"Now on Jewish.TV: Parshah Mnemonics: Pekudei: Decoding the Hidden Messages - Aaron L. Raskin" Jewish.TV - Chabad.org Video for Wednesday, 9 March 2016
Parshah Mnemonics: Pekudei
Decoding the hidden messages
Aaron L. Raskin
Watch Now
About this webcast:
The parshah of Pekudei contains 92 verses and there seems to be no mnemonic for it. Explore the coded message in the unknown Masoretic note and its connection to the general themes of the Parshah.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Talmud Gitin 89 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Birchas Asher Yatzar Velokai Neshamah 6:6
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 5
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 5
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
What Impact the Zodiac Can Have On You
By Shifra Sharfstein
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 11am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Jews for Trump feeling maligned; Pew study shows deep rifts among Israelis; is CUNY tough enough on alleged anti-Semitic incidents?" The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 9 March 2016 - This week on TheJewishWeek.com
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Dear Reader,
Yes, Virginia, there are Jews for Trump. Kind of, maybe. Associate Editor Jonathan Mark talked to a few who seem motivated primarily by fear of a Democratic victory. From Tel Aviv, Josh Mitnick writes of fear of Trump among Israelis.
National
Jews For Trump, Kind Of, Maybe
David Duke, the Hitler salute: It’s not easy backing The Donald.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Some Orthodox supporters of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump complain that they’re being called racist.Getty Images
In a campaign stained by insults and innuendo, has anyone been more smeared than conservative Republicans supporting Donald Trump?
More than a few Orthodox Zionists among them complained to us that in a dangerous, uncertain world, their fears are dismissed as phobias: xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia; they’re called racist, nativist, fascist. Their candidate, Trump, is routinely compared to “Hitler” by professors, comedians, even Anne Frank’s half-sister, Eva.
(Despite the oft-repeated charges that Trump hates Muslims, a March 1 poll conducted by CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, found that 18 percent of American Muslims are now Republican for whom Trump is their favored nominee.)
Last week, Trump asked those at a rally to “raise your hand,” like a juror at a swearing-in, in a pledge to vote for Trump in the primary. To the people at the rally, an innocent gesture, surely, but it was “Heil Hitler” in the eyes of Abe Foxman, formerly of the Anti-Defamation League, signaling “obedience to their leader.”
Foxman, for decades, scolded those who made Holocaust comparisons to petty politics. Americans are routinely scolded against comparing the nuclear deal with Iran to the 1938 Hitler appeasement. “We can’t even compare Islamic terrorists to Nazis — or even to Islam,” said one Trump supporter, “and suddenly we’re told that a Trump rally is a Nuremberg rally on the eve of the Holocaust.” Incivility is contagious; Trump’s campaign, drizzled with impolitic insults, is being mirrored on the left by intemperate critiques as incendiary as Trump’s own.
J.J. Gross, a New York writer now living in Jerusalem, e-mailed: “I am not for Trump; I am against Hillary [Clinton] and [Bernie] Sanders. Hence I will vote for Trump, absent any other opponent to those two.”
Gross was one of several who pointed to Sidney Blumenthal as an example why “Hillary can’t be trusted.” Blumenthal’s son, Max, is a fierce critic of Israel; The Nation called “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” by Max Blumenthal, “the ‘I Hate Israel’ handbook.” The elder Blumenthal suggested Clinton read Max’s articles, some of which Clinton distributed to her staff.
Gross continued, “Bernie Sanders’ Jewishness is the most dangerous kind. … My worry with Sanders is not what he would do ‘for’ Israel but what he would do ‘to’ Israel. Yes, Trump is a bombastic, bloviating egomaniac, in the American tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and P.T. Barnum; such ego demands greatness for America, and by extension its allies, of which Israel is certainly one, if not the only one.”
In Brooklyn, one rabbi, familiar with back-room conversations in Borough Park and chasidic Williamsburg, said Trump’s supporters were “not the sophisticated people.” But even unsophisticated people can have good reasons, said the rabbi, who asked not to be named because of his political ties. “There’s great anger at the Democratic Party,” and “here comes a man who speaks his mind, telling everyone off. He’s not really a nice guy. The Yiddish word is prust,” crude, coarse.
Nevertheless, in Florida, Sid Dinerstein, former Palm Beach County Republican chair, said, “The Republican Jews I speak to seem very solid for Trump.”
Larry Spiewak, chairman of the Flatbush Council of Jewish Organizations, was cited last summer in Hamodia and Haaretz as a Trump supporter. (In the American Jewish Committee poll of Jewish attitudes released last fall, Trump polled higher than any other GOP hopeful.) Spiewak told Haaretz that Trump was like Howard Stern. “Only Trump has the guts to say what others are afraid to say out loud. … Is he abrasive sometimes? Yeah, but that’s what people like…”
Six months later, Spiewak is not so sure. He senses that Trump supporters may be less apt to express their support. “Look,” Spiewak told us, “I listen to Howard Stern every morning, but I don’t go around telling everybody. I still agree with what Trump’s saying on the issues, but I’m not agreeing with how it is said — the way he puts people down. He’s losing respect from the community. My respect level is less than it was.
“You know,” said Spiewak, “I always say to my friends, ‘anybody but Hillary.’ But I really don’t know what I’m going to do now. Hey, it’s early. My father used to say, an hour before Shabbos isn’t Shabbos. A lot can happen.”
What about him being neutral on Israel? (Trump has said that in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians he would be “evenhanded,” an honest broker.) “I don’t think he’s neutral on Israel,” said Spiewak.
Dr. Alan Rosenthal, a professor of surgery at New York University, said he had no problem with Trump’s “neutral” comment regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “He is correct in ‘not showing his cards’ at this time. I would not want to play poker with Donald Trump. I don’t think Trump would hesitate to treat Arab leaders as condescendingly as he did Chris Christie.”
Rosenthal continued, “From an Israel/Jewish perspective, a priority to me, I trust Trump to be a very strong, positive candidate. People I know who have had dealings with Trump, both business and personal, never heard him intimate even the most subtle anti-Jewish or anti-Israel comments.” His Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, “all of whom he loves dearly,” are all shomer Shabbat, “making an anti-Israel/Jewish position very unlikely.”
There hasn’t been much polling on the race in Israel, but the Jewish Journal cited an Israeli Democracy Institute monthly Peace Index poll saying that 60 percent of Israelis say that Trump is good for the country, while 51 percent say the same for Hillary Clinton. Seventeen percent of Israelis say Trump would be bad for Israel; 32 percent say Clinton would be bad for the Jewish state.
Rather than Establishment and anti-Establishment, which is how the Trump phenomenon has been largely framed, Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal, in a column that sets out to explain Trump’s appeal, that this is an election between “the protected and the unpredicted.” The protected are those who are isolated from the roughness of the world, be it the roughness in the Middle East or the results of open borders.
“You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. ... Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration — its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine.” In Germany, on New Year’s Eve, “Packs of men, said to be recent migrants, groped and molested [more than 300] young women. … And it was not the protected who were the victims. … It was middle- and working-class girls, the unprotected, who didn’t even immediately protest,” some fearing they’d be dismissed as Islamophobic. The girls, writes Noonan, “must have understood that in the general scheme of things they’re nobodies.”
As Rosenthal said, “Humans have an innate drive to connect with a protector.”
Trump supporters sense that he’ll protect them — and an Israel increasingly unprotected in Washington and Europe. Lawrence Stern, a Los Angeles attorney and Democrat, told JTA, “I have seen the Democratic Party move away from … its roots and its core foundation to a closer relationship to those who are both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
“This is to me more about who I don’t like than who I like.
Stern said he won’t vote for Clinton because of her support for the Iran nuclear deal, her 1999 embrace of Yasir Arafat’s wife, and the support given to the Clinton Foundation from Arab donors.”
Michael Koplen, an attorney, president of the Washington Online Learning Institute, and a former Republican legislator in the Rockland County legislature, told us that if Trump is the nominee, “I will support him, and hope for the best. The Democratic Party has shifted far to the left, and the left, for its own peculiar reasons, is hostile to Israel,” while expanding government and welfare. “I would never vote for Hillary or Bernie.”---------------------Israel News
‘Oy Vey For The Western World’
Israelis fearful of a President Trump on many levels.
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka, right.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has been a grand marshal of New York’s Celebrate Israel parade and his daughter Ivanka is an observant Jew, but that hasn’t allayed deep concerns of Israeli analysts about how a candidate with a volatile personality and no foreign policy experience will perform as leader of the free world.
Is Trump an isolationist? Or will his belligerence embroil the U.S. in unnecessary military and diplomatic conflicts?
It’s a critical issue for Israel that goes beyond the simple question of where Trump would stand on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, say analysts. With Israel’s national security in large part derivative of the U.S.’s standing in the world, Trump’s lack of a clear foreign policy worldview is a cardinal issue for Israel.
“The biggest issue for Israel with Trump is of a charlatan being in charge — it’s a question of American leadership in the world,” said Jonathan Rynhold, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University who recently authored a book on U.S.-Israeli relations.
“His instincts on foreign policy are, if America is threatened, you whack them. He doesn’t seem instinctively interested in America leading the world. ... He is not an isolationist, but he doesn’t subscribe to what [former Secretary of State] Madeline Albright said about America being an indispensable power.”
Trump, say Rynhold and other analysts, seems like a leader who might continue what Israelis see as President Barack Obama’s several-year pullback from the Middle East — opening up a vacuum for more hostile powers like Russia. The political science professor pointed to Trump’s opposition to U.S. enforcement of no-fly zones in Syria to aid rebels in the civil war.
On the question of isolationism versus interventionism, Israelis would probably prefer Republican candidate Sen. Marco Rubio and Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton to Trump.
With praise for Ronald Reagan and links to the Republican establishment, Rubio is expected to continue a neoconservative approach to foreign policy that held sway under President George W. Bush.
Beyond Israelis’ generation-long emotional attachment to the Clinton family for former President Bill Clinton’s eulogy after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, the former secretary of state is also seen as more sympathetic to Israel than Obama and more interested in preserving the U.S. post-World War II role as leader of the free world.
“There is hope for a president who will bring more balance to the U.S. foreign policy in the international arena, and [Trump] doesn’t seem like the person to do it. How is the U.S. going to be world policeman in isolation?” said professor Eytan Gilboa, also an expert on U.S.-Israel relations at Bar-Ilan University.
Many Israelis see in Trump a reality-show phenomenon who is unpredictable and shoots from the hip, said analysts.
“Trump comes off as someone who isn’t a serious person; he can’t serve as the president of a superpower and the leader of the free world,” says Gilboa.
The mainstream Israeli media has taken its cues from the criticism of Trump that crosses the political divide in the U.S. and dominates the American talk shows.
A political cartoon in the liberal Haaretz newspaper depicted Trump being inaugurated with Ku Klux Klan members in the front row. A talk-show host on state-run Israel radio remarked that she wouldn’t vote for him because of his remarks about women.
Amid all the criticism, Channel 2 television news recently broadcast a seven-minute profile of Trump’s daughter Ivanka — noting her adopted Hebrew name of Yael, and highlighting both her success in business and her close relationship with her father. The subtext of the report was the suggestion that the relationship might one day influence the decisions of a President Trump toward Israel.
But the real estate magnate’s anti-immigrant and bigoted remarks strike an even deeper chord of historic trauma for Israeli Jews.
“His rhetoric is scary for Jews wherever,” said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political analyst and columnist. “It doesn’t matter that right now it is directed at Muslims or Mexicans. Jewish people easily envision this kind of rhetoric being directed at them.”
As for clues about how a President Trump would conduct foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is more concern because of Trump’s conflicting statements, said analysts.
He recently remarked that he would be “100 percent” with the Jewish state, but prior to that he said he would seek to be a neutral broker in resolving the conflict with the Palestinians and that Israel shared some of blame for the stymied peace process.
That inconsistency has Israeli right-wingers just as worried as doves, said Schnieder. She added that there’s fear among politicians that his abrasive and volatile style might be one day directed at the Israeli government.
“The Israeli right wing doesn’t want anyone to come and get a deal done — it prefers status quo,” she said. “Having a Republican candidate saying, ‘I am good at making deals,’ is something they don’t like to hear. ... Rubio is a one-sided broker — that’s what they want to hear.”
Among the public, nervousness about the rise of Trump may even bridge the country’s political chasm between the hip cafes of Tel Aviv and the hilltops of the West Bank.
“Oy vey for the Western world. I don’t want to think about it. I think it would be the end of the world,” said Motti Chaimovitz, a cafe owner in Tel Aviv. “How can you take him seriously? I don’t see Donald Trump as the leader of the free world. … He’s a heartless capitalist, fascist and a racist,” he said. “And America is supposed to be a fortress of democracy?”
David Ha’ivri, a resident of the settlement of Kfar Tapuach, said Trump’s success is seen as the continuation of a malfunction in the U.S. political system that enabled the election of President Obama — who is seen by a broad swath of Israelis as unsympathetic to Israel.
“A lot of people think he looks like he’s someone from the circus,” Ha’ivri said. “It’s kind of disappointing. The Israelis look up to the Americans. I hope they succeed in getting their act together and developing more serious leadership. But we are learning that we have to be responsible for our own destiny.
“If, in the past, we thought we could lean on America and rely on America for direction,” Ha’ivri concluded, “we need to be self-reliant and take care of our own needs.”---------------------
A major new Pew survey on the attitudes of Israeli Jews toward each other, toward Palestinians and toward American Jews shows a number of deep rifts. Managing Editor Rob Goldblum focuses on Israeli society losing its religious middle, and findings that American Orthodox Jews are closely aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues.
National
Major Pew Survey Charts ‘Two Planes of Existence’
Poll finds American Orthodox increasingly aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues; Israeli society losing its religious middle.
Robert Goldblum
Managing Editor
A showdown in 1997; the divide has only grown worse in the decades since. Menachem Kahana/AFP/Getty
To say that deep fissures cut through Israeli society is a little like saying the San Andreas Fault is a hairline fracture. But the depth of those divisions — over the commitment to democratic principles, the role of religion in society, the meaning of Jewish identity and the prospects for peace and even coexistence with the Palestinians — comes into sharp relief in a major new Pew Research Center survey.
And the divisions the study documents between secular, “traditional,” “religious” and charedi Jews in Israel do not end at Israel’s shoreline.
Deep rifts also exist between Israeli Jews and American Jews — ones that liberal Jewish leaders here have been warning about for years — especially over lightning-rod issues like Jewish settlements in the West Bank. At the same time, the two groups share a strong sense of peoplehood and a common destiny. The study reveals as well that the gulf between Orthodox and liberal branches in America is creating a situation where the former is more in line with Israeli attitudes on a range of issues than with Reform and Conservative Jews in the U.S.
The 237-page report, which was released Tuesday and includes interviews with 5,600 Israelis conducted from October 2014 to May 2015, references some familiar, and well-publicized, issues when it comes to the country’s long-running secular-religious war: fights over public transportation on the Sabbath, gender segregation on buses, Orthodox control of marriage, divorce and conversion, and military service for the ultra-Orthodox.
The findings about the friction between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs also have a familiar ring, given the persistent charge by the country’s largest minority group (19 percent of Israel’s adult population) that its members are second-class citizens.
But the starkness of the divides on those and other issues revealed in the study points to the dizzying complexities of Israeli society and raises questions about whether the chasms can be bridged. And demographic trends are likely to calcify the problems.
The religious middle, so to speak, represented by the “Masorti” cohort — Israelis who hold moderate levels of religious practice — is in clear decline. In 1999, 45 percent of Israelis identified themselves as religiously middle of the road. By 2015, that figure had dropped to 34 percent. At the same time, the charedi population is on the rise, and those who identify as secular (“Hiloni”) Israelis, though their numbers have held steady over the last 10 years, have a higher percentage of those over age 50 (52 percent) than under 30 (44 percent). Secular Israelis make up 40 percent of Israeli Jews, Masorti, 23 percent, “Dati” (religious), 10 percent, and charedi, 8 percent.
The study’s lead researcher, Neha Sahgal, put the religious, political and social differences among segments of Israeli society in stark terms.
“Every society has divisions,” she told The Jewish Week on the eve of the survey’s publication. “But in Israel these divisions aren’t just on political topics. They’re on social topics, too. Israelis live religiously balkanized lives. They have no friends outside their circle. They don’t intermarry and they don’t want their children to intermarry. Secular Israelis find it more problematic for one of their children to marry a charedi Jew than to marry a Christian.”
Sahgal added, “We’re seeing evidence of further polarization in Israeli society across time.”
Israelis aren’t just polarized religiously, of course. On the central question of whether Israel can be both a democratic and Jewish state, there is a broad consensus across Israeli society that yes, in fact, it can. Three out of four Israelis say so.
But on what Sahgal refers to as a “where the rubber meets the road” follow-up question — If there is contradiction between democratic principles and religious law, which should take priority? — there is a gaping difference of opinion: Nearly 9 in 10 charedim and 65 percent of “Dati” (religious) Jews side with religious law, while nearly 9 in 10 secular Jews and 56 percent of Masorti Jews side with the principles of democracy.
By Shifra Sharfstein
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 11am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Jews for Trump feeling maligned; Pew study shows deep rifts among Israelis; is CUNY tough enough on alleged anti-Semitic incidents?" The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 9 March 2016 - This week on TheJewishWeek.com
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Dear Reader,
Yes, Virginia, there are Jews for Trump. Kind of, maybe. Associate Editor Jonathan Mark talked to a few who seem motivated primarily by fear of a Democratic victory. From Tel Aviv, Josh Mitnick writes of fear of Trump among Israelis.
National
Jews For Trump, Kind Of, Maybe
David Duke, the Hitler salute: It’s not easy backing The Donald.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Some Orthodox supporters of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump complain that they’re being called racist.Getty Images
In a campaign stained by insults and innuendo, has anyone been more smeared than conservative Republicans supporting Donald Trump?
More than a few Orthodox Zionists among them complained to us that in a dangerous, uncertain world, their fears are dismissed as phobias: xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia; they’re called racist, nativist, fascist. Their candidate, Trump, is routinely compared to “Hitler” by professors, comedians, even Anne Frank’s half-sister, Eva.
(Despite the oft-repeated charges that Trump hates Muslims, a March 1 poll conducted by CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, found that 18 percent of American Muslims are now Republican for whom Trump is their favored nominee.)
Last week, Trump asked those at a rally to “raise your hand,” like a juror at a swearing-in, in a pledge to vote for Trump in the primary. To the people at the rally, an innocent gesture, surely, but it was “Heil Hitler” in the eyes of Abe Foxman, formerly of the Anti-Defamation League, signaling “obedience to their leader.”
Foxman, for decades, scolded those who made Holocaust comparisons to petty politics. Americans are routinely scolded against comparing the nuclear deal with Iran to the 1938 Hitler appeasement. “We can’t even compare Islamic terrorists to Nazis — or even to Islam,” said one Trump supporter, “and suddenly we’re told that a Trump rally is a Nuremberg rally on the eve of the Holocaust.” Incivility is contagious; Trump’s campaign, drizzled with impolitic insults, is being mirrored on the left by intemperate critiques as incendiary as Trump’s own.
J.J. Gross, a New York writer now living in Jerusalem, e-mailed: “I am not for Trump; I am against Hillary [Clinton] and [Bernie] Sanders. Hence I will vote for Trump, absent any other opponent to those two.”
Gross was one of several who pointed to Sidney Blumenthal as an example why “Hillary can’t be trusted.” Blumenthal’s son, Max, is a fierce critic of Israel; The Nation called “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” by Max Blumenthal, “the ‘I Hate Israel’ handbook.” The elder Blumenthal suggested Clinton read Max’s articles, some of which Clinton distributed to her staff.
Gross continued, “Bernie Sanders’ Jewishness is the most dangerous kind. … My worry with Sanders is not what he would do ‘for’ Israel but what he would do ‘to’ Israel. Yes, Trump is a bombastic, bloviating egomaniac, in the American tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and P.T. Barnum; such ego demands greatness for America, and by extension its allies, of which Israel is certainly one, if not the only one.”
In Brooklyn, one rabbi, familiar with back-room conversations in Borough Park and chasidic Williamsburg, said Trump’s supporters were “not the sophisticated people.” But even unsophisticated people can have good reasons, said the rabbi, who asked not to be named because of his political ties. “There’s great anger at the Democratic Party,” and “here comes a man who speaks his mind, telling everyone off. He’s not really a nice guy. The Yiddish word is prust,” crude, coarse.
Nevertheless, in Florida, Sid Dinerstein, former Palm Beach County Republican chair, said, “The Republican Jews I speak to seem very solid for Trump.”
Larry Spiewak, chairman of the Flatbush Council of Jewish Organizations, was cited last summer in Hamodia and Haaretz as a Trump supporter. (In the American Jewish Committee poll of Jewish attitudes released last fall, Trump polled higher than any other GOP hopeful.) Spiewak told Haaretz that Trump was like Howard Stern. “Only Trump has the guts to say what others are afraid to say out loud. … Is he abrasive sometimes? Yeah, but that’s what people like…”
Six months later, Spiewak is not so sure. He senses that Trump supporters may be less apt to express their support. “Look,” Spiewak told us, “I listen to Howard Stern every morning, but I don’t go around telling everybody. I still agree with what Trump’s saying on the issues, but I’m not agreeing with how it is said — the way he puts people down. He’s losing respect from the community. My respect level is less than it was.
“You know,” said Spiewak, “I always say to my friends, ‘anybody but Hillary.’ But I really don’t know what I’m going to do now. Hey, it’s early. My father used to say, an hour before Shabbos isn’t Shabbos. A lot can happen.”
What about him being neutral on Israel? (Trump has said that in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians he would be “evenhanded,” an honest broker.) “I don’t think he’s neutral on Israel,” said Spiewak.
Dr. Alan Rosenthal, a professor of surgery at New York University, said he had no problem with Trump’s “neutral” comment regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “He is correct in ‘not showing his cards’ at this time. I would not want to play poker with Donald Trump. I don’t think Trump would hesitate to treat Arab leaders as condescendingly as he did Chris Christie.”
Rosenthal continued, “From an Israel/Jewish perspective, a priority to me, I trust Trump to be a very strong, positive candidate. People I know who have had dealings with Trump, both business and personal, never heard him intimate even the most subtle anti-Jewish or anti-Israel comments.” His Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, “all of whom he loves dearly,” are all shomer Shabbat, “making an anti-Israel/Jewish position very unlikely.”
There hasn’t been much polling on the race in Israel, but the Jewish Journal cited an Israeli Democracy Institute monthly Peace Index poll saying that 60 percent of Israelis say that Trump is good for the country, while 51 percent say the same for Hillary Clinton. Seventeen percent of Israelis say Trump would be bad for Israel; 32 percent say Clinton would be bad for the Jewish state.
Rather than Establishment and anti-Establishment, which is how the Trump phenomenon has been largely framed, Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal, in a column that sets out to explain Trump’s appeal, that this is an election between “the protected and the unpredicted.” The protected are those who are isolated from the roughness of the world, be it the roughness in the Middle East or the results of open borders.
“You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. ... Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration — its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine.” In Germany, on New Year’s Eve, “Packs of men, said to be recent migrants, groped and molested [more than 300] young women. … And it was not the protected who were the victims. … It was middle- and working-class girls, the unprotected, who didn’t even immediately protest,” some fearing they’d be dismissed as Islamophobic. The girls, writes Noonan, “must have understood that in the general scheme of things they’re nobodies.”
As Rosenthal said, “Humans have an innate drive to connect with a protector.”
Trump supporters sense that he’ll protect them — and an Israel increasingly unprotected in Washington and Europe. Lawrence Stern, a Los Angeles attorney and Democrat, told JTA, “I have seen the Democratic Party move away from … its roots and its core foundation to a closer relationship to those who are both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
“This is to me more about who I don’t like than who I like.
Stern said he won’t vote for Clinton because of her support for the Iran nuclear deal, her 1999 embrace of Yasir Arafat’s wife, and the support given to the Clinton Foundation from Arab donors.”
Michael Koplen, an attorney, president of the Washington Online Learning Institute, and a former Republican legislator in the Rockland County legislature, told us that if Trump is the nominee, “I will support him, and hope for the best. The Democratic Party has shifted far to the left, and the left, for its own peculiar reasons, is hostile to Israel,” while expanding government and welfare. “I would never vote for Hillary or Bernie.”---------------------Israel News
‘Oy Vey For The Western World’
Israelis fearful of a President Trump on many levels.
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka, right.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has been a grand marshal of New York’s Celebrate Israel parade and his daughter Ivanka is an observant Jew, but that hasn’t allayed deep concerns of Israeli analysts about how a candidate with a volatile personality and no foreign policy experience will perform as leader of the free world.
Is Trump an isolationist? Or will his belligerence embroil the U.S. in unnecessary military and diplomatic conflicts?
It’s a critical issue for Israel that goes beyond the simple question of where Trump would stand on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, say analysts. With Israel’s national security in large part derivative of the U.S.’s standing in the world, Trump’s lack of a clear foreign policy worldview is a cardinal issue for Israel.
“The biggest issue for Israel with Trump is of a charlatan being in charge — it’s a question of American leadership in the world,” said Jonathan Rynhold, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University who recently authored a book on U.S.-Israeli relations.
“His instincts on foreign policy are, if America is threatened, you whack them. He doesn’t seem instinctively interested in America leading the world. ... He is not an isolationist, but he doesn’t subscribe to what [former Secretary of State] Madeline Albright said about America being an indispensable power.”
Trump, say Rynhold and other analysts, seems like a leader who might continue what Israelis see as President Barack Obama’s several-year pullback from the Middle East — opening up a vacuum for more hostile powers like Russia. The political science professor pointed to Trump’s opposition to U.S. enforcement of no-fly zones in Syria to aid rebels in the civil war.
On the question of isolationism versus interventionism, Israelis would probably prefer Republican candidate Sen. Marco Rubio and Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton to Trump.
With praise for Ronald Reagan and links to the Republican establishment, Rubio is expected to continue a neoconservative approach to foreign policy that held sway under President George W. Bush.
