sisi and he said, ‘I am a partner.’ … This is something we at the Presidents Conference have been working on for the last two years — a Mediterranean alliance involving Israel and countries in the area that have common interest in tourism, economics, trade and energy. The turmoil in the surrounding area brought this about. There are others like Italy, Malta and Morocco who will come in. This is something [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is watching carefully, and it is encouraging him to look at Israel differently.
Such an alliance takes Israel out of the cauldron of the Middle East and into a calmer setting of the Mediterranean, where it can look to the West and have partners. One day, even Lebanon and Tunisia might come in. It has potential. We started promoting it five years ago and it has been developed intensively by Cyprus, Greece and Israel in the last two years because of the oil finds in the area. I would not have anticipated what the president of Cyprus showed me on his desk when I visited him [in January with a small group from the Presidents Conference] — a hotline telephone to Bibi [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]. It was installed the day we got there. He said they talk regularly —once a week — and there is very close cooperation on a military and security level ….
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is said to desperately want to renew diplomatic relations with Israel but said Israel must do certain things first. Did that come up in your meeting?
He said there has been progress in the talks [with Israel]. After one hour and 20 minutes with him — and he had 19 members of his government there and only five or six for his meeting with [Vice President Joe] Biden — there were 35 in our delegation and he took a picture of the meeting and sent it out [to the media].
Sisi after our meeting invited us to an adjacent room for a group picture that they also sent out. It’s on his Facebook page — and the Moslem Brotherhood attacked him over it. In the past, such meetings were confidential.
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council has just designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The action came one day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah complained that Saudi Arabia was fomenting instability to weaken Hezbollah. The action heightens the conflict between the Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia and Iran’s Shiite supporters of Hezbollah.
It indicates recognition of the reality of what Hezbollah represents. The Saudis have also cut off their funding of the Lebanese army, believing that the Lebanese government betrayed them. The Saudis felt the money they were giving Lebanon is fungible and was being used to support Hezbollah.
stewart@jewishweek.org
New York
FBI Fraud Probe Extends To NYC Yeshivas
Julie Wiener
JTA

FBI agents and police officers conducted a series of raids in Ramapo, New York. JTA
The FBI raided charedi Orthodox yeshivas and technology vendors that serve them in Brooklyn and in New York’s Rockland County, but declined to state publicly the details of the investigations.
In a large operation Wednesday afternoon, dozens of FBI agents, search warrants in hand, entered multiple yeshivas and vendors’ offices in Rockland County, demanding they account for technology purchases for which they billed the federal government, according to The Journal News. Agents were seen walking out with boxes of documents and computer hard drives.
The FBI confirmed to JTA that it also searched a handful of yeshivas in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn Wednesday afternoon. Those included two locations of Bais Ruchel d’Satmar, a girls school affiliated with the Satmar chasidic sect and possibly one location that was not a school.
The raids in Rockland are believed to be part of a larger investigation of fraud in the federal government’s E-rate program, which funds the purchase of technology equipment and Internet service by schools and libraries. A 2013 investigative report in the New York Jewish Week (co-written by this reporter) found that charedi Orthodox yeshivas, particularly chasidic ones, in Rockland County and Brooklyn disproportionately benefit from the program even though few offer their students or teachers Internet access.
A spokeswoman at the FBI’s New York office told JTA that the Brooklyn action were “searches” and “not raids,” and that they were part of an “ongoing investigation.” She would not confirm whether the investigation was related to the E-rate program, and said the Rockland and Brooklyn searches were not related, but were two separate investigations.
Bais Ruchel d’Satmar featured prominently in The Jewish Week’s 2013 articles, which noted that the school had been cited for noncompliance, yet continued to be approved for millions of dollars of services through E-rate. In 2011, it was approved for more E-rate funds than any other Jewish school in New York State, and in 2013 it applied for, but never received, $1.2 million for “internal connections” and “internal connections maintenance” provided by a nearby company called Computer Corner.
In a statement reported in the Journal News Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said: “Today, the FBI, working with our office, conducted searches in connection with an ongoing fraud investigation. If and when charges are filed, they will eventually become public. This remains an ongoing matter, and we are unable to provide any additional information at this time.”
More than 300 agents and officers were involved in Wednesday’s raid, authorities said, adding that no arrests had been made and none were expected that day.
In a potentially related development, The Journal News reported Wednesday that the FBI had used an Orthodox Jewish radio program and a charedi Orthodox informant in a sting operation that led to the conviction of several Rockland County officials in a corruption scandal.
The 2013 Jewish Week report found that charedi Orthodox schools that publicly eschew the Internet were awarded millions of dollars for tech equipment and Internet wiring.
In 2011, for example, Jewish schools — the vast majority of them charedi Orthodox — were awarded 22 percent of the E-rate funds in New York State, even though they enroll only 4 percent of the state’s students.
That year, of the $30 million approved for E-rate purchases at almost 300 New York Jewish schools participating in the program, nearly $9 million went to 10 schools — all but one chasidic. Those schools, among them United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, which was reportedly raided Wednesday, were collectively awarded nearly $9 million in E-rate-funded services.
In the E-rate program, money does not go directly to schools but to the vendors, called “service providers,” who sell the tech equipment and services. The charedi Orthodox yeshivas largely work with small Jewish-owned companies whose E-rate contracts are almost exclusively in charedi schools. In 2013, the Jewish Week reported that many of these companies lacked websites or storefronts, and that some had overlapping owners.
Hashomer Alarm Systems, one of the Rockland County vendors raided Wednesday, was, according to the Jewish Week’s 2013 reporting, one of the largest E-rate service providers in the Jewish community. In 2011 Hashomer was awarded more than $3 million in E-rate contracts, largely for Jewish clients, and did more business in the Jewish sector than Verizon, Sprint and Nextel combined.
According to the Journal News, officials said Wednesday that both Hashomer and its owner, Peretz Klein, were targets of their investigation. Klein declined the Journal News’ requests for comment.
Since its creation in 1998, the E-rate program, which is administered for the Federal Communication Commission by the Universal Service Administrative Company, has struggled with fraud. Two General Accounting Office reports have noted problems with the nonprofit’s “internal controls,” and several multi-million-dollar fraud cases involving the company have been exposed.
Read The Jewish Week's 3-part, investigation here:
Part 1: Haredi Schools Reap Millions In Federal Tech Funds
Part 2: How Do Haredi Schools Get All That Money?
Part 3: E-Rate Program Dogged By Concerns
Q&A with Malcolm Hoenlein 'Shifts Taking Place' In Egypt, Turkey
On his visit with with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan; and more.
Stewart Ain
Features
The JW Q&A
‘Shifts Taking Place’ In Egypt, Turkey
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Malcolm Hoenlein: Egyptian schools have begun teaching about the Camp David Accords with Israel.
Malcolm Hoenlein is the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He returned recently from the group’s 42nd annual Leadership Mission to Israel, which was attended by more than 100 leaders from the conference’s 53 member organizations. Before the group landed in Israel, some of them visited Turkey and Egypt and met with the leadership of both countries.
Q.: Your meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is another signal of the warm relationship the Egyptian leadership has developed with Israeli leaders, one that is not shared by the Egyptian people. Were you aware of that?
A.: We are aware of the divide, which is not unique to Egypt. The same is true with Jordan — even Morocco — where you have large segments of the population expressing hostile views not to Jews but to reconciliation with Israel. … Anti-Israel sentiment in Jordan is also held by about 90 percent of the population, which tells us how much work has to be done. There is not going to be an instant change, but the change at the top helps set the tone for a change in society over time.
There are shifts taking place and there are opportunities. We met Egyptians in our hotel and people in the shuk in Turkey — where there has also been incitement against Israel — and everybody greeted us. They obviously knew we were Jewish and they could not have been friendlier. … Trade between Israel and Turkey has increased each year since tensions arose between the two countries in 2010. And the number of flights between Israel and Turkey on a daily basis is incredible.
We’re hearing that Israel and the Palestinians don’t have to sign a peace treaty to ease the hostility among the populace, but rather just begin talks.
Yes, but today they are no longer putting the onus on Israel alone. They are saying the Palestinians too are responsible, and many express great frustration ... [believing that] the money given in aid goes to people’s pockets and not the Palestinian people. And they say that [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas has not taken advantage of the opportunities he has had to make peace. At the same time, they believe that were Israel to make peace, it would remove an obstacle to the normalization of relations.
These countries look at Israel differently than they used to. They see it as a force against Iran and they do not think they can rely on the West. Many feel alienated by the withdrawal of the West [from the Mideast], and look to Israel as a source of stability in the region.
There are reports that Egypt has for the first time begun teaching school children about the Camp David Peace Accords signed 38 years ago between Israel and Egypt.
Removing the incitement [against Israel] in textbooks is something we called for a long time ago. Now, the books say the signing of the agreement ended the state of war between Israel and Egypt. It is an important development and it was reflected in Sisi’s public comments on television about looking at Israel anew — and making other positive comments. It will take a long time to root out generations of hatred that people have been indoctrinated with. And some of it still continues, not only from the Palestinians but also from some Egyptian media.
On the other hand, there are courageous people in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world who cooperate with Israel, and there are those in Saudi Arabia who have written articles about it. … Egypt is working to close Hamas tunnels – they have closed 1,100 tunnels and they are very committed to it. Sisi told us that when [former Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat visited Israel [in 1977 to start the peace process], no one would have believed the level of cooperation taking place today between the two countries.
There are reports that Egypt would like to join the consortium Israel has formed with Greece and Cyprus. Is that true?
We raised it in our meeting with Sisi and he said, ‘I am a partner.’ … This is something we at the Presidents Conference have been working on for the last two years — a Mediterranean alliance involving Israel and countries in the area that have common interest in tourism, economics, trade and energy. The turmoil in the surrounding area brought this about. There are others like Italy, Malta and Morocco who will come in. This is something [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is watching carefully, and it is encouraging him to look at Israel differently.
Such an alliance takes Israel out of the cauldron of the Middle East and into a calmer setting of the Mediterranean, where it can look to the West and have partners. One day, even Lebanon and Tunisia might come in. It has potential. We started promoting it five years ago and it has been developed intensively by Cyprus, Greece and Israel in the last two years because of the oil finds in the area. I would not have anticipated what the president of Cyprus showed me on his desk when I visited him [in January with a small group from the Presidents Conference] — a hotline telephone to Bibi [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]. It was installed the day we got there. He said they talk regularly —once a week — and there is very close cooperation on a military and security level ….
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is said to desperately want to renew diplomatic relations with Israel but said Israel must do certain things first. Did that come up in your meeting?
He said there has been progress in the talks [with Israel]. After one hour and 20 minutes with him — and he had 19 members of his government there and only five or six for his meeting with [Vice President Joe] Biden — there were 35 in our delegation and he took a picture of the meeting and sent it out [to the media].
Sisi after our meeting invited us to an adjacent room for a group picture that they also sent out. It’s on his Facebook page — and the Moslem Brotherhood attacked him over it. In the past, such meetings were confidential.
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council has just designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The action came one day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah complained that Saudi Arabia was fomenting instability to weaken Hezbollah. The action heightens the conflict between the Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia and Iran’s Shiite supporters of Hezbollah.
It indicates recognition of the reality of what Hezbollah represents. The Saudis have also cut off their funding of the Lebanese army, believing that the Lebanese government betrayed them. The Saudis felt the money they were giving Lebanon is fungible and was being used to support Hezbollah.
stewart@jewishweek.org
Traveling Vermont; A Vacation With Socialist Leanings
Hilary Danailova
Travel
Travel
A Vacation With Socialist Leanings
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer

The gift shop at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory, in Manchester. credit: Flickr
Bernie fever has reached such a pitch in the green hills of Vermont that at farmer’s markets around Manchester you can buy Bernie Sandwich Bread, a marble rye that pays homage to the democratic socialist senator’s Brooklyn roots.
“It’s a funny kind of Jewish bread, I guess,” said Oliver Levis, the loaf’s creator and proprietor of Earth Sky Time Organic Farm in Manchester. Of Sanders, he added: “I’m not sure if he likes it or not. But at this point, the Bernie Sandwich has kind of taken on its own thing.”
We Jewish New Yorkers like to think of ourselves as an urban people — but the Sanders phenomenon has cast a fresh spotlight on the rugged, quirky, individualistic tradition of Jewish New Englanders. It’s a tradition epitomized by the Levis clan, whose family owns and operates not only the farm, but also the Wilburton Inn, a grand country estate here in Manchester where art, music, theater and Jewish life coexist in a very “Vermont” fashion.
“There’s an abundance of young Jewish farmers,” Max Levis, Oliver’s younger brother, told me. “Vermont has a legacy of Jewish woodcutters and farmers and Old World pastimes — people in the schmatte trade setting up their little country stores.” Like Sanders, the Levis’ parents, who bought the inn, were among that vanguard of urban-hippie Jews who left the city for Vermont in the 1960s and ’70s. “Nowadays that mythos of Vermont as the greener pastures continues,” said Max.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the New York-born Jewish founders of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream empire, were also part of that first wave, and their Waterbury factory — about two hours north of Manchester — is a place of pilgrimage for many a dessert lover. Visitors to the candy-colored facility can take a 30-minute tour to sample flavors, watch the production process, and hear about the values of sustainability that define both the iconic company and the region.
You might also hear about those values at the beloved Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, where a vast children’s floor invites hours of browsing, and the cozy Spiral Press Café is the perfect stop for coffee or lunch. Spread over several floors in historic Colburn House, which was formerly an inn in the town center, Northshire is a destination as well as the kind of unique, family-owned business that defines a community — a popular spot for book clubs and discussion groups.
When Vermonters aren’t reading or debating politics, they’re likely to be harvesting root vegetables. Fresh crops — as well as honey, baked goods and jams — are a year-round treat at the many area farmers’ markets, as well as the market at Earth Sky Time Organic Farm. While not certified kosher, the farm kitchen is vegetarian, and Oliver Levis performs the bracha over the challah as it is prepared in what he calls “a spiritual process.”
The farm team — which includes wife Bonnie, three children and a dozen crewmembers, many Jewish — also cranks out hundreds of pounds of hummus each week and a popular “Goldburger” veggie patty. In the warmer months, the farm hosts a weekly Wednesday evening al fresco vegetarian buffet, accompanied by live music, “all organic and haimish,” Oliver Levis said. Year-round, Shabbat visitors can join the family’s Friday night sing-along, when friends gather informally to strum banjos and guitars, beat drums and sing songs and liturgy of the family’s own creation.
Up at the Wilburton Inn, Max, big sisters Melissa and Tajlei and their father, Albert, welcome guests into the beautifully restored fin-de-siècle mansion (there are seven additional houses on the estate, which are popular with vacationing families; the Levises will kasher a kitchen on request). “For a lot of Jewish guests, knowing we’re a Jewish family makes people feel very welcome,” said Melissa, noting that the inn offers a Shabbat package that includes challah, local wine and kosher products.
A giant poster of “The Sisters Rosensweig,” the hit Broadway play, is a tribute to the family’s best-known playwright — aunt Wendy Wasserstein — but Melissa and Tajlei, both professional musical-theater writers, write and stage their own plays and host performing events at the inn. It’s part of a vibrant cultural atmosphere that includes several local theaters, the Manchester Music Festival, and numerous art galleries.
The best known of these is the Southern Vermont Arts Center, a century-old institution spread out over 100 acres of rolling forests, lawns and walking trails. Visitors can tour Vermont’s largest sculpture park and an impressive collection of 19th- and 20th-century American art, and enjoy a summertime performing-arts lineup that ranges from jazz concerts to circuses to a film series.
“In the summer, it seems like there is an opening or a concert every night,” said Tajlei Levis. “There’s so much to do here.” Even if you’re not running for president.
Book Review: What's Wrong, And Right,
With Religion
Rabbi Donniel Hartman on the necessity of seeing the
'Other' as having a moral voice.
Jeffrey Salkin
Books
Books
What’s Wrong, And Right, With Religion
Rabbi Donniel Hartman on the necessity of seeing the ‘Other’ as having a moral voice.
Jeffrey Salkin
Special To The Jewish Week

Rabbi Donniel Hartman’s book faults religious followers who put God second to their own interpretations of religious priorities.
There is a bookshelf in my study that I have nicknamed “Amsterdam.”
On that shelf, you can find the following books: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” by the late Christopher Hitchens; “The God Delusion,” by Richard Dawkins; “Letter To a Christian Nation,” by Sam Harris; and “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” by Daniel Dennett.
“Amsterdam” refers, of course, to the hometown of the quintessential Jewish freethinker, Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza. Those authors have earned a place on the “Amsterdam” shelf because they fall under the rubric of “popular atheism,” which was, for several years, a minor literary cottage industry.
I mention these authors because they provide some of the intellectual backdrop to “Putting God Second: How To Save Religion From Itself” (Beacon Press), the new book by Rabbi Donniel Hartman.
Rabbi Hartman is one of Judaism’s great educators and public intellectuals. He is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, founded by his late father, the Modern Orthodox theologian and intellectual activist Rabbi David Hartman. (Full disclosure: For many years, I have participated in Hartman Institute programs).
In this book, Donniel Hartman poses a big question: If religion is so great, why does it so often fail to do its job of forming good people?
And why is this topic so important, precisely now? Because religion has come back — some would say, with a vengeance. Religion is at the center of regional and world conflicts. Rabbi Hartman examines contemporary religion as he would examine a medical patient. And he discovers that religion has an autoimmune disease.
What is the nature of this autoimmune disease?
First, God intoxication. As Rabbi Hartman sees it, too many people are so enraptured by God’s presence that they forget everything else — including other people and the ethical demands that are part of religious life.
God intoxication is God-induced indifference to anything that is not God. For Rabbi Hartman, the classic example of this is the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). Abraham is so blinded by his devotion to God that he is willing to sacrifice his own son, and therefore his own future.
Rabbi Hartman tells the story of the chasidic master who criticizes a student so caught up in prayer at home that he fails to attend to his crying baby.
“If praying makes one deaf to the cries of a child, there is something flawed in the prayer,” the rebbe tells the young man.
Implicit in citing this story is a reference to charedim, those ultra-Orthodox Jews who have retreated into their own physical, intellectual, and spiritual ghettos, and who have essentially ignored the “crying baby” of contemporary Israel and modernity.
He could also be talking about devotees of ISIS, who will sacrifice children in the name of their murderous ideology.
Religion’s second critical flaw is God manipulation, which is what is happening when we force God “to serve the self-interests of the anointed, to the exclusion of all others, by using God in the service of our own interests, while simultaneously waving the banner of divine approval.”
This is God-sanctioned indifference — this time, to anyone who is not “us.”
Rabbi Hartman relates the Talmudic story of Rabbi Shimon ben Shetah (Jerusalem Talmud, Baba Metzia 2:5), who returned a lost jewel to an idolatrous gentile. In fact, biblical law requires that an Israelite return the property of only a fellow Israelite. This gesture, therefore, went above and beyond the strict limits of the law.
By returning the jewel to the gentile, Shimon ben Shetah acknowledged that non-Jews possess inalienable human dignity.
Here again, it appears Rabbi Hartman is making an implicit point. In this case that the State of Israel must also affirm the dignity of the “Other,”and must go beyond the mere demands of the law in doing so.
How does Donniel Hartman recommend that we overcome the twin temptations of God intoxication and God manipulation?
Remember the real role of religion, he writes, “[to be a] moral mentor, reminding, cajoling, exhorting, and at times threatening its adherents to check their self-interest and become people who see others, who cannot remain indifferent, and who define their religious identities as agents of moral good.”
This means that Jewish ethical behavior must be able to stand up to, and endure, external critique.
To illustrate this, Hartman reflects on the biblical teaching that if an Israelite owns an animal, and the animal does damage to the animal of a gentile, the Jew is not liable for that damage.
Outrageous, yes? That’s what a passage in the Talmud would have us believe, as well.
The Talmud (Baba Kama 38a) tells the following story: The Roman government once sent two commissioners to the Sages of Israel with a request to teach them Torah. The Sages complied, and the commissioners studied the Torah in its entirety.
Before returning to Rome, however, the commissioners left their Jewish teachers with a sharp comment and critique. “We have gone carefully through your Torah, and found it correct, with the exception of this point: why are Jews exempt from paying damages they cause idolaters, while the latter have maximum responsibility for any damage to Jewish property?”
Consider: The Romans serve as outside “auditors” of the Jewish tradition. They have a notion of the good and the ethical that does not derive from Judaism. The inclusion of this story in the Talmud shows that there were at least some ancient sages who thought that the Torah teaching was unethical.
What else, though, is Hartman saying?
He is speaking about the role of Israel in the world. He writes, “Do not cast all external critics as hostile enemies. If you do, you will lose a profound resource for moral self-renewal. To the contrary, actively cultivate the voices, and embrace the judgments, of outsiders who articulate an independent moral standard.”
Donniel Hartman does not shy away from the most difficult and mature questions of faith. His reasoned, yet passionate, discourse is exactly what many young Jews are seeking — a way to engage with Judaism, and not be forced to leave their critical faculties at the door of that engagement.
Jeffrey K. Salkin is the senior rabbi of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Fla., and the author or editor of ten books on Judaism and culture, published by Jewish Lights Publishing and the Jewish Publication Society. He blogs at jeffreysalkin.religionnews.com.Top Stories:
Garland Pick '˜Testament To America'
National
Garland Pick ‘Testament To America’
Obama’s pick, if confirmed, would be fourth Jew on High Court; cites his Jewish roots in accepting nomination.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Judge Merrick Garland speaking after being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court today in the Rose Garden. JTA
President Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court today a Jewish judge, Merrick Garland, who is currently the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. If confirmed, he would be the fourth Jew on the nine-member court.
“It is a remarkable testament to America that a fourth Jew can be nominated to the court and that his religion is not an impediment,” said Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Committee.
If confirmed, Garland would fill the seat held by Antonin Scalia, who died last month.
Stern said he believes it unlikely that Garland’s religion will “generate substantial opposition from those who would say there are too many Jews on the court. Nobody is threatening violence against the Jews, as happened in Europe when they thought the Jews were too powerful. … It’s unprecedented in the long history of the diaspora that you have an institution as powerful as the Supreme Court and that there could be four members who are Jewish when Jews constitute less than 2 percent of the population.”
“It’s remarkable to us, not to anybody else,” he added.
it is likely to be politics and not anything else that derails Garland’s nomination. Just minutes after Obama finished announcing his selection in the White House Rose Garden with Garland at his side, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor to affirm his commitment to block the nomination.
is “about a principle and not about a person,” McConnell stressed.
justified his decision by quoting a 1992 speech by then-Senate Democrat Joe Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in which he said the Senate should not hold hearings to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year. Biden insists the Republicans have misrepresented his position.
said he is convinced that Obama’s decision to announce a nomination knowing the Republican-controlled Senate would not consider it was made “to politicize it for the purpose of the election.”
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) pointed out in a statement that Garland is a “thoughtful jurist with impeccable credentials who has already garnered overwhelming bipartisan support for a job that requires nearly the exact same criteria as a Supreme Court justice. He gets the impact of the court’s decisions on hardworking Americans in the real world. We hope the saner heads in the Republican Party will prevail” so that hearings can be held.
“If Merrick Garland can’t get bipartisan support no one can,” he added.
Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, speculated that should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton win the presidential election in November, “you could imagine a scenario in which the Republicans would want to confirm him if he is perceived as a moderate and they are worried that Hillary might nominate someone who is more liberal.”
Asked what would happen should Republican New York businessman Donald Trump win the presidency, Diament replied: “As Yogi Berra once said, predictions are difficult, especially when they are about the future.”
But all of political machinations appeared to be the furthest thing on his mind as Garland, 63, stepped before the microphone to accept Obama’s nomination. As he did so, he suddenly became overcome with emotion and, choking up, thanked Obama for “the greatest honor of my life.”
Born to a Jewish mother and a Protestant father, Garland, a Chicago native, was raised as a Jew. He has worked in Washington since the 1970s, first as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr., then a private lawyer, an assistant U.S. attorney and, since 1997, a federal judge.
Garland is a Harvard Law School graduate who married a fellow Harvard graduate, Lynn Rosenman in a Jewish ceremony in 1987. She sat next to their two daughters as he credited his family with his success.
He recalled that his grandparents “left the pale of settlement at the border of Western Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fleeing anti- Semitism and hoping to make a better life for their children in America.”
Garland said they eventually made their way to Chicago and that his father, Cyril, ran a small business from their basement. His mother, Shirley, whom Garland said was a watching the proceedings on television, headed the local PTA “all the while instilling in my sisters and me the understanding that service to the community is a responsibility above all others.”
His wife’s grandfather, Samuel I. Rosenman, was an advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
In accepting the nomination, Garland also spelled out his judicial philosophy, saying a judge “must be faithful to the Constitution and to the statutes passed by the Congress. He or she must put aside his personal views or preferences and follow the law — not make it. Fidelity to the Constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my professional life. And is the hallmark of the kind of judge I have tried to be for the past 18 years.”
In announcing Garland as his nominee, Obama said he anticipated the Republican response but asked that they reconsider.
“I simply ask Republicans in the Senate to give him a fair hearing and then an up or down vote,” he said. “If you don’t, then it will not only be an abdication of the Senate’s constitutional duty, it will indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond repair. It will mean everything is subject to the most partisan of politics, everything. It will provoke an endless cycle of more tit for tat and make it increasingly impossible for any president, Democrat or Republican, to carry out their constitutional function.”
“The reputation of the Supreme Court will inevitably suffer,” Obama added. “Faith in our justice system will inevitably suffer. Our democracy will ultimately suffer as well. … He is the right man for the job. He deserves to be confirmed. I could not be prouder of the work that he has already done on behalf of the American people. He deserves our thanks and he deserves a fair hearing.”
Books
What’s Wrong, And Right, With Religion
Rabbi Donniel Hartman on the necessity of seeing the ‘Other’ as having a moral voice.
Jeffrey Salkin
Special To The Jewish Week

Rabbi Donniel Hartman’s book faults religious followers who put God second to their own interpretations of religious priorities.
There is a bookshelf in my study that I have nicknamed “Amsterdam.”
On that shelf, you can find the following books: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” by the late Christopher Hitchens; “The God Delusion,” by Richard Dawkins; “Letter To a Christian Nation,” by Sam Harris; and “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” by Daniel Dennett.
“Amsterdam” refers, of course, to the hometown of the quintessential Jewish freethinker, Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza. Those authors have earned a place on the “Amsterdam” shelf because they fall under the rubric of “popular atheism,” which was, for several years, a minor literary cottage industry.
I mention these authors because they provide some of the intellectual backdrop to “Putting God Second: How To Save Religion From Itself” (Beacon Press), the new book by Rabbi Donniel Hartman.
Rabbi Hartman is one of Judaism’s great educators and public intellectuals. He is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, founded by his late father, the Modern Orthodox theologian and intellectual activist Rabbi David Hartman. (Full disclosure: For many years, I have participated in Hartman Institute programs).
In this book, Donniel Hartman poses a big question: If religion is so great, why does it so often fail to do its job of forming good people?
And why is this topic so important, precisely now? Because religion has come back — some would say, with a vengeance. Religion is at the center of regional and world conflicts. Rabbi Hartman examines contemporary religion as he would examine a medical patient. And he discovers that religion has an autoimmune disease.
What is the nature of this autoimmune disease?
First, God intoxication. As Rabbi Hartman sees it, too many people are so enraptured by God’s presence that they forget everything else — including other people and the ethical demands that are part of religious life.
God intoxication is God-induced indifference to anything that is not God. For Rabbi Hartman, the classic example of this is the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). Abraham is so blinded by his devotion to God that he is willing to sacrifice his own son, and therefore his own future.
Rabbi Hartman tells the story of the chasidic master who criticizes a student so caught up in prayer at home that he fails to attend to his crying baby.
“If praying makes one deaf to the cries of a child, there is something flawed in the prayer,” the rebbe tells the young man.
Implicit in citing this story is a reference to charedim, those ultra-Orthodox Jews who have retreated into their own physical, intellectual, and spiritual ghettos, and who have essentially ignored the “crying baby” of contemporary Israel and modernity.
He could also be talking about devotees of ISIS, who will sacrifice children in the name of their murderous ideology.
Religion’s second critical flaw is God manipulation, which is what is happening when we force God “to serve the self-interests of the anointed, to the exclusion of all others, by using God in the service of our own interests, while simultaneously waving the banner of divine approval.”
This is God-sanctioned indifference — this time, to anyone who is not “us.”
Rabbi Hartman relates the Talmudic story of Rabbi Shimon ben Shetah (Jerusalem Talmud, Baba Metzia 2:5), who returned a lost jewel to an idolatrous gentile. In fact, biblical law requires that an Israelite return the property of only a fellow Israelite. This gesture, therefore, went above and beyond the strict limits of the law.
By returning the jewel to the gentile, Shimon ben Shetah acknowledged that non-Jews possess inalienable human dignity.
Here again, it appears Rabbi Hartman is making an implicit point. In this case that the State of Israel must also affirm the dignity of the “Other,”and must go beyond the mere demands of the law in doing so.
How does Donniel Hartman recommend that we overcome the twin temptations of God intoxication and God manipulation?
Remember the real role of religion, he writes, “[to be a] moral mentor, reminding, cajoling, exhorting, and at times threatening its adherents to check their self-interest and become people who see others, who cannot remain indifferent, and who define their religious identities as agents of moral good.”
This means that Jewish ethical behavior must be able to stand up to, and endure, external critique.
To illustrate this, Hartman reflects on the biblical teaching that if an Israelite owns an animal, and the animal does damage to the animal of a gentile, the Jew is not liable for that damage.
Outrageous, yes? That’s what a passage in the Talmud would have us believe, as well.
The Talmud (Baba Kama 38a) tells the following story: The Roman government once sent two commissioners to the Sages of Israel with a request to teach them Torah. The Sages complied, and the commissioners studied the Torah in its entirety.
Before returning to Rome, however, the commissioners left their Jewish teachers with a sharp comment and critique. “We have gone carefully through your Torah, and found it correct, with the exception of this point: why are Jews exempt from paying damages they cause idolaters, while the latter have maximum responsibility for any damage to Jewish property?”
Consider: The Romans serve as outside “auditors” of the Jewish tradition. They have a notion of the good and the ethical that does not derive from Judaism. The inclusion of this story in the Talmud shows that there were at least some ancient sages who thought that the Torah teaching was unethical.
What else, though, is Hartman saying?
He is speaking about the role of Israel in the world. He writes, “Do not cast all external critics as hostile enemies. If you do, you will lose a profound resource for moral self-renewal. To the contrary, actively cultivate the voices, and embrace the judgments, of outsiders who articulate an independent moral standard.”
Donniel Hartman does not shy away from the most difficult and mature questions of faith. His reasoned, yet passionate, discourse is exactly what many young Jews are seeking — a way to engage with Judaism, and not be forced to leave their critical faculties at the door of that engagement.
Jeffrey K. Salkin is the senior rabbi of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Fla., and the author or editor of ten books on Judaism and culture, published by Jewish Lights Publishing and the Jewish Publication Society. He blogs at jeffreysalkin.religionnews.com.Top Stories:
Garland Pick '˜Testament To America'
National
Garland Pick ‘Testament To America’
Obama’s pick, if confirmed, would be fourth Jew on High Court; cites his Jewish roots in accepting nomination.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Judge Merrick Garland speaking after being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court today in the Rose Garden. JTA
President Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court today a Jewish judge, Merrick Garland, who is currently the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. If confirmed, he would be the fourth Jew on the nine-member court.
“It is a remarkable testament to America that a fourth Jew can be nominated to the court and that his religion is not an impediment,” said Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Committee.
If confirmed, Garland would fill the seat held by Antonin Scalia, who died last month.
Stern said he believes it unlikely that Garland’s religion will “generate substantial opposition from those who would say there are too many Jews on the court. Nobody is threatening violence against the Jews, as happened in Europe when they thought the Jews were too powerful. … It’s unprecedented in the long history of the diaspora that you have an institution as powerful as the Supreme Court and that there could be four members who are Jewish when Jews constitute less than 2 percent of the population.”
“It’s remarkable to us, not to anybody else,” he added.
it is likely to be politics and not anything else that derails Garland’s nomination. Just minutes after Obama finished announcing his selection in the White House Rose Garden with Garland at his side, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor to affirm his commitment to block the nomination.
is “about a principle and not about a person,” McConnell stressed.
justified his decision by quoting a 1992 speech by then-Senate Democrat Joe Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in which he said the Senate should not hold hearings to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year. Biden insists the Republicans have misrepresented his position.
said he is convinced that Obama’s decision to announce a nomination knowing the Republican-controlled Senate would not consider it was made “to politicize it for the purpose of the election.”
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) pointed out in a statement that Garland is a “thoughtful jurist with impeccable credentials who has already garnered overwhelming bipartisan support for a job that requires nearly the exact same criteria as a Supreme Court justice. He gets the impact of the court’s decisions on hardworking Americans in the real world. We hope the saner heads in the Republican Party will prevail” so that hearings can be held.
“If Merrick Garland can’t get bipartisan support no one can,” he added.
Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, speculated that should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton win the presidential election in November, “you could imagine a scenario in which the Republicans would want to confirm him if he is perceived as a moderate and they are worried that Hillary might nominate someone who is more liberal.”
Asked what would happen should Republican New York businessman Donald Trump win the presidency, Diament replied: “As Yogi Berra once said, predictions are difficult, especially when they are about the future.”
But all of political machinations appeared to be the furthest thing on his mind as Garland, 63, stepped before the microphone to accept Obama’s nomination. As he did so, he suddenly became overcome with emotion and, choking up, thanked Obama for “the greatest honor of my life.”
Born to a Jewish mother and a Protestant father, Garland, a Chicago native, was raised as a Jew. He has worked in Washington since the 1970s, first as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr., then a private lawyer, an assistant U.S. attorney and, since 1997, a federal judge.
Garland is a Harvard Law School graduate who married a fellow Harvard graduate, Lynn Rosenman in a Jewish ceremony in 1987. She sat next to their two daughters as he credited his family with his success.
He recalled that his grandparents “left the pale of settlement at the border of Western Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fleeing anti- Semitism and hoping to make a better life for their children in America.”
Garland said they eventually made their way to Chicago and that his father, Cyril, ran a small business from their basement. His mother, Shirley, whom Garland said was a watching the proceedings on television, headed the local PTA “all the while instilling in my sisters and me the understanding that service to the community is a responsibility above all others.”
His wife’s grandfather, Samuel I. Rosenman, was an advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
In accepting the nomination, Garland also spelled out his judicial philosophy, saying a judge “must be faithful to the Constitution and to the statutes passed by the Congress. He or she must put aside his personal views or preferences and follow the law — not make it. Fidelity to the Constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my professional life. And is the hallmark of the kind of judge I have tried to be for the past 18 years.”
In announcing Garland as his nominee, Obama said he anticipated the Republican response but asked that they reconsider.
“I simply ask Republicans in the Senate to give him a fair hearing and then an up or down vote,” he said. “If you don’t, then it will not only be an abdication of the Senate’s constitutional duty, it will indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond repair. It will mean everything is subject to the most partisan of politics, everything. It will provoke an endless cycle of more tit for tat and make it increasingly impossible for any president, Democrat or Republican, to carry out their constitutional function.”
“The reputation of the Supreme Court will inevitably suffer,” Obama added. “Faith in our justice system will inevitably suffer. Our democracy will ultimately suffer as well. … He is the right man for the job. He deserves to be confirmed. I could not be prouder of the work that he has already done on behalf of the American people. He deserves our thanks and he deserves a fair hearing.”
FBI Raids Rockland Firms As Part Of Yeshiva Fraud Probe
New York
FBI Raids Rockland Firms As Part Of Yeshiva Fraud Probe
Feds demanding for proof that ultra-Orthodox schools used federal technology funds for intended purpose.
Jeremy Uliss
Editorial Intern

Students at a chasidic yeshiva in Brooklyn. Michael Datikash/JW
FBI agents and police raided four Rockland County vendors to investigate allegations that charedi yeshivas had misused federal E-Rate funds meant for computer and phone equipment, The Journal News reported.
The investigators issued search warrants to the vendors before seizing boxes of records capable of proving whether the millions of dollars in grant money issued to the yeshivas over the past several years was used for its intended purpose: the purchase of educational telecommunications technology.
The apparent misallocation of funds was first uncovered by The Jewish Week in 2013. The four-month investigation by reporters Julie Wiener and Hella Winston uncovered signs of possible misuse such as that Yeshivat Avir Yakov in Brooklyn accepted $3.3 million in E-Rate funding while the building remained devoid of computers.
Both the U.S. Attorney and Rockland’s District Attorney have yet to comment on the raid as well as the status of the investigation.
Read The Jewish Week's 3-part, investigation here:
Part 1: Haredi Schools Reap Millions In Federal Tech Funds
Part 2: How Do Haredi Schools Get All That Money?
Part 3: E-Rate Program Dogged By Concerns
New York
FBI Raids Rockland Firms As Part Of Yeshiva Fraud Probe
Feds demanding for proof that ultra-Orthodox schools used federal technology funds for intended purpose.
Jeremy Uliss
Editorial Intern