Beyond Israelis’ generation-long emotional attachment to the Clinton family for former President Bill Clinton’s eulogy after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, the former secretary of state is also seen as more sympathetic to Israel than Obama and more interested in preserving the U.S. post-World War II role as leader of the free world.
“There is hope for a president who will bring more balance to the U.S. foreign policy in the international arena, and [Trump] doesn’t seem like the person to do it. How is the U.S. going to be world policeman in isolation?” said professor Eytan Gilboa, also an expert on U.S.-Israel relations at Bar-Ilan University.
Many Israelis see in Trump a reality-show phenomenon who is unpredictable and shoots from the hip, said analysts.
“Trump comes off as someone who isn’t a serious person; he can’t serve as the president of a superpower and the leader of the free world,” says Gilboa.
The mainstream Israeli media has taken its cues from the criticism of Trump that crosses the political divide in the U.S. and dominates the American talk shows.
A political cartoon in the liberal Haaretz newspaper depicted Trump being inaugurated with Ku Klux Klan members in the front row. A talk-show host on state-run Israel radio remarked that she wouldn’t vote for him because of his remarks about women.
Amid all the criticism, Channel 2 television news recently broadcast a seven-minute profile of Trump’s daughter Ivanka — noting her adopted Hebrew name of Yael, and highlighting both her success in business and her close relationship with her father. The subtext of the report was the suggestion that the relationship might one day influence the decisions of a President Trump toward Israel.
But the real estate magnate’s anti-immigrant and bigoted remarks strike an even deeper chord of historic trauma for Israeli Jews.
“His rhetoric is scary for Jews wherever,” said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political analyst and columnist. “It doesn’t matter that right now it is directed at Muslims or Mexicans. Jewish people easily envision this kind of rhetoric being directed at them.”
As for clues about how a President Trump would conduct foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is more concern because of Trump’s conflicting statements, said analysts.
He recently remarked that he would be “100 percent” with the Jewish state, but prior to that he said he would seek to be a neutral broker in resolving the conflict with the Palestinians and that Israel shared some of blame for the stymied peace process.
That inconsistency has Israeli right-wingers just as worried as doves, said Schnieder. She added that there’s fear among politicians that his abrasive and volatile style might be one day directed at the Israeli government.
“The Israeli right wing doesn’t want anyone to come and get a deal done — it prefers status quo,” she said. “Having a Republican candidate saying, ‘I am good at making deals,’ is something they don’t like to hear. ... Rubio is a one-sided broker — that’s what they want to hear.”
Among the public, nervousness about the rise of Trump may even bridge the country’s political chasm between the hip cafes of Tel Aviv and the hilltops of the West Bank.
“Oy vey for the Western world. I don’t want to think about it. I think it would be the end of the world,” said Motti Chaimovitz, a cafe owner in Tel Aviv. “How can you take him seriously? I don’t see Donald Trump as the leader of the free world. … He’s a heartless capitalist, fascist and a racist,” he said. “And America is supposed to be a fortress of democracy?”
David Ha’ivri, a resident of the settlement of Kfar Tapuach, said Trump’s success is seen as the continuation of a malfunction in the U.S. political system that enabled the election of President Obama — who is seen by a broad swath of Israelis as unsympathetic to Israel.
“A lot of people think he looks like he’s someone from the circus,” Ha’ivri said. “It’s kind of disappointing. The Israelis look up to the Americans. I hope they succeed in getting their act together and developing more serious leadership. But we are learning that we have to be responsible for our own destiny.
“If, in the past, we thought we could lean on America and rely on America for direction,” Ha’ivri concluded, “we need to be self-reliant and take care of our own needs.”---------------------
A major new Pew survey on the attitudes of Israeli Jews toward each other, toward Palestinians and toward American Jews shows a number of deep rifts. Managing Editor Rob Goldblum focuses on Israeli society losing its religious middle, and findings that American Orthodox Jews are closely aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues.
National
Major Pew Survey Charts ‘Two Planes of Existence’
Poll finds American Orthodox increasingly aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues; Israeli society losing its religious middle.
Robert Goldblum
Managing Editor
A showdown in 1997; the divide has only grown worse in the decades since. Menachem Kahana/AFP/Getty
To say that deep fissures cut through Israeli society is a little like saying the San Andreas Fault is a hairline fracture. But the depth of those divisions — over the commitment to democratic principles, the role of religion in society, the meaning of Jewish identity and the prospects for peace and even coexistence with the Palestinians — comes into sharp relief in a major new Pew Research Center survey.
And the divisions the study documents between secular, “traditional,” “religious” and charedi Jews in Israel do not end at Israel’s shoreline.
Deep rifts also exist between Israeli Jews and American Jews — ones that liberal Jewish leaders here have been warning about for years — especially over lightning-rod issues like Jewish settlements in the West Bank. At the same time, the two groups share a strong sense of peoplehood and a common destiny. The study reveals as well that the gulf between Orthodox and liberal branches in America is creating a situation where the former is more in line with Israeli attitudes on a range of issues than with Reform and Conservative Jews in the U.S.
The 237-page report, which was released Tuesday and includes interviews with 5,600 Israelis conducted from October 2014 to May 2015, references some familiar, and well-publicized, issues when it comes to the country’s long-running secular-religious war: fights over public transportation on the Sabbath, gender segregation on buses, Orthodox control of marriage, divorce and conversion, and military service for the ultra-Orthodox.
The findings about the friction between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs also have a familiar ring, given the persistent charge by the country’s largest minority group (19 percent of Israel’s adult population) that its members are second-class citizens.
But the starkness of the divides on those and other issues revealed in the study points to the dizzying complexities of Israeli society and raises questions about whether the chasms can be bridged. And demographic trends are likely to calcify the problems.
The religious middle, so to speak, represented by the “Masorti” cohort — Israelis who hold moderate levels of religious practice — is in clear decline. In 1999, 45 percent of Israelis identified themselves as religiously middle of the road. By 2015, that figure had dropped to 34 percent. At the same time, the charedi population is on the rise, and those who identify as secular (“Hiloni”) Israelis, though their numbers have held steady over the last 10 years, have a higher percentage of those over age 50 (52 percent) than under 30 (44 percent). Secular Israelis make up 40 percent of Israeli Jews, Masorti, 23 percent, “Dati” (religious), 10 percent, and charedi, 8 percent.
The study’s lead researcher, Neha Sahgal, put the religious, political and social differences among segments of Israeli society in stark terms.
“Every society has divisions,” she told The Jewish Week on the eve of the survey’s publication. “But in Israel these divisions aren’t just on political topics. They’re on social topics, too. Israelis live religiously balkanized lives. They have no friends outside their circle. They don’t intermarry and they don’t want their children to intermarry. Secular Israelis find it more problematic for one of their children to marry a charedi Jew than to marry a Christian.”
Sahgal added, “We’re seeing evidence of further polarization in Israeli society across time.”
Israelis aren’t just polarized religiously, of course. On the central question of whether Israel can be both a democratic and Jewish state, there is a broad consensus across Israeli society that yes, in fact, it can. Three out of four Israelis say so.
But on what Sahgal refers to as a “where the rubber meets the road” follow-up question — If there is contradiction between democratic principles and religious law, which should take priority? — there is a gaping difference of opinion: Nearly 9 in 10 charedim and 65 percent of “Dati” (religious) Jews side with religious law, while nearly 9 in 10 secular Jews and 56 percent of Masorti Jews side with the principles of democracy.
“It’s a mirror image,” Sahgal said. “The religious in Israel want public life to be largely governed by religion. Secular Israelis want religion to be separate from the public square.”
When it comes to Israeli Arabs, nearly two-thirds say Israel cannot be both a democracy and a Jewish state at the same time. In another mirror-image finding, 79 percent of Israeli Arabs say there is a lot of discrimination in Israeli society against Muslims, while 3-in-4 Israeli Jews say they don’t see much discrimination against Muslims.
In addition, nearly half of Israeli Jews say Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, a figure that garnered headlines in Israel, though it came under fire; the divide in Israeli society is particularly evident here, with 71 percent of Datim agreeing and 58 percent of secular Israelis disagreeing. Israel Prize-winning sociologist Sammy Smooha, an authority on relations between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, criticized the expulsion/transfer question for its vague wording. Since the question doesn’t specify those who might be expelled, he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “this question can be understood in various ways.” He said he believed that “about a quarter of the Jews oppose coexistence with Arab citizens.”
These societal realities in Israel reach across the Atlantic, too, and affect attitudes among American Jews. (The figures for American Jews in the current survey, “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society,” were culled from Pew’s 2013 study, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.”)
The study reveals a strong bond between Israeli and American Jews — 70 percent of American Jews say they are either very or somewhat attached to Israel, and more than 80 percent say that caring about Israel is either an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. Sixty-nine percent of Israeli Jews say the diaspora is central to Jewish survival.
But when politics enters into the equation, the differences between the two groups — and between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox here — begin to emerge, and in stark ways.
On the contentious issue of Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank, 42 percent of Israeli Jews believe continued construction helps the country’s security. For American Jews, that figure stands at 17 percent, with 44 percent saying the settlements hurt Israel’s security.(Thirty-four percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements help Israel’s security; 15 percent of non-Orthodox Jews say so.)
When it comes to Israeli Arabs, nearly two-thirds say Israel cannot be both a democracy and a Jewish state at the same time. In another mirror-image finding, 79 percent of Israeli Arabs say there is a lot of discrimination in Israeli society against Muslims, while 3-in-4 Israeli Jews say they don’t see much discrimination against Muslims.
In addition, nearly half of Israeli Jews say Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, a figure that garnered headlines in Israel, though it came under fire; the divide in Israeli society is particularly evident here, with 71 percent of Datim agreeing and 58 percent of secular Israelis disagreeing. Israel Prize-winning sociologist Sammy Smooha, an authority on relations between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, criticized the expulsion/transfer question for its vague wording. Since the question doesn’t specify those who might be expelled, he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “this question can be understood in various ways.” He said he believed that “about a quarter of the Jews oppose coexistence with Arab citizens.”
These societal realities in Israel reach across the Atlantic, too, and affect attitudes among American Jews. (The figures for American Jews in the current survey, “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society,” were culled from Pew’s 2013 study, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.”)
The study reveals a strong bond between Israeli and American Jews — 70 percent of American Jews say they are either very or somewhat attached to Israel, and more than 80 percent say that caring about Israel is either an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. Sixty-nine percent of Israeli Jews say the diaspora is central to Jewish survival.
But when politics enters into the equation, the differences between the two groups — and between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox here — begin to emerge, and in stark ways.
On the contentious issue of Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank, 42 percent of Israeli Jews believe continued construction helps the country’s security. For American Jews, that figure stands at 17 percent, with 44 percent saying the settlements hurt Israel’s security.(Thirty-four percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements help Israel’s security; 15 percent of non-Orthodox Jews say so.)
About whether Israel’s government is making a sincere effort to achieve peace with the Palestinians, the divides are also great. Fifty-six percent of Israeli Jews believe that Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is making a sincere effort, while only 38 percent of American Jews believe so. (Sixty-one percent of Orthodox Jews say the Israeli government is making a sincere effort.) In addition, 61 percent of American Jews think a two-state solution is possible, a view held by only 43 percent of Israeli Jews. (Only 30 percent of Orthodox Jews believe it is possible.)
And when it comes to American support for Jerusalem, there are yet more divisions. More than half of Israeli Jews (52 percent) think Israel should be getting more support from Washington, and 34 percent think the support is about right. For American Jews, those figures are reversed: 54 percent say the support is about right, while 31 percent say U.S. support should be greater. (Fifty-three percent of Orthodox Jews say the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel.)
“What stood out for me in the survey,” said Steven Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s contemporary Jewish life department, “is the convergence of views between Orthodox Jews in America and Israeli society as a whole. American Jews are not convinced that settlements enhance Israel’s security. Yet only 16 percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements are a problem. … We’re talking about two planes of existence, a real divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox.”
Bayme said he was also struck by the fact that only 29 percent of Israeli Jews have college degrees, compared to 58 percent of American Jews. “College tends to be a liberalizing experience,” Bayme said, “and it’s where we learn that the world is very different, and we learn to cope with that. Less than a third of Israeli Jews have that experience, and so perhaps it’s not surprising that they hold attitudes that are contradictory to democratic norms.”
In a “what planet are you on?” result, Israeli Jews identified their country’s most-pressing long-term problems as economic issues (39 percent) and security (38 percent). Nearly two-thirds of American Jews (66 percent), however, cited security — perhaps an indication of the type of coverage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tends to receive in the U.S. media — and a mere 1 percent said economic issues. About 15 percent of Jews in both countries said social, religious or political issues are the biggest problems facing Israel.
On issues of Jewish identity, Israeli Jews and American Jews part ways, too. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. Jews say living an ethical and moral life is key to their Jewish identity; 47 percent of Israeli Jews say so. And 56 percent of American Jews say working for justice and equality is central to their Jewish identity; in Israel 27 percent of the Jewish population thinks so. Nearly half of American Jews say intellectual curiosity is part of what it means to be Jewish, while 16 percent of Israeli Jews think it is. The gulf is even wider on whether having a sense of humor is important to one’s Jewish identity, with 42 percent of American Jews and only 9 percent of Israeli Jews saying it is.
But nearly twice as many Israeli Jews as American Jews see observing Jewish law as essential to being Jewish (35 percent to 19 percent). And 53 percent of Israeli Jews say providing a Jewish education to their children is central to their Jewish identity.
Asked if there was one figure from the poll that surprised her the most, Sahgal, the study’s lead researcher, thought for a moment and said, “We asked Muslims in Israel about the experiences they had facing discrimination because they were Muslim — getting stopped and questioned by security forces, that kind of thing. Seventeen percent said they had.”
Sahgal continued, perhaps finding a data point out of the hundreds in the survey that was a metaphorical bridge across a fault line. “But 26 percent said they had a Jewish person express sympathy for them.”
And when it comes to American support for Jerusalem, there are yet more divisions. More than half of Israeli Jews (52 percent) think Israel should be getting more support from Washington, and 34 percent think the support is about right. For American Jews, those figures are reversed: 54 percent say the support is about right, while 31 percent say U.S. support should be greater. (Fifty-three percent of Orthodox Jews say the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel.)
“What stood out for me in the survey,” said Steven Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s contemporary Jewish life department, “is the convergence of views between Orthodox Jews in America and Israeli society as a whole. American Jews are not convinced that settlements enhance Israel’s security. Yet only 16 percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements are a problem. … We’re talking about two planes of existence, a real divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox.”
Bayme said he was also struck by the fact that only 29 percent of Israeli Jews have college degrees, compared to 58 percent of American Jews. “College tends to be a liberalizing experience,” Bayme said, “and it’s where we learn that the world is very different, and we learn to cope with that. Less than a third of Israeli Jews have that experience, and so perhaps it’s not surprising that they hold attitudes that are contradictory to democratic norms.”
In a “what planet are you on?” result, Israeli Jews identified their country’s most-pressing long-term problems as economic issues (39 percent) and security (38 percent). Nearly two-thirds of American Jews (66 percent), however, cited security — perhaps an indication of the type of coverage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tends to receive in the U.S. media — and a mere 1 percent said economic issues. About 15 percent of Jews in both countries said social, religious or political issues are the biggest problems facing Israel.
On issues of Jewish identity, Israeli Jews and American Jews part ways, too. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. Jews say living an ethical and moral life is key to their Jewish identity; 47 percent of Israeli Jews say so. And 56 percent of American Jews say working for justice and equality is central to their Jewish identity; in Israel 27 percent of the Jewish population thinks so. Nearly half of American Jews say intellectual curiosity is part of what it means to be Jewish, while 16 percent of Israeli Jews think it is. The gulf is even wider on whether having a sense of humor is important to one’s Jewish identity, with 42 percent of American Jews and only 9 percent of Israeli Jews saying it is.
But nearly twice as many Israeli Jews as American Jews see observing Jewish law as essential to being Jewish (35 percent to 19 percent). And 53 percent of Israeli Jews say providing a Jewish education to their children is central to their Jewish identity.
Asked if there was one figure from the poll that surprised her the most, Sahgal, the study’s lead researcher, thought for a moment and said, “We asked Muslims in Israel about the experiences they had facing discrimination because they were Muslim — getting stopped and questioned by security forces, that kind of thing. Seventeen percent said they had.”
Sahgal continued, perhaps finding a data point out of the hundreds in the survey that was a metaphorical bridge across a fault line. “But 26 percent said they had a Jewish person express sympathy for them.”
--------------
My column reports on a new grassroots effort initiated by Rabbi Avi Weiss to bolster and support Jews on the liberal end of Orthodoxy who are feeling increasingly isolated. Will it fly?
Gary Rosenblatt
Giving Voice To Inclusive Orthodoxy
New grassroots group seeks to revive and expand ideals of Edah, which folded a decade ago.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Ten years ago, when Edah, an organization devoted to the ideology and values of Modern Orthodoxy, closed its doors, founding director Rabbi Saul Berman said it had largely achieved its goal of reversing “the separatist trend within Modern Orthodoxy, which was isolating” that community “from the rest of the Jewish people.” He added that after a nine-year tenure it was “time to pass the challenge on to others to do the work.”
Since then, Modern Orthodoxy has in many ways moved further to the religious right, in part driven by young people who return from a post-high school gap year or two of yeshiva/seminary study in Israel with a more rigorous commitment to ritual observance and to strict separation of the sexes, influenced by the religious teachings of their rebbes in Israel.
A Pew report on American Orthodox Jews in 2015 indicates the growth of the religious right. It found that while about 10 percent of American Jews are Orthodox, 60 percent of that segment now is charedi (ultra-Orthodox) and about 30 percent is Modern Orthodox, with each group defined in part by its resistance to, or acceptance of, secular society.
Now comes a new grassroots group seeking to revive and advance many of the principles and ideals of Edah, whose motto was “the courage to be modern and Orthodox.”
The formation of PORAT (People for Orthodox Renaissance and Torah), first being announced on these pages, comes at a key moment, marking a renewed effort to bridge the widening gap between Orthodox Jews and the rest of the American Jewish community.
The group will hold the first of several planned public events for the year on May 15, at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (KJ) on the Upper East Side. A panel discussion on the future of Modern Orthodoxy will feature Chaim Steinmetz, the recently appointed senior rabbi of KJ; Blu Greenberg, a writer, activist and founder of JOFA; and Binyamin Lau, rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue in Jerusalem as well as professor, writer, lecturer and activist on issues of halacha and social justice.
A board of directors for PORAT (Hebrew for “fruitful”) is in formation and there are plans to raise funds for a staff to sponsor public forums and educational programs, create a website that will serve as a network and forum for the exchange of ideas relevant to Jewish life, and support organizations and projects already in place that foster Modern Orthodox ideals.
Rabbi Avi Weiss, who recently stepped down as full-time senior rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, is the force behind PORAT. Having long led the campaign for a more inclusive form of halachic life, which he calls Open Orthodoxy, and founded Yeshivat Chovevei Torah for men, Yeshivat Maharat for women, and co-founded the International Rabbinic Fellowship, he may be seen by some as creating this new lay group to bolster his institutions. But he insists that his goal is to create a “safe space” for what he believes to be “the silent majority” of Orthodox Jews — variously referred to as liberal, modern or open — “in the tens of thousands around the country” who would welcome and support efforts to broaden the conversation on issues like rabbinic authority, conversion, ethics, social justice, gender equality, relations with other denominations and faith groups, and the place of gays and lesbians in the community.
“This is an effort that goes well beyond any individual,” the rabbi said in an interview this week, “and the goal is very specific: to demonstrate that a critical mass of Orthodox Jews support the values of an inclusive Modern Orthodoxy.” He added that “it’s time to stop looking over our shoulders” at those on the religious right to verify one’s authenticity as Orthodox. Commitment to “the mesorah (tradition) doesn’t mean being cemented to the past,” he said.
What has changed in the last decade, according to Rabbi Weiss, “are the daily attacks on blogs and in other writings that seek to marginalize the left” within Orthodoxy, asserting that it has crossed the line and is no longer part of the halachic community. Such statements come not only from groups like Agudath Israel on the right but from rosh yeshivas at Yeshiva University, the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy.
“We want to create a safe space for reflection and conversation,” the rabbi said.
Key Role For Modern Orthodox
Though relatively small in number, Orthodox Jews play an outsize role in Jewish life, not only because their numbers are increasing — to a remarkable degree — but because of their dynamism and commitment to the faith, to Jewish education and to the Zionist ideals of Israel. That makes the notion of the Modern Orthodox serving as a link between the liberal denominations on the left, and the centrist and charedi groups on the right, appealing. The reality, though, is that Modern Orthodox views on issues from abortion to Zionism, and from President Obama to the settlements, differ sharply with the large majority of American Jews. The move to the right finds some Modern Orthodox adapting to the fundamentalists around them and others feeling marginalized and overwhelmed.
That’s what prompted the founding group of about 20 men and women of a wide range of ages in the New York area to launch PORAT.
Steven Bayme, a member of the founding group and an executive at the American Jewish Committee, said that many Modern Orthodox Jews are frustrated that their values of inclusion are de-emphasized or marginalized by those on the right.
He noted that over the last four decades the influence of pulpit rabbis in their communities has diminished and authority has become more centralized, in the hands of Talmudic scholars and rebbes cloistered in yeshivas. But Bayme senses “a swing of the pendulum” amid signs that the cultural atmosphere is changing. He cited more open inquiry into Jewish texts, renewed efforts to free agunot (or, chained wives) and training rabbis to be sensitive to and more accepting of their congregants.
For Laura Shaw Frank, a Jewish educator who is part of the founding group, a key issue is the role of women in synagogue. She spoke of her frustration when, in 2003, the new rabbi of the Baltimore congregation she belonged to decided that women should no longer dance with the Torah on Simchat Torah, as had been the custom. She noted that “there was a great deal of anger and resentment among the women about this decision, but no one really stood up to the rabbi” to question his more stringent interpretation of Jewish law on the matter.
Recognizing the women’s discontent, the rabbi asked Shaw Frank, an attorney learned in Jewish law, to give a shiur (class) for the women of the congregation on Simchat Torah morning while the men danced with the Torah. She agreed out of respect for the rabbi, though she felt it was being done “to keep the women busy and placate them.”
Shaw Frank chose to discuss issues of women and halacha (Jewish law). Feeling “empowered” by the experience, she began offering a weekly shiur in her home for women willing to probe sources but with “enormous respect for halacha and the halachic process.” She later helped found a congregation more inclusive to women.
“There are many people outside of the New York area who feel frustrated and disenfranchised, as if Orthodoxy has left them,” said Shaw Frank, who is now an administrator of Yeshivat Maharat, the first yeshiva to ordain women as Orthodox clergy. “I think PORAT can offer them a lifeline.”
Victoria Lindenbaum Feder, a co-founder of JCP (Jewish Community Project) in Tribeca, says she felt a responsibility to join the PORAT founding group because “I’m living the benefits” of those who advocated for “inclusivity and tolerance within the framework of halacha.” She said she constantly struggles with “being told what is and isn’t Orthodoxy,” and dealing with “lines drawn” rather than feeling free to discuss and debate complex religious issues. “We need a voice of moderation,” she said, “and we need to make it louder.”
Anat Barber, another member of the founding group of PORAT who works professionally in the Jewish community, said she and her fellow millennials “are less interested in labels and institutional hierarchies” than their elders. What’s more meaningful to younger people, she said, are open and honest conversations on complex issues. Barber describes herself as “a sucker for Jewish unity,” and hopes PORAT can foster “civil discourse among people who don’t agree with each other, but who can show deep and profound respect for choices that others make Jewishly.”
Much To Offer Charedim
Rabbi Berman, the Edah founder and a professor at both Stern College and Columbia Law School, observed with irony this week that the harsh charedi critics of Modern Orthodoxy may well have the most to gain from engaging with that community. He said that with more charedim seeking professional degrees in fields like law, accounting and business after years in the yeshiva, a group like PORAT could have “much to offer them in making the cultural adjustment,” maintaining strict adherence to halachic life while engaging with the outside world.
For now, the prospects of that happening seem highly unlikely. Indeed, even Modern Orthodoxy’s central institutions and rabbinic leaders set themselves apart from Rabbi Weiss’ brand of Open rthodoxy. YU, through its Center for the Jewish Future, has exposed students to the wider world through volunteer programs for social justice and tikkun olam, including projects in Third World countries. And Stern College now has an established program in Talmud study for women. But leading YU rosh yeshivas have spoken out against the dangers of Open Orthodoxy, described as outside the boundaries of halacha. The Rabbinical Council of America, the largest group of Orthodox rabbis, will not accept rabbis ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, few of whom have been hired to lead mainstream Orthodox congregations. Partly in response, Rabbi Weiss co-founded the International Rabbinic Fellowship as an alternative to the RCA, from which he resigned. His decision to ordain women as rabbinic clergy through Yeshivat Maharat has deepened the split within Modern Orthodoxy.
In truth, there has always been a struggle between liberals and traditionalists within the movement. What has changed in recent years, reflecting the increasing polarization and lack of discourse in American society in general, is the angry tone and effort to delegitimize rather than just dispute those seen as challenging tradition. Whether PORAT succeeds in bolstering those who seek a more inclusive approach or flames out in the face of fundamentalism remains to be seen. Hopefully its call for deep dialogue and engagement with the realities of a rapidly changing culture will be discussed rather than dismissed — an opportunity to build bridges rather than walls in our community.
Gary@jewishweek.org---------------------
Also this week, ZOA and other critics say CUNY's response to alleged anti-Semitic bias is too tame; new UJA-Federation study has some positive data on local millennials' views on Jewish identity; Israel correspondent Nathan Jeffay on the latest SodaStream drama falling flat; cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes her black and Jewish heritage; and spotlight on autism atReelAbilities Film Festival at JCC Manhattan.