Students at a chasidic yeshiva in Brooklyn. Michael Datikash/JW
FBI agents and police raided four Rockland County vendors to investigate allegations that charedi yeshivas had misused federal E-Rate funds meant for computer and phone equipment, The Journal News reported.
The investigators issued search warrants to the vendors before seizing boxes of records capable of proving whether the millions of dollars in grant money issued to the yeshivas over the past several years was used for its intended purpose: the purchase of educational telecommunications technology.
The apparent misallocation of funds was first uncovered by The Jewish Week in 2013. The four-month investigation by reporters Julie Wiener and Hella Winston uncovered signs of possible misuse such as that Yeshivat Avir Yakov in Brooklyn accepted $3.3 million in E-Rate funding while the building remained devoid of computers.
Both the U.S. Attorney and Rockland’s District Attorney have yet to comment on the raid as well as the status of the investigation.
Read The Jewish Week's 3-part, investigation here:
Part 1: Haredi Schools Reap Millions In Federal Tech Funds
Part 2: How Do Haredi Schools Get All That Money?
Part 3: E-Rate Program Dogged By Concerns
'Prime' Battle Over Kosher Practices
New York
‘Prime’ Battle Over Kosher Practices
Powerful communal and commercial interests collide in the case of Prime Grill’s Joey Allaham v. Lincoln Square Synagogue.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer

Joey Allaham: Transformed world of kosher cuisine. Courtesy of John Uher Photography
A significant trial is set to begin this week in a religious court here pitting a leading kosher restaurant entrepreneur, Joey Allaham of Prime Grill fame, against a venerable Modern Orthodox synagogue, Lincoln Square Synagogue, from Manhattan’s West Side.
The stakes are high, not only in dollars but in reputation. And rather than a three-man bet din, as is the custom, the case will be heard by only one rabbi — Hershel Schachter, a prominent Orthodox authority.
The synagogue claims Allaham, who is its exclusive caterer, owes $1.8 million in unpaid rental fees. Allaham maintains that long delays in the construction of Lincoln Square, completed in 2013, cost him vital business.
Another interested party in this case is the Orthodox Union, the largest and most trusted kosher certifier in the world, which gives its hechsher (stamp of approval) to Allaham’s posh restaurants. It grants him that coveted seal even as critics claim that he owes money all over town, operates unethically and has been involved in a numerous lawsuits. Allaham denies any unethical behavior and claims his conduct, in each instance, was justified.
And then there is the shadow of the Beth Din of America — the gold standard of religious courts in this country — hanging over the case after Allaham rejected its adjudicating the matter and called for a little-known Brooklyn beit din in his legal fight with Lincoln Square. Taken together, the parties in the dispute — both direct and indirect — represent a confluence of powerful communal and commercial interests. And the case brings into sharp relief the delicate dance — a little pressure here, a little leverage there — that takes place when those interests collide.
Allaham insists he will retain OU certification regardless of the outcome. Rabbi Menachem Genack, who heads the OU’s kashrut division, makes the point that trustworthiness is the key ingredient to kashrut supervision. “The credibility of the people we’re dealing with” is “part of what every supervision is about.”

The Prime Grill restaurant in the atrium of the Sony building on East 57th Street. Michael Datikash/JW
In fact, the OU has set a precedent for withdrawing certification for matters that do not deal solely with kashrut. Sources close to the organization confirmed that it has decertified business owners in the past for crimes involving theft and fraud. In a case that garnered national headlines, the OU stripped its certification from Sholom Rubashkin, former CEO of Agriprocessors, the now-bankrupt kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, in 2008, after the company was charged with thousands of counts of child labor violations, according to multiple press reports. Other cases, from enforcing a modest dress code for waitresses to stipulating that dance music not be played while wine is served, have given major kashrut organizations reason to threaten to pull their approval.
In the case of Allaham and Lincoln Square, it is most likely, say observers, that Rabbi Schachter will seek a compromise. But if he rules against Allaham, would the OU pull its certification? Such a move would potentially be a serious blow to Allaham’s fortunes. It would represent a fall from grace for the golden-boy restaurateur who came here from Syria in the 1990s knowing almost no English and with few connections, and within a few short years transformed the world of kosher cuisine.
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On the ground floor of the towering Sony building in Midtown Manhattan, men in well-tailored suits begin to cluster around noontime, checking their watches and waiting for their parties to arrive. Some wear kippot, others do not. There is no exterior indication that the restaurant is Glatt kosher — those who know don’t have to ask. Lunch over a Chimichurri-marinated hanger steak, made from kosher-certified Angus Beef, or miso-glazed Chilean sea bass, could be the perfect thing to ease a business deal or cement a new contact.
Though the quality of elegant ambiance can be hard to come by in kosher dining, Allaham changed the game when he opened The Prime Grill restaurant in the boom year of 2000. Here was an upscale kosher steakhouse — and the cuts of aged beef were succulent. The salting and soaking requirements of Jewish law that render meat kosher are generally hell on a cut of prime beef, but Allaham found a way to do it beautifully, in a classy setting, many agreed. Allaham hails from a family of kosher butchers from Syria; even his name means butcher in Arabic.
“I have a passion for meat,” said Allaham, who described learning the trade from his grandfather in Syria. As a boy, he would help his grandfather pick out live cattle from the marketplace. “It’s not something you can learn in school. You learn from watching.”
(Allaham agreed to a sit-down interview after first canceling a scheduled in-person meeting for this story, saying he would answer questions only by email. In the end, the interview, which had been scheduled to take place at The Jewish Week, took place at the Midtown office of his lawyer, who was present.)
Shortly after arriving in America in 1994 with his mother, Allaham landed a job as a stock boy at a mini-mart in Brooklyn. From there, he worked his way up to head butcher, and eventually raised funds from investors and opened his own restaurant, the first Prime Grill, on East 49th Street. He was still in his 20s.
Soon after Prime Grill opened, word got out. New Yorkers of a certain status like their steakhouses. A-list celebs from Bono to Madonna began frequenting the restaurant. Bill de Blasio and Bill Clinton stopped in for a bite. Allaham’s star was soaring. He followed up Prime Grill with Prime KO (now Prime West), Prime at the Bentley and Pizza da Solo; Prime West, located on the Upper West Side, serves French cuisine, including lamb ribs braised for 48 hours. Solo, in the cavernous Sony atrium, serves up handmade pies and authentic Italian fare. Then, in a move that garnered publicity, he opened a sleek, high-end butcher shop in the East 80s just two blocks from the long-standing Park East Kosher Butchers.
But Allaham’s rise to culinary stardom hasn’t been without pitfalls. In the past, Allaham has faced a number of lawsuits, charging everything from stolen tips to defaulting on investor payments. The OU has been made aware of some of the allegations, sources close to the organization’s kashrut bureau confirm, and for now it is standing by Allaham, who denies all allegations against him.
“I cannot comment on unsubstantiated allegations,” Allaham wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday. “As a businessman and an observant Jew, I pride myself on conducting all of my operations in a professional manner. As with any business, there have been times when certain payments have been made late due to circumstances beyond my control. And as with any business I have come across various disputes and disagreements from time to time.
“However,” he continued, “to my knowledge all my accounts are current.” Noting that he has more than 500 employees, he encouraged anyone with claims against him to deal with him directly.
“If the OU leaves because it considers a restaurant unreliable, most other reputable certifiers will be wary,” said Timothy Lytton, a kashrut-industry expert, author and law professor. “The weaker the reliability of the certification, the weaker the customer base.”
“Neemanut,” the Hebrew term for trustworthiness, lies at the core of the kashrut industry’s business model, he said. “When the OU supervises a restaurant, it has to be thinking about the trustworthiness of the person in charge. From a religious ethical point of view, that’s because it’s their job to protect the public. From a business point of view, an unreliable restaurateur will reflect poorly on the reliability of the supervision.”
While the OU has pulled certification from a handful of business owners due to fraudulent activities, the mainstream kashrut industry still has a major problem when it comes to enforcing ethical standards, according to Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder of Uri L’Tzedek, the Orthodox social justice movement.
“Kashrut authorities in America today make it clear that they have no interest in policing the ethical dimension of the industry,” said Rabbi Yanklowitz, who has spoken on behalf of workers’ rights and unjust treatment of animals. He maintains that ethical practices and the kosher status of food are “completely intertwined,” despite attempts by major certifiers to separate the two, “for the sake of business.”
The Last Tenant Standing
Currently, Allaham is in a turf battle with the Sony Building, where Prime Grill moved in the summer of 2015 from 25 W. 56th St. Pizza da Solo, Allaham’s kosher pizzeria, moved into the building several years earlier; the two restaurants now split the space.

Pizza da Solo is Joey Allaham's fancy pizza eatery adjacent to the Prime Grill. Michael Datikash/JW
Troubles began shortly after Sony sold the tower for $1.1 billion to Joseph Chetrit and business partner David Bistricer in March 2013. Now, the new owners want Allaham out, presumably to use the space for other interests, but Allaham wants to keep his lease, which he says lasts until at least 2029. Sony, Allaham’s landlord, filed suit against him in 2013 for alleged lease violations, including generating too much garbage in the atrium, where the two restaurants are housed. The slow-grinding court battle is ongoing; Allaham has denied the allegations and claims Sony is fronting for Chetrit.
Come spring, Prime Grill and Pizza da Solo will be the only tenants left standing in the table-lined atrium of the building connecting East 55th and East 56th streets, said Valentino-Puiu Lulea, general manager at Prime Grill.
The move to the Sony building is Prime Grill’s third relocation since launching in 2000. Allaham was involved in a lawsuit over Prime Grill leaving the E. 49th Street location, resulting in a settlement that alleged he had owed more than $850,000 in unpaid rent. Prime Grill was evicted from the second location, on W. 56th Street, in August 2015.
According to Allaham, he tried unsuccessfully to surrender the keys and the lease to the landlord of 25 W. 56th before the eviction notice was posted. He decided to surrender the lease because the Sony building, where he had opened Pizza da Solo, did not want him to operate a competing restaurant within a two-block radius.
A source close to Allaham said the restaurateur is “desperate” to receive a big payout from Chetrit in exchange for abandoning the Sony lease, though the source said such a payout is not likely. Though Allaham did not directly address this claim, he maintains that his financial position is solid.
“Chetrit will build up around Joey if he has to,” the source said, speaking to The Jewish Week anonymously for fear of retribution. The source claims Allaham still owes him a significant amount of money.
Chetrit has not responded to requests for comment.
Passover Fiasco
Landlords aren’t the only ones pushing for payback. Allaham, who ran three luxury Passover programs in Aspen, Colo., Puerto Rico and Dana Point, Calif., last spring, is still battling legal fallout from the experience. American Express Centurion Bank filed a $1.3 million suit in state Supreme Court here against Allaham on Dec. 23. Though the case was dismissed on Feb. 4, an examination of Allaham’s credit card bill, filed by American Express as an exhibit to its complaint, shows that Allaham accrued several hundred thousand dollars in debt over the course of three days to pay for the 2015 Passover programs. When he tried to pay off that debt, American Express alleged, his checks bounced several times.
The lawyer representing American Express did not return requests for comment.
According to Allaham, the American Express suit was caused by 400 dissatisfied Passover guests who abruptly reversed their charges after the holiday getaway failed to live up to guests’ expectations and its contractual obligations. He blames the high-price hotel and its employees, whom he says sabotaged his operation. Several incidents, including bread being served at Passover meals — an infringement of the highest order according to Orthodox law -- left customers enraged.
Allaham is currently suing Vieques Hotel Partners, owner of the W Retreat and Spa in Puerto Rico, which he claims is responsible for the Passover fiasco. According to his complaint, the hotel staff carried out “numerous repugnant and indefensible acts of hostility, bias, malice, discrimination, anti-Semitism … vandalism and theft” towards his staff and guests.
The W Retreat and Spa did not respond to request for comment.
This year Allaham has downscaled his Pesach programming somewhat. None of the three hotels from 2015 was renewed. This year, Allaham’s “Prime Pesach” is set to take place at the Fairmont in Santa Monica, Calif. All 302 rooms in the hotel’s three towers (10 floors per tower) have been booked in advance for the week of Passover. Allaham is charging up to $9,500 per person, according to the program’s website; last year prices reached $11,000 per person, according to online price listings for the program.
Similar to his past Passover programs, a star-studded cast of rabbis, lecturers and Jewish entertainers are expected to fill the schedule this year. But some former employees of those Passover programs describe less than satisfactory experiences dealing with Allaham.
Rabbi Mendel Mintz, executive director of the Chabad Community Center in Aspen Valley, said he was recruited by Allaham to help with the kosher certification, or hashgacha, of his 2015 Passover program in Aspen. Rabbi Mintz said he spent “months” answering questions from hotel staff and guests, and personally recruiting eight mashgichim to oversee kashrut operations at the hotel. They were to be paid a total of $16,000, or $2,000 a person.
The rabbi’s first “red flag” was when Allaham asked him to pay out of pocket for the plane tickets of the eight mashgichim. “It was strange that Joey would ask me — his employee — to lay out the money when he hadn’t even paid me yet,” Rabbi Mintz told The Jewish Week in a phone interview. “But I decided not to make much of it at the time.”
A week before Passover, Rabbi Mintz asked Allaham about the money. Allaham assured him the check was in the mail. No check ever arrived, according to the rabbi.
What followed was a months-long email and phone exchange in which Rabbi Mintz continued to request the money and Allaham promised the money would be sent, to no avail. When the check for $8,000 finally arrived, it bounced — twice. “More emails, more checks — checks bounced, repeat,” said Rabbi Mintz. The money has since been paid in full, according to the rabbi.
Allaham denied allegations of non-payment. He said he paid the rabbi shorty after the Passover holiday.
Mendel Zirkind, a private chef and mashgiach hired by Allaham to help prepare food for the 2015 Passover programs, said he was never paid for his six weeks of work, during which he averaged 70 hours a week.
“The way Joey runs his operations is he makes you come and beg for the money. If you don’t run after your money, you won’t get it,” he said. Zirkind described the work-intensive cooking methods he used to prepare the meat, including sous-vide, a method in which food is sealed in a plastic bag and submerged in temperature-controlled water for long periods of time — 24 hours or more, in some cases. According to Zirkind, Allaham still owes him $7,500 for the work. To date, he has received two checks from Allaham — both bounced, he said.
According to Allaham, Zirkind was caught on camera stealing large amounts of meat from the kitchen in Lincoln Square, where preparations for the program were underway. Allaham produced what he said was photo evidence taken from security cameras showing a bearded man, allegedly Zirkind, moving large boxes in and out of the building.
Zirkind denies the claims. “I’m a single guy, I live alone,” he said. “What exactly would I do with $20,000 worth of meat?”
Allaham asserts that Zirkind sold the meat for personal gain.
A number of vendors, suppliers and former employees of Allaham interviewed for this article claim Allaham still owes him or her money, in amounts ranging from a few thousand to $80,000. Many have requested to remain anonymous in the hopes that Allaham will still pay them back.
“I’ve waited to be paid back for so many years, I just can’t risk losing everything now,” said one independent contractor, after describing his “troubles” with Allaham over the past several years. According to the contractor, the restaurateur owes him up to $80,000. After months of calling and many bounced checks, Allaham has finally set up a functional, albeit dilatory, payment plan, he said. (A source with knowledge of the disputes says Allaham has sought to settle old financial scores in advance of the publication of this article.)
Trouble At The Airport
In October 2014, caterer and restaurateur David Pearlman, 34, says he spent six weeks creating an intricate menu for a Sukkot hotel program that would take place that year in Orlando, Fla. The program was one of Allaham’s first forays into the world of luxury, all-inclusive kosher holiday retreats.
Pearlman said his long days of preparation for the program entailed ordering everything from salt to tuna tartar, arranging truck deliveries, and making sure the destination kitchen was prepared for a strictly kosher clientele. After six weeks, he headed down to Orlando three days before the program’s start date to set up shop; his wife and three young children planned to join him there for the holiday.
At the airport, he met with Allaham and his crew. According to Pearlman and another former employee of Allaham’s who witnessed the scene, Allaham, who had just experienced a baggage mishap, screamed at Pearlman to get on a flight and go back home. Pearlman tried to protest but quickly realized it was futile.
“They were all so terrified of him [Allaham] that they just turned their heads and looked away,” he told The Jewish Week in a phone interview. “No one questioned him. No one stood up for me. No one said anything.”
Shaken by the experience, he booked a flight home and scrambled together last-minute holiday plans.
Shortly thereafter, Pearlman sent Allaham an invoice for $5,000. He received no response. He e-mailed Allaham’s director of operations (this individual no longer works for Allaham). “I don’t think he plans on paying you,” the director emailed back, claimed Pearlman.
“I started to hear from people who used to work for Joey. They all said the same thing. ‘This is his M.O. — don’t expect to get paid,’” said Pearlman.
His next step was to reach out to the Orthodox Union, which he knew certified Allaham’s operations. Pearlman said he contacted a kashrut representative at the OU, who advised him to take his case to the Beit Din of America. Rabbi Genack, the CEO of OU’s kashrut division, confirmed that Pearlman reached out to the organization and was advised to bring his case before the Orthodox high court.
“He [Genack] told me anything the Beit Din of America decided, the OU would uphold,” said Pearlman. He described the threat of removing Allaham’s valuable kosher seal of approval as his only “leverage.”
In June 2015, Pearlman brought Allaham before a religious court of three judges at the BDA religious court. The BDA ruled in favor of Pearlman. In November, the court sent a letter documenting the decision to Pearlman and Allaham, demanding Allaham pay the $5,000 in full.
Allaham told The Jewish Week he mailed the payment in full to Pearlman during the first week of March. He said he told Pearlman to cancel his flight to Orlando while he was still in New York. He also claimed Pearlman intentionally canceled the flights of 20 other employees, causing Allaham significant financial losses.
A Synagogue Caught In Middle
In 2012, Lincoln Square Synagogue, a fixture on the Upper West Side since the 1960s, began seeking a high-quality kosher caterer to take up operations in its newly constructed social hall. The Modern Orthodox synagogue was nearing the end of its $50 million construction project, a new, state-of-the-art 50,000-square-foot facility at 180 Amsterdam Ave. Though originally the project was expected to take only two years, financial setbacks, exacerbated by the market collapse in 2008, set the project back four years and left the synagogue scrambling for funds.

Lincoln Square Synagogue. The shul's catering hall, operated by Allaham, is under dispute. Michael Datikash/JW
In an effort to raise revenue, the synagogue struck up a deal with Allaham in November of 2012. Prime Grill would be the exclusive caterer for all events that took place in the new building, and Allaham would pay a monthly fee of $20,883, all utility fees, and be responsible for renovating the new ballroom, according to court papers — an undertaking projected to cost $1.5 million. The agreement also provided that any dispute between Prime Grill and the synagogue would be arbitrated before the Beit Din of America. According to the synagogue, Allaham defaulted on every one of these agreements. Allaham claims that construction delays cost him business.
Lincoln Square wants the case resolved quickly because it cannot rent the ballroom to other vendors until the contract with Allaham is legally terminated, said a synagogue representative. Currently, if another party wants to use the ballroom for an event, Prime Grill is paid for the time, said the representative.
The synagogue decided to take the case before the Beit Din of America in August 2015. According to court documents, Allaham agreed to have the case arbitrated before the religious court, and his lawyer sent several emails to arrange a date. During the case proceedings, the OU reinforced the BDA’s court summons, and threatened to remove Allaham’s certification if he did not comply, according to a source close to the situation.
Unlike many ad hoc beit dins that operate around New York City, the BDA is committed to regulations, rules and procedures, said Rabbi Shlomo Weissmann, its director. “We are committed to the highest standards of transparency and protocol,” said the rabbi, who is a licensed attorney.
But after agreeing to bring the case before the BDA, Allaham reneged, claiming that Rabbi Shaul Robinson, Lincoln Square’s rabbi, presents a conflict of interest because he is a member of the Rabbinical Council of America, an organization that is affiliated with the BDA. The synagogue alleges that this action was “a blatant attempt at forum shopping.”
Though he declined to comment on the Lincoln Square case, Rabbi Weissmann said that the court has a specific mechanism for objecting to an arbitrator who has any conflict of interest. “We are careful to staff a case only with individuals who have no prior relationship to either party,” he said. In the case that the judges do have some prior relationship, the information is disclosed at the start of the hearing. “Our goal is complete transparency,” he said.
According to Lincoln Square, Allaham said he wanted to appear before a different bit din, the Beth Din of the Central Rabbinical Congress in Brooklyn. (In a Google search, no information about this alternative beit din comes up.) When Lincoln Square resisted, Allaham took his case to civil court instead.
The OU’s Rabbi Genack confirmed that Allaham’s refusal to appear before the BDA, or another approved arbiter, could compromise his supervision. However, the current agreement to appear before Rabbi Schachter protects Allaham from this possibility. The rabbi’s ruling, which will likely inform OU’s actions about Prime Grill’s kosher seal of approval, will be legally binding in civil court, according to Rabbi Genack.
For his part, Joey Allaham insists his ties with the OU are unshakable. And he denies any unethical conduct that would put his certification in jeopardy. The OU’s seal is not an endorsement he is willing to lose. “We’ve always had OU certification,” he said. “We won’t lose the certification, whatever the outcome in beit din.”
This article was made possible with funding from The Jewish Week Investigative Journalism Fund.
New York
‘Prime’ Battle Over Kosher Practices
Powerful communal and commercial interests collide in the case of Prime Grill’s Joey Allaham v. Lincoln Square Synagogue.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer

Joey Allaham: Transformed world of kosher cuisine. Courtesy of John Uher Photography
A significant trial is set to begin this week in a religious court here pitting a leading kosher restaurant entrepreneur, Joey Allaham of Prime Grill fame, against a venerable Modern Orthodox synagogue, Lincoln Square Synagogue, from Manhattan’s West Side.
The stakes are high, not only in dollars but in reputation. And rather than a three-man bet din, as is the custom, the case will be heard by only one rabbi — Hershel Schachter, a prominent Orthodox authority.
The synagogue claims Allaham, who is its exclusive caterer, owes $1.8 million in unpaid rental fees. Allaham maintains that long delays in the construction of Lincoln Square, completed in 2013, cost him vital business.
Another interested party in this case is the Orthodox Union, the largest and most trusted kosher certifier in the world, which gives its hechsher (stamp of approval) to Allaham’s posh restaurants. It grants him that coveted seal even as critics claim that he owes money all over town, operates unethically and has been involved in a numerous lawsuits. Allaham denies any unethical behavior and claims his conduct, in each instance, was justified.
And then there is the shadow of the Beth Din of America — the gold standard of religious courts in this country — hanging over the case after Allaham rejected its adjudicating the matter and called for a little-known Brooklyn beit din in his legal fight with Lincoln Square. Taken together, the parties in the dispute — both direct and indirect — represent a confluence of powerful communal and commercial interests. And the case brings into sharp relief the delicate dance — a little pressure here, a little leverage there — that takes place when those interests collide.
Allaham insists he will retain OU certification regardless of the outcome. Rabbi Menachem Genack, who heads the OU’s kashrut division, makes the point that trustworthiness is the key ingredient to kashrut supervision. “The credibility of the people we’re dealing with” is “part of what every supervision is about.”