New York
CUNY Response To Alleged Bias ‘Inadequate’
ZOA, Council members say pledge to investigate campus actions fails to hold perpetrators accountable.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
An SJP “Die-in/Vigil for Ferguson and Gaza” held in John Jay’s atrium, the main common area. Tomer Kornfeld
Two and a half weeks after a group of students chanting slogans including “Zionists off campus” broke up a Brooklyn College faculty council meeting, City University of New York Chancellor James B. Milliken announced the school had hired outside attorneys to investigate complaints that a student group is causing Jews to feel harassed and physically unsafe.
But while some Jewish organizations have praised CUNY for its response, others say it’s not enough and that the student group behind most incidents, Students For Justice In Palestine (SJP), must be shut down.
Milliken’s announcement last week came in response to a 14-page letter from the Zionist Organization of America, detailing numerous complaints the group has received from students at four CUNY campuses: Brooklyn College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Hunter College and the College of Staten Island. The complaints ranged from individual comments (“I don’t hug murderers” was one) to swastikas carved into desks, to students yelling offensive slogans at unrelated rallies, including “We should drag the Zionists down the street!” and “Jews out of CUNY.”
At the College of Staten Island, SJP’s banner depicting the State of Israel covered by a keffiyah hangs in the campus center, the rotunda, despite Jewish students’ complaints. At Brooklyn College, a professor wearing a kipa was called a “Zionist” something — he couldn’t hear the second word though another professor at the scene said it was “pig.”
In addition to the probe, Milliken also announced that he has appointed two separate committees of administrators, faculty, and students to address the situation. One would “define best practices” to foster “a climate of mutual respect and civil discourse” on campus, and the other would make sure the university’s policies protect free speech.
“We’re deeply disappointed with Milliken’s actions,” said ZOA’s national president, Morton Klein. “All Milliken has done is condemn anti-Semitism. We demand that they condemn the student conduct,” and, if merited, revoke the club’s student-group status.
“When these sort of things have happened to other groups at other schools, those student groups have been shut down,” he continued. “No gay, black or Hispanic group would accept the administration saying: ‘We’ll look into it.’”
The ZOA’s letter pointed to several other universities that responded significantly more forcefully to bias incidents, including: University of Oklahoma, where a fraternity was kicked off campus, two members expelled and about 20 more disciplined after a video of the students reciting a racist chant was made public; Yale, where a fraternity was suspended for five years and individual students penalized for chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!”; and at University of California San Diego, where a student was suspended for hanging up a noose in the library.
ZOA attorney Susan Tuchman pointed out that Jewish students are a protected group under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and that, under that act, universities must take prompt and effective steps to address the situation and prevent a hostile atmosphere from reoccurring.
“It’s been done [before] and we’re saying: There’s no reason to treat the concerns of Jewish students less seriously,” she said.
Klein criticized other Jewish organizations for failing to join ZOA in speaking up. “Why isn’t ADL demanding this? Why isn’t AJCommittee? [sic],” he said.
In fact, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement commending CUNY for “taking these allegations seriously.”
“I think CUNY’s steps in doing the probe are the right first steps,” said Evan Bernstein, ADL’s New York regional director. “I think doing things in a smart fashion and not as a [hasty] reaction is a smart approach.”
An AJC spokesman said his organization has a different approach from ZOA and also noted that Milliken traveled with AJC to Israel in 2008.
Jacob Levkowicz, AJC’s assistant director of campus affairs, said in a statement: “Combatting BDS is a top AJC priority, and our 22 regional offices across the country are working closely with like-minded campus-based organizations, reaching out to university leaders to counter SJP and other anti-Israel groups, while also deepening understanding of and support for Israel among students and faculty.”
Members of the City Council Jewish Caucus also released a statement calling the CUNY response inadequate. In a letter to Chancellor Milliken, dated March 1, all 14 members of the group save Stephen Levin said CUNY needs to “develop a comprehensive plan” and “implement system-wide policies to swiftly and openly address anti-Semitic incidents.”
Saying that the “proliferation” of swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti on many campuses indicates “latent hostility,” university officials should be “decrying the creep of hate onto their campuses” and using it as an opportunity to educate students about anti-Semitism and the need for inter-cultural tolerance. Instead, the letter says “administrators at some colleges have remained silent about the graffiti’s anti-Semitic nature, or, worse yet, ignored it entirely.”
“When anti-Semitism rears its ugly head, it must be named and condemned — as must all bigotry,” it continued, noting that at several CUNY schools, “Jewish students have reported feeling that the campus environment was so hostile that they could not wear Stars of David or kipas, openly identifying as Jewish, or espouse pro-Israel beliefs without fearing for their safety.”
Councilmen Mark Levine, David Greenfield, Barry Grodenchik, Rory Lancman and Mark Treyger followed up the letter by using the public comment portion of a meeting of the City Council Committee on Higher Education to demand stronger action.
After listening to CUNY Vice Chancellor Fred Schaffer read a statement condemning “all forms of bigotry and discrimination including anti-Semitism” and laying out plans for the investigation and two committees, David Greenfield called the response unacceptable.
“I have a student who is my constituent who is getting a master’s degree and she tells me that she cannot wear her star of David at Brooklyn College because she feels intimidated and threatened,” he said, “and your response is: ‘Well, we’re not really sure what we’re going to do so we’re going to hire some experts to tell us.’ Come on, that’s just not acceptable.”
Like the ZOA, Greenfield asked that SJP be punished, saying “they’re not engaging in free speech, they’re engaging in hate speech. ... And honestly, if God forbid something happens to these students,” he warned CUNY administrators, “we’re going to hold you guys accountable.
Other councilmen were more measured, saying they weren’t asking for anything to be done to SJP but rather that specific systems needed to be put into place to prevent all forms of bigotry, such as a system-wide protocol requiring that hate-based incidents be reported to the police.
Levine stressed at the hearing the need for training and protocols — especially for professors who encounter bias issues. “Are there no guidelines that stipulate faculty interactions in this cases? Is there no training?” he asked.
SJP chapters from each college as well as the national and regional offices did not immediately respond to request for comment. However, the organization Palestine Legal had issued a response to the ZOA’s letter on their website immediately after it came out.
“The ZOA wants to shut down all speech on Israel/Palestine that doesn’t hew to its narrative that Israel can do no wrong,” Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath said in the statement. “They’ve routinely misstated the law, misstated the facts, or both. And this is why their attempts to punish speech critical of Israel routinely fail.”
Grodenchik took on the issue of censorship at the City Council committee hearing, saying that free speech is fine as long as it doesn’t cross impinge upon the rights of others:
“I’m not asking that anyone’s speech be impinged upon, I believe wholeheartedly in the First Amendment as we all do, but there has got to be a strong policy ... that when people cross the line you have got to be there.”
The administration, he said, has to “understand that the infringement of anybody’s rights, and especially their personal safety, is totally unacceptable.” ---------------------
New York
Millennial Study Looks Up, Prompts Hands-On Grants
Jewish identity gets a boost in survey; being the underdog is ‘in.’
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
OneTable, a non-profit that sets up Shabbat meals, received a $85,000 grant from UJA-Federation of NY. Courtesy of One Table
As Jewish organizations plan for a fast-changing communal landscape, many are trying to figure out ways to engage the most coveted demographic cohort: the millennial generation. Studies have shown that 20- and 30-something Jews are pulling away from communal institutions in a big way.
But now comes a report, sponsored by UJA-Federation of New York and released last week, which provides a glimmer of hope about New York-area millennials’ attitudes toward Jewish identity.
The study, “Insights and Strategies for Engaging Jewish Millennials,” found that 80 percent of the young Jews interviewed believe that being Jewish is an important part of their identity, and 82 percent plan to raise their children Jewish. The survey polled 218 respondents between the ages of 22 and 36, and young adults who were already “highly engaged,” defined as attending synagogue once a week or more, were excluded from the study.
The study’s new numbers provide a more optimistic outlook than the March 2014 Pew study on millennials, which found that young adults are disengaging from institutions en masse; nearly a third affiliating with no political party or religion. The new results also contrast with the 2013 Pew Center’s “Portrait of American Jewry,” which found a 71 percent intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews and a 58 percent rate overall.
“On an identity level, Judaism remains a major part of how unaffiliated Jewish millennials see and define themselves,” said Boaz Mourad, lead researcher on the study. Strong family values, a good sense of humor (described in the study as “witty sensibilities”) and a drive to find meaning all play a part in “Jewish identity.”
Still, in terms of religious activities and behaviors, such as attending synagogue or participating in holiday rituals, millennials lag far behind previous generations, he said. “Jewish professionals need to meet millennials where they’re at. If we provide them with experiences they seek and value, they’ll re-engage.”
UJA-Federation is already applying the data. The study’s results are immediately being translated into allocation decisions, said Andrea Fleishaker, a planning executive spearheading the initiative.
Three new grants have been awarded based on the data: One Table, a nonprofit that helps 20- and 30-somethings host and find Shabbat meals, received a $85,000 grant; Reboot, a nonprofit that generates creative programming to affirm Jewish identity, received a $50,000 grant; and 70 Faces Media, a Jewish media company, received nearly $30,000 of seed funding to launch an online magazine for women in their 20s and 30s.
“Once the research came out, the implications for practice were immediate,” said Fleishaker, who said the study is a first for UJA-Federation in terms of targeting this specific population. “We wanted to make sure our grants matched up with the themes that rose up.”
Several themes stood out, including the centrality of millennials’ “search for meaning.” Ninety-eight percent of those surveyed said helping others was of prime importance, and 85 percent associated doing good deeds with Jewish culture. Mindfulness, self-awareness, and a mission to repair the world all characterized their search.
“I found the results very encouraging,” said Arin Tuerk, one of the study’s researchers and a Jewish millennial herself. “It’s good to know that Jewishness continues to play such a central role in young peoples’ identity.” She added that the Jewish struggle for existence through much of history is something millennials find very appealing — “associating with the underdog is in,” she said. “It’s something young people appreciate.”
The study, which includes a prescriptive section for those looking to apply its results, encourages organizations to “step into the space where millennials are pursuing their life goals.” The study cites the instant success of JSwipe, a dating app that allows Jewish singles to survey other singles in their general location, which successfully blends strong functionality—providing an efficient way to find relationships — with humor, progressiveness and community. Fifty-five percent of single participants in the study said that finding the right romantic partner is a major focus in their lives right now.
“We need to meet millennials where they are at by matching their functional needs,” said Mourad, explaining that Judaism needs to make a case for how it fits into the millennial value system. “‘Jewishness’ can take a back seat; the context and connections provide enough.”
Stressing the focus on millennial engagement, the Union for Reform Judaism announced this week the launch of a new yearlong outreach fellowship. The first fellow, Evan Traylor, 21, of Edmond, Okla., will work alongside Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs and other leaders of the Reform movement to develop a toolkit for engaging millennials. The focus on this age cohort is clearly becoming a trend, said a URJ representative.
“Millennials are seeking welcoming, relevant, and socially conscious engagement,” said Rabbi Jacobs in a statement. “Evan, in this new role, is uniquely positioned to help us think and act strategically in this area in order to bring young adults closer to the core of Jewish life. Engaging millennials is as challenging as it is imperative.”---------------------
Letter From Israel
Latest SodaStream Drama Falling Flat
BDS, Palestinian workers, and the company’s new Negev plant.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
Palestinian SodaStream employees show identity cards after being laid off from Negev plant as a result of a permit battle. Getty
Can everybody please stop talking nonsense about Sodastream?
The company, which closed down its West Bank plant in October and moved its Middle East production solely inside the Green Line, last week said goodbye to its last Palestinian workers.
When the main plant for its home-carbonation machines was in a settlement, located close to Palestinian areas, it employed hundreds of Palestinians. Now, it’s located in the Negev Desert, and the company is expected to employ Israeli citizens.
SodaStream got a temporary permit for 74 Palestinians to stay with the company for a few months despite its move into Israel’s internationally recognized borders, where the employment of Palestinians is rarer. But last week time ran out, and despite the company’s utter fury, the employees left. They are expected to be replaced by people who live close to the new plant, many of whom are Arabs from Israel’s impoverished Bedouin community.
This is, of course, the same company that was the target of intense protests by the anti-Israel boycott movement BDS, especially around the time of the 2014 Super Bowl when it put out an ad starring Scarlett Johansson. And so, two and two have been added together to make five.
“BDS efforts cost Palestinian workers their SodaStream jobs,” yelled a headline in the right-leaning Israel Hayom newspaper. Despite the divergent politics at the left-wing Haaretz, it drew the same conclusion. “Sodastream’s last Palestinian workers lose jobs after BDS pressure leads company to relocate,” claims its headline.
Commentators have rushed to discuss the development. “Another great victory for BDS,” wrote Sherwin Pomerantz in the Jerusalem Post sarcastically, calling it a “big financial defeat” for the families of the Palestinian workers. Even an anonymous official from the Prime Minister’s Office was quoted saying that “BDS” is behind what has happened.
They say never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and in this case, there’s a bizarre case of media, anti-boycott forces and pro-boycott forces all doing exactly this in (uncoordinated) unison. For media, it’s a good headline. For those who oppose boycotts, this seems to be a way of illustrating its absurdity. And for the boycotters, the kudos from the suggestion that they are responsible for SodaStream’s move outweighs any qualms about the unemployed Palestinians.
But SodaStream didn’t move inside the Green Line as a knee-jerk reaction to the boycott movement. The factory where its operations are now centered was being planned long before the 2014 Super Bowl when the furor about its location reached full throttle.
A grant from the Israeli government toward construction of its new Negev plant had already been approved in April 2012. And it wasn’t hard to work out why the company was attracted to the Negev — there are swaths of empty land and large state incentives to get companies relocating there and employing local Bedouins. In short, the Negev now offers the kind of attractive prospects that Peter Wiseburgh, the British-born Israeli who established SodaStream in the 1990s, saw in the West Bank when he was drawn to a cheap and empty plot there.
The company had, back in 2012, considered the possibility that politics would force it to leave the West Bank, but it wasn’t building for an exit strategy — the company was growing at a dizzying pace and it needed more facilities. The next year, however, the earth shook under SodaStream.
It’s a company that dreamed of rivaling Coke and Pepsi and built its marketing strategy around this desire, but it took its eye off the ball. And when it did, people started spurning sugary fizzy drinks. In short, at some point in late 2013 it was focused on the wrong market, and its sales then stopped rising and dropped significantly. It started the hard work of redesigning products and rebranding itself to focus on fizzy water rather than sugary drinks.
So here’s a company that decided to build an additional plant when it was at an all-time high, and which has since found itself in a very different situation — having had to totally rethink its focus, realize that it’s not the big hitter it thought it was, and cut its costs. It has shuttered a facility in northern Israel and, yes, decided to leave the West Bank instead of keeping the plant there in addition to the new Negev site. Yet all the complexity that surrounded the company’s decision-making is widely ignored as people presume that the boycotters simply cast a spell and it worked.
SodaStream’s CEO, Daniel Birnbaum, has said he didn’t leave the West Bank plant based on boycott pressure, but he did acknowledge that once the decision was made, the pressure made them execute it quicker than it may have otherwise. Even if he’s underplaying the significance of the boycotters’ pressure slightly, it was but one factor among many in deciding the fate of the West Bank plant.
Why does all of this matter? Because when the decision is presented as a simple cause-and-effect response to boycotters, it buoys them beyond all imagination. It gives their cynical movement the recognition and sense of success that it craves — and which it then uses to strengthen itself.
Now, if we can’t rage against the boycott movement for the Palestinian SodaStream workers losing their jobs, can we unleash anger toward the Israeli government? SodaStream certainly has, running a PR campaign to this effect, and Birnbaum has called the failure to renew the permits of Palestinian workers to be “ridiculous” and “immoral.” As regular readers know, I don’t hesitate to criticize Israel’s government, but these claims against it are unwarranted.
I hope for a day when there is a comprehensive peace plan, and there are processes in place for Palestinian workers to have long-term jobs at Israeli companies, but we are a long way off. Israeli companies know that if they are located within the Green Line, there is no guarantee they can rely on Palestinian workers. SodaStream was located in the West Bank and, taking into account all the implications of its decision, decided to move to the other side of the Green Line. It has to embrace all that goes along with that based on the political reality of the day, not the political reality that it may like to see in existence.
As for the company’s suggestion that Jerusalem is wasting a ready-made opportunity for positive PR, that’s not so clear. Yes, having Palestinians in a high-profile company that touts its peace ethos could have promoted a progressive message about Israel. But it could have led to the opposite outcome. The current reality in this part of the world is harsh, and passage from the West Bank to Israel can be far from simple for Palestinians. Certain security situations result in closures. Every time SodaStream employees were subjected to closures or prevented from getting to work, that fact could have generated a news story suggesting that Israel is a thorn in the side of this coexistence company.
Beyond all of this, SodaStream stresses the large number of people supported in extended Palestinian families by the wages it pays. One of the government’s reasons for investing so heavily in bringing business to the Negev is to see it transform reality for local residents. Just as 74 jobs support big Palestinian families, they can support big Bedouin families. The government is entitled to want to see its investment in the Negev region benefit locals, who are its own citizens.
What the current media fest has done is to obscure the expansion of job opportunities in the Negev, including Bedouin tribes, by putting all attention on Palestinian work permits that were never really expected to be renewed. And it has given much more oxygen to the boycott movement, which will help it turn into the monster we think it has already become.
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice a month.---------------------
Music
Nostalgia For A Hipper New York
With a black and Jewish heritage and a classical musical pedigree, cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes it all together.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Of her new record, Marika Hughes says, “I hear the blues, the art rock of the ’90s, the spirit of jazz. Nisha Sondhe
City breezes and nightlights infuse a lot of Marika Hughes’ songs, and so does love and its longings. Born of classical musical royalty, she’s an urban poet who writes music and lyrics, plays the cello, sings and fronts a band. Her latest CD, “New York Nostalgia,” is a love song to this city.
“A lot of the songs are about an ‘almost love,’” she says in an interview near Lincoln Center, close to where she studied at Juilliard and visited her “tantes,” or aunts, on Central Park West. The nostalgia is for an earlier New York City, one that was grittier, friendlier and more racially integrated, when many artists and musicians lived on the Upper West Side. Her New York of the 1970s and ’80s was a city “with everything not so precious, a little dirtier in a beautiful way.” During high school, her string quartet would play at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 73rd Street, but as things shifted in the city, the police would chase them away.
Hughes’ biography is all over her music. She’s the daughter of a German-Jewish mother and an African-American father who ran a jazz club together, and she’s the granddaughter of Emanuel Feuermann, considered one of the great cellists of the 20th century. Born in Poland in 1902 into a musical family, Feuermann was sent to study in Vienna, where he made his debut at age 12 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He then taught in Berlin, but was ousted from his position by the Nazis in 1933. In 1935, he made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic. Returning to Europe and then fleeing persecution, he moved to London, where he married Eva Reifenberg, and then to Zurich. He happened to be in Vienna in 1938 when the Nazis invaded, and a violinist friend helped him and his wife and daughter Monica escape. They moved to the U.S. later that year, and he continued to play and teach. In 1942, he died suddenly after complications from routine surgery. He was close with Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and other internationally celebrated musicians; Arturo Toscanini was a pallbearer at his funeral.
While Hughes was growing up, her late grandfather was a presence. The first records she learned to spin were Feuermann playing Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace.”
The name Marika is a combination of her parents’ names, Marvin and Monica. Her mother was a pianist; her father was not a musician but described himself as a professional listener. Marika began violin lessons at age 3 and was also a regular on “Sesame Street.” She played violin with seriousness until she was 12. In a visit to the music store run by her grandfather’s student Mosa Havivi (where she got all of her instruments for free), she asked to try one of the cellos. After holding it for the first time and playing the C-string, she was hooked. Over the next year, she played both cello and violin, and then chose the cello.
For her, the classical music world was a tough and pressured place. “The generation of musicians from Eastern and Central Europe, who were the first people recording, had these brutal expectations that I would be his granddaughter in a certain way. I was a very good cellist, but I wasn’t him,” she says, and adds, “I always went to the beat of my own drummer; I had different intentions, whether I knew it or not.”
From 1980 to 1987, her parents ran a popular West Side jazz club called Burgundy’s on Amsterdam Avenue between 82nd and 83rd Street. Her mother managed the day-to-day operations of the club, while her father continued his work as a software engineer. Marika loved the place, and would stop by on her way home from school. She would have enjoyed staying there every afternoon and evening, but she had to practice her cello. If someone she loved was playing, she was allowed to return and stay up late.
“I was there a lot,” she recalls. Journalist Ed Bradley and literary agent Marie Brown were regulars. She remembers hearing guitarist Peter Bernstein, jazz pianist Danny Mixon and singer Novella Nelson. “It was a very mixed place. Everyone lived in the neighborhood.” In the early years, the club served food, and she’d go to Zabar’s to pick up bagels for Sunday brunch. Then, Anthony Bourdain used to cook there, before achieving fame as a chef, cookbook author and television personality.
Their home was also an open gathering place for extended family and visiting musicians, including those who knew her grandfather. Her “tantes,” the European aunts on her mother’s side, doted on her, encouraging her musical abilities, teaching her proper elocution and serving as important influences throughout her life. One died at age 99 and another recently at 106.
Hughes attended Manhattan Country Day School and Horace Mann, and then studied political science at Barnard and cello at Juilliard. After a sojourn in northern California — serving coffee, playing in local symphonies, teaching, expanding her classical repertoire, experimenting with other genres, recording commercials and film scores, only slowly letting on to people in the music world that she was Feuermann’s granddaughter — she returned to New York City in 2006.
Since then, she has performed on her own and also as a “side girl,” or freelance cellist, with Whitney Houston, Sean Lennon and others, and has recorded with many artists, including Lou Reed and Ani DiFranco and also with Jewlia Isenberg, on the Tzadik label. Hughes now leads the band Bottom Heavy and has recorded a previous CD with them as well as solo CDs. Her own music has traces of classical, pop, jazz, experimental and soul rhythms. On stage, she’s very natural, with the personal warmth and vibrancy gained from being around club hosts who loved their guests.
About “New York Nostalgia,” she says, “When I listen to the music, I hear the classical in me — it’s very diatonic — I hear the blues, I hear the art rock of the ’90s, I hear the spirit of jazz. It’s hard to define myself. It’s all there, it’s my voice — this vast span of musical styles.”
In writing music and lyrics, she often begins with structure and chord progression. She wrote the song “No Dancing” on the No. 38 bus, when the lines “Put me on your to-do list, baby” came to her. Her voice is rich and her songs are gems, their spirit hopeful.
Now, she lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Her mother passed away, and her father lives in Harlem, always attending her gigs.
“I’m exactly half-Jewish and half-black. Right down the middle, and then completely intertwined,” she says.
“As to the Jewish part of me, I grew up in a house that was very involved in social justice — it was a part of our thinking. I always knew that my grandmother and grandfather had to leave Germany, and I knew why. I always had a lot of Jewish friends and felt a cultural sensibility, nothing to do with religion.” She hasn’t yet been to Israel — she was supposed to go twice — and says she would love to go.
“I have incredible pride in my biracial heritage. I’m very fortunate to be able to roll into different worlds and feel comfortable.”
The only place she says that she felt discrimination and disrespect based on race has been at the international classical music competition held in Berlin every four years, the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann. The organizers, who have the rights to use her grandfather’s name although the family is not involved, have not welcomed the accomplished musician who is Feuermann’s granddaughter.
She has seen her grandfather’s cellos, but has not been able to play them. She says that her grandmother was given terrible advice and sold them, and they are now being sold between banks; his Stradivarius recently sold for $15 million.
Hughes has also done work in South Africa and Haiti as well as New York City, working with teens to write plays, with underlying messages about making wise choices. “I was looking to do something that mattered, not just about improving me, but about improving the world.”
Launching “New York Nostalgia,” Marika Hughes will play on Monday, March 14, 7:30 p.m., at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre (425 Lafayette St.) with her band Bottom Heavy, including Charlie Burnham on violin, Kyle Sanna on guitar, Fred Cash Jr. on bass and Tony Mason on drums.---------------------
New York
Spotlight On Autism At ReelAbilities Fest
George Robinson
My column reports on a new grassroots effort initiated by Rabbi Avi Weiss to bolster and support Jews on the liberal end of Orthodoxy who are feeling increasingly isolated. Will it fly?
Gary Rosenblatt
Giving Voice To Inclusive Orthodoxy
New grassroots group seeks to revive and expand ideals of Edah, which folded a decade ago.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Ten years ago, when Edah, an organization devoted to the ideology and values of Modern Orthodoxy, closed its doors, founding director Rabbi Saul Berman said it had largely achieved its goal of reversing “the separatist trend within Modern Orthodoxy, which was isolating” that community “from the rest of the Jewish people.” He added that after a nine-year tenure it was “time to pass the challenge on to others to do the work.”
Since then, Modern Orthodoxy has in many ways moved further to the religious right, in part driven by young people who return from a post-high school gap year or two of yeshiva/seminary study in Israel with a more rigorous commitment to ritual observance and to strict separation of the sexes, influenced by the religious teachings of their rebbes in Israel.
A Pew report on American Orthodox Jews in 2015 indicates the growth of the religious right. It found that while about 10 percent of American Jews are Orthodox, 60 percent of that segment now is charedi (ultra-Orthodox) and about 30 percent is Modern Orthodox, with each group defined in part by its resistance to, or acceptance of, secular society.
Now comes a new grassroots group seeking to revive and advance many of the principles and ideals of Edah, whose motto was “the courage to be modern and Orthodox.”
The formation of PORAT (People for Orthodox Renaissance and Torah), first being announced on these pages, comes at a key moment, marking a renewed effort to bridge the widening gap between Orthodox Jews and the rest of the American Jewish community.
The group will hold the first of several planned public events for the year on May 15, at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (KJ) on the Upper East Side. A panel discussion on the future of Modern Orthodoxy will feature Chaim Steinmetz, the recently appointed senior rabbi of KJ; Blu Greenberg, a writer, activist and founder of JOFA; and Binyamin Lau, rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue in Jerusalem as well as professor, writer, lecturer and activist on issues of halacha and social justice.
A board of directors for PORAT (Hebrew for “fruitful”) is in formation and there are plans to raise funds for a staff to sponsor public forums and educational programs, create a website that will serve as a network and forum for the exchange of ideas relevant to Jewish life, and support organizations and projects already in place that foster Modern Orthodox ideals.
Rabbi Avi Weiss, who recently stepped down as full-time senior rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, is the force behind PORAT. Having long led the campaign for a more inclusive form of halachic life, which he calls Open Orthodoxy, and founded Yeshivat Chovevei Torah for men, Yeshivat Maharat for women, and co-founded the International Rabbinic Fellowship, he may be seen by some as creating this new lay group to bolster his institutions. But he insists that his goal is to create a “safe space” for what he believes to be “the silent majority” of Orthodox Jews — variously referred to as liberal, modern or open — “in the tens of thousands around the country” who would welcome and support efforts to broaden the conversation on issues like rabbinic authority, conversion, ethics, social justice, gender equality, relations with other denominations and faith groups, and the place of gays and lesbians in the community.
“This is an effort that goes well beyond any individual,” the rabbi said in an interview this week, “and the goal is very specific: to demonstrate that a critical mass of Orthodox Jews support the values of an inclusive Modern Orthodoxy.” He added that “it’s time to stop looking over our shoulders” at those on the religious right to verify one’s authenticity as Orthodox. Commitment to “the mesorah (tradition) doesn’t mean being cemented to the past,” he said.
What has changed in the last decade, according to Rabbi Weiss, “are the daily attacks on blogs and in other writings that seek to marginalize the left” within Orthodoxy, asserting that it has crossed the line and is no longer part of the halachic community. Such statements come not only from groups like Agudath Israel on the right but from rosh yeshivas at Yeshiva University, the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy.
“We want to create a safe space for reflection and conversation,” the rabbi said.
Key Role For Modern Orthodox
Though relatively small in number, Orthodox Jews play an outsize role in Jewish life, not only because their numbers are increasing — to a remarkable degree — but because of their dynamism and commitment to the faith, to Jewish education and to the Zionist ideals of Israel. That makes the notion of the Modern Orthodox serving as a link between the liberal denominations on the left, and the centrist and charedi groups on the right, appealing. The reality, though, is that Modern Orthodox views on issues from abortion to Zionism, and from President Obama to the settlements, differ sharply with the large majority of American Jews. The move to the right finds some Modern Orthodox adapting to the fundamentalists around them and others feeling marginalized and overwhelmed.
That’s what prompted the founding group of about 20 men and women of a wide range of ages in the New York area to launch PORAT.
Steven Bayme, a member of the founding group and an executive at the American Jewish Committee, said that many Modern Orthodox Jews are frustrated that their values of inclusion are de-emphasized or marginalized by those on the right.
He noted that over the last four decades the influence of pulpit rabbis in their communities has diminished and authority has become more centralized, in the hands of Talmudic scholars and rebbes cloistered in yeshivas. But Bayme senses “a swing of the pendulum” amid signs that the cultural atmosphere is changing. He cited more open inquiry into Jewish texts, renewed efforts to free agunot (or, chained wives) and training rabbis to be sensitive to and more accepting of their congregants.
For Laura Shaw Frank, a Jewish educator who is part of the founding group, a key issue is the role of women in synagogue. She spoke of her frustration when, in 2003, the new rabbi of the Baltimore congregation she belonged to decided that women should no longer dance with the Torah on Simchat Torah, as had been the custom. She noted that “there was a great deal of anger and resentment among the women about this decision, but no one really stood up to the rabbi” to question his more stringent interpretation of Jewish law on the matter.
Recognizing the women’s discontent, the rabbi asked Shaw Frank, an attorney learned in Jewish law, to give a shiur (class) for the women of the congregation on Simchat Torah morning while the men danced with the Torah. She agreed out of respect for the rabbi, though she felt it was being done “to keep the women busy and placate them.”
Shaw Frank chose to discuss issues of women and halacha (Jewish law). Feeling “empowered” by the experience, she began offering a weekly shiur in her home for women willing to probe sources but with “enormous respect for halacha and the halachic process.” She later helped found a congregation more inclusive to women.
“There are many people outside of the New York area who feel frustrated and disenfranchised, as if Orthodoxy has left them,” said Shaw Frank, who is now an administrator of Yeshivat Maharat, the first yeshiva to ordain women as Orthodox clergy. “I think PORAT can offer them a lifeline.”
Victoria Lindenbaum Feder, a co-founder of JCP (Jewish Community Project) in Tribeca, says she felt a responsibility to join the PORAT founding group because “I’m living the benefits” of those who advocated for “inclusivity and tolerance within the framework of halacha.” She said she constantly struggles with “being told what is and isn’t Orthodoxy,” and dealing with “lines drawn” rather than feeling free to discuss and debate complex religious issues. “We need a voice of moderation,” she said, “and we need to make it louder.”
Anat Barber, another member of the founding group of PORAT who works professionally in the Jewish community, said she and her fellow millennials “are less interested in labels and institutional hierarchies” than their elders. What’s more meaningful to younger people, she said, are open and honest conversations on complex issues. Barber describes herself as “a sucker for Jewish unity,” and hopes PORAT can foster “civil discourse among people who don’t agree with each other, but who can show deep and profound respect for choices that others make Jewishly.”
Much To Offer Charedim
Rabbi Berman, the Edah founder and a professor at both Stern College and Columbia Law School, observed with irony this week that the harsh charedi critics of Modern Orthodoxy may well have the most to gain from engaging with that community. He said that with more charedim seeking professional degrees in fields like law, accounting and business after years in the yeshiva, a group like PORAT could have “much to offer them in making the cultural adjustment,” maintaining strict adherence to halachic life while engaging with the outside world.
For now, the prospects of that happening seem highly unlikely. Indeed, even Modern Orthodoxy’s central institutions and rabbinic leaders set themselves apart from Rabbi Weiss’ brand of Open rthodoxy. YU, through its Center for the Jewish Future, has exposed students to the wider world through volunteer programs for social justice and tikkun olam, including projects in Third World countries. And Stern College now has an established program in Talmud study for women. But leading YU rosh yeshivas have spoken out against the dangers of Open Orthodoxy, described as outside the boundaries of halacha. The Rabbinical Council of America, the largest group of Orthodox rabbis, will not accept rabbis ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, few of whom have been hired to lead mainstream Orthodox congregations. Partly in response, Rabbi Weiss co-founded the International Rabbinic Fellowship as an alternative to the RCA, from which he resigned. His decision to ordain women as rabbinic clergy through Yeshivat Maharat has deepened the split within Modern Orthodoxy.
In truth, there has always been a struggle between liberals and traditionalists within the movement. What has changed in recent years, reflecting the increasing polarization and lack of discourse in American society in general, is the angry tone and effort to delegitimize rather than just dispute those seen as challenging tradition. Whether PORAT succeeds in bolstering those who seek a more inclusive approach or flames out in the face of fundamentalism remains to be seen. Hopefully its call for deep dialogue and engagement with the realities of a rapidly changing culture will be discussed rather than dismissed — an opportunity to build bridges rather than walls in our community.
Gary@jewishweek.org---------------------
Also this week, ZOA and other critics say CUNY's response to alleged anti-Semitic bias is too tame; new UJA-Federation study has some positive data on local millennials' views on Jewish identity; Israel correspondent Nathan Jeffay on the latest SodaStream drama falling flat; cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes her black and Jewish heritage; and spotlight on autism atReelAbilities Film Festival at JCC Manhattan.
New York
CUNY Response To Alleged Bias ‘Inadequate’
ZOA, Council members say pledge to investigate campus actions fails to hold perpetrators accountable.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
An SJP “Die-in/Vigil for Ferguson and Gaza” held in John Jay’s atrium, the main common area. Tomer Kornfeld
Two and a half weeks after a group of students chanting slogans including “Zionists off campus” broke up a Brooklyn College faculty council meeting, City University of New York Chancellor James B. Milliken announced the school had hired outside attorneys to investigate complaints that a student group is causing Jews to feel harassed and physically unsafe.
But while some Jewish organizations have praised CUNY for its response, others say it’s not enough and that the student group behind most incidents, Students For Justice In Palestine (SJP), must be shut down.
Milliken’s announcement last week came in response to a 14-page letter from the Zionist Organization of America, detailing numerous complaints the group has received from students at four CUNY campuses: Brooklyn College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Hunter College and the College of Staten Island. The complaints ranged from individual comments (“I don’t hug murderers” was one) to swastikas carved into desks, to students yelling offensive slogans at unrelated rallies, including “We should drag the Zionists down the street!” and “Jews out of CUNY.”
At the College of Staten Island, SJP’s banner depicting the State of Israel covered by a keffiyah hangs in the campus center, the rotunda, despite Jewish students’ complaints. At Brooklyn College, a professor wearing a kipa was called a “Zionist” something — he couldn’t hear the second word though another professor at the scene said it was “pig.”
In addition to the probe, Milliken also announced that he has appointed two separate committees of administrators, faculty, and students to address the situation. One would “define best practices” to foster “a climate of mutual respect and civil discourse” on campus, and the other would make sure the university’s policies protect free speech.
“We’re deeply disappointed with Milliken’s actions,” said ZOA’s national president, Morton Klein. “All Milliken has done is condemn anti-Semitism. We demand that they condemn the student conduct,” and, if merited, revoke the club’s student-group status.
“When these sort of things have happened to other groups at other schools, those student groups have been shut down,” he continued. “No gay, black or Hispanic group would accept the administration saying: ‘We’ll look into it.’”
The ZOA’s letter pointed to several other universities that responded significantly more forcefully to bias incidents, including: University of Oklahoma, where a fraternity was kicked off campus, two members expelled and about 20 more disciplined after a video of the students reciting a racist chant was made public; Yale, where a fraternity was suspended for five years and individual students penalized for chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!”; and at University of California San Diego, where a student was suspended for hanging up a noose in the library.
ZOA attorney Susan Tuchman pointed out that Jewish students are a protected group under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and that, under that act, universities must take prompt and effective steps to address the situation and prevent a hostile atmosphere from reoccurring.
“It’s been done [before] and we’re saying: There’s no reason to treat the concerns of Jewish students less seriously,” she said.
Klein criticized other Jewish organizations for failing to join ZOA in speaking up. “Why isn’t ADL demanding this? Why isn’t AJCommittee? [sic],” he said.
In fact, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement commending CUNY for “taking these allegations seriously.”
“I think CUNY’s steps in doing the probe are the right first steps,” said Evan Bernstein, ADL’s New York regional director. “I think doing things in a smart fashion and not as a [hasty] reaction is a smart approach.”
An AJC spokesman said his organization has a different approach from ZOA and also noted that Milliken traveled with AJC to Israel in 2008.
Jacob Levkowicz, AJC’s assistant director of campus affairs, said in a statement: “Combatting BDS is a top AJC priority, and our 22 regional offices across the country are working closely with like-minded campus-based organizations, reaching out to university leaders to counter SJP and other anti-Israel groups, while also deepening understanding of and support for Israel among students and faculty.”
Members of the City Council Jewish Caucus also released a statement calling the CUNY response inadequate. In a letter to Chancellor Milliken, dated March 1, all 14 members of the group save Stephen Levin said CUNY needs to “develop a comprehensive plan” and “implement system-wide policies to swiftly and openly address anti-Semitic incidents.”
Saying that the “proliferation” of swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti on many campuses indicates “latent hostility,” university officials should be “decrying the creep of hate onto their campuses” and using it as an opportunity to educate students about anti-Semitism and the need for inter-cultural tolerance. Instead, the letter says “administrators at some colleges have remained silent about the graffiti’s anti-Semitic nature, or, worse yet, ignored it entirely.”
“When anti-Semitism rears its ugly head, it must be named and condemned — as must all bigotry,” it continued, noting that at several CUNY schools, “Jewish students have reported feeling that the campus environment was so hostile that they could not wear Stars of David or kipas, openly identifying as Jewish, or espouse pro-Israel beliefs without fearing for their safety.”
Councilmen Mark Levine, David Greenfield, Barry Grodenchik, Rory Lancman and Mark Treyger followed up the letter by using the public comment portion of a meeting of the City Council Committee on Higher Education to demand stronger action.
After listening to CUNY Vice Chancellor Fred Schaffer read a statement condemning “all forms of bigotry and discrimination including anti-Semitism” and laying out plans for the investigation and two committees, David Greenfield called the response unacceptable.
“I have a student who is my constituent who is getting a master’s degree and she tells me that she cannot wear her star of David at Brooklyn College because she feels intimidated and threatened,” he said, “and your response is: ‘Well, we’re not really sure what we’re going to do so we’re going to hire some experts to tell us.’ Come on, that’s just not acceptable.”
Like the ZOA, Greenfield asked that SJP be punished, saying “they’re not engaging in free speech, they’re engaging in hate speech. ... And honestly, if God forbid something happens to these students,” he warned CUNY administrators, “we’re going to hold you guys accountable.
Other councilmen were more measured, saying they weren’t asking for anything to be done to SJP but rather that specific systems needed to be put into place to prevent all forms of bigotry, such as a system-wide protocol requiring that hate-based incidents be reported to the police.
Levine stressed at the hearing the need for training and protocols — especially for professors who encounter bias issues. “Are there no guidelines that stipulate faculty interactions in this cases? Is there no training?” he asked.
SJP chapters from each college as well as the national and regional offices did not immediately respond to request for comment. However, the organization Palestine Legal had issued a response to the ZOA’s letter on their website immediately after it came out.
“The ZOA wants to shut down all speech on Israel/Palestine that doesn’t hew to its narrative that Israel can do no wrong,” Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath said in the statement. “They’ve routinely misstated the law, misstated the facts, or both. And this is why their attempts to punish speech critical of Israel routinely fail.”
Grodenchik took on the issue of censorship at the City Council committee hearing, saying that free speech is fine as long as it doesn’t cross impinge upon the rights of others:
“I’m not asking that anyone’s speech be impinged upon, I believe wholeheartedly in the First Amendment as we all do, but there has got to be a strong policy ... that when people cross the line you have got to be there.”
The administration, he said, has to “understand that the infringement of anybody’s rights, and especially their personal safety, is totally unacceptable.” ---------------------
New York
Millennial Study Looks Up, Prompts Hands-On Grants
Jewish identity gets a boost in survey; being the underdog is ‘in.’
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
OneTable, a non-profit that sets up Shabbat meals, received a $85,000 grant from UJA-Federation of NY. Courtesy of One Table
As Jewish organizations plan for a fast-changing communal landscape, many are trying to figure out ways to engage the most coveted demographic cohort: the millennial generation. Studies have shown that 20- and 30-something Jews are pulling away from communal institutions in a big way.
But now comes a report, sponsored by UJA-Federation of New York and released last week, which provides a glimmer of hope about New York-area millennials’ attitudes toward Jewish identity.
The study, “Insights and Strategies for Engaging Jewish Millennials,” found that 80 percent of the young Jews interviewed believe that being Jewish is an important part of their identity, and 82 percent plan to raise their children Jewish. The survey polled 218 respondents between the ages of 22 and 36, and young adults who were already “highly engaged,” defined as attending synagogue once a week or more, were excluded from the study.
The study’s new numbers provide a more optimistic outlook than the March 2014 Pew study on millennials, which found that young adults are disengaging from institutions en masse; nearly a third affiliating with no political party or religion. The new results also contrast with the 2013 Pew Center’s “Portrait of American Jewry,” which found a 71 percent intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews and a 58 percent rate overall.
“On an identity level, Judaism remains a major part of how unaffiliated Jewish millennials see and define themselves,” said Boaz Mourad, lead researcher on the study. Strong family values, a good sense of humor (described in the study as “witty sensibilities”) and a drive to find meaning all play a part in “Jewish identity.”
Still, in terms of religious activities and behaviors, such as attending synagogue or participating in holiday rituals, millennials lag far behind previous generations, he said. “Jewish professionals need to meet millennials where they’re at. If we provide them with experiences they seek and value, they’ll re-engage.”
UJA-Federation is already applying the data. The study’s results are immediately being translated into allocation decisions, said Andrea Fleishaker, a planning executive spearheading the initiative.
Three new grants have been awarded based on the data: One Table, a nonprofit that helps 20- and 30-somethings host and find Shabbat meals, received a $85,000 grant; Reboot, a nonprofit that generates creative programming to affirm Jewish identity, received a $50,000 grant; and 70 Faces Media, a Jewish media company, received nearly $30,000 of seed funding to launch an online magazine for women in their 20s and 30s.
“Once the research came out, the implications for practice were immediate,” said Fleishaker, who said the study is a first for UJA-Federation in terms of targeting this specific population. “We wanted to make sure our grants matched up with the themes that rose up.”
Several themes stood out, including the centrality of millennials’ “search for meaning.” Ninety-eight percent of those surveyed said helping others was of prime importance, and 85 percent associated doing good deeds with Jewish culture. Mindfulness, self-awareness, and a mission to repair the world all characterized their search.
“I found the results very encouraging,” said Arin Tuerk, one of the study’s researchers and a Jewish millennial herself. “It’s good to know that Jewishness continues to play such a central role in young peoples’ identity.” She added that the Jewish struggle for existence through much of history is something millennials find very appealing — “associating with the underdog is in,” she said. “It’s something young people appreciate.”
The study, which includes a prescriptive section for those looking to apply its results, encourages organizations to “step into the space where millennials are pursuing their life goals.” The study cites the instant success of JSwipe, a dating app that allows Jewish singles to survey other singles in their general location, which successfully blends strong functionality—providing an efficient way to find relationships — with humor, progressiveness and community. Fifty-five percent of single participants in the study said that finding the right romantic partner is a major focus in their lives right now.
“We need to meet millennials where they are at by matching their functional needs,” said Mourad, explaining that Judaism needs to make a case for how it fits into the millennial value system. “‘Jewishness’ can take a back seat; the context and connections provide enough.”
Stressing the focus on millennial engagement, the Union for Reform Judaism announced this week the launch of a new yearlong outreach fellowship. The first fellow, Evan Traylor, 21, of Edmond, Okla., will work alongside Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs and other leaders of the Reform movement to develop a toolkit for engaging millennials. The focus on this age cohort is clearly becoming a trend, said a URJ representative.
“Millennials are seeking welcoming, relevant, and socially conscious engagement,” said Rabbi Jacobs in a statement. “Evan, in this new role, is uniquely positioned to help us think and act strategically in this area in order to bring young adults closer to the core of Jewish life. Engaging millennials is as challenging as it is imperative.”---------------------
Letter From Israel
Latest SodaStream Drama Falling Flat
BDS, Palestinian workers, and the company’s new Negev plant.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
Palestinian SodaStream employees show identity cards after being laid off from Negev plant as a result of a permit battle. Getty
Can everybody please stop talking nonsense about Sodastream?
The company, which closed down its West Bank plant in October and moved its Middle East production solely inside the Green Line, last week said goodbye to its last Palestinian workers.
When the main plant for its home-carbonation machines was in a settlement, located close to Palestinian areas, it employed hundreds of Palestinians. Now, it’s located in the Negev Desert, and the company is expected to employ Israeli citizens.
SodaStream got a temporary permit for 74 Palestinians to stay with the company for a few months despite its move into Israel’s internationally recognized borders, where the employment of Palestinians is rarer. But last week time ran out, and despite the company’s utter fury, the employees left. They are expected to be replaced by people who live close to the new plant, many of whom are Arabs from Israel’s impoverished Bedouin community.
This is, of course, the same company that was the target of intense protests by the anti-Israel boycott movement BDS, especially around the time of the 2014 Super Bowl when it put out an ad starring Scarlett Johansson. And so, two and two have been added together to make five.
“BDS efforts cost Palestinian workers their SodaStream jobs,” yelled a headline in the right-leaning Israel Hayom newspaper. Despite the divergent politics at the left-wing Haaretz, it drew the same conclusion. “Sodastream’s last Palestinian workers lose jobs after BDS pressure leads company to relocate,” claims its headline.
Commentators have rushed to discuss the development. “Another great victory for BDS,” wrote Sherwin Pomerantz in the Jerusalem Post sarcastically, calling it a “big financial defeat” for the families of the Palestinian workers. Even an anonymous official from the Prime Minister’s Office was quoted saying that “BDS” is behind what has happened.
They say never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and in this case, there’s a bizarre case of media, anti-boycott forces and pro-boycott forces all doing exactly this in (uncoordinated) unison. For media, it’s a good headline. For those who oppose boycotts, this seems to be a way of illustrating its absurdity. And for the boycotters, the kudos from the suggestion that they are responsible for SodaStream’s move outweighs any qualms about the unemployed Palestinians.
But SodaStream didn’t move inside the Green Line as a knee-jerk reaction to the boycott movement. The factory where its operations are now centered was being planned long before the 2014 Super Bowl when the furor about its location reached full throttle.
A grant from the Israeli government toward construction of its new Negev plant had already been approved in April 2012. And it wasn’t hard to work out why the company was attracted to the Negev — there are swaths of empty land and large state incentives to get companies relocating there and employing local Bedouins. In short, the Negev now offers the kind of attractive prospects that Peter Wiseburgh, the British-born Israeli who established SodaStream in the 1990s, saw in the West Bank when he was drawn to a cheap and empty plot there.
The company had, back in 2012, considered the possibility that politics would force it to leave the West Bank, but it wasn’t building for an exit strategy — the company was growing at a dizzying pace and it needed more facilities. The next year, however, the earth shook under SodaStream.
It’s a company that dreamed of rivaling Coke and Pepsi and built its marketing strategy around this desire, but it took its eye off the ball. And when it did, people started spurning sugary fizzy drinks. In short, at some point in late 2013 it was focused on the wrong market, and its sales then stopped rising and dropped significantly. It started the hard work of redesigning products and rebranding itself to focus on fizzy water rather than sugary drinks.
So here’s a company that decided to build an additional plant when it was at an all-time high, and which has since found itself in a very different situation — having had to totally rethink its focus, realize that it’s not the big hitter it thought it was, and cut its costs. It has shuttered a facility in northern Israel and, yes, decided to leave the West Bank instead of keeping the plant there in addition to the new Negev site. Yet all the complexity that surrounded the company’s decision-making is widely ignored as people presume that the boycotters simply cast a spell and it worked.
SodaStream’s CEO, Daniel Birnbaum, has said he didn’t leave the West Bank plant based on boycott pressure, but he did acknowledge that once the decision was made, the pressure made them execute it quicker than it may have otherwise. Even if he’s underplaying the significance of the boycotters’ pressure slightly, it was but one factor among many in deciding the fate of the West Bank plant.
Why does all of this matter? Because when the decision is presented as a simple cause-and-effect response to boycotters, it buoys them beyond all imagination. It gives their cynical movement the recognition and sense of success that it craves — and which it then uses to strengthen itself.
Now, if we can’t rage against the boycott movement for the Palestinian SodaStream workers losing their jobs, can we unleash anger toward the Israeli government? SodaStream certainly has, running a PR campaign to this effect, and Birnbaum has called the failure to renew the permits of Palestinian workers to be “ridiculous” and “immoral.” As regular readers know, I don’t hesitate to criticize Israel’s government, but these claims against it are unwarranted.
I hope for a day when there is a comprehensive peace plan, and there are processes in place for Palestinian workers to have long-term jobs at Israeli companies, but we are a long way off. Israeli companies know that if they are located within the Green Line, there is no guarantee they can rely on Palestinian workers. SodaStream was located in the West Bank and, taking into account all the implications of its decision, decided to move to the other side of the Green Line. It has to embrace all that goes along with that based on the political reality of the day, not the political reality that it may like to see in existence.
As for the company’s suggestion that Jerusalem is wasting a ready-made opportunity for positive PR, that’s not so clear. Yes, having Palestinians in a high-profile company that touts its peace ethos could have promoted a progressive message about Israel. But it could have led to the opposite outcome. The current reality in this part of the world is harsh, and passage from the West Bank to Israel can be far from simple for Palestinians. Certain security situations result in closures. Every time SodaStream employees were subjected to closures or prevented from getting to work, that fact could have generated a news story suggesting that Israel is a thorn in the side of this coexistence company.
Beyond all of this, SodaStream stresses the large number of people supported in extended Palestinian families by the wages it pays. One of the government’s reasons for investing so heavily in bringing business to the Negev is to see it transform reality for local residents. Just as 74 jobs support big Palestinian families, they can support big Bedouin families. The government is entitled to want to see its investment in the Negev region benefit locals, who are its own citizens.
What the current media fest has done is to obscure the expansion of job opportunities in the Negev, including Bedouin tribes, by putting all attention on Palestinian work permits that were never really expected to be renewed. And it has given much more oxygen to the boycott movement, which will help it turn into the monster we think it has already become.
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice a month.---------------------
Music
Nostalgia For A Hipper New York
With a black and Jewish heritage and a classical musical pedigree, cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes it all together.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Of her new record, Marika Hughes says, “I hear the blues, the art rock of the ’90s, the spirit of jazz. Nisha Sondhe
City breezes and nightlights infuse a lot of Marika Hughes’ songs, and so does love and its longings. Born of classical musical royalty, she’s an urban poet who writes music and lyrics, plays the cello, sings and fronts a band. Her latest CD, “New York Nostalgia,” is a love song to this city.
“A lot of the songs are about an ‘almost love,’” she says in an interview near Lincoln Center, close to where she studied at Juilliard and visited her “tantes,” or aunts, on Central Park West. The nostalgia is for an earlier New York City, one that was grittier, friendlier and more racially integrated, when many artists and musicians lived on the Upper West Side. Her New York of the 1970s and ’80s was a city “with everything not so precious, a little dirtier in a beautiful way.” During high school, her string quartet would play at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 73rd Street, but as things shifted in the city, the police would chase them away.