The Prime Grill restaurant in the atrium of the Sony building on East 57th Street. Michael Datikash/JW
In fact, the OU has set a precedent for withdrawing certification for matters that do not deal solely with kashrut. Sources close to the organization confirmed that it has decertified business owners in the past for crimes involving theft and fraud. In a case that garnered national headlines, the OU stripped its certification from Sholom Rubashkin, former CEO of Agriprocessors, the now-bankrupt kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, in 2008, after the company was charged with thousands of counts of child labor violations, according to multiple press reports. Other cases, from enforcing a modest dress code for waitresses to stipulating that dance music not be played while wine is served, have given major kashrut organizations reason to threaten to pull their approval.
In the case of Allaham and Lincoln Square, it is most likely, say observers, that Rabbi Schachter will seek a compromise. But if he rules against Allaham, would the OU pull its certification? Such a move would potentially be a serious blow to Allaham’s fortunes. It would represent a fall from grace for the golden-boy restaurateur who came here from Syria in the 1990s knowing almost no English and with few connections, and within a few short years transformed the world of kosher cuisine.
------♦------
On the ground floor of the towering Sony building in Midtown Manhattan, men in well-tailored suits begin to cluster around noontime, checking their watches and waiting for their parties to arrive. Some wear kippot, others do not. There is no exterior indication that the restaurant is Glatt kosher — those who know don’t have to ask. Lunch over a Chimichurri-marinated hanger steak, made from kosher-certified Angus Beef, or miso-glazed Chilean sea bass, could be the perfect thing to ease a business deal or cement a new contact.
Though the quality of elegant ambiance can be hard to come by in kosher dining, Allaham changed the game when he opened The Prime Grill restaurant in the boom year of 2000. Here was an upscale kosher steakhouse — and the cuts of aged beef were succulent. The salting and soaking requirements of Jewish law that render meat kosher are generally hell on a cut of prime beef, but Allaham found a way to do it beautifully, in a classy setting, many agreed. Allaham hails from a family of kosher butchers from Syria; even his name means butcher in Arabic.
“I have a passion for meat,” said Allaham, who described learning the trade from his grandfather in Syria. As a boy, he would help his grandfather pick out live cattle from the marketplace. “It’s not something you can learn in school. You learn from watching.”
(Allaham agreed to a sit-down interview after first canceling a scheduled in-person meeting for this story, saying he would answer questions only by email. In the end, the interview, which had been scheduled to take place at The Jewish Week, took place at the Midtown office of his lawyer, who was present.)
Shortly after arriving in America in 1994 with his mother, Allaham landed a job as a stock boy at a mini-mart in Brooklyn. From there, he worked his way up to head butcher, and eventually raised funds from investors and opened his own restaurant, the first Prime Grill, on East 49th Street. He was still in his 20s.
Soon after Prime Grill opened, word got out. New Yorkers of a certain status like their steakhouses. A-list celebs from Bono to Madonna began frequenting the restaurant. Bill de Blasio and Bill Clinton stopped in for a bite. Allaham’s star was soaring. He followed up Prime Grill with Prime KO (now Prime West), Prime at the Bentley and Pizza da Solo; Prime West, located on the Upper West Side, serves French cuisine, including lamb ribs braised for 48 hours. Solo, in the cavernous Sony atrium, serves up handmade pies and authentic Italian fare. Then, in a move that garnered publicity, he opened a sleek, high-end butcher shop in the East 80s just two blocks from the long-standing Park East Kosher Butchers.
But Allaham’s rise to culinary stardom hasn’t been without pitfalls. In the past, Allaham has faced a number of lawsuits, charging everything from stolen tips to defaulting on investor payments. The OU has been made aware of some of the allegations, sources close to the organization’s kashrut bureau confirm, and for now it is standing by Allaham, who denies all allegations against him.
“I cannot comment on unsubstantiated allegations,” Allaham wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday. “As a businessman and an observant Jew, I pride myself on conducting all of my operations in a professional manner. As with any business, there have been times when certain payments have been made late due to circumstances beyond my control. And as with any business I have come across various disputes and disagreements from time to time.
“However,” he continued, “to my knowledge all my accounts are current.” Noting that he has more than 500 employees, he encouraged anyone with claims against him to deal with him directly.
“If the OU leaves because it considers a restaurant unreliable, most other reputable certifiers will be wary,” said Timothy Lytton, a kashrut-industry expert, author and law professor. “The weaker the reliability of the certification, the weaker the customer base.”
“Neemanut,” the Hebrew term for trustworthiness, lies at the core of the kashrut industry’s business model, he said. “When the OU supervises a restaurant, it has to be thinking about the trustworthiness of the person in charge. From a religious ethical point of view, that’s because it’s their job to protect the public. From a business point of view, an unreliable restaurateur will reflect poorly on the reliability of the supervision.”
While the OU has pulled certification from a handful of business owners due to fraudulent activities, the mainstream kashrut industry still has a major problem when it comes to enforcing ethical standards, according to Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder of Uri L’Tzedek, the Orthodox social justice movement.
“Kashrut authorities in America today make it clear that they have no interest in policing the ethical dimension of the industry,” said Rabbi Yanklowitz, who has spoken on behalf of workers’ rights and unjust treatment of animals. He maintains that ethical practices and the kosher status of food are “completely intertwined,” despite attempts by major certifiers to separate the two, “for the sake of business.”
The Last Tenant Standing
Currently, Allaham is in a turf battle with the Sony Building, where Prime Grill moved in the summer of 2015 from 25 W. 56th St. Pizza da Solo, Allaham’s kosher pizzeria, moved into the building several years earlier; the two restaurants now split the space.

Pizza da Solo is Joey Allaham's fancy pizza eatery adjacent to the Prime Grill. Michael Datikash/JW
Troubles began shortly after Sony sold the tower for $1.1 billion to Joseph Chetrit and business partner David Bistricer in March 2013. Now, the new owners want Allaham out, presumably to use the space for other interests, but Allaham wants to keep his lease, which he says lasts until at least 2029. Sony, Allaham’s landlord, filed suit against him in 2013 for alleged lease violations, including generating too much garbage in the atrium, where the two restaurants are housed. The slow-grinding court battle is ongoing; Allaham has denied the allegations and claims Sony is fronting for Chetrit.
Come spring, Prime Grill and Pizza da Solo will be the only tenants left standing in the table-lined atrium of the building connecting East 55th and East 56th streets, said Valentino-Puiu Lulea, general manager at Prime Grill.
The move to the Sony building is Prime Grill’s third relocation since launching in 2000. Allaham was involved in a lawsuit over Prime Grill leaving the E. 49th Street location, resulting in a settlement that alleged he had owed more than $850,000 in unpaid rent. Prime Grill was evicted from the second location, on W. 56th Street, in August 2015.
According to Allaham, he tried unsuccessfully to surrender the keys and the lease to the landlord of 25 W. 56th before the eviction notice was posted. He decided to surrender the lease because the Sony building, where he had opened Pizza da Solo, did not want him to operate a competing restaurant within a two-block radius.
A source close to Allaham said the restaurateur is “desperate” to receive a big payout from Chetrit in exchange for abandoning the Sony lease, though the source said such a payout is not likely. Though Allaham did not directly address this claim, he maintains that his financial position is solid.
“Chetrit will build up around Joey if he has to,” the source said, speaking to The Jewish Week anonymously for fear of retribution. The source claims Allaham still owes him a significant amount of money.
Chetrit has not responded to requests for comment.
Passover Fiasco
Landlords aren’t the only ones pushing for payback. Allaham, who ran three luxury Passover programs in Aspen, Colo., Puerto Rico and Dana Point, Calif., last spring, is still battling legal fallout from the experience. American Express Centurion Bank filed a $1.3 million suit in state Supreme Court here against Allaham on Dec. 23. Though the case was dismissed on Feb. 4, an examination of Allaham’s credit card bill, filed by American Express as an exhibit to its complaint, shows that Allaham accrued several hundred thousand dollars in debt over the course of three days to pay for the 2015 Passover programs. When he tried to pay off that debt, American Express alleged, his checks bounced several times.
The lawyer representing American Express did not return requests for comment.
According to Allaham, the American Express suit was caused by 400 dissatisfied Passover guests who abruptly reversed their charges after the holiday getaway failed to live up to guests’ expectations and its contractual obligations. He blames the high-price hotel and its employees, whom he says sabotaged his operation. Several incidents, including bread being served at Passover meals — an infringement of the highest order according to Orthodox law -- left customers enraged.
Allaham is currently suing Vieques Hotel Partners, owner of the W Retreat and Spa in Puerto Rico, which he claims is responsible for the Passover fiasco. According to his complaint, the hotel staff carried out “numerous repugnant and indefensible acts of hostility, bias, malice, discrimination, anti-Semitism … vandalism and theft” towards his staff and guests.
The W Retreat and Spa did not respond to request for comment.
This year Allaham has downscaled his Pesach programming somewhat. None of the three hotels from 2015 was renewed. This year, Allaham’s “Prime Pesach” is set to take place at the Fairmont in Santa Monica, Calif. All 302 rooms in the hotel’s three towers (10 floors per tower) have been booked in advance for the week of Passover. Allaham is charging up to $9,500 per person, according to the program’s website; last year prices reached $11,000 per person, according to online price listings for the program.
Similar to his past Passover programs, a star-studded cast of rabbis, lecturers and Jewish entertainers are expected to fill the schedule this year. But some former employees of those Passover programs describe less than satisfactory experiences dealing with Allaham.
Rabbi Mendel Mintz, executive director of the Chabad Community Center in Aspen Valley, said he was recruited by Allaham to help with the kosher certification, or hashgacha, of his 2015 Passover program in Aspen. Rabbi Mintz said he spent “months” answering questions from hotel staff and guests, and personally recruiting eight mashgichim to oversee kashrut operations at the hotel. They were to be paid a total of $16,000, or $2,000 a person.
The rabbi’s first “red flag” was when Allaham asked him to pay out of pocket for the plane tickets of the eight mashgichim. “It was strange that Joey would ask me — his employee — to lay out the money when he hadn’t even paid me yet,” Rabbi Mintz told The Jewish Week in a phone interview. “But I decided not to make much of it at the time.”
A week before Passover, Rabbi Mintz asked Allaham about the money. Allaham assured him the check was in the mail. No check ever arrived, according to the rabbi.
What followed was a months-long email and phone exchange in which Rabbi Mintz continued to request the money and Allaham promised the money would be sent, to no avail. When the check for $8,000 finally arrived, it bounced — twice. “More emails, more checks — checks bounced, repeat,” said Rabbi Mintz. The money has since been paid in full, according to the rabbi.
Allaham denied allegations of non-payment. He said he paid the rabbi shorty after the Passover holiday.
Mendel Zirkind, a private chef and mashgiach hired by Allaham to help prepare food for the 2015 Passover programs, said he was never paid for his six weeks of work, during which he averaged 70 hours a week.
“The way Joey runs his operations is he makes you come and beg for the money. If you don’t run after your money, you won’t get it,” he said. Zirkind described the work-intensive cooking methods he used to prepare the meat, including sous-vide, a method in which food is sealed in a plastic bag and submerged in temperature-controlled water for long periods of time — 24 hours or more, in some cases. According to Zirkind, Allaham still owes him $7,500 for the work. To date, he has received two checks from Allaham — both bounced, he said.
According to Allaham, Zirkind was caught on camera stealing large amounts of meat from the kitchen in Lincoln Square, where preparations for the program were underway. Allaham produced what he said was photo evidence taken from security cameras showing a bearded man, allegedly Zirkind, moving large boxes in and out of the building.
Zirkind denies the claims. “I’m a single guy, I live alone,” he said. “What exactly would I do with $20,000 worth of meat?”
Allaham asserts that Zirkind sold the meat for personal gain.
A number of vendors, suppliers and former employees of Allaham interviewed for this article claim Allaham still owes him or her money, in amounts ranging from a few thousand to $80,000. Many have requested to remain anonymous in the hopes that Allaham will still pay them back.
“I’ve waited to be paid back for so many years, I just can’t risk losing everything now,” said one independent contractor, after describing his “troubles” with Allaham over the past several years. According to the contractor, the restaurateur owes him up to $80,000. After months of calling and many bounced checks, Allaham has finally set up a functional, albeit dilatory, payment plan, he said. (A source with knowledge of the disputes says Allaham has sought to settle old financial scores in advance of the publication of this article.)
Trouble At The Airport
In October 2014, caterer and restaurateur David Pearlman, 34, says he spent six weeks creating an intricate menu for a Sukkot hotel program that would take place that year in Orlando, Fla. The program was one of Allaham’s first forays into the world of luxury, all-inclusive kosher holiday retreats.
Pearlman said his long days of preparation for the program entailed ordering everything from salt to tuna tartar, arranging truck deliveries, and making sure the destination kitchen was prepared for a strictly kosher clientele. After six weeks, he headed down to Orlando three days before the program’s start date to set up shop; his wife and three young children planned to join him there for the holiday.
At the airport, he met with Allaham and his crew. According to Pearlman and another former employee of Allaham’s who witnessed the scene, Allaham, who had just experienced a baggage mishap, screamed at Pearlman to get on a flight and go back home. Pearlman tried to protest but quickly realized it was futile.
“They were all so terrified of him [Allaham] that they just turned their heads and looked away,” he told The Jewish Week in a phone interview. “No one questioned him. No one stood up for me. No one said anything.”
Shaken by the experience, he booked a flight home and scrambled together last-minute holiday plans.
Shortly thereafter, Pearlman sent Allaham an invoice for $5,000. He received no response. He e-mailed Allaham’s director of operations (this individual no longer works for Allaham). “I don’t think he plans on paying you,” the director emailed back, claimed Pearlman.
“I started to hear from people who used to work for Joey. They all said the same thing. ‘This is his M.O. — don’t expect to get paid,’” said Pearlman.
His next step was to reach out to the Orthodox Union, which he knew certified Allaham’s operations. Pearlman said he contacted a kashrut representative at the OU, who advised him to take his case to the Beit Din of America. Rabbi Genack, the CEO of OU’s kashrut division, confirmed that Pearlman reached out to the organization and was advised to bring his case before the Orthodox high court.
“He [Genack] told me anything the Beit Din of America decided, the OU would uphold,” said Pearlman. He described the threat of removing Allaham’s valuable kosher seal of approval as his only “leverage.”
In June 2015, Pearlman brought Allaham before a religious court of three judges at the BDA religious court. The BDA ruled in favor of Pearlman. In November, the court sent a letter documenting the decision to Pearlman and Allaham, demanding Allaham pay the $5,000 in full.
Allaham told The Jewish Week he mailed the payment in full to Pearlman during the first week of March. He said he told Pearlman to cancel his flight to Orlando while he was still in New York. He also claimed Pearlman intentionally canceled the flights of 20 other employees, causing Allaham significant financial losses.
A Synagogue Caught In Middle
In 2012, Lincoln Square Synagogue, a fixture on the Upper West Side since the 1960s, began seeking a high-quality kosher caterer to take up operations in its newly constructed social hall. The Modern Orthodox synagogue was nearing the end of its $50 million construction project, a new, state-of-the-art 50,000-square-foot facility at 180 Amsterdam Ave. Though originally the project was expected to take only two years, financial setbacks, exacerbated by the market collapse in 2008, set the project back four years and left the synagogue scrambling for funds.