Hughes’ biography is all over her music. She’s the daughter of a German-Jewish mother and an African-American father who ran a jazz club together, and she’s the granddaughter of Emanuel Feuermann, considered one of the great cellists of the 20th century. Born in Poland in 1902 into a musical family, Feuermann was sent to study in Vienna, where he made his debut at age 12 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He then taught in Berlin, but was ousted from his position by the Nazis in 1933. In 1935, he made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic. Returning to Europe and then fleeing persecution, he moved to London, where he married Eva Reifenberg, and then to Zurich. He happened to be in Vienna in 1938 when the Nazis invaded, and a violinist friend helped him and his wife and daughter Monica escape. They moved to the U.S. later that year, and he continued to play and teach. In 1942, he died suddenly after complications from routine surgery. He was close with Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and other internationally celebrated musicians; Arturo Toscanini was a pallbearer at his funeral.
While Hughes was growing up, her late grandfather was a presence. The first records she learned to spin were Feuermann playing Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace.”
The name Marika is a combination of her parents’ names, Marvin and Monica. Her mother was a pianist; her father was not a musician but described himself as a professional listener. Marika began violin lessons at age 3 and was also a regular on “Sesame Street.” She played violin with seriousness until she was 12. In a visit to the music store run by her grandfather’s student Mosa Havivi (where she got all of her instruments for free), she asked to try one of the cellos. After holding it for the first time and playing the C-string, she was hooked. Over the next year, she played both cello and violin, and then chose the cello.
For her, the classical music world was a tough and pressured place. “The generation of musicians from Eastern and Central Europe, who were the first people recording, had these brutal expectations that I would be his granddaughter in a certain way. I was a very good cellist, but I wasn’t him,” she says, and adds, “I always went to the beat of my own drummer; I had different intentions, whether I knew it or not.”
From 1980 to 1987, her parents ran a popular West Side jazz club called Burgundy’s on Amsterdam Avenue between 82nd and 83rd Street. Her mother managed the day-to-day operations of the club, while her father continued his work as a software engineer. Marika loved the place, and would stop by on her way home from school. She would have enjoyed staying there every afternoon and evening, but she had to practice her cello. If someone she loved was playing, she was allowed to return and stay up late.
“I was there a lot,” she recalls. Journalist Ed Bradley and literary agent Marie Brown were regulars. She remembers hearing guitarist Peter Bernstein, jazz pianist Danny Mixon and singer Novella Nelson. “It was a very mixed place. Everyone lived in the neighborhood.” In the early years, the club served food, and she’d go to Zabar’s to pick up bagels for Sunday brunch. Then, Anthony Bourdain used to cook there, before achieving fame as a chef, cookbook author and television personality.
Their home was also an open gathering place for extended family and visiting musicians, including those who knew her grandfather. Her “tantes,” the European aunts on her mother’s side, doted on her, encouraging her musical abilities, teaching her proper elocution and serving as important influences throughout her life. One died at age 99 and another recently at 106.
Hughes attended Manhattan Country Day School and Horace Mann, and then studied political science at Barnard and cello at Juilliard. After a sojourn in northern California — serving coffee, playing in local symphonies, teaching, expanding her classical repertoire, experimenting with other genres, recording commercials and film scores, only slowly letting on to people in the music world that she was Feuermann’s granddaughter — she returned to New York City in 2006.
Since then, she has performed on her own and also as a “side girl,” or freelance cellist, with Whitney Houston, Sean Lennon and others, and has recorded with many artists, including Lou Reed and Ani DiFranco and also with Jewlia Isenberg, on the Tzadik label. Hughes now leads the band Bottom Heavy and has recorded a previous CD with them as well as solo CDs. Her own music has traces of classical, pop, jazz, experimental and soul rhythms. On stage, she’s very natural, with the personal warmth and vibrancy gained from being around club hosts who loved their guests.
About “New York Nostalgia,” she says, “When I listen to the music, I hear the classical in me — it’s very diatonic — I hear the blues, I hear the art rock of the ’90s, I hear the spirit of jazz. It’s hard to define myself. It’s all there, it’s my voice — this vast span of musical styles.”
In writing music and lyrics, she often begins with structure and chord progression. She wrote the song “No Dancing” on the No. 38 bus, when the lines “Put me on your to-do list, baby” came to her. Her voice is rich and her songs are gems, their spirit hopeful.
Now, she lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Her mother passed away, and her father lives in Harlem, always attending her gigs.
“I’m exactly half-Jewish and half-black. Right down the middle, and then completely intertwined,” she says.
“As to the Jewish part of me, I grew up in a house that was very involved in social justice — it was a part of our thinking. I always knew that my grandmother and grandfather had to leave Germany, and I knew why. I always had a lot of Jewish friends and felt a cultural sensibility, nothing to do with religion.” She hasn’t yet been to Israel — she was supposed to go twice — and says she would love to go.
“I have incredible pride in my biracial heritage. I’m very fortunate to be able to roll into different worlds and feel comfortable.”
The only place she says that she felt discrimination and disrespect based on race has been at the international classical music competition held in Berlin every four years, the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann. The organizers, who have the rights to use her grandfather’s name although the family is not involved, have not welcomed the accomplished musician who is Feuermann’s granddaughter.
She has seen her grandfather’s cellos, but has not been able to play them. She says that her grandmother was given terrible advice and sold them, and they are now being sold between banks; his Stradivarius recently sold for $15 million.
Hughes has also done work in South Africa and Haiti as well as New York City, working with teens to write plays, with underlying messages about making wise choices. “I was looking to do something that mattered, not just about improving me, but about improving the world.”
Launching “New York Nostalgia,” Marika Hughes will play on Monday, March 14, 7:30 p.m., at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre (425 Lafayette St.) with her band Bottom Heavy, including Charlie Burnham on violin, Kyle Sanna on guitar, Fred Cash Jr. on bass and Tony Mason on drums.---------------------
New York
Spotlight On Autism At ReelAbilities Fest
George Robinson
Scenes from “Bumblebees,” left, and “Little Hero.” Little Hero” credit: Johnna Taylor
Autism spectrum disorder is a complex group of neurodevelopment disorders characterized by a repetitive and characteristic patterns of behavior, and difficulties with social communication and interaction. The symptoms are present from early childhood and affect daily functioning; within the spectrum, those affected may range from children and adults who are able to perform the functions of daily life to others who are unable to perform even the most basic tasks without substantial assistance.
The eighth edition of the ReelAbilities Film Festival, which opens Thursday, March 10 for a weeklong run at the JCC Manhattan and 40 other venues (reelabilities.org), wisely includes several short films about autism, spanning a range of narrative styles. The result is a glimpse into the array of disorders subsumed under the diagnosis of ASD.
“Short films get overlooked, but sometimes they’re the stars,” said Isaac Zablocki, the festival’s director and co-founder. “Every year we get outstanding animation and live-action shorts, and they give you a nice compilation of everything. You get to see a few different kinds of film styles, learn about different disabilities.”
In recent years autism has moved front and center in terms of public awareness, not just at ReelAbilities but in the larger population as well.
“Autism stands out,” Zablocki says. “It’s about people who express themselves differently. It highlights that in a way that’s very understandable, that people can relate to. It’s a topic that, by its very nature, shows its humanity. And the rising numbers [of diagnoses] make it very close to our hearts.”
Among this year’s films, four shorts about autism are particularly compelling. “Little Hero,” directed by Marcus A. McDougald and Jennifer Medvin, profiles Medvin’s 6-year-old twins Xander who is autistic, and his sister Avery, who is not. The film offers Avery an opportunity to talk about (and for) her brother, which she does with a wisdom far beyond her years. “I think Zander sees the world different from me,” she says, but she could say she same for her mom and McDougald, whose quirky blend of animation and documentary gives the film an appealing flair.
“Bumblebees,” which Zablocki says is one of the pre-festival favorites, is also a family affair, with Jenna Kanell offering a charming portrait of her brother Vance. He is an autistic 19-year-old who was told at age 4 that he would never walk or speak. As the film whimsically demonstrates, he has defied that prediction and is now moving on to a more daunting challenge: dating. With sound advice from his cat Goldie, Vance prepares for his “first first” date.
“Chimes for Tyler,” directed by Stephen Panaggio, profiles Tyler Doi, a Toronto-based 8-year-old with autism, who has become obsessed with wind chimes, particularly the elegant products of Woodstock Chimes. His fascination with the company’s output inspired Garry Kvistad, the Grammy-winning musician who founded the firm, to become involved in fundraising for autism.
The 14-minute “Jesse,” directed by young Canadian filmmaker Adam Goldhammer, features stunning performances by Hannah Anderson as the 22-year-old sister of, and sole caregiver for, the title character, and Jake Epstein, who plays him. Based on Goldhammer’s relationship with his sister, “Jesse” is a tough-minded film that shows the harrowing emotional demands of having a sibling with a disability.
Three of these four films were made by people who have experienced autism directly in their own families, a fact that points to one of the most interesting developments Zablocki and his colleagues are discovering.
“There are a lot of first-person expressions about disability now,” the festival head explains. “There’s been a growth in general in film and video, thanks to the increasing accessibility of digital equipment.
Last year’s festival received 300 submissions, Zablocki notes. This year, the number soared to over 1,000.
“There’s a movement, and it’s starting to grow,” he concludes. “There was a great deal of discussion about diversity and minority access surrounding this year’s Oscars, and justifiably so. But the largest minority in the country, people with disabilities, wasn’t mentioned at all.”----------------------------
Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Check out our website for breaking news any time and for exclusive blogs, Op-eds, advice columns, and more.
--------------------
Major Pew Survey Charts "Two Planes of Existence"
Poll finds American Orthodox increasingly aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues; Israeli society losing its religious middle.
National
Major Pew Survey Charts ‘Two Planes of Existence’
Poll finds American Orthodox increasingly aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues; Israeli society losing its religious middle.
Robert Goldblum
Managing Editor
A showdown in 1997; the divide has only grown worse in the decades since. Menachem Kahana/AFP/Getty
To say that deep fissures cut through Israeli society is a little like saying the San Andreas Fault is a hairline fracture. But the depth of those divisions — over the commitment to democratic principles, the role of religion in society, the meaning of Jewish identity and the prospects for peace and even coexistence with the Palestinians — comes into sharp relief in a major new Pew Research Center survey.
And the divisions the study documents between secular, “traditional,” “religious” and charedi Jews in Israel do not end at Israel’s shoreline.
Deep rifts also exist between Israeli Jews and American Jews — ones that liberal Jewish leaders here have been warning about for years — especially over lightning-rod issues like Jewish settlements in the West Bank. At the same time, the two groups share a strong sense of peoplehood and a common destiny. The study reveals as well that the gulf between Orthodox and liberal branches in America is creating a situation where the former is more in line with Israeli attitudes on a range of issues than with Reform and Conservative Jews in the U.S.
The 237-page report, which was released Tuesday and includes interviews with 5,600 Israelis conducted from October 2014 to May 2015, references some familiar, and well-publicized, issues when it comes to the country’s long-running secular-religious war: fights over public transportation on the Sabbath, gender segregation on buses, Orthodox control of marriage, divorce and conversion, and military service for the ultra-Orthodox.
The findings about the friction between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs also have a familiar ring, given the persistent charge by the country’s largest minority group (19 percent of Israel’s adult population) that its members are second-class citizens.
But the starkness of the divides on those and other issues revealed in the study points to the dizzying complexities of Israeli society and raises questions about whether the chasms can be bridged. And demographic trends are likely to calcify the problems.
The religious middle, so to speak, represented by the “Masorti” cohort — Israelis who hold moderate levels of religious practice — is in clear decline. In 1999, 45 percent of Israelis identified themselves as religiously middle of the road. By 2015, that figure had dropped to 34 percent. At the same time, the charedi population is on the rise, and those who identify as secular (“Hiloni”) Israelis, though their numbers have held steady over the last 10 years, have a higher percentage of those over age 50 (52 percent) than under 30 (44 percent). Secular Israelis make up 40 percent of Israeli Jews, Masorti, 23 percent, “Dati” (religious), 10 percent, and charedi, 8 percent.
The study’s lead researcher, Neha Sahgal, put the religious, political and social differences among segments of Israeli society in stark terms.
“Every society has divisions,” she told The Jewish Week on the eve of the survey’s publication. “But in Israel these divisions aren’t just on political topics. They’re on social topics, too. Israelis live religiously balkanized lives. They have no friends outside their circle. They don’t intermarry and they don’t want their children to intermarry. Secular Israelis find it more problematic for one of their children to marry a charedi Jew than to marry a Christian.”
Sahgal added, “We’re seeing evidence of further polarization in Israeli society across time.”
Israelis aren’t just polarized religiously, of course. On the central question of whether Israel can be both a democratic and Jewish state, there is a broad consensus across Israeli society that yes, in fact, it can. Three out of four Israelis say so.
But on what Sahgal refers to as a “where the rubber meets the road” follow-up question — If there is contradiction between democratic principles and religious law, which should take priority? — there is a gaping difference of opinion: Nearly 9 in 10 charedim and 65 percent of “Dati” (religious) Jews side with religious law, while nearly 9 in 10 secular Jews and 56 percent of Masorti Jews side with the principles of democracy.
“It’s a mirror image,” Sahgal said. “The religious in Israel want public life to be largely governed by religion. Secular Israelis want religion to be separate from the public square.”
When it comes to Israeli Arabs, nearly two-thirds say Israel cannot be both a democracy and a Jewish state at the same time. In another mirror-image finding, 79 percent of Israeli Arabs say there is a lot of discrimination in Israeli society against Muslims, while 3-in-4 Israeli Jews say they don’t see much discrimination against Muslims.
In addition, nearly half of Israeli Jews say Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, a figure that garnered headlines in Israel, though it came under fire; the divide in Israeli society is particularly evident here, with 71 percent of Datim agreeing and 58 percent of secular Israelis disagreeing. Israel Prize-winning sociologist Sammy Smooha, an authority on relations between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, criticized the expulsion/transfer question for its vague wording. Since the question doesn’t specify those who might be expelled, he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “this question can be understood in various ways.” He said he believed that “about a quarter of the Jews oppose coexistence with Arab citizens.”
These societal realities in Israel reach across the Atlantic, too, and affect attitudes among American Jews. (The figures for American Jews in the current survey, “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society,” were culled from Pew’s 2013 study, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.”)
The study reveals a strong bond between Israeli and American Jews — 70 percent of American Jews say they are either very or somewhat attached to Israel, and more than 80 percent say that caring about Israel is either an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. Sixty-nine percent of Israeli Jews say the diaspora is central to Jewish survival.
But when politics enters into the equation, the differences between the two groups — and between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox here — begin to emerge, and in stark ways.
On the contentious issue of Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank, 42 percent of Israeli Jews believe continued construction helps the country’s security. For American Jews, that figure stands at 17 percent, with 44 percent saying the settlements hurt Israel’s security.(Thirty-four percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements help Israel’s security; 15 percent of non-Orthodox Jews say so.)
Autism spectrum disorder is a complex group of neurodevelopment disorders characterized by a repetitive and characteristic patterns of behavior, and difficulties with social communication and interaction. The symptoms are present from early childhood and affect daily functioning; within the spectrum, those affected may range from children and adults who are able to perform the functions of daily life to others who are unable to perform even the most basic tasks without substantial assistance.
The eighth edition of the ReelAbilities Film Festival, which opens Thursday, March 10 for a weeklong run at the JCC Manhattan and 40 other venues (reelabilities.org), wisely includes several short films about autism, spanning a range of narrative styles. The result is a glimpse into the array of disorders subsumed under the diagnosis of ASD.
“Short films get overlooked, but sometimes they’re the stars,” said Isaac Zablocki, the festival’s director and co-founder. “Every year we get outstanding animation and live-action shorts, and they give you a nice compilation of everything. You get to see a few different kinds of film styles, learn about different disabilities.”
In recent years autism has moved front and center in terms of public awareness, not just at ReelAbilities but in the larger population as well.
“Autism stands out,” Zablocki says. “It’s about people who express themselves differently. It highlights that in a way that’s very understandable, that people can relate to. It’s a topic that, by its very nature, shows its humanity. And the rising numbers [of diagnoses] make it very close to our hearts.”
Among this year’s films, four shorts about autism are particularly compelling. “Little Hero,” directed by Marcus A. McDougald and Jennifer Medvin, profiles Medvin’s 6-year-old twins Xander who is autistic, and his sister Avery, who is not. The film offers Avery an opportunity to talk about (and for) her brother, which she does with a wisdom far beyond her years. “I think Zander sees the world different from me,” she says, but she could say she same for her mom and McDougald, whose quirky blend of animation and documentary gives the film an appealing flair.
“Bumblebees,” which Zablocki says is one of the pre-festival favorites, is also a family affair, with Jenna Kanell offering a charming portrait of her brother Vance. He is an autistic 19-year-old who was told at age 4 that he would never walk or speak. As the film whimsically demonstrates, he has defied that prediction and is now moving on to a more daunting challenge: dating. With sound advice from his cat Goldie, Vance prepares for his “first first” date.
“Chimes for Tyler,” directed by Stephen Panaggio, profiles Tyler Doi, a Toronto-based 8-year-old with autism, who has become obsessed with wind chimes, particularly the elegant products of Woodstock Chimes. His fascination with the company’s output inspired Garry Kvistad, the Grammy-winning musician who founded the firm, to become involved in fundraising for autism.
The 14-minute “Jesse,” directed by young Canadian filmmaker Adam Goldhammer, features stunning performances by Hannah Anderson as the 22-year-old sister of, and sole caregiver for, the title character, and Jake Epstein, who plays him. Based on Goldhammer’s relationship with his sister, “Jesse” is a tough-minded film that shows the harrowing emotional demands of having a sibling with a disability.
Three of these four films were made by people who have experienced autism directly in their own families, a fact that points to one of the most interesting developments Zablocki and his colleagues are discovering.
“There are a lot of first-person expressions about disability now,” the festival head explains. “There’s been a growth in general in film and video, thanks to the increasing accessibility of digital equipment.
Last year’s festival received 300 submissions, Zablocki notes. This year, the number soared to over 1,000.
“There’s a movement, and it’s starting to grow,” he concludes. “There was a great deal of discussion about diversity and minority access surrounding this year’s Oscars, and justifiably so. But the largest minority in the country, people with disabilities, wasn’t mentioned at all.”----------------------------
Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Check out our website for breaking news any time and for exclusive blogs, Op-eds, advice columns, and more.
--------------------
Major Pew Survey Charts "Two Planes of Existence"
Poll finds American Orthodox increasingly aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues; Israeli society losing its religious middle.
National
Major Pew Survey Charts ‘Two Planes of Existence’
Poll finds American Orthodox increasingly aligned with Israelis on hot-button issues; Israeli society losing its religious middle.
Robert Goldblum
Managing Editor
A showdown in 1997; the divide has only grown worse in the decades since. Menachem Kahana/AFP/Getty
To say that deep fissures cut through Israeli society is a little like saying the San Andreas Fault is a hairline fracture. But the depth of those divisions — over the commitment to democratic principles, the role of religion in society, the meaning of Jewish identity and the prospects for peace and even coexistence with the Palestinians — comes into sharp relief in a major new Pew Research Center survey.
And the divisions the study documents between secular, “traditional,” “religious” and charedi Jews in Israel do not end at Israel’s shoreline.
Deep rifts also exist between Israeli Jews and American Jews — ones that liberal Jewish leaders here have been warning about for years — especially over lightning-rod issues like Jewish settlements in the West Bank. At the same time, the two groups share a strong sense of peoplehood and a common destiny. The study reveals as well that the gulf between Orthodox and liberal branches in America is creating a situation where the former is more in line with Israeli attitudes on a range of issues than with Reform and Conservative Jews in the U.S.
The 237-page report, which was released Tuesday and includes interviews with 5,600 Israelis conducted from October 2014 to May 2015, references some familiar, and well-publicized, issues when it comes to the country’s long-running secular-religious war: fights over public transportation on the Sabbath, gender segregation on buses, Orthodox control of marriage, divorce and conversion, and military service for the ultra-Orthodox.
The findings about the friction between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs also have a familiar ring, given the persistent charge by the country’s largest minority group (19 percent of Israel’s adult population) that its members are second-class citizens.
But the starkness of the divides on those and other issues revealed in the study points to the dizzying complexities of Israeli society and raises questions about whether the chasms can be bridged. And demographic trends are likely to calcify the problems.
The religious middle, so to speak, represented by the “Masorti” cohort — Israelis who hold moderate levels of religious practice — is in clear decline. In 1999, 45 percent of Israelis identified themselves as religiously middle of the road. By 2015, that figure had dropped to 34 percent. At the same time, the charedi population is on the rise, and those who identify as secular (“Hiloni”) Israelis, though their numbers have held steady over the last 10 years, have a higher percentage of those over age 50 (52 percent) than under 30 (44 percent). Secular Israelis make up 40 percent of Israeli Jews, Masorti, 23 percent, “Dati” (religious), 10 percent, and charedi, 8 percent.
The study’s lead researcher, Neha Sahgal, put the religious, political and social differences among segments of Israeli society in stark terms.
“Every society has divisions,” she told The Jewish Week on the eve of the survey’s publication. “But in Israel these divisions aren’t just on political topics. They’re on social topics, too. Israelis live religiously balkanized lives. They have no friends outside their circle. They don’t intermarry and they don’t want their children to intermarry. Secular Israelis find it more problematic for one of their children to marry a charedi Jew than to marry a Christian.”
Sahgal added, “We’re seeing evidence of further polarization in Israeli society across time.”
Israelis aren’t just polarized religiously, of course. On the central question of whether Israel can be both a democratic and Jewish state, there is a broad consensus across Israeli society that yes, in fact, it can. Three out of four Israelis say so.
But on what Sahgal refers to as a “where the rubber meets the road” follow-up question — If there is contradiction between democratic principles and religious law, which should take priority? — there is a gaping difference of opinion: Nearly 9 in 10 charedim and 65 percent of “Dati” (religious) Jews side with religious law, while nearly 9 in 10 secular Jews and 56 percent of Masorti Jews side with the principles of democracy.
“It’s a mirror image,” Sahgal said. “The religious in Israel want public life to be largely governed by religion. Secular Israelis want religion to be separate from the public square.”When it comes to Israeli Arabs, nearly two-thirds say Israel cannot be both a democracy and a Jewish state at the same time. In another mirror-image finding, 79 percent of Israeli Arabs say there is a lot of discrimination in Israeli society against Muslims, while 3-in-4 Israeli Jews say they don’t see much discrimination against Muslims.
In addition, nearly half of Israeli Jews say Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, a figure that garnered headlines in Israel, though it came under fire; the divide in Israeli society is particularly evident here, with 71 percent of Datim agreeing and 58 percent of secular Israelis disagreeing. Israel Prize-winning sociologist Sammy Smooha, an authority on relations between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, criticized the expulsion/transfer question for its vague wording. Since the question doesn’t specify those who might be expelled, he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “this question can be understood in various ways.” He said he believed that “about a quarter of the Jews oppose coexistence with Arab citizens.”
These societal realities in Israel reach across the Atlantic, too, and affect attitudes among American Jews. (The figures for American Jews in the current survey, “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society,” were culled from Pew’s 2013 study, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.”)
The study reveals a strong bond between Israeli and American Jews — 70 percent of American Jews say they are either very or somewhat attached to Israel, and more than 80 percent say that caring about Israel is either an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. Sixty-nine percent of Israeli Jews say the diaspora is central to Jewish survival.
But when politics enters into the equation, the differences between the two groups — and between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox here — begin to emerge, and in stark ways.
On the contentious issue of Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank, 42 percent of Israeli Jews believe continued construction helps the country’s security. For American Jews, that figure stands at 17 percent, with 44 percent saying the settlements hurt Israel’s security.(Thirty-four percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements help Israel’s security; 15 percent of non-Orthodox Jews say so.)
About whether Israel’s government is making a sincere effort to achieve peace with the Palestinians, the divides are also great. Fifty-six percent of Israeli Jews believe that Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is making a sincere effort, while only 38 percent of American Jews believe so. (Sixty-one percent of Orthodox Jews say the Israeli government is making a sincere effort.) In addition, 61 percent of American Jews think a two-state solution is possible, a view held by only 43 percent of Israeli Jews. (Only 30 percent of Orthodox Jews believe it is possible.)
And when it comes to American support for Jerusalem, there are yet more divisions. More than half of Israeli Jews (52 percent) think Israel should be getting more support from Washington, and 34 percent think the support is about right. For American Jews, those figures are reversed: 54 percent say the support is about right, while 31 percent say U.S. support should be greater. (Fifty-three percent of Orthodox Jews say the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel.)
“What stood out for me in the survey,” said Steven Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s contemporary Jewish life department, “is the convergence of views between Orthodox Jews in America and Israeli society as a whole. American Jews are not convinced that settlements enhance Israel’s security. Yet only 16 percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements are a problem. … We’re talking about two planes of existence, a real divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox.”
Bayme said he was also struck by the fact that only 29 percent of Israeli Jews have college degrees, compared to 58 percent of American Jews. “College tends to be a liberalizing experience,” Bayme said, “and it’s where we learn that the world is very different, and we learn to cope with that. Less than a third of Israeli Jews have that experience, and so perhaps it’s not surprising that they hold attitudes that are contradictory to democratic norms.”
In a “what planet are you on?” result, Israeli Jews identified their country’s most-pressing long-term problems as economic issues (39 percent) and security (38 percent). Nearly two-thirds of American Jews (66 percent), however, cited security — perhaps an indication of the type of coverage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tends to receive in the U.S. media — and a mere 1 percent said economic issues. About 15 percent of Jews in both countries said social, religious or political issues are the biggest problems facing Israel.
On issues of Jewish identity, Israeli Jews and American Jews part ways, too. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. Jews say living an ethical and moral life is key to their Jewish identity; 47 percent of Israeli Jews say so. And 56 percent of American Jews say working for justice and equality is central to their Jewish identity; in Israel 27 percent of the Jewish population thinks so. Nearly half of American Jews say intellectual curiosity is part of what it means to be Jewish, while 16 percent of Israeli Jews think it is. The gulf is even wider on whether having a sense of humor is important to one’s Jewish identity, with 42 percent of American Jews and only 9 percent of Israeli Jews saying it is.
But nearly twice as many Israeli Jews as American Jews see observing Jewish law as essential to being Jewish (35 percent to 19 percent). And 53 percent of Israeli Jews say providing a Jewish education to their children is central to their Jewish identity.
Asked if there was one figure from the poll that surprised her the most, Sahgal, the study’s lead researcher, thought for a moment and said, “We asked Muslims in Israel about the experiences they had facing discrimination because they were Muslim — getting stopped and questioned by security forces, that kind of thing. Seventeen percent said they had.”
Sahgal continued, perhaps finding a data point out of the hundreds in the survey that was a metaphorical bridge across a fault line. “But 26 percent said they had a Jewish person express sympathy for them.”---------------------
Nostalgia For A Hipper New York
With a black and Jewish heritage and a classical musical pedigree, cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes it all together.
Music
Nostalgia For A Hipper New York
With a black and Jewish heritage and a classical musical pedigree, cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes it all together.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Of her new record, Marika Hughes says, “I hear the blues, the art rock of the ’90s, the spirit of jazz. Nisha Sondhe
City breezes and nightlights infuse a lot of Marika Hughes’ songs, and so does love and its longings. Born of classical musical royalty, she’s an urban poet who writes music and lyrics, plays the cello, sings and fronts a band. Her latest CD, “New York Nostalgia,” is a love song to this city.
“A lot of the songs are about an ‘almost love,’” she says in an interview near Lincoln Center, close to where she studied at Juilliard and visited her “tantes,” or aunts, on Central Park West. The nostalgia is for an earlier New York City, one that was grittier, friendlier and more racially integrated, when many artists and musicians lived on the Upper West Side. Her New York of the 1970s and ’80s was a city “with everything not so precious, a little dirtier in a beautiful way.” During high school, her string quartet would play at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 73rd Street, but as things shifted in the city, the police would chase them away.
Hughes’ biography is all over her music. She’s the daughter of a German-Jewish mother and an African-American father who ran a jazz club together, and she’s the granddaughter of Emanuel Feuermann, considered one of the great cellists of the 20th century. Born in Poland in 1902 into a musical family, Feuermann was sent to study in Vienna, where he made his debut at age 12 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He then taught in Berlin, but was ousted from his position by the Nazis in 1933. In 1935, he made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic. Returning to Europe and then fleeing persecution, he moved to London, where he married Eva Reifenberg, and then to Zurich. He happened to be in Vienna in 1938 when the Nazis invaded, and a violinist friend helped him and his wife and daughter Monica escape. They moved to the U.S. later that year, and he continued to play and teach. In 1942, he died suddenly after complications from routine surgery. He was close with Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and other internationally celebrated musicians; Arturo Toscanini was a pallbearer at his funeral.
While Hughes was growing up, her late grandfather was a presence. The first records she learned to spin were Feuermann playing Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace.”
The name Marika is a combination of her parents’ names, Marvin and Monica. Her mother was a pianist; her father was not a musician but described himself as a professional listener. Marika began violin lessons at age 3 and was also a regular on “Sesame Street.” She played violin with seriousness until she was 12. In a visit to the music store run by her grandfather’s student Mosa Havivi (where she got all of her instruments for free), she asked to try one of the cellos. After holding it for the first time and playing the C-string, she was hooked. Over the next year, she played both cello and violin, and then chose the cello.
For her, the classical music world was a tough and pressured place. “The generation of musicians from Eastern and Central Europe, who were the first people recording, had these brutal expectations that I would be his granddaughter in a certain way. I was a very good cellist, but I wasn’t him,” she says, and adds, “I always went to the beat of my own drummer; I had different intentions, whether I knew it or not.”
From 1980 to 1987, her parents ran a popular West Side jazz club called Burgundy’s on Amsterdam Avenue between 82nd and 83rd Street. Her mother managed the day-to-day operations of the club, while her father continued his work as a software engineer. Marika loved the place, and would stop by on her way home from school. She would have enjoyed staying there every afternoon and evening, but she had to practice her cello. If someone she loved was playing, she was allowed to return and stay up late.
“I was there a lot,” she recalls. Journalist Ed Bradley and literary agent Marie Brown were regulars. She remembers hearing guitarist Peter Bernstein, jazz pianist Danny Mixon and singer Novella Nelson. “It was a very mixed place. Everyone lived in the neighborhood.” In the early years, the club served food, and she’d go to Zabar’s to pick up bagels for Sunday brunch. Then, Anthony Bourdain used to cook there, before achieving fame as a chef, cookbook author and television personality.
Their home was also an open gathering place for extended family and visiting musicians, including those who knew her grandfather. Her “tantes,” the European aunts on her mother’s side, doted on her, encouraging her musical abilities, teaching her proper elocution and serving as important influences throughout her life. One died at age 99 and another recently at 106.
Hughes attended Manhattan Country Day School and Horace Mann, and then studied political science at Barnard and cello at Juilliard. After a sojourn in northern California — serving coffee, playing in local symphonies, teaching, expanding her classical repertoire, experimenting with other genres, recording commercials and film scores, only slowly letting on to people in the music world that she was Feuermann’s granddaughter — she returned to New York City in 2006.
Since then, she has performed on her own and also as a “side girl,” or freelance cellist, with Whitney Houston, Sean Lennon and others, and has recorded with many artists, including Lou Reed and Ani DiFranco and also with Jewlia Isenberg, on the Tzadik label. Hughes now leads the band Bottom Heavy and has recorded a previous CD with them as well as solo CDs. Her own music has traces of classical, pop, jazz, experimental and soul rhythms. On stage, she’s very natural, with the personal warmth and vibrancy gained from being around club hosts who loved their guests.
About “New York Nostalgia,” she says, “When I listen to the music, I hear the classical in me — it’s very diatonic — I hear the blues, I hear the art rock of the ’90s, I hear the spirit of jazz. It’s hard to define myself. It’s all there, it’s my voice — this vast span of musical styles.”
In writing music and lyrics, she often begins with structure and chord progression. She wrote the song “No Dancing” on the No. 38 bus, when the lines “Put me on your to-do list, baby” came to her. Her voice is rich and her songs are gems, their spirit hopeful.
Now, she lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Her mother passed away, and her father lives in Harlem, always attending her gigs.
“I’m exactly half-Jewish and half-black. Right down the middle, and then completely intertwined,” she says.
“As to the Jewish part of me, I grew up in a house that was very involved in social justice — it was a part of our thinking. I always knew that my grandmother and grandfather had to leave Germany, and I knew why. I always had a lot of Jewish friends and felt a cultural sensibility, nothing to do with religion.” She hasn’t yet been to Israel — she was supposed to go twice — and says she would love to go.
“I have incredible pride in my biracial heritage. I’m very fortunate to be able to roll into different worlds and feel comfortable.”
The only place she says that she felt discrimination and disrespect based on race has been at the international classical music competition held in Berlin every four years, the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann. The organizers, who have the rights to use her grandfather’s name although the family is not involved, have not welcomed the accomplished musician who is Feuermann’s granddaughter.
She has seen her grandfather’s cellos, but has not been able to play them. She says that her grandmother was given terrible advice and sold them, and they are now being sold between banks; his Stradivarius recently sold for $15 million.
Hughes has also done work in South Africa and Haiti as well as New York City, working with teens to write plays, with underlying messages about making wise choices. “I was looking to do something that mattered, not just about improving me, but about improving the world.”
Launching “New York Nostalgia,” Marika Hughes will play on Monday, March 14, 7:30 p.m., at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre (425 Lafayette St.) with her band Bottom Heavy, including Charlie Burnham on violin, Kyle Sanna on guitar, Fred Cash Jr. on bass and Tony Mason on drums.---------------------
CUNY Response To Alleged Bias 'Inadequate'
ZOA, Council members say pledge to investigate campus actions fails to hold perpetrators accountable.
New York
CUNY Response To Alleged Bias ‘Inadequate’
ZOA, Council members say pledge to investigate campus actions fails to hold perpetrators accountable.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
An SJP “Die-in/Vigil for Ferguson and Gaza” held in John Jay’s atrium, the main common area. Tomer Kornfeld
Two and a half weeks after a group of students chanting slogans including “Zionists off campus” broke up a Brooklyn College faculty council meeting, City University of New York Chancellor James B. Milliken announced the school had hired outside attorneys to investigate complaints that a student group is causing Jews to feel harassed and physically unsafe.
But while some Jewish organizations have praised CUNY for its response, others say it’s not enough and that the student group behind most incidents, Students For Justice In Palestine (SJP), must be shut down.
Milliken’s announcement last week came in response to a 14-page letter from the Zionist Organization of America, detailing numerous complaints the group has received from students at four CUNY campuses: Brooklyn College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Hunter College and the College of Staten Island. The complaints ranged from individual comments (“I don’t hug murderers” was one) to swastikas carved into desks, to students yelling offensive slogans at unrelated rallies, including “We should drag the Zionists down the street!” and “Jews out of CUNY.”
At the College of Staten Island, SJP’s banner depicting the State of Israel covered by a keffiyah hangs in the campus center, the rotunda, despite Jewish students’ complaints. At Brooklyn College, a professor wearing a kipa was called a “Zionist” something — he couldn’t hear the second word though another professor at the scene said it was “pig.”
In addition to the probe, Milliken also announced that he has appointed two separate committees of administrators, faculty, and students to address the situation. One would “define best practices” to foster “a climate of mutual respect and civil discourse” on campus, and the other would make sure the university’s policies protect free speech.
“We’re deeply disappointed with Milliken’s actions,” said ZOA’s national president, Morton Klein. “All Milliken has done is condemn anti-Semitism. We demand that they condemn the student conduct,” and, if merited, revoke the club’s student-group status.
“When these sort of things have happened to other groups at other schools, those student groups have been shut down,” he continued. “No gay, black or Hispanic group would accept the administration saying: ‘We’ll look into it.’”
The ZOA’s letter pointed to several other universities that responded significantly more forcefully to bias incidents, including: University of Oklahoma, where a fraternity was kicked off campus, two members expelled and about 20 more disciplined after a video of the students reciting a racist chant was made public; Yale, where a fraternity was suspended for five years and individual students penalized for chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!”; and at University of California San Diego, where a student was suspended for hanging up a noose in the library.
ZOA attorney Susan Tuchman pointed out that Jewish students are a protected group under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and that, under that act, universities must take prompt and effective steps to address the situation and prevent a hostile atmosphere from reoccurring.
“It’s been done [before] and we’re saying: There’s no reason to treat the concerns of Jewish students less seriously,” she said.
Klein criticized other Jewish organizations for failing to join ZOA in speaking up. “Why isn’t ADL demanding this? Why isn’t AJCommittee? [sic],” he said.
In fact, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement commending CUNY for “taking these allegations seriously.”
“I think CUNY’s steps in doing the probe are the right first steps,” said Evan Bernstein, ADL’s New York regional director. “I think doing things in a smart fashion and not as a [hasty] reaction is a smart approach.”
An AJC spokesman said his organization has a different approach from ZOA and also noted that Milliken traveled with AJC to Israel in 2008.
Jacob Levkowicz, AJC’s assistant director of campus affairs, said in a statement: “Combatting BDS is a top AJC priority, and our 22 regional offices across the country are working closely with like-minded campus-based organizations, reaching out to university leaders to counter SJP and other anti-Israel groups, while also deepening understanding of and support for Israel among students and faculty.”
Members of the City Council Jewish Caucus also released a statement calling the CUNY response inadequate. In a letter to Chancellor Milliken, dated March 1, all 14 members of the group save Stephen Levin said CUNY needs to “develop a comprehensive plan” and “implement system-wide policies to swiftly and openly address anti-Semitic incidents.”
Saying that the “proliferation” of swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti on many campuses indicates “latent hostility,” university officials should be “decrying the creep of hate onto their campuses” and using it as an opportunity to educate students about anti-Semitism and the need for inter-cultural tolerance. Instead, the letter says “administrators at some colleges have remained silent about the graffiti’s anti-Semitic nature, or, worse yet, ignored it entirely.”
“When anti-Semitism rears its ugly head, it must be named and condemned — as must all bigotry,” it continued, noting that at several CUNY schools, “Jewish students have reported feeling that the campus environment was so hostile that they could not wear Stars of David or kipas, openly identifying as Jewish, or espouse pro-Israel beliefs without fearing for their safety.”
Councilmen Mark Levine, David Greenfield, Barry Grodenchik, Rory Lancman and Mark Treyger followed up the letter by using the public comment portion of a meeting of the City Council Committee on Higher Education to demand stronger action.
After listening to CUNY Vice Chancellor Fred Schaffer read a statement condemning “all forms of bigotry and discrimination including anti-Semitism” and laying out plans for the investigation and two committees, David Greenfield called the response unacceptable.
“I have a student who is my constituent who is getting a master’s degree and she tells me that she cannot wear her star of David at Brooklyn College because she feels intimidated and threatened,” he said, “and your response is: ‘Well, we’re not really sure what we’re going to do so we’re going to hire some experts to tell us.’ Come on, that’s just not acceptable.”
Like the ZOA, Greenfield asked that SJP be punished, saying “they’re not engaging in free speech, they’re engaging in hate speech. ... And honestly, if God forbid something happens to these students,” he warned CUNY administrators, “we’re going to hold you guys accountable.
Other councilmen were more measured, saying they weren’t asking for anything to be done to SJP but rather that specific systems needed to be put into place to prevent all forms of bigotry, such as a system-wide protocol requiring that hate-based incidents be reported to the police.
Levine stressed at the hearing the need for training and protocols — especially for professors who encounter bias issues. “Are there no guidelines that stipulate faculty interactions in this cases? Is there no training?” he asked.
SJP chapters from each college as well as the national and regional offices did not immediately respond to request for comment. However, the organization Palestine Legal had issued a response to the ZOA’s letter on their website immediately after it came out.
“The ZOA wants to shut down all speech on Israel/Palestine that doesn’t hew to its narrative that Israel can do no wrong,” Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath said in the statement. “They’ve routinely misstated the law, misstated the facts, or both. And this is why their attempts to punish speech critical of Israel routinely fail.”
Grodenchik took on the issue of censorship at the City Council committee hearing, saying that free speech is fine as long as it doesn’t cross impinge upon the rights of others:
“I’m not asking that anyone’s speech be impinged upon, I believe wholeheartedly in the First Amendment as we all do, but there has got to be a strong policy ... that when people cross the line you have got to be there.”
The administration, he said, has to “understand that the infringement of anybody’s rights, and especially their personal safety, is totally unacceptable.”
--------------------
Jews For Trump, Kind Of, Maybe
From Israel, Josh Mitnick writes that a policy reassessment may be imminent.
National
Jews For Trump, Kind Of, Maybe
David Duke, the Hitler salute: It’s not easy backing The Donald.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Some Orthodox supporters of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump complain that they’re being called racist.Getty Images
In a campaign stained by insults and innuendo, has anyone been more smeared than conservative Republicans supporting Donald Trump?
More than a few Orthodox Zionists among them complained to us that in a dangerous, uncertain world, their fears are dismissed as phobias: xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia; they’re called racist, nativist, fascist. Their candidate, Trump, is routinely compared to “Hitler” by professors, comedians, even Anne Frank’s half-sister, Eva.
(Despite the oft-repeated charges that Trump hates Muslims, a March 1 poll conducted by CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, found that 18 percent of American Muslims are now Republican and Trump is their favored nominee.)
Last week, Trump asked those at a rally to “raise your hand,” like a juror at a swearing-in, in a pledge to vote for Trump in the primary. To the people at the rally, an innocent gesture, surely, but it was “Heil Hitler” in the eyes of Abe Foxman, formerly of the Anti-Defamation League, signaling “obedience to their leader.”
Foxman, for decades, scolded those who made Holocaust comparisons to petty politics. Americans are routinely scolded against comparing the nuclear deal with Iran to the 1938 Hitler appeasement. “We can’t even compare Islamic terrorists to Nazis — or even to Islam,” said one Trump supporter, “and suddenly we’re told that a Trump rally is a Nuremberg rally on the eve of the Holocaust.” Incivility is contagious; Trump’s campaign, drizzled with impolitic insults, is being mirrored on the left by intemperate critiques as incendiary as Trump’s own.
J.J. Gross, a New York writer now living in Jerusalem, e-mailed: “I am not for Trump; I am against Hillary [Clinton] and [Bernie] Sanders. Hence I will vote for Trump, absent any other opponent to those two.”
Gross was one of several who pointed to Sidney Blumenthal as an example why “Hillary can’t be trusted.” Blumenthal’s son, Max, is a fierce critic of Israel; The Nation called “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” by Max Blumenthal, “the ‘I Hate Israel’ handbook.” The elder Blumenthal suggested Clinton read Max’s articles, some of which Clinton distributed to her staff.
Gross continued, “Bernie Sanders’ Jewishness is the most dangerous kind. … My worry with Sanders is not what he would do ‘for’ Israel but what he would do ‘to’ Israel. Yes, Trump is a bombastic, bloviating egomaniac, in the American tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and P.T. Barnum; such ego demands greatness for America, and by extension its allies, of which Israel is certainly one, if not the only one.”
In Brooklyn, one rabbi, familiar with back-room conversations in Borough Park and chasidic Williamsburg, said Trump’s supporters were “not the sophisticated people.” But even unsophisticated people can have good reasons, said the rabbi, who asked not to be named because of his political ties. “There’s great anger at the Democratic Party,” and “here comes a man who speaks his mind, telling everyone off. He’s not really a nice guy. The Yiddish word is prust,” crude, coarse.
Nevertheless, in Florida, Sid Dinerstein, former Palm Beach County Republican chair, said, “The Republican Jews I speak to seem very solid for Trump.”
Larry Spiewak, chairman of the Flatbush Council of Jewish Organizations, was cited last summer in Hamodia and Haaretz as a Trump supporter. (In the American Jewish Committee poll of Jewish attitudes released last fall, Trump polled higher than any other GOP hopeful.) Spiewak told Haaretz that Trump was like Howard Stern. “Only Trump has the guts to say what others are afraid to say out loud. … Is he abrasive sometimes? Yeah, but that’s what people like…”
Six months later, Spiewak is not so sure. He senses that Trump supporters may be less apt to express their support. “Look,” Spiewak told us, “I listen to Howard Stern every morning, but I don’t go around telling everybody. I still agree with what Trump’s saying on the issues, but I’m not agreeing with how it is said — the way he puts people down. He’s losing respect from the community. My respect level is less than it was.
“You know,” said Spiewak, “I always say to my friends, ‘anybody but Hillary.’ But I really don’t know what I’m going to do now. Hey, it’s early. My father used to say, an hour before Shabbos isn’t Shabbos. A lot can happen.”
What about him being neutral on Israel? (Trump has said that in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians he would be “evenhanded,” an honest broker.) “I don’t think he’s neutral on Israel,” said Spiewak.
Dr. Alan Rosenthal, a professor of surgery at New York University, said he had no problem with Trump’s “neutral” comment regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “He is correct in ‘not showing his cards’ at this time. I would not want to play poker with Donald Trump. I don’t think Trump would hesitate to treat Arab leaders as condescendingly as he did Chris Christie.”
Rosenthal continued, “From an Israel/Jewish perspective, a priority to me, I trust Trump to be a very strong, positive candidate. People I know who have had dealings with Trump, both business and personal, never heard him intimate even the most subtle anti-Jewish or anti-Israel comments.” His Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, “all of whom he loves dearly,” are all shomer Shabbat, “making an anti-Israel/Jewish position very unlikely.”
There hasn’t been much polling on the race in Israel, but the Jewish Journal cited an Israeli Democracy Institute monthly Peace Index poll saying that 60 percent of Israelis say that Trump is good for Israel, while 51 percent say the same for Hillary Clinton. Seventeen percent of Israelis say Trump would be bad for Israel; 32 percent say Clinton would be bad for the Jewish state.
Rather than Establishment and anti-Establishment, which is how the Trump phenomenon has been largely framed, Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal, in a column that sets out to explain Trump’s appeal, that this is an election between “the protected and the unpredicted.” The protected are those who are isolated from the roughness of the world, be it the roughness in the Middle East or the results of open borders.
“You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. ... Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration — its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine.” In Germany, on New Year’s Eve, “Packs of men, said to be recent migrants, groped and molested [more than 300] young women. … And it was not the protected who were the victims. … It was middle- and working-class girls, the unprotected, who didn’t even immediately protest,” some fearing they’d be dismissed as Islamophobic. The girls, writes Noonan, “must have understood that in the general scheme of things they’re nobodies.”
As Rosenthal said, “Humans have an innate drive to connect with a protector.”
Trump supporters sense that he’ll protect them — and an Israel increasingly unprotected in Washington and Europe. Lawrence Stern, a Los Angeles attorney and Democrat, told JTA, “I have seen the Democratic Party move away from … its roots and its core foundation to a closer relationship to those who are both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
“This is to me more about who I don’t like than who I like."
Stern said he won’t vote for Clinton because of her support for the Iran nuclear deal, her 1999 embrace of Yasir Arafat’s wife, and the support given to the Clinton Foundation from Arab donors.”
Michael Koplen, an attorney, president of the Washington Online Learning Institute, and a former Republican legislator in the Rockland County legislature, told us that if Trump is the nominee, “I will support him, and hope for the best. The Democratic Party has shifted far to the left, and the left, for its own peculiar reasons, is hostile to Israel,” while expanding government and welfare. “I would never vote for Hillary or Bernie.”---------------------
Latest SodaStream Drama Falling Flat
New YIVO exhibit at Center for Jewish History features records,
photos, posters, and more.
Letter From Israel
Latest SodaStream Drama Falling Flat
BDS, Palestinian workers, and the company’s new Negev plant.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
Palestinian SodaStream employees show identity cards after being laid off from Negev plant as a result of a permit battle. Getty
Can everybody please stop talking nonsense about Sodastream?
The company, which closed down its West Bank plant in October and moved its Middle East production solely inside the Green Line, last week said goodbye to its last Palestinian workers.
When the main plant for its home-carbonation machines was in a settlement, located close to Palestinian areas, it employed hundreds of Palestinians. Now, it’s located in the Negev Desert, and the company is expected to employ Israeli citizens.
SodaStream got a temporary permit for 74 Palestinians to stay with the company for a few months despite its move into Israel’s internationally recognized borders, where the employment of Palestinians is rarer. But last week time ran out, and despite the company’s utter fury, the employees left. They are expected to be replaced by people who live close to the new plant, many of whom are Arabs from Israel’s impoverished Bedouin community.
This is, of course, the same company that was the target of intense protests by the anti-Israel boycott movement BDS, especially around the time of the 2014 Super Bowl when it put out an ad starring Scarlett Johansson. And so, two and two have been added together to make five.
“BDS efforts cost Palestinian workers their SodaStream jobs,” yelled a headline in the right-leaning Israel Hayom newspaper. Despite the divergent politics at the left-wing Haaretz, it drew the same conclusion. “Sodastream’s last Palestinian workers lose jobs after BDS pressure leads company to relocate,” claims its headline.
Commentators have rushed to discuss the development. “Another great victory for BDS,” wrote Sherwin Pomerantz in the Jerusalem Post sarcastically, calling it a “big financial defeat” for the families of the Palestinian workers. Even an anonymous official from the Prime Minister’s Office was quoted saying that “BDS” is behind what has happened.
They say never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and in this case, there’s a bizarre case of media, anti-boycott forces and pro-boycott forces all doing exactly this in (uncoordinated) unison. For media, it’s a good headline. For those who oppose boycotts, this seems to be a way of illustrating its absurdity. And for the boycotters, the kudos from the suggestion that they are responsible for SodaStream’s move outweighs any qualms about the unemployed Palestinians.
But SodaStream didn’t move inside the Green Line as a knee-jerk reaction to the boycott movement. The factory where its operations are now centered was being planned long before the 2014 Super Bowl when the furor about its location reached full throttle.
A grant from the Israeli government toward construction of its new Negev plant had already been approved in April 2012. And it wasn’t hard to work out why the company was attracted to the Negev — there are swaths of empty land and large state incentives to get companies relocating there and employing local Bedouins. In short, the Negev now offers the kind of attractive prospects that Peter Wiseburgh, the British-born Israeli who established SodaStream in the 1990s, saw in the West Bank when he was drawn to a cheap and empty plot there.
The company had, back in 2012, considered the possibility that politics would force it to leave the West Bank, but it wasn’t building for an exit strategy — the company was growing at a dizzying pace and it needed more facilities. The next year, however, the earth shook under SodaStream.
It’s a company that dreamed of rivaling Coke and Pepsi and built its marketing strategy around this desire, but it took its eye off the ball. And when it did, people started spurning sugary fizzy drinks. In short, at some point in late 2013 it was focused on the wrong market, and its sales then stopped rising and dropped significantly. It started the hard work of redesigning products and rebranding itself to focus on fizzy water rather than sugary drinks.
So here’s a company that decided to build an additional plant when it was at an all-time high, and which has since found itself in a very different situation — having had to totally rethink its focus, realize that it’s not the big hitter it thought it was, and cut its costs. It has shuttered a facility in northern Israel and, yes, decided to leave the West Bank instead of keeping the plant there in addition to the new Negev site. Yet all the complexity that surrounded the company’s decision-making is widely ignored as people presume that the boycotters simply cast a spell and it worked.
SodaStream’s CEO, Daniel Birnbaum, has said he didn’t leave the West Bank plant based on boycott pressure, but he did acknowledge that once the decision was made, the pressure made them execute it quicker than it may have otherwise. Even if he’s underplaying the significance of the boycotters’ pressure slightly, it was but one factor among many in deciding the fate of the West Bank plant.
Why does all of this matter? Because when the decision is presented as a simple cause-and-effect response to boycotters, it buoys them beyond all imagination. It gives their cynical movement the recognition and sense of success that it craves — and which it then uses to strengthen itself.
Now, if we can’t rage against the boycott movement for the Palestinian SodaStream workers losing their jobs, can we unleash anger toward the Israeli government? SodaStream certainly has, running a PR campaign to this effect, and Birnbaum has called the failure to renew the permits of Palestinian workers to be “ridiculous” and “immoral.” As regular readers know, I don’t hesitate to criticize Israel’s government, but these claims against it are unwarranted.