Lincoln Square Synagogue. The shul's catering hall, operated by Allaham, is under dispute. Michael Datikash/JW
In an effort to raise revenue, the synagogue struck up a deal with Allaham in November of 2012. Prime Grill would be the exclusive caterer for all events that took place in the new building, and Allaham would pay a monthly fee of $20,883, all utility fees, and be responsible for renovating the new ballroom, according to court papers — an undertaking projected to cost $1.5 million. The agreement also provided that any dispute between Prime Grill and the synagogue would be arbitrated before the Beit Din of America. According to the synagogue, Allaham defaulted on every one of these agreements. Allaham claims that construction delays cost him business.
Lincoln Square wants the case resolved quickly because it cannot rent the ballroom to other vendors until the contract with Allaham is legally terminated, said a synagogue representative. Currently, if another party wants to use the ballroom for an event, Prime Grill is paid for the time, said the representative.
The synagogue decided to take the case before the Beit Din of America in August 2015. According to court documents, Allaham agreed to have the case arbitrated before the religious court, and his lawyer sent several emails to arrange a date. During the case proceedings, the OU reinforced the BDA’s court summons, and threatened to remove Allaham’s certification if he did not comply, according to a source close to the situation.
Unlike many ad hoc beit dins that operate around New York City, the BDA is committed to regulations, rules and procedures, said Rabbi Shlomo Weissmann, its director. “We are committed to the highest standards of transparency and protocol,” said the rabbi, who is a licensed attorney.
But after agreeing to bring the case before the BDA, Allaham reneged, claiming that Rabbi Shaul Robinson, Lincoln Square’s rabbi, presents a conflict of interest because he is a member of the Rabbinical Council of America, an organization that is affiliated with the BDA. The synagogue alleges that this action was “a blatant attempt at forum shopping.”
Though he declined to comment on the Lincoln Square case, Rabbi Weissmann said that the court has a specific mechanism for objecting to an arbitrator who has any conflict of interest. “We are careful to staff a case only with individuals who have no prior relationship to either party,” he said. In the case that the judges do have some prior relationship, the information is disclosed at the start of the hearing. “Our goal is complete transparency,” he said.
According to Lincoln Square, Allaham said he wanted to appear before a different bit din, the Beth Din of the Central Rabbinical Congress in Brooklyn. (In a Google search, no information about this alternative beit din comes up.) When Lincoln Square resisted, Allaham took his case to civil court instead.
The OU’s Rabbi Genack confirmed that Allaham’s refusal to appear before the BDA, or another approved arbiter, could compromise his supervision. However, the current agreement to appear before Rabbi Schachter protects Allaham from this possibility. The rabbi’s ruling, which will likely inform OU’s actions about Prime Grill’s kosher seal of approval, will be legally binding in civil court, according to Rabbi Genack.
For his part, Joey Allaham insists his ties with the OU are unshakable. And he denies any unethical conduct that would put his certification in jeopardy. The OU’s seal is not an endorsement he is willing to lose. “We’ve always had OU certification,” he said. “We won’t lose the certification, whatever the outcome in beit din.”
This article was made possible with funding from The Jewish Week Investigative Journalism Fund.
Jerry Seinfeld Sells 17 Cars For $22M
National
Jerry Seinfeld Sells 17 Cars For $22M
JTA

President Obama with Jerry Seinfeld in an episode of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” JTA
Jerry Seinfeld sold 17 collectible cars at auction for more than $22 million.
The Jewish comedian’s cars – 15 Porsches and two Volkswagens – brought in $22,244,500 this weekend,according to the Los Angeles Times. A 1955 Porsche 55 Spyder alone went for more than $5 million.
Seinfeld is known to be a car aficionado. In his web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” which featured President Barack Obama in December, he goes out to eat with a well-known comedian in a vintage car.
Gooding & Co. estimated the auction would actually bring in $10 million more than it did, Jalopnik said.
The “Seinfeld” star and co-creator showed up at the auction house to promote the sale.
Seinfeld had previously said he loved owning the cars and would have held onto them in an ideal world.
“[T]he reason I wanted to bid these cars farewell in this way is really just to see the look of excitement on the faces of the next owners who I know will be out of their minds with joy that they are going to get to experience them,” he said in a February statement.
Seinfeld only failed to sell one car at the auction, a non-drivable Carrera GT concept car, one of two in the world, which didn’t reach its minimum $1.5 million minimum asking price.
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/jerry-seinfeld-sells-17-cars-22m#OqhjXKOw4XGaktj0.99
National
Jerry Seinfeld Sells 17 Cars For $22M
JTA

President Obama with Jerry Seinfeld in an episode of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” JTA
Jerry Seinfeld sold 17 collectible cars at auction for more than $22 million.
The Jewish comedian’s cars – 15 Porsches and two Volkswagens – brought in $22,244,500 this weekend,according to the Los Angeles Times. A 1955 Porsche 55 Spyder alone went for more than $5 million.
Seinfeld is known to be a car aficionado. In his web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” which featured President Barack Obama in December, he goes out to eat with a well-known comedian in a vintage car.
Gooding & Co. estimated the auction would actually bring in $10 million more than it did, Jalopnik said.
The “Seinfeld” star and co-creator showed up at the auction house to promote the sale.
Seinfeld had previously said he loved owning the cars and would have held onto them in an ideal world.
“[T]he reason I wanted to bid these cars farewell in this way is really just to see the look of excitement on the faces of the next owners who I know will be out of their minds with joy that they are going to get to experience them,” he said in a February statement.
Seinfeld only failed to sell one car at the auction, a non-drivable Carrera GT concept car, one of two in the world, which didn’t reach its minimum $1.5 million minimum asking price.
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/jerry-seinfeld-sells-17-cars-22m#OqhjXKOw4XGaktj0.99
Henry Winkler's Symbol Of Holocaust Survival Lives On In Hollywood
National
Henry Winkler’s Symbol Of Holocaust Survival Lives On In Hollywood
Most of his relatives died in Nazi Germany, but a smuggled-out plant and its cuttings flourish across Tinseltown.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer

Henry Winkler passes a leather jacket to actor Ben Freeman in 2014 to launch the London musical "Happy Days." Getty Images
Henry Winkler, the Jewish actor best known as tough-talking Arthur Fonzarelli — aka, “The Fonz” — on the 1970s-80s TV show “Happy Days,” is earning a new reputation. As a protector of a unique Holocaust legacy.
Now 70 and a graying grandfather, the son of refugees from Nazi Germany, he keeps in his Hollywood home a spider plant with a unique history. It grew from cuttings from the original plant that was in the coffin in which a friend of his family, known as “Tante Erma” was smuggled out of Germany in the 1930s.
Most of the actor’s extended family perished in the Holocaust.
A symbol of perseverance and survival, Winkler's green-and-white plant has flourished in his home and in the home of many of his friends.
“Everybody got a cutting,” he told The Washington Post.
Jill Soloway, creator of “Transparent,” the transgender comedy starring Jeffrey Tambor, keeps one of Winkler’s gift plants in her writer’s room as a source of inspiration, The Post reported. “It’s a beautiful story.”
In his post-Happy Days days, Winkler had served as a TV series producer and as an actor in episodes of several programs.
Winkler during career has supported many causes, including research on dyslexia (a condition he struggled with as a kid), and many Jewish organizations, including Congregation Habonim in Manhattan (his parents were among the founders of the synagogue).
“I think that being Jewish equates with being empathetic,” he told the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia in a recent interview. “The humanness of being Jewish makes me so proud.” “I would imagine that I’m the actor I am because of the life that I have lived, the childhood I had.”
Winkler is writing the 31st novel in his series of Hank Zipzer children’s books series, whose main character has dyslexia. His work to remove the stigma of being dyslexic has earned him many awards; England’s Queen Elizabeth II honored him in 2011 for his work with children’s literacy.
To Winkler, keeping his plant, and its meaning, alive, has become an obligation.
“I grew up with it, I heard the story, and I thought maybe it’s my responsibility to make sure it lives.”
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/henry-winklers-symbol-holocaust-survival-lives-hollywood#qO1awDGpjXEgog76.99
National
Henry Winkler’s Symbol Of Holocaust Survival Lives On In Hollywood
Most of his relatives died in Nazi Germany, but a smuggled-out plant and its cuttings flourish across Tinseltown.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer

Henry Winkler passes a leather jacket to actor Ben Freeman in 2014 to launch the London musical "Happy Days." Getty Images
Henry Winkler, the Jewish actor best known as tough-talking Arthur Fonzarelli — aka, “The Fonz” — on the 1970s-80s TV show “Happy Days,” is earning a new reputation. As a protector of a unique Holocaust legacy.
Now 70 and a graying grandfather, the son of refugees from Nazi Germany, he keeps in his Hollywood home a spider plant with a unique history. It grew from cuttings from the original plant that was in the coffin in which a friend of his family, known as “Tante Erma” was smuggled out of Germany in the 1930s.
Most of the actor’s extended family perished in the Holocaust.
A symbol of perseverance and survival, Winkler's green-and-white plant has flourished in his home and in the home of many of his friends.
“Everybody got a cutting,” he told The Washington Post.
Jill Soloway, creator of “Transparent,” the transgender comedy starring Jeffrey Tambor, keeps one of Winkler’s gift plants in her writer’s room as a source of inspiration, The Post reported. “It’s a beautiful story.”
In his post-Happy Days days, Winkler had served as a TV series producer and as an actor in episodes of several programs.
Winkler during career has supported many causes, including research on dyslexia (a condition he struggled with as a kid), and many Jewish organizations, including Congregation Habonim in Manhattan (his parents were among the founders of the synagogue).
“I think that being Jewish equates with being empathetic,” he told the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia in a recent interview. “The humanness of being Jewish makes me so proud.” “I would imagine that I’m the actor I am because of the life that I have lived, the childhood I had.”
Winkler is writing the 31st novel in his series of Hank Zipzer children’s books series, whose main character has dyslexia. His work to remove the stigma of being dyslexic has earned him many awards; England’s Queen Elizabeth II honored him in 2011 for his work with children’s literacy.
To Winkler, keeping his plant, and its meaning, alive, has become an obligation.
“I grew up with it, I heard the story, and I thought maybe it’s my responsibility to make sure it lives.”
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/henry-winklers-symbol-holocaust-survival-lives-hollywood#qO1awDGpjXEgog76.99
'Fiddler' In His Veins
Theater
‘Fiddler’ In His Veins
Wearing his father’s well-worn boots, Michael Bernardi carries on a family tradition that stretches back years.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor

Michael Bernardi as Tevye. Courtesy of Michael Bernardi
Over in Anatevka, on Broadway, Michael Bernardi is pouring vodka for customers at the village inn, keeping the peace among rivals and occasionally breaking out into song and dance.
He’s dancing in the high boots worn by his father, the late Herschel Bernardi, who made his mark as Tevye on Broadway in the 1960s and then again in the 1980s. This production of “Fiddler on the Roof” is Michael’s Broadway debut. Aside from playing Mordcha the innkeeper, he is an understudy for the rabbi and also for Tevye. While he has rehearsed as Tevye, he hasn’t yet been called on to substitute for Danny Burstein.
To say that Michael was born into performing in this show is something of an understatement. In an interview near the Broadway Theatre, he says that his mother tells him that when she was in labor, Herschel sang the entire score of “Fiddler on the Roof” to calm her down. So Michael entered the world hearing “Sabbath Prayer” and “If I Were a Rich Man.”
Now, backstage before the curtain goes up, Michael practices an exercise his father would do before every performance: Looking into a mirror, breathing in, then closing his eyes, breathing out, and entering the world of Anatevka.
Herschel Bernardi was the third Broadway Tevye, after Zero Mostel pioneered the role, and Luther Adler followed briefly. When Herschel died suddenly of a heart attack in 1986, he was 62, and his son Michael was one year and a half.
The 31-year-old actor’s theater pedigree goes back further. His grandparents, Berel and Helen (Laina) Bernardi met in Berlin in 1899, when he (then known as Berl Topf) visited as an actor with a Yiddish troupe; she then joined him on stage and they moved to America in 1901. They married and performed in the Yiddish theater in New York, Canada and traveling productions across the U.S. When they played on Second Avenue in the 1920s, their son Hershel appeared onstage, in his mother’s arms, at 3 months old.
Herschel went on to perform in the Yiddish theater and in Yiddish films, such as the 1937 production of Peretz Hirschbein’s “Grine Felder” (Green Fields), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami. He made the transition to films, television and stage in English, playing the title role of “Zorba” on Broadway, as the star of his own television series “Arnie,” and in films including “The Front.” He knew the subject of that film well, as he had been blacklisted. He also did voiceovers, and for 25 years was the voice of Charley the Tuna for StarKist.
Michael is too young to have memories of his father, but he does remember his smell, in a pleasant way, and he’d experience it when he’d find some item of clothing that belonged to his father.
He wore his father’s full Tevye costume — sent to him by his mother — when he played the role for the first time in a production at the historic Priscilla Beach Theater in Plymouth, Mass., last year. When he tried on the garments, he says, he could sense his father’s presence in the room, along with his permission to wear them.
“It felt like a hug, an incredible hug I had been waiting for for over 30 years.”
Michael grew up in Los Angeles, on the edge of Beverly Hills, and attended Beverly Hills High School. His interests were football and theater, and he ultimately chose the stage. When he was younger and spent a lot of time with adults, family friends who enjoyed his humor around the table encouraged his mother to have him try out at the Comedy Store. By the time he was 8, he was a regular, getting the time slots usually reserved for veteran comedians. He was called Wonderboy (and later learned that his father was called Wunderkind, or Wonderboy, when he was a child in the Yiddish theater). After a couple of years of performing, he told his mother that he just wanted to quit and be a kid.
He studied acting at SUNY Purchase, where he did a one-man show, “My Father the Actor.” After graduating, he went back to Los Angeles, as there still were a few Bernardi relatives (including his father’s brother) who were active in the industry and could help him. But he arrived just as the Writers’ Strike was beginning in 2007. He returned to New York, did some acting and some odd jobs, and then returned to Los Angeles, determined to act. He took on some roles and grew disillusioned but kept at it, enrolling in graduate school at USC. After a couple of years in the program, he realized that he was “focusing on becoming a better actor, not on becoming a working actor” and set out to find work.
At the same time, he learned that his mother had breast cancer. “I had two thoughts. I would do everything in my power to take care of my mother. And I cannot have my mother leave this earth without her witnessing some form of success. She had been so much of a supporter.”
As he would soon be singing, “Life has a way of confusing us, blessing and bruising us.”
To his surprise, he got a call from an old friend about playing Tevye in Massachusetts. At first, he was terrified, but was able to “let go of any idea of being compared to my father. I was able to allow myself to feel his love and support.”
During his first performance, in the final scene when the townspeople are leaving Anatevka, “I got lost in the show. I realized that the connection is beyond my father, beyond my grandfather, that this play is bigger than all of us. It contains the spirit of survival, and it is about joy.”
While in Massachusetts, he heard that “Fiddler on the Roof” was going to be opening on Broadway, auditioned and got a part.
As for the boots, his mother brought them out before he went to Plymouth, and they were too small. Michael found a Los Angeles cobbler to fix them, and when he picked them up he was overwhelmed. When the cobbler asked what was wrong, Michael explained that these were the boots his father wore on Broadway. The shoemaker then said that his father used to have a business on Broadway before moving to Los Angeles and did the boots for “Fiddler” and other shows. The walls of the shop were lined with theater posters and photographs.
His mother, who has returned to good health, has been to New York several times to see the show. For Bernardi, it’s a dream come true, all around. For now, he lives in Midtown, and walks to the theater. As the bearded Mordcha, he likes to hang out at the Russian Vodka Room on West 52nd Street, where he can study the bartender for insight into his character. Toward the end of the play, as the shtetl dwellers are forced to leave Anatevka, Mordcha wonders out loud what he will do with 100 bottles of vodka.
When he plays the rabbi, his final line echoes: As the townspeople are ordered to leave and someone asks, “Rabbi, we’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t now be a good time for him to come?” The rabbi replies, “I guess we’ll have to wait someplace else.”
When he’s on stage as Tevye, he’ll get the last word.
The actor’s own spiritual life is in the theater. “My faith is something I actively strive for daily. Like Tevye, I ask questions to a vast unseen, unheard presence that only makes itself known in the most secret of ways. I find strength from the survival of Jewish culture, which teaches me that the nature of art is to defy all odds and continue to live. In short, I’ll share a quote shared from my father, shared with me by my mother: ‘Be a person.’”
Before we leave, I ask him to demonstrate his shimmy, the classic Tevye “biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-bom,” and he obliges, with a quiet melody. Raising his arms, he takes small steps and shakes his lean torso, with a laughter-through-the-tears smile. There’s poetry and history in these movements. ---------------------

The Jewish Week
Theater
‘Fiddler’ In His Veins
Wearing his father’s well-worn boots, Michael Bernardi carries on a family tradition that stretches back years.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor

Michael Bernardi as Tevye. Courtesy of Michael Bernardi
Over in Anatevka, on Broadway, Michael Bernardi is pouring vodka for customers at the village inn, keeping the peace among rivals and occasionally breaking out into song and dance.
He’s dancing in the high boots worn by his father, the late Herschel Bernardi, who made his mark as Tevye on Broadway in the 1960s and then again in the 1980s. This production of “Fiddler on the Roof” is Michael’s Broadway debut. Aside from playing Mordcha the innkeeper, he is an understudy for the rabbi and also for Tevye. While he has rehearsed as Tevye, he hasn’t yet been called on to substitute for Danny Burstein.
To say that Michael was born into performing in this show is something of an understatement. In an interview near the Broadway Theatre, he says that his mother tells him that when she was in labor, Herschel sang the entire score of “Fiddler on the Roof” to calm her down. So Michael entered the world hearing “Sabbath Prayer” and “If I Were a Rich Man.”
Now, backstage before the curtain goes up, Michael practices an exercise his father would do before every performance: Looking into a mirror, breathing in, then closing his eyes, breathing out, and entering the world of Anatevka.
Herschel Bernardi was the third Broadway Tevye, after Zero Mostel pioneered the role, and Luther Adler followed briefly. When Herschel died suddenly of a heart attack in 1986, he was 62, and his son Michael was one year and a half.
The 31-year-old actor’s theater pedigree goes back further. His grandparents, Berel and Helen (Laina) Bernardi met in Berlin in 1899, when he (then known as Berl Topf) visited as an actor with a Yiddish troupe; she then joined him on stage and they moved to America in 1901. They married and performed in the Yiddish theater in New York, Canada and traveling productions across the U.S. When they played on Second Avenue in the 1920s, their son Hershel appeared onstage, in his mother’s arms, at 3 months old.
Herschel went on to perform in the Yiddish theater and in Yiddish films, such as the 1937 production of Peretz Hirschbein’s “Grine Felder” (Green Fields), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami. He made the transition to films, television and stage in English, playing the title role of “Zorba” on Broadway, as the star of his own television series “Arnie,” and in films including “The Front.” He knew the subject of that film well, as he had been blacklisted. He also did voiceovers, and for 25 years was the voice of Charley the Tuna for StarKist.
Michael is too young to have memories of his father, but he does remember his smell, in a pleasant way, and he’d experience it when he’d find some item of clothing that belonged to his father.
He wore his father’s full Tevye costume — sent to him by his mother — when he played the role for the first time in a production at the historic Priscilla Beach Theater in Plymouth, Mass., last year. When he tried on the garments, he says, he could sense his father’s presence in the room, along with his permission to wear them.
“It felt like a hug, an incredible hug I had been waiting for for over 30 years.”
Michael grew up in Los Angeles, on the edge of Beverly Hills, and attended Beverly Hills High School. His interests were football and theater, and he ultimately chose the stage. When he was younger and spent a lot of time with adults, family friends who enjoyed his humor around the table encouraged his mother to have him try out at the Comedy Store. By the time he was 8, he was a regular, getting the time slots usually reserved for veteran comedians. He was called Wonderboy (and later learned that his father was called Wunderkind, or Wonderboy, when he was a child in the Yiddish theater). After a couple of years of performing, he told his mother that he just wanted to quit and be a kid.
He studied acting at SUNY Purchase, where he did a one-man show, “My Father the Actor.” After graduating, he went back to Los Angeles, as there still were a few Bernardi relatives (including his father’s brother) who were active in the industry and could help him. But he arrived just as the Writers’ Strike was beginning in 2007. He returned to New York, did some acting and some odd jobs, and then returned to Los Angeles, determined to act. He took on some roles and grew disillusioned but kept at it, enrolling in graduate school at USC. After a couple of years in the program, he realized that he was “focusing on becoming a better actor, not on becoming a working actor” and set out to find work.
At the same time, he learned that his mother had breast cancer. “I had two thoughts. I would do everything in my power to take care of my mother. And I cannot have my mother leave this earth without her witnessing some form of success. She had been so much of a supporter.”
As he would soon be singing, “Life has a way of confusing us, blessing and bruising us.”
To his surprise, he got a call from an old friend about playing Tevye in Massachusetts. At first, he was terrified, but was able to “let go of any idea of being compared to my father. I was able to allow myself to feel his love and support.”
During his first performance, in the final scene when the townspeople are leaving Anatevka, “I got lost in the show. I realized that the connection is beyond my father, beyond my grandfather, that this play is bigger than all of us. It contains the spirit of survival, and it is about joy.”
While in Massachusetts, he heard that “Fiddler on the Roof” was going to be opening on Broadway, auditioned and got a part.
As for the boots, his mother brought them out before he went to Plymouth, and they were too small. Michael found a Los Angeles cobbler to fix them, and when he picked them up he was overwhelmed. When the cobbler asked what was wrong, Michael explained that these were the boots his father wore on Broadway. The shoemaker then said that his father used to have a business on Broadway before moving to Los Angeles and did the boots for “Fiddler” and other shows. The walls of the shop were lined with theater posters and photographs.
His mother, who has returned to good health, has been to New York several times to see the show. For Bernardi, it’s a dream come true, all around. For now, he lives in Midtown, and walks to the theater. As the bearded Mordcha, he likes to hang out at the Russian Vodka Room on West 52nd Street, where he can study the bartender for insight into his character. Toward the end of the play, as the shtetl dwellers are forced to leave Anatevka, Mordcha wonders out loud what he will do with 100 bottles of vodka.
When he plays the rabbi, his final line echoes: As the townspeople are ordered to leave and someone asks, “Rabbi, we’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t now be a good time for him to come?” The rabbi replies, “I guess we’ll have to wait someplace else.”
When he’s on stage as Tevye, he’ll get the last word.
The actor’s own spiritual life is in the theater. “My faith is something I actively strive for daily. Like Tevye, I ask questions to a vast unseen, unheard presence that only makes itself known in the most secret of ways. I find strength from the survival of Jewish culture, which teaches me that the nature of art is to defy all odds and continue to live. In short, I’ll share a quote shared from my father, shared with me by my mother: ‘Be a person.’”
Before we leave, I ask him to demonstrate his shimmy, the classic Tevye “biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-bom,” and he obliges, with a quiet melody. Raising his arms, he takes small steps and shakes his lean torso, with a laughter-through-the-tears smile. There’s poetry and history in these movements. ---------------------
The Jewish Week
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New York, New York 10036, United States
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