I hope for a day when there is a comprehensive peace plan, and there are processes in place for Palestinian workers to have long-term jobs at Israeli companies, but we are a long way off. Israeli companies know that if they are located within the Green Line, there is no guarantee they can rely on Palestinian workers. SodaStream was located in the West Bank and, taking into account all the implications of its decision, decided to move to the other side of the Green Line. It has to embrace all that goes along with that based on the political reality of the day, not the political reality that it may like to see in existence.
As for the company’s suggestion that Jerusalem is wasting a ready-made opportunity for positive PR, that’s not so clear. Yes, having Palestinians in a high-profile company that touts its peace ethos could have promoted a progressive message about Israel. But it could have led to the opposite outcome. The current reality in this part of the world is harsh, and passage from the West Bank to Israel can be far from simple for Palestinians. Certain security situations result in closures. Every time SodaStream employees were subjected to closures or prevented from getting to work, that fact could have generated a news story suggesting that Israel is a thorn in the side of this coexistence company.
Beyond all of this, SodaStream stresses the large number of people supported in extended Palestinian families by the wages it pays. One of the government’s reasons for investing so heavily in bringing business to the Negev is to see it transform reality for local residents. Just as 74 jobs support big Palestinian families, they can support big Bedouin families. The government is entitled to want to see its investment in the Negev region benefit locals, who are its own citizens.
What the current media fest has done is to obscure the expansion of job opportunities in the Negev, including Bedouin tribes, by putting all attention on Palestinian work permits that were never really expected to be renewed. And it has given much more oxygen to the boycott movement, which will help it turn into the monster we think it has already become.
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice a month.
---------------------
Latest Headlines:
Vanderbilt U. Business Student Killed In Mass Stabbing In Tel Aviv
Israel News
Vanderbilt U. Business Student Killed In Mass Stabbing In Tel Aviv
JTA
Taylor Force. JTA
A 29-year-old American business school student was killed in a stabbing attack in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv.
Taylor Force, a student at the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management, was on a school trip to Israel when he was killed Tuesday evening, the university said. As many as 10 people were wounded in the attack at and near the Jaffa Port, Force’s wife seriously, Ynet reported.
Force and other Owen school students had gone to Israel to learn about the high-tech industry there. No one else on the trip was hurt, the university said.
“This horrific act of violence has robbed our Vanderbilt family of a young hopeful life and all of the bright promise that he held for bettering our greater world,” said Vanderbilt Chancellor Nick Zeppos in an email to students, faculty and staff.
The Jaffa attack came less than two hours after terror attacks in Jerusalem and central Israel left a haredi Orthodox man and two Israeli Border Police officers seriously injured.
Four of the injured are reported to be in serious condition and four others in moderate condition, according to Israel’s Channel 2. The attack lasted about 20 minutes in three locations.
Police said the assailant was “neutralized.” He was later identified by the Palestinian Maan news agency and then by police as a 22-year-old man from the Palestinian city of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank. Haaretz named him as Bashar Masalha.
At the time of the attack, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was less than 2 miles away meeting with former Israeli President Shimon Peres at the Peres Center for Peace. He is in Israel on a two-day trip.
At the entrance to the Jaffa port, the assailant stabbed two people before running up the promenade, including to near the Dolphinarium Club, according to reports. The port is a popular seaside shopping and dining center for Israelis and tourists in Jaffa, the predominately Arab area of south Tel Aviv.
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality vowed to step up security in the wake of the attack.
---------------------
In Jerusalem, Biden Criticizes Those Who Fail To Condemn Terror Attacks In Israel
Israel News
In Jerusalem, Biden Criticizes Those Who Fail To Condemn Terror Attacks In Israel
JTA
Vice President Joe Biden, right, walking with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem, Israel, March 9, 2016. JTA
Jerusalem — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Jerusalem appeared to criticize the Palestinian Authority and some in the international community for failing to condemn terror attacks in Israel.
“Let me say in no uncertain terms,” Biden said Wednesday morning after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The U.S. condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn them. This cannot become an accepted modus opperendi.”
He also said: “This cannot be viewed by civilized people as an appropriate way to behave. It is just not tolerable in the 21st century. They’re targeting innocent civilians, mothers, pregnant women, teenagers, grandfathers, American citizens. They can be no justification for this hateful violence and the United States stands firmly behind Israel when it defends itself as we are defending ourselves at this moment as well.”
Biden, who arrived in Israel Tuesday just as a wave of three terror attacks began unfolding in Jerusalem, Petah Tikvah and Jaffa, told reporters during the joint appearance with Netanyahu after the meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office that his wife, Jill, and two of his grandchildren who have joined t hem on the trip, were having dinner on the Tel Aviv beach close to the attacks Tuesday night in Jaffa when they occurred. An American tourist, Vanderbilt graduate student, Taylor Force, 29, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was killed in the attack, which wounded about a dozen others, including Force’s wife.
“It just brings home that it (terror) can happen, it can happen anywhere, at any time,” Biden said.
Biden said that he had wanted to visit the wounded Americans in the wake of the attack, but that it was not possible to arrange.
Netanyahu lamented that Abbas had not condemned the attacks and pointed out that his Fatah party had praised the attacker as a “martyr and a hero.”
“I believe that to fight terror, all civilized societies must stand together. And while Israel has many partners in this decisive battle, we have no better partner than the United States of America. It’s a partnership anchored in common values, confronting common enemies and striving for a more secure, prosperous and peaceful future,” Netanyahu said. He described as a challenge “the persistent incitement in Palestinian society that glorifies murderers of innocent people, and calls for a Palestinian state not to live in peace with Israel, but to replace Israel.”
Biden also addressed the current defense aid negotiations between Israel and Washington, which were to be discussed during his visit, telling reporters that the United States is “committed to making sure that Israel can defend itself against all serious threats, maintain its qualitative edge with a quantity sufficient to maintain that.”
The United States currently provides about $3 billion a year in military grants to Israel. With the current grants expiring in 2018, the U.S. and Israel are working to negotiate a new 10-year deal, known as the Memorandum of Understanding.
---------------------
Bernie Sanders Wins Michigan In An Upset
National
Bernie Sanders Wins Michigan In An Upset
JTA
Bernie Sanders acknowledging his supporters during a campaign event in Miami, Florida, March 8, 2016. JTA
Washington — Bernie Sanders won Michigan’s Democratic primary, an upset that gave new life to his candidacy and edged him closer to being the first Jewish major party nominee.
Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, trailed the Independent senator from Vermont by 2 percentage points in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, 48 percent to his 50 percent, in a race polls had predicted she would win by double digits.
It was Sanders’ first contest in a large state and his first in the Midwest, an area critical to his ambitions of persuading Americans that he is best positioned to redress income inequality. It sets him up to challenge Clinton in neighboring Ohio on March 15, another major state Clinton was until Tuesday expected to handily win.
“The political revolution that we were talking about is strong in every part of the country and frankly we believe that our strongest areas are yet to happen,” Sanders said at a press conference in Florida, another state running a primary on March 15.
Clinton remains the front-runner, leading Sanders in state delegates by more than 200, and with the vast majority of “superdelegates,” or party officials, pledged to her. She trounced Sanders on Tuesday in Mississippi. She also leads in states won, 12 to Sanders’ nine.
But Sanders defied expectations in Michigan, drawing equal with Clinton among younger blacks, according to CNN. Clinton was believed to have a lock on minorities.
Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire who is the Republican front-runner, picked up two more wins on Tuesday, with 48 percent of the vote in Mississippi and 37 percent in Michigan. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, emerging as Trump’s sturdiest rival, came second in both states, with 25 percent in Michigan and 36 percent in Mississippi. Cruz also won Idaho, with 43 percent of the vote, and Trump came in second, with 28 percent..
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who had hoped for a surge in Michigan ahead of the Ohio vote next week, which he must win to stay in the race, came in third in Michigan, but at 24 percent, just a percentage point behind Cruz’s 25 percent.
Kasich got single digits in Mississippi and Idaho, 9 percent and 7 percent respectively.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who is sticking it out at least until next week when his home state, Florida, votes, scored third in Idaho, with 18 percent of the vote, but wallowed in single digits in the other states: 9 percent in Michigan and 5 percent in Mississippi.
Trump has so far won 14 nomination contests, against Cruz’s seven and Rubio’s two. Kasich has not won any yet.
Republicans were also voting in Hawaii on Tuesday
---------------------
Jerusalem Car Ramming-Shooting Attack Injures Palestinian Bystander
Israel News
Jerusalem Car Ramming-Shooting Attack Injures Palestinian Bystander
JTA
Israeli security at scene where a man was seriously injured when a Palestinian attacker drove his vehicle into pedestrians. JTA
Jerusalem — A Palestinian bystander was seriously injured when two Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem allegedly tried to run over and then shoot police officers and civilians at a Jerusalem light rail stop.
The attack took place on Wednesday morning at a train stop near the Damascus Gate outside the Old City of Jerusalem.
The attackers were shot dead in the vehicle during a shoot out with police. They were later identified as Abd al-Malik Abu Kharub, 19, and Muhammad Jamal Al-Kaluti, 21, from from Kafr Aqab in eastern Jerusalem.
They used a sawed-off machine gun to fire on the lightrail stop and then to shoot at the police who pursued them.
The Palestinian victim, about 50, from Beit Hanina in eastern Jerusalem, was caught in the cross-fire between the attackers and police. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus with a gunshot wound to the head.
Prior to the attack, gunmen fired on a crowded public bus in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem. No one was injured in the attack. It is believed to be the same gunmen, since the car they were driving was identified in both attacks.
Also on Wednesday morning, a Palestinian man tried to stab Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint close to the Palestinian village of Salfit near the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. The would-be assailant was shot dead by soldiers during the attempted attack. In addition, a Palestinian woman carrying a knife broke into the Kedumim settlement in the northern West Bank. The would-be assailant brandished the knife while running after a female resident of the settlement. She was subdued by security forces and taken for questioning.
The incidents come a day after three terror attacks in Jerusalem and central Israel that left an American tourist dead and at least 12 others injured.
---------------------
The Jewish Week
And when it comes to American support for Jerusalem, there are yet more divisions. More than half of Israeli Jews (52 percent) think Israel should be getting more support from Washington, and 34 percent think the support is about right. For American Jews, those figures are reversed: 54 percent say the support is about right, while 31 percent say U.S. support should be greater. (Fifty-three percent of Orthodox Jews say the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel.)
“What stood out for me in the survey,” said Steven Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s contemporary Jewish life department, “is the convergence of views between Orthodox Jews in America and Israeli society as a whole. American Jews are not convinced that settlements enhance Israel’s security. Yet only 16 percent of Orthodox Jews say settlements are a problem. … We’re talking about two planes of existence, a real divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox.”
Bayme said he was also struck by the fact that only 29 percent of Israeli Jews have college degrees, compared to 58 percent of American Jews. “College tends to be a liberalizing experience,” Bayme said, “and it’s where we learn that the world is very different, and we learn to cope with that. Less than a third of Israeli Jews have that experience, and so perhaps it’s not surprising that they hold attitudes that are contradictory to democratic norms.”
In a “what planet are you on?” result, Israeli Jews identified their country’s most-pressing long-term problems as economic issues (39 percent) and security (38 percent). Nearly two-thirds of American Jews (66 percent), however, cited security — perhaps an indication of the type of coverage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tends to receive in the U.S. media — and a mere 1 percent said economic issues. About 15 percent of Jews in both countries said social, religious or political issues are the biggest problems facing Israel.
On issues of Jewish identity, Israeli Jews and American Jews part ways, too. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. Jews say living an ethical and moral life is key to their Jewish identity; 47 percent of Israeli Jews say so. And 56 percent of American Jews say working for justice and equality is central to their Jewish identity; in Israel 27 percent of the Jewish population thinks so. Nearly half of American Jews say intellectual curiosity is part of what it means to be Jewish, while 16 percent of Israeli Jews think it is. The gulf is even wider on whether having a sense of humor is important to one’s Jewish identity, with 42 percent of American Jews and only 9 percent of Israeli Jews saying it is.
But nearly twice as many Israeli Jews as American Jews see observing Jewish law as essential to being Jewish (35 percent to 19 percent). And 53 percent of Israeli Jews say providing a Jewish education to their children is central to their Jewish identity.
Asked if there was one figure from the poll that surprised her the most, Sahgal, the study’s lead researcher, thought for a moment and said, “We asked Muslims in Israel about the experiences they had facing discrimination because they were Muslim — getting stopped and questioned by security forces, that kind of thing. Seventeen percent said they had.”
Sahgal continued, perhaps finding a data point out of the hundreds in the survey that was a metaphorical bridge across a fault line. “But 26 percent said they had a Jewish person express sympathy for them.”---------------------
Nostalgia For A Hipper New York
With a black and Jewish heritage and a classical musical pedigree, cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes it all together.
Music
Nostalgia For A Hipper New York
With a black and Jewish heritage and a classical musical pedigree, cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes it all together.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Of her new record, Marika Hughes says, “I hear the blues, the art rock of the ’90s, the spirit of jazz. Nisha Sondhe
City breezes and nightlights infuse a lot of Marika Hughes’ songs, and so does love and its longings. Born of classical musical royalty, she’s an urban poet who writes music and lyrics, plays the cello, sings and fronts a band. Her latest CD, “New York Nostalgia,” is a love song to this city.
“A lot of the songs are about an ‘almost love,’” she says in an interview near Lincoln Center, close to where she studied at Juilliard and visited her “tantes,” or aunts, on Central Park West. The nostalgia is for an earlier New York City, one that was grittier, friendlier and more racially integrated, when many artists and musicians lived on the Upper West Side. Her New York of the 1970s and ’80s was a city “with everything not so precious, a little dirtier in a beautiful way.” During high school, her string quartet would play at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 73rd Street, but as things shifted in the city, the police would chase them away.
Hughes’ biography is all over her music. She’s the daughter of a German-Jewish mother and an African-American father who ran a jazz club together, and she’s the granddaughter of Emanuel Feuermann, considered one of the great cellists of the 20th century. Born in Poland in 1902 into a musical family, Feuermann was sent to study in Vienna, where he made his debut at age 12 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He then taught in Berlin, but was ousted from his position by the Nazis in 1933. In 1935, he made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic. Returning to Europe and then fleeing persecution, he moved to London, where he married Eva Reifenberg, and then to Zurich. He happened to be in Vienna in 1938 when the Nazis invaded, and a violinist friend helped him and his wife and daughter Monica escape. They moved to the U.S. later that year, and he continued to play and teach. In 1942, he died suddenly after complications from routine surgery. He was close with Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and other internationally celebrated musicians; Arturo Toscanini was a pallbearer at his funeral.
While Hughes was growing up, her late grandfather was a presence. The first records she learned to spin were Feuermann playing Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace.”
The name Marika is a combination of her parents’ names, Marvin and Monica. Her mother was a pianist; her father was not a musician but described himself as a professional listener. Marika began violin lessons at age 3 and was also a regular on “Sesame Street.” She played violin with seriousness until she was 12. In a visit to the music store run by her grandfather’s student Mosa Havivi (where she got all of her instruments for free), she asked to try one of the cellos. After holding it for the first time and playing the C-string, she was hooked. Over the next year, she played both cello and violin, and then chose the cello.
For her, the classical music world was a tough and pressured place. “The generation of musicians from Eastern and Central Europe, who were the first people recording, had these brutal expectations that I would be his granddaughter in a certain way. I was a very good cellist, but I wasn’t him,” she says, and adds, “I always went to the beat of my own drummer; I had different intentions, whether I knew it or not.”
From 1980 to 1987, her parents ran a popular West Side jazz club called Burgundy’s on Amsterdam Avenue between 82nd and 83rd Street. Her mother managed the day-to-day operations of the club, while her father continued his work as a software engineer. Marika loved the place, and would stop by on her way home from school. She would have enjoyed staying there every afternoon and evening, but she had to practice her cello. If someone she loved was playing, she was allowed to return and stay up late.
“I was there a lot,” she recalls. Journalist Ed Bradley and literary agent Marie Brown were regulars. She remembers hearing guitarist Peter Bernstein, jazz pianist Danny Mixon and singer Novella Nelson. “It was a very mixed place. Everyone lived in the neighborhood.” In the early years, the club served food, and she’d go to Zabar’s to pick up bagels for Sunday brunch. Then, Anthony Bourdain used to cook there, before achieving fame as a chef, cookbook author and television personality.
Their home was also an open gathering place for extended family and visiting musicians, including those who knew her grandfather. Her “tantes,” the European aunts on her mother’s side, doted on her, encouraging her musical abilities, teaching her proper elocution and serving as important influences throughout her life. One died at age 99 and another recently at 106.
Hughes attended Manhattan Country Day School and Horace Mann, and then studied political science at Barnard and cello at Juilliard. After a sojourn in northern California — serving coffee, playing in local symphonies, teaching, expanding her classical repertoire, experimenting with other genres, recording commercials and film scores, only slowly letting on to people in the music world that she was Feuermann’s granddaughter — she returned to New York City in 2006.
Since then, she has performed on her own and also as a “side girl,” or freelance cellist, with Whitney Houston, Sean Lennon and others, and has recorded with many artists, including Lou Reed and Ani DiFranco and also with Jewlia Isenberg, on the Tzadik label. Hughes now leads the band Bottom Heavy and has recorded a previous CD with them as well as solo CDs. Her own music has traces of classical, pop, jazz, experimental and soul rhythms. On stage, she’s very natural, with the personal warmth and vibrancy gained from being around club hosts who loved their guests.
About “New York Nostalgia,” she says, “When I listen to the music, I hear the classical in me — it’s very diatonic — I hear the blues, I hear the art rock of the ’90s, I hear the spirit of jazz. It’s hard to define myself. It’s all there, it’s my voice — this vast span of musical styles.”
In writing music and lyrics, she often begins with structure and chord progression. She wrote the song “No Dancing” on the No. 38 bus, when the lines “Put me on your to-do list, baby” came to her. Her voice is rich and her songs are gems, their spirit hopeful.
Now, she lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Her mother passed away, and her father lives in Harlem, always attending her gigs.
“I’m exactly half-Jewish and half-black. Right down the middle, and then completely intertwined,” she says.
“As to the Jewish part of me, I grew up in a house that was very involved in social justice — it was a part of our thinking. I always knew that my grandmother and grandfather had to leave Germany, and I knew why. I always had a lot of Jewish friends and felt a cultural sensibility, nothing to do with religion.” She hasn’t yet been to Israel — she was supposed to go twice — and says she would love to go.
“I have incredible pride in my biracial heritage. I’m very fortunate to be able to roll into different worlds and feel comfortable.”
The only place she says that she felt discrimination and disrespect based on race has been at the international classical music competition held in Berlin every four years, the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann. The organizers, who have the rights to use her grandfather’s name although the family is not involved, have not welcomed the accomplished musician who is Feuermann’s granddaughter.
She has seen her grandfather’s cellos, but has not been able to play them. She says that her grandmother was given terrible advice and sold them, and they are now being sold between banks; his Stradivarius recently sold for $15 million.
Hughes has also done work in South Africa and Haiti as well as New York City, working with teens to write plays, with underlying messages about making wise choices. “I was looking to do something that mattered, not just about improving me, but about improving the world.”
Launching “New York Nostalgia,” Marika Hughes will play on Monday, March 14, 7:30 p.m., at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre (425 Lafayette St.) with her band Bottom Heavy, including Charlie Burnham on violin, Kyle Sanna on guitar, Fred Cash Jr. on bass and Tony Mason on drums.---------------------
CUNY Response To Alleged Bias 'Inadequate'
ZOA, Council members say pledge to investigate campus actions fails to hold perpetrators accountable.
New York
CUNY Response To Alleged Bias ‘Inadequate’
ZOA, Council members say pledge to investigate campus actions fails to hold perpetrators accountable.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
An SJP “Die-in/Vigil for Ferguson and Gaza” held in John Jay’s atrium, the main common area. Tomer Kornfeld
Two and a half weeks after a group of students chanting slogans including “Zionists off campus” broke up a Brooklyn College faculty council meeting, City University of New York Chancellor James B. Milliken announced the school had hired outside attorneys to investigate complaints that a student group is causing Jews to feel harassed and physically unsafe.
But while some Jewish organizations have praised CUNY for its response, others say it’s not enough and that the student group behind most incidents, Students For Justice In Palestine (SJP), must be shut down.
Milliken’s announcement last week came in response to a 14-page letter from the Zionist Organization of America, detailing numerous complaints the group has received from students at four CUNY campuses: Brooklyn College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Hunter College and the College of Staten Island. The complaints ranged from individual comments (“I don’t hug murderers” was one) to swastikas carved into desks, to students yelling offensive slogans at unrelated rallies, including “We should drag the Zionists down the street!” and “Jews out of CUNY.”
At the College of Staten Island, SJP’s banner depicting the State of Israel covered by a keffiyah hangs in the campus center, the rotunda, despite Jewish students’ complaints. At Brooklyn College, a professor wearing a kipa was called a “Zionist” something — he couldn’t hear the second word though another professor at the scene said it was “pig.”
In addition to the probe, Milliken also announced that he has appointed two separate committees of administrators, faculty, and students to address the situation. One would “define best practices” to foster “a climate of mutual respect and civil discourse” on campus, and the other would make sure the university’s policies protect free speech.
“We’re deeply disappointed with Milliken’s actions,” said ZOA’s national president, Morton Klein. “All Milliken has done is condemn anti-Semitism. We demand that they condemn the student conduct,” and, if merited, revoke the club’s student-group status.
“When these sort of things have happened to other groups at other schools, those student groups have been shut down,” he continued. “No gay, black or Hispanic group would accept the administration saying: ‘We’ll look into it.’”
The ZOA’s letter pointed to several other universities that responded significantly more forcefully to bias incidents, including: University of Oklahoma, where a fraternity was kicked off campus, two members expelled and about 20 more disciplined after a video of the students reciting a racist chant was made public; Yale, where a fraternity was suspended for five years and individual students penalized for chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!”; and at University of California San Diego, where a student was suspended for hanging up a noose in the library.
ZOA attorney Susan Tuchman pointed out that Jewish students are a protected group under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and that, under that act, universities must take prompt and effective steps to address the situation and prevent a hostile atmosphere from reoccurring.
“It’s been done [before] and we’re saying: There’s no reason to treat the concerns of Jewish students less seriously,” she said.
Klein criticized other Jewish organizations for failing to join ZOA in speaking up. “Why isn’t ADL demanding this? Why isn’t AJCommittee? [sic],” he said.
In fact, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement commending CUNY for “taking these allegations seriously.”
“I think CUNY’s steps in doing the probe are the right first steps,” said Evan Bernstein, ADL’s New York regional director. “I think doing things in a smart fashion and not as a [hasty] reaction is a smart approach.”
An AJC spokesman said his organization has a different approach from ZOA and also noted that Milliken traveled with AJC to Israel in 2008.
Jacob Levkowicz, AJC’s assistant director of campus affairs, said in a statement: “Combatting BDS is a top AJC priority, and our 22 regional offices across the country are working closely with like-minded campus-based organizations, reaching out to university leaders to counter SJP and other anti-Israel groups, while also deepening understanding of and support for Israel among students and faculty.”
Members of the City Council Jewish Caucus also released a statement calling the CUNY response inadequate. In a letter to Chancellor Milliken, dated March 1, all 14 members of the group save Stephen Levin said CUNY needs to “develop a comprehensive plan” and “implement system-wide policies to swiftly and openly address anti-Semitic incidents.”
Saying that the “proliferation” of swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti on many campuses indicates “latent hostility,” university officials should be “decrying the creep of hate onto their campuses” and using it as an opportunity to educate students about anti-Semitism and the need for inter-cultural tolerance. Instead, the letter says “administrators at some colleges have remained silent about the graffiti’s anti-Semitic nature, or, worse yet, ignored it entirely.”
“When anti-Semitism rears its ugly head, it must be named and condemned — as must all bigotry,” it continued, noting that at several CUNY schools, “Jewish students have reported feeling that the campus environment was so hostile that they could not wear Stars of David or kipas, openly identifying as Jewish, or espouse pro-Israel beliefs without fearing for their safety.”
Councilmen Mark Levine, David Greenfield, Barry Grodenchik, Rory Lancman and Mark Treyger followed up the letter by using the public comment portion of a meeting of the City Council Committee on Higher Education to demand stronger action.
After listening to CUNY Vice Chancellor Fred Schaffer read a statement condemning “all forms of bigotry and discrimination including anti-Semitism” and laying out plans for the investigation and two committees, David Greenfield called the response unacceptable.
“I have a student who is my constituent who is getting a master’s degree and she tells me that she cannot wear her star of David at Brooklyn College because she feels intimidated and threatened,” he said, “and your response is: ‘Well, we’re not really sure what we’re going to do so we’re going to hire some experts to tell us.’ Come on, that’s just not acceptable.”
Like the ZOA, Greenfield asked that SJP be punished, saying “they’re not engaging in free speech, they’re engaging in hate speech. ... And honestly, if God forbid something happens to these students,” he warned CUNY administrators, “we’re going to hold you guys accountable.
Other councilmen were more measured, saying they weren’t asking for anything to be done to SJP but rather that specific systems needed to be put into place to prevent all forms of bigotry, such as a system-wide protocol requiring that hate-based incidents be reported to the police.
Levine stressed at the hearing the need for training and protocols — especially for professors who encounter bias issues. “Are there no guidelines that stipulate faculty interactions in this cases? Is there no training?” he asked.
SJP chapters from each college as well as the national and regional offices did not immediately respond to request for comment. However, the organization Palestine Legal had issued a response to the ZOA’s letter on their website immediately after it came out.
“The ZOA wants to shut down all speech on Israel/Palestine that doesn’t hew to its narrative that Israel can do no wrong,” Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath said in the statement. “They’ve routinely misstated the law, misstated the facts, or both. And this is why their attempts to punish speech critical of Israel routinely fail.”
Grodenchik took on the issue of censorship at the City Council committee hearing, saying that free speech is fine as long as it doesn’t cross impinge upon the rights of others:
“I’m not asking that anyone’s speech be impinged upon, I believe wholeheartedly in the First Amendment as we all do, but there has got to be a strong policy ... that when people cross the line you have got to be there.”
The administration, he said, has to “understand that the infringement of anybody’s rights, and especially their personal safety, is totally unacceptable.”
--------------------
Jews For Trump, Kind Of, Maybe
From Israel, Josh Mitnick writes that a policy reassessment may be imminent.
National
Jews For Trump, Kind Of, Maybe
David Duke, the Hitler salute: It’s not easy backing The Donald.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Some Orthodox supporters of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump complain that they’re being called racist.Getty Images
In a campaign stained by insults and innuendo, has anyone been more smeared than conservative Republicans supporting Donald Trump?
More than a few Orthodox Zionists among them complained to us that in a dangerous, uncertain world, their fears are dismissed as phobias: xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia; they’re called racist, nativist, fascist. Their candidate, Trump, is routinely compared to “Hitler” by professors, comedians, even Anne Frank’s half-sister, Eva.
(Despite the oft-repeated charges that Trump hates Muslims, a March 1 poll conducted by CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, found that 18 percent of American Muslims are now Republican and Trump is their favored nominee.)
Last week, Trump asked those at a rally to “raise your hand,” like a juror at a swearing-in, in a pledge to vote for Trump in the primary. To the people at the rally, an innocent gesture, surely, but it was “Heil Hitler” in the eyes of Abe Foxman, formerly of the Anti-Defamation League, signaling “obedience to their leader.”
Foxman, for decades, scolded those who made Holocaust comparisons to petty politics. Americans are routinely scolded against comparing the nuclear deal with Iran to the 1938 Hitler appeasement. “We can’t even compare Islamic terrorists to Nazis — or even to Islam,” said one Trump supporter, “and suddenly we’re told that a Trump rally is a Nuremberg rally on the eve of the Holocaust.” Incivility is contagious; Trump’s campaign, drizzled with impolitic insults, is being mirrored on the left by intemperate critiques as incendiary as Trump’s own.
J.J. Gross, a New York writer now living in Jerusalem, e-mailed: “I am not for Trump; I am against Hillary [Clinton] and [Bernie] Sanders. Hence I will vote for Trump, absent any other opponent to those two.”
Gross was one of several who pointed to Sidney Blumenthal as an example why “Hillary can’t be trusted.” Blumenthal’s son, Max, is a fierce critic of Israel; The Nation called “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” by Max Blumenthal, “the ‘I Hate Israel’ handbook.” The elder Blumenthal suggested Clinton read Max’s articles, some of which Clinton distributed to her staff.
Gross continued, “Bernie Sanders’ Jewishness is the most dangerous kind. … My worry with Sanders is not what he would do ‘for’ Israel but what he would do ‘to’ Israel. Yes, Trump is a bombastic, bloviating egomaniac, in the American tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and P.T. Barnum; such ego demands greatness for America, and by extension its allies, of which Israel is certainly one, if not the only one.”
In Brooklyn, one rabbi, familiar with back-room conversations in Borough Park and chasidic Williamsburg, said Trump’s supporters were “not the sophisticated people.” But even unsophisticated people can have good reasons, said the rabbi, who asked not to be named because of his political ties. “There’s great anger at the Democratic Party,” and “here comes a man who speaks his mind, telling everyone off. He’s not really a nice guy. The Yiddish word is prust,” crude, coarse.
Nevertheless, in Florida, Sid Dinerstein, former Palm Beach County Republican chair, said, “The Republican Jews I speak to seem very solid for Trump.”
Larry Spiewak, chairman of the Flatbush Council of Jewish Organizations, was cited last summer in Hamodia and Haaretz as a Trump supporter. (In the American Jewish Committee poll of Jewish attitudes released last fall, Trump polled higher than any other GOP hopeful.) Spiewak told Haaretz that Trump was like Howard Stern. “Only Trump has the guts to say what others are afraid to say out loud. … Is he abrasive sometimes? Yeah, but that’s what people like…”
Six months later, Spiewak is not so sure. He senses that Trump supporters may be less apt to express their support. “Look,” Spiewak told us, “I listen to Howard Stern every morning, but I don’t go around telling everybody. I still agree with what Trump’s saying on the issues, but I’m not agreeing with how it is said — the way he puts people down. He’s losing respect from the community. My respect level is less than it was.
“You know,” said Spiewak, “I always say to my friends, ‘anybody but Hillary.’ But I really don’t know what I’m going to do now. Hey, it’s early. My father used to say, an hour before Shabbos isn’t Shabbos. A lot can happen.”
What about him being neutral on Israel? (Trump has said that in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians he would be “evenhanded,” an honest broker.) “I don’t think he’s neutral on Israel,” said Spiewak.
Dr. Alan Rosenthal, a professor of surgery at New York University, said he had no problem with Trump’s “neutral” comment regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “He is correct in ‘not showing his cards’ at this time. I would not want to play poker with Donald Trump. I don’t think Trump would hesitate to treat Arab leaders as condescendingly as he did Chris Christie.”
Rosenthal continued, “From an Israel/Jewish perspective, a priority to me, I trust Trump to be a very strong, positive candidate. People I know who have had dealings with Trump, both business and personal, never heard him intimate even the most subtle anti-Jewish or anti-Israel comments.” His Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, “all of whom he loves dearly,” are all shomer Shabbat, “making an anti-Israel/Jewish position very unlikely.”
There hasn’t been much polling on the race in Israel, but the Jewish Journal cited an Israeli Democracy Institute monthly Peace Index poll saying that 60 percent of Israelis say that Trump is good for Israel, while 51 percent say the same for Hillary Clinton. Seventeen percent of Israelis say Trump would be bad for Israel; 32 percent say Clinton would be bad for the Jewish state.
Rather than Establishment and anti-Establishment, which is how the Trump phenomenon has been largely framed, Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal, in a column that sets out to explain Trump’s appeal, that this is an election between “the protected and the unpredicted.” The protected are those who are isolated from the roughness of the world, be it the roughness in the Middle East or the results of open borders.
“You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. ... Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration — its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine.” In Germany, on New Year’s Eve, “Packs of men, said to be recent migrants, groped and molested [more than 300] young women. … And it was not the protected who were the victims. … It was middle- and working-class girls, the unprotected, who didn’t even immediately protest,” some fearing they’d be dismissed as Islamophobic. The girls, writes Noonan, “must have understood that in the general scheme of things they’re nobodies.”
As Rosenthal said, “Humans have an innate drive to connect with a protector.”
Trump supporters sense that he’ll protect them — and an Israel increasingly unprotected in Washington and Europe. Lawrence Stern, a Los Angeles attorney and Democrat, told JTA, “I have seen the Democratic Party move away from … its roots and its core foundation to a closer relationship to those who are both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
“This is to me more about who I don’t like than who I like."
Stern said he won’t vote for Clinton because of her support for the Iran nuclear deal, her 1999 embrace of Yasir Arafat’s wife, and the support given to the Clinton Foundation from Arab donors.”
Michael Koplen, an attorney, president of the Washington Online Learning Institute, and a former Republican legislator in the Rockland County legislature, told us that if Trump is the nominee, “I will support him, and hope for the best. The Democratic Party has shifted far to the left, and the left, for its own peculiar reasons, is hostile to Israel,” while expanding government and welfare. “I would never vote for Hillary or Bernie.”---------------------
Latest SodaStream Drama Falling Flat
New YIVO exhibit at Center for Jewish History features records,
photos, posters, and more.
Letter From Israel
Latest SodaStream Drama Falling Flat
BDS, Palestinian workers, and the company’s new Negev plant.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
Palestinian SodaStream employees show identity cards after being laid off from Negev plant as a result of a permit battle. Getty
Can everybody please stop talking nonsense about Sodastream?
The company, which closed down its West Bank plant in October and moved its Middle East production solely inside the Green Line, last week said goodbye to its last Palestinian workers.
When the main plant for its home-carbonation machines was in a settlement, located close to Palestinian areas, it employed hundreds of Palestinians. Now, it’s located in the Negev Desert, and the company is expected to employ Israeli citizens.
SodaStream got a temporary permit for 74 Palestinians to stay with the company for a few months despite its move into Israel’s internationally recognized borders, where the employment of Palestinians is rarer. But last week time ran out, and despite the company’s utter fury, the employees left. They are expected to be replaced by people who live close to the new plant, many of whom are Arabs from Israel’s impoverished Bedouin community.
This is, of course, the same company that was the target of intense protests by the anti-Israel boycott movement BDS, especially around the time of the 2014 Super Bowl when it put out an ad starring Scarlett Johansson. And so, two and two have been added together to make five.
“BDS efforts cost Palestinian workers their SodaStream jobs,” yelled a headline in the right-leaning Israel Hayom newspaper. Despite the divergent politics at the left-wing Haaretz, it drew the same conclusion. “Sodastream’s last Palestinian workers lose jobs after BDS pressure leads company to relocate,” claims its headline.
Commentators have rushed to discuss the development. “Another great victory for BDS,” wrote Sherwin Pomerantz in the Jerusalem Post sarcastically, calling it a “big financial defeat” for the families of the Palestinian workers. Even an anonymous official from the Prime Minister’s Office was quoted saying that “BDS” is behind what has happened.
They say never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and in this case, there’s a bizarre case of media, anti-boycott forces and pro-boycott forces all doing exactly this in (uncoordinated) unison. For media, it’s a good headline. For those who oppose boycotts, this seems to be a way of illustrating its absurdity. And for the boycotters, the kudos from the suggestion that they are responsible for SodaStream’s move outweighs any qualms about the unemployed Palestinians.
But SodaStream didn’t move inside the Green Line as a knee-jerk reaction to the boycott movement. The factory where its operations are now centered was being planned long before the 2014 Super Bowl when the furor about its location reached full throttle.
A grant from the Israeli government toward construction of its new Negev plant had already been approved in April 2012. And it wasn’t hard to work out why the company was attracted to the Negev — there are swaths of empty land and large state incentives to get companies relocating there and employing local Bedouins. In short, the Negev now offers the kind of attractive prospects that Peter Wiseburgh, the British-born Israeli who established SodaStream in the 1990s, saw in the West Bank when he was drawn to a cheap and empty plot there.
The company had, back in 2012, considered the possibility that politics would force it to leave the West Bank, but it wasn’t building for an exit strategy — the company was growing at a dizzying pace and it needed more facilities. The next year, however, the earth shook under SodaStream.
It’s a company that dreamed of rivaling Coke and Pepsi and built its marketing strategy around this desire, but it took its eye off the ball. And when it did, people started spurning sugary fizzy drinks. In short, at some point in late 2013 it was focused on the wrong market, and its sales then stopped rising and dropped significantly. It started the hard work of redesigning products and rebranding itself to focus on fizzy water rather than sugary drinks.
So here’s a company that decided to build an additional plant when it was at an all-time high, and which has since found itself in a very different situation — having had to totally rethink its focus, realize that it’s not the big hitter it thought it was, and cut its costs. It has shuttered a facility in northern Israel and, yes, decided to leave the West Bank instead of keeping the plant there in addition to the new Negev site. Yet all the complexity that surrounded the company’s decision-making is widely ignored as people presume that the boycotters simply cast a spell and it worked.
SodaStream’s CEO, Daniel Birnbaum, has said he didn’t leave the West Bank plant based on boycott pressure, but he did acknowledge that once the decision was made, the pressure made them execute it quicker than it may have otherwise. Even if he’s underplaying the significance of the boycotters’ pressure slightly, it was but one factor among many in deciding the fate of the West Bank plant.
Why does all of this matter? Because when the decision is presented as a simple cause-and-effect response to boycotters, it buoys them beyond all imagination. It gives their cynical movement the recognition and sense of success that it craves — and which it then uses to strengthen itself.
Now, if we can’t rage against the boycott movement for the Palestinian SodaStream workers losing their jobs, can we unleash anger toward the Israeli government? SodaStream certainly has, running a PR campaign to this effect, and Birnbaum has called the failure to renew the permits of Palestinian workers to be “ridiculous” and “immoral.” As regular readers know, I don’t hesitate to criticize Israel’s government, but these claims against it are unwarranted.
I hope for a day when there is a comprehensive peace plan, and there are processes in place for Palestinian workers to have long-term jobs at Israeli companies, but we are a long way off. Israeli companies know that if they are located within the Green Line, there is no guarantee they can rely on Palestinian workers. SodaStream was located in the West Bank and, taking into account all the implications of its decision, decided to move to the other side of the Green Line. It has to embrace all that goes along with that based on the political reality of the day, not the political reality that it may like to see in existence.
As for the company’s suggestion that Jerusalem is wasting a ready-made opportunity for positive PR, that’s not so clear. Yes, having Palestinians in a high-profile company that touts its peace ethos could have promoted a progressive message about Israel. But it could have led to the opposite outcome. The current reality in this part of the world is harsh, and passage from the West Bank to Israel can be far from simple for Palestinians. Certain security situations result in closures. Every time SodaStream employees were subjected to closures or prevented from getting to work, that fact could have generated a news story suggesting that Israel is a thorn in the side of this coexistence company.
Beyond all of this, SodaStream stresses the large number of people supported in extended Palestinian families by the wages it pays. One of the government’s reasons for investing so heavily in bringing business to the Negev is to see it transform reality for local residents. Just as 74 jobs support big Palestinian families, they can support big Bedouin families. The government is entitled to want to see its investment in the Negev region benefit locals, who are its own citizens.
What the current media fest has done is to obscure the expansion of job opportunities in the Negev, including Bedouin tribes, by putting all attention on Palestinian work permits that were never really expected to be renewed. And it has given much more oxygen to the boycott movement, which will help it turn into the monster we think it has already become.
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice a month.
---------------------
Latest Headlines:
Vanderbilt U. Business Student Killed In Mass Stabbing In Tel Aviv
Israel News
Vanderbilt U. Business Student Killed In Mass Stabbing In Tel Aviv
JTA
Taylor Force. JTA
A 29-year-old American business school student was killed in a stabbing attack in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv.
Taylor Force, a student at the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management, was on a school trip to Israel when he was killed Tuesday evening, the university said. As many as 10 people were wounded in the attack at and near the Jaffa Port, Force’s wife seriously, Ynet reported.
Force and other Owen school students had gone to Israel to learn about the high-tech industry there. No one else on the trip was hurt, the university said.
“This horrific act of violence has robbed our Vanderbilt family of a young hopeful life and all of the bright promise that he held for bettering our greater world,” said Vanderbilt Chancellor Nick Zeppos in an email to students, faculty and staff.
The Jaffa attack came less than two hours after terror attacks in Jerusalem and central Israel left a haredi Orthodox man and two Israeli Border Police officers seriously injured.
Four of the injured are reported to be in serious condition and four others in moderate condition, according to Israel’s Channel 2. The attack lasted about 20 minutes in three locations.
Police said the assailant was “neutralized.” He was later identified by the Palestinian Maan news agency and then by police as a 22-year-old man from the Palestinian city of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank. Haaretz named him as Bashar Masalha.
At the time of the attack, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was less than 2 miles away meeting with former Israeli President Shimon Peres at the Peres Center for Peace. He is in Israel on a two-day trip.
At the entrance to the Jaffa port, the assailant stabbed two people before running up the promenade, including to near the Dolphinarium Club, according to reports. The port is a popular seaside shopping and dining center for Israelis and tourists in Jaffa, the predominately Arab area of south Tel Aviv.
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality vowed to step up security in the wake of the attack.
---------------------
In Jerusalem, Biden Criticizes Those Who Fail To Condemn Terror Attacks In Israel
Israel News
In Jerusalem, Biden Criticizes Those Who Fail To Condemn Terror Attacks In Israel
JTA
Vice President Joe Biden, right, walking with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem, Israel, March 9, 2016. JTA
Jerusalem — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Jerusalem appeared to criticize the Palestinian Authority and some in the international community for failing to condemn terror attacks in Israel.
“Let me say in no uncertain terms,” Biden said Wednesday morning after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The U.S. condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn them. This cannot become an accepted modus opperendi.”
He also said: “This cannot be viewed by civilized people as an appropriate way to behave. It is just not tolerable in the 21st century. They’re targeting innocent civilians, mothers, pregnant women, teenagers, grandfathers, American citizens. They can be no justification for this hateful violence and the United States stands firmly behind Israel when it defends itself as we are defending ourselves at this moment as well.”
Biden, who arrived in Israel Tuesday just as a wave of three terror attacks began unfolding in Jerusalem, Petah Tikvah and Jaffa, told reporters during the joint appearance with Netanyahu after the meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office that his wife, Jill, and two of his grandchildren who have joined t hem on the trip, were having dinner on the Tel Aviv beach close to the attacks Tuesday night in Jaffa when they occurred. An American tourist, Vanderbilt graduate student, Taylor Force, 29, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was killed in the attack, which wounded about a dozen others, including Force’s wife.
“It just brings home that it (terror) can happen, it can happen anywhere, at any time,” Biden said.
Biden said that he had wanted to visit the wounded Americans in the wake of the attack, but that it was not possible to arrange.
Netanyahu lamented that Abbas had not condemned the attacks and pointed out that his Fatah party had praised the attacker as a “martyr and a hero.”
“I believe that to fight terror, all civilized societies must stand together. And while Israel has many partners in this decisive battle, we have no better partner than the United States of America. It’s a partnership anchored in common values, confronting common enemies and striving for a more secure, prosperous and peaceful future,” Netanyahu said. He described as a challenge “the persistent incitement in Palestinian society that glorifies murderers of innocent people, and calls for a Palestinian state not to live in peace with Israel, but to replace Israel.”
Biden also addressed the current defense aid negotiations between Israel and Washington, which were to be discussed during his visit, telling reporters that the United States is “committed to making sure that Israel can defend itself against all serious threats, maintain its qualitative edge with a quantity sufficient to maintain that.”
The United States currently provides about $3 billion a year in military grants to Israel. With the current grants expiring in 2018, the U.S. and Israel are working to negotiate a new 10-year deal, known as the Memorandum of Understanding.
---------------------
Bernie Sanders Wins Michigan In An Upset
National
Bernie Sanders Wins Michigan In An Upset
JTA
Bernie Sanders acknowledging his supporters during a campaign event in Miami, Florida, March 8, 2016. JTA
Washington — Bernie Sanders won Michigan’s Democratic primary, an upset that gave new life to his candidacy and edged him closer to being the first Jewish major party nominee.
Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, trailed the Independent senator from Vermont by 2 percentage points in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, 48 percent to his 50 percent, in a race polls had predicted she would win by double digits.
It was Sanders’ first contest in a large state and his first in the Midwest, an area critical to his ambitions of persuading Americans that he is best positioned to redress income inequality. It sets him up to challenge Clinton in neighboring Ohio on March 15, another major state Clinton was until Tuesday expected to handily win.
“The political revolution that we were talking about is strong in every part of the country and frankly we believe that our strongest areas are yet to happen,” Sanders said at a press conference in Florida, another state running a primary on March 15.
Clinton remains the front-runner, leading Sanders in state delegates by more than 200, and with the vast majority of “superdelegates,” or party officials, pledged to her. She trounced Sanders on Tuesday in Mississippi. She also leads in states won, 12 to Sanders’ nine.
But Sanders defied expectations in Michigan, drawing equal with Clinton among younger blacks, according to CNN. Clinton was believed to have a lock on minorities.
Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire who is the Republican front-runner, picked up two more wins on Tuesday, with 48 percent of the vote in Mississippi and 37 percent in Michigan. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, emerging as Trump’s sturdiest rival, came second in both states, with 25 percent in Michigan and 36 percent in Mississippi. Cruz also won Idaho, with 43 percent of the vote, and Trump came in second, with 28 percent..
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who had hoped for a surge in Michigan ahead of the Ohio vote next week, which he must win to stay in the race, came in third in Michigan, but at 24 percent, just a percentage point behind Cruz’s 25 percent.
Kasich got single digits in Mississippi and Idaho, 9 percent and 7 percent respectively.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who is sticking it out at least until next week when his home state, Florida, votes, scored third in Idaho, with 18 percent of the vote, but wallowed in single digits in the other states: 9 percent in Michigan and 5 percent in Mississippi.
Trump has so far won 14 nomination contests, against Cruz’s seven and Rubio’s two. Kasich has not won any yet.
Republicans were also voting in Hawaii on Tuesday
---------------------
Jerusalem Car Ramming-Shooting Attack Injures Palestinian Bystander
Israel News
Jerusalem Car Ramming-Shooting Attack Injures Palestinian Bystander
JTA
Israeli security at scene where a man was seriously injured when a Palestinian attacker drove his vehicle into pedestrians. JTA
Jerusalem — A Palestinian bystander was seriously injured when two Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem allegedly tried to run over and then shoot police officers and civilians at a Jerusalem light rail stop.
The attack took place on Wednesday morning at a train stop near the Damascus Gate outside the Old City of Jerusalem.
The attackers were shot dead in the vehicle during a shoot out with police. They were later identified as Abd al-Malik Abu Kharub, 19, and Muhammad Jamal Al-Kaluti, 21, from from Kafr Aqab in eastern Jerusalem.
They used a sawed-off machine gun to fire on the lightrail stop and then to shoot at the police who pursued them.
The Palestinian victim, about 50, from Beit Hanina in eastern Jerusalem, was caught in the cross-fire between the attackers and police. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus with a gunshot wound to the head.
Prior to the attack, gunmen fired on a crowded public bus in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem. No one was injured in the attack. It is believed to be the same gunmen, since the car they were driving was identified in both attacks.
Also on Wednesday morning, a Palestinian man tried to stab Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint close to the Palestinian village of Salfit near the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. The would-be assailant was shot dead by soldiers during the attempted attack. In addition, a Palestinian woman carrying a knife broke into the Kedumim settlement in the northern West Bank. The would-be assailant brandished the knife while running after a female resident of the settlement. She was subdued by security forces and taken for questioning.
The incidents come a day after three terror attacks in Jerusalem and central Israel that left an American tourist dead and at least 12 others injured.
---------------------
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, New York 10036, United States
---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Parshah Mnemonics: Pekudei: Decoding the Hidden Messages - Aaron L. Raskin" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 9 March 2016
Parshah Mnemonics: Pekudei
Decoding the hidden messages
Aaron L. Raskin
Watch Now
About this webcast:
The parshah of Pekudei contains 92 verses and there seems to be no mnemonic for it. Explore the coded message in the unknown Masoretic note and its connection to the general themes of the Parshah.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Talmud Gitin 89 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Birchas Asher Yatzar Velokai Neshamah 6:6
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 5
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
What Impact the Zodiac Can Have On You
By Shifra Sharfstein
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 11am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Megillah Preambles: Lions, Bears, and Paupers: The Talmud on the Megillah, Lesson 4 - Mendel Kaplan" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 9 March 2016
Megillah Preambles: Lions, Bears, and Paupers
The Talmud on the Megillah, Lesson 4
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch Now
About this webcast:
This Talmud class on the Megillah expounds upon ancient Scriptural prophecies that allude to the Purim miracle centuries later. The Talmud continues to recount the thought-provoking preambles of the Sages that decode the hidden messages encrypted in the verses.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Dreams in the Jewish Tradition
Phenomenal perspectives on the meaning of dreams
By Pinchas Taylor
Airs Tuesday, March 8 at 7pm ET
Talmud Gitin 88 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Wednesday, March 9 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Birchas Asher Yatzar Velokai Neshamah 6:5
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 4
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Wednesday, March 9 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Dreams in the Jewish Tradition: Phenomenal Perspectives on the Meaning of Dreams - Pinchas Taylor" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Tuesday, 8 March 2016
Dreams in the Jewish Tradition
Phenomenal perspectives on the meaning of dreams
By Pinchas Taylor
Watch
This webcast begins:
Tuesday, March 08, 2016 at 7pm ET
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Plot and Conspiracy
The Book of Nechemiah, Part 6
By Mendel Dubov
Airs Monday, March 7 at 7pm ET
Shulchan Aruch, Birchas Asher Yatzar Velokai Neshamah 6:4
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 3
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Tuesday, March 8 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Parshah Mnemonics: Pekudei: Decoding the Hidden Messages - Aaron L. Raskin" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 9 March 2016
Parshah Mnemonics: Pekudei
Decoding the hidden messages
Aaron L. Raskin
Watch Now
About this webcast:
The parshah of Pekudei contains 92 verses and there seems to be no mnemonic for it. Explore the coded message in the unknown Masoretic note and its connection to the general themes of the Parshah.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Talmud Gitin 89 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Birchas Asher Yatzar Velokai Neshamah 6:6
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 5
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 6am ET
What Impact the Zodiac Can Have On You
By Shifra Sharfstein
Airs Thursday, March 10 at 11am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Megillah Preambles: Lions, Bears, and Paupers: The Talmud on the Megillah, Lesson 4 - Mendel Kaplan" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 9 March 2016Megillah Preambles: Lions, Bears, and Paupers
The Talmud on the Megillah, Lesson 4
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch Now
About this webcast:
This Talmud class on the Megillah expounds upon ancient Scriptural prophecies that allude to the Purim miracle centuries later. The Talmud continues to recount the thought-provoking preambles of the Sages that decode the hidden messages encrypted in the verses.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Dreams in the Jewish Tradition
Phenomenal perspectives on the meaning of dreams
By Pinchas Taylor
Airs Tuesday, March 8 at 7pm ET
Talmud Gitin 88 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Wednesday, March 9 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Birchas Asher Yatzar Velokai Neshamah 6:5
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 4
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Wednesday, March 9 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Dreams in the Jewish Tradition: Phenomenal Perspectives on the Meaning of Dreams - Pinchas Taylor" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Tuesday, 8 March 2016
Dreams in the Jewish Tradition
Phenomenal perspectives on the meaning of dreams
By Pinchas Taylor
Watch
This webcast begins:
Tuesday, March 08, 2016 at 7pm ET
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Plot and Conspiracy
The Book of Nechemiah, Part 6
By Mendel Dubov
Airs Monday, March 7 at 7pm ET
Shulchan Aruch, Birchas Asher Yatzar Velokai Neshamah 6:4
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 3
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Tuesday, March 8 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment