"Now on Jewish.TV: Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 9 - Yaakov Brawer" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Sunday, 6 March 2016
Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 9
Ratzon compels the limbs, yet it’s not affected by the limbs
By Yaakov Brawer
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Whereas the powers of the Nefesh that animate a limb are also affected by the limb, Ratzon is not influenced by the activity or status of the limb that it drives.
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"Trump's stand on the Jews & Israel; 5 Israeli companies driving disability tech; Colbert belts out Fiddler On The Roof song; more on The Jewish Week" The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 4 March 2016 JWMG Friday Newsletter
Friday, March 4, 2016
New Dawn For An Old Jewish Center
Visiting Wrocław, a European Capital of Culture for 2016
Hilary Danailova
Laws Relating to the Blessings Asher Yatzar and Elokai Neshamah, Part 1
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, March 6 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
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"Trump's stand on the Jews & Israel; 5 Israeli companies driving disability tech; Colbert belts out Fiddler On The Roof song; more on The Jewish Week" The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 4 March 2016 JWMG Friday Newsletter
Friday, March 4, 2016
New Dawn For An Old Jewish Center
Visiting Wrocław, a European Capital of Culture for 2016
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
Travel
New Dawn For An Old Jewish Center
Visiting Wrocław, a European Capital of Culture for 2016
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
Wroclaw’s old city, a jumble of cheery Baroque facades in pink, pistachio and daffodil yellow. Wikimedia Commons
One of the proudest buildings in Wrocław, a European Capital of Culture for 2016, is the White Stork Synagogue. Its white-brick neoclassical façade fairly shimmers since a restoration was completed in 2010, the bittersweet revival of a structure that outlived most of the community it today represents.
Here, in what was once a major center of Jewish life, the White Stork Synagogue was the only temple to survive the Holocaust. Like so many survivors, it endured by being in the right place at what was definitely the wrong time — tucked into a neighborhood with so many neighboring non-Jewish businesses that the Nazis felt it too risky to light afire on Kristallnacht, instead ransacking its interior while other temples burned.
The circa-1829 synagogue, first built in the Prussian Kingdom of 1829 by a renowned theater designer, is now the headquarters of Wrocław’s modern Jewish community — and one of the Jewish highlights in a city with a turbulent past. Wrocław, pronounced vrot-swahf (really), has been part of Poland since World War II; before the war it was the German city of Breslau, and before that it passed variously through Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian hands as a strategic outpost of empire.
The imprint of this polyglot stew is evident in Wrocław’s colorful appearance, a jumble of cheery Baroque façades in pink, pistachio and daffodil-yellow; ornate Gothic spires; sunny plazas; and peaked tomato-red roofs over well-preserved cobblestone streets (much of Wrocław’s historic core survived the war, though Socialist-era blight was arguably as destructive from an aesthetic point of view). The River Oder cuts through the city, defining island neighborhoods with a series of footbridges. Aesthetically, Wrocław is like Bergen (Norway) meeting Bologna — a magnificent metropolis that is finally getting its well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
What does this mean for tourists? Most of the yearlong European Capital of Culture program will take place during the warmer months, so the schedule of events has not yet been finalized.
But in addition to a lineup of theater, art exhibitions and concerts both indoors and out, Wrocław promises “unconventional” artistic events and concerts throughout the year in “forgotten” spaces like stairwells, historic courtyards and underpasses — the better to reveal a city that itself has been largely overlooked. The largest city in Western Poland and the fourth largest nationally, Wroclaw is also the hub of a vast historical region known as Silesia, and a number of this year’s events showcase Silesian painting, folklore, music and traditional dance.
Few Americans have heard of Silesia, but Wrocław is surprisingly easy to access. LOT, the national carrier, operates a half-dozen daily flights from Warsaw; Lufthansa has international connections to the city’s Nicholas Copernicus Airport, and discount European airlines such as Ryanair and Wizzair connect from London and Paris.
Jewish visitors can make a beeline for the stylish CIZ Café — the Jewish Information Centre, a welcoming spot that serves kosher pastry and artisan-roasted coffee along with itineraries and English-language walking tours. It’s a modern introduction to a community that dates to the 12th century and was renowned for its tradition of scholarship — including the first modern rabbinical seminary in Central Europe, the Jewish Theological Seminary, which opened in 1854 and produced generations of renowned Breslau rabbis.
On the same street where Breslau’s JTS was once located (now Włodkowica Street), that tradition of intellectual ferment has been revived in the form of Chidusz (Hebrew for “innovation”), a monthly magazine published for Wrocław’s roughly 1,000 Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. In its own words — from a just-released English edition — Chidusz aims to be “a Jewish answer to the challenges of today’s world, to co-create a modern Jewish identity in Europe.”
A previous Jewish identity is evident in Wrocław’s two Jewish cemeteries. The so-called “Old Jewish Cemetery,” located in the southeast and established in the 1850s, is a portrait of Jewish Breslau during the German reign. More than 1,200 tombstones are monuments not only to accomplished Jewish scholars, bankers, scientists and other residents, but also to architectural styles ranging from Gothic to Neoclassical to Baroque.
Badly damaged during the war and neglected afterward, the stately burial ground has been restored as a museum of cemetery art. Across town, the New Jewish Cemetery is a vast, jungly green space that’s nearly as intriguing from an architectural point of view, but has a long way to go toward restoration.
Wrocław is a sprawling city, but visitors will spend most of their time prowling the atmospheric streets of the Old Town. Start in the huge central square, explore the Teutonic-style Town Hall, ogle the impressive churches and stroll through open markets filled with fresh flowers and used books. Enlivened by a population of university students, Wrocław is both more beautiful and more diverse than you might expect — and between its revived Jewish heritage and a Continental spotlight, it’s newly worth a look.
Inset Images: Wikimedia Commons
Meet 5 Israeli Companies
Driving Disability Tech
JTA
The New Normal
Meet 5 Israeli Companies Driving Disability Tech
JTA
Paratek makes wheelchair hiking possible. Courtesy of JTA
TEL AVIV (JTA) — After a missile strike during the 1973 Yom Kippur War left Omer Zur’s father paralyzed from the chest down, his dad vowed to continue life as normal. But there was one Israeli pastime he couldn’t enjoy: hiking.
“He’d say, ‘I’ll go in the car and meet you on the other side,’” said Zur, a certified Israeli tour guide. “I said, ‘Why can’t he do this with us?’”
In 2008, Zur decided that he and his wheelchair-user father would complete a 300-mile trek in southern Turkey. With the help of dozens of friends who joined them on segments of the hike, Zur and his father were able to complete the trail, sleep in tents and cook meals over an open fire.
The hike sparked Paratrek, a startup Zur founded in 2014 that aims to make hiking accessible to people with paraplegia by outfitting wheelchairs with accessories that enable them to travel over rough terrain.
The company is one of several startups focused on improving the lives of the nearly 1 million Israelis with disabilities.
A3I — a startup accelerator run by PresenTense, which fosters social entrepreneurship; housed at Beit Issie Shapiro, an Israeli advocacy organization for people with disabilities; and backed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles — has helped launch 22 disability projects in the past two years. Tikkun Olam Makers, a three-day competition where tech entrepreneurs design projects for people with disabilities, had three events in Israel in 2014 and 2015.
“We very much think one of the missing approaches in the world of disability is the entrepreneurial approach,” said Shira Ruderman, director of the Ruderman Family Foundation, which supports A3I. “We wanted to work with organizations that are not disability oriented.”
Here are five Israeli companies helped by A3I that are making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.
Paratrek
Zur and his co-founder, Ziv Demeter, saw no reason why people in wheelchairs should not enjoy a hike. So they outfitted a chair with oversize wheels, mountain bike-style tires and a wide rod in back for easier pushing. A U-shaped harness attached to the front allows it to be pulled like a rickshaw.
Zur and Demeter also act as hiking consultants for would-be hikers. Understanding their clients’ physical limits and where they want to hike, the company can set up a trek and even join in to make sure all goes smoothly.
The pair have set up hikes across Israel, as well as in France and, later this year, in Switzerland. They’re also looking into using rescue equipment to help people with disabilities climb mountainsides.
IC Touch
A pair of glasses normally would be useless to a blind person. But Zeev Zalevsky’s glasses don’t help you see what’s in front of you — they help you feel it.
Zalevsky’s startup, IC Touch, makes glasses that take and process a picture before sending a signal to a set of tiny mirrors that are millimeters from the wearer’s eyes. The mirrors then send a set of vibrations to the cornea that make the cornea “feel” objects in the space around it.
Instead of guiding themselves with a stick or a dog, Zalevsky says, blind people can feel their surroundings with the glasses, even identifying objects up to a half-mile away.
“It’s like if you close your eyes and feel your surroundings with your fingertips, you can imagine what’s in front of you,” said Zalevsky, an engineering professor at Bar-Ilan University. “Instead of reaching out in front of you, the picture comes to your head.”
Gemon
The screen looks a little like the classic 1980s arcade game Frogger, in which an amphibian tries to cross a busy street. In this version, a red car has to maneuver through blue cars to reach an open lane — but instead of using buttons and a joystick, players move the car by raising a pole from one notch to the next. Sensors in each notch capture the motion and project the car’s progress on an iPad.
The game, the initial offering from the startup Gemon, helps strengthen the upper back of people with disabilities or those recovering from an injury. The company aims to “game-ify” rehabilitation to relieve the tedium of staring at an exercise machine all day. Co-founders Tomer Yannay and Ohad Doron are also creating a sensor that can be attached to any workout machine to transform the exercise into a game. Eventually, Yannay says, the games could even appear in health clubs.
Easy Stroll
Adira was eight months pregnant and about to become a single mother, but she had a problem: She couldn’t take her baby for a walk.
Adira is in a wheelchair and can’t push a stroller. So she contacted Dana Yichye-Shwachman, a designer with Jonathan Bar-Or Industrial Design. Yichye-Shwachman responded with Easy Stroll, an aluminum attachment to the wheelchair’s footboard that latches on to a stroller.
Yichye-Shwachman posted a video of the product online and received 30 emails for new orders. She is now creating a prototype that will fit a variety of wheelchairs and strollers.
Siman Shenagish
Few children have to accompany their parents to the bank and explain to them that their account is in overdraft. But for Tal Bousidan, days like that were routine.
Bousidan was born to two deaf parents. With sign-language interpreters in short supply in Israel, he would fill the role for his parents, explaining to them what bank tellers and shop clerks were unable to communicate on their own.
Now a professional sign-language interpreter, Bousidan has created a startup that provides instantaneous Hebrew sign-language translation via tablet computers.
The startup, Siman Shenagish — Hebrew for “accessible sign” — has a pilot running at a health clinic in the southern city of Ashkelon. Deaf patients tap on the iPad, and a full-time translator appears on the screen ready to translate for the doctor. The startup has plans to expand to Tel Aviv, and Bousidan hopes to provide translation in other languages in the future.
This article was part of a series tied to Jewish Disability & Inclusion Awareness Month that is part of our partnership with the Ruderman Family Foundation. Guided by Jewish values, the foundation advocates for and advances the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout the Jewish community. To learn more, visit the foundation’s website.
Last Chance For Closure
Director Atom Egoyan on his new film 'Remember' - a take on memory and revenge, and a very different kind of road movie.
Freema Gottlieb
Special To The Jewish Week
Film
Last Chance For Closure
Director Atom Egoyan on his new film ‘Remember’ — a take on memory and revenge, and a very different kind of road movie.
Freema Gottlieb
Special To The Jewish Week
Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau in a scene from “Remember.” Photos by Sophie Giraud
The phone line between Toronto and New York seemed to crackle with impassioned urgency as the film director Atom Egoyan spoke of his compelling new movie, “Remember,” due to open here next week at the Angelika Film Center.
“Now is the last chance for people who have experienced the Holocaust at first hand to receive some kind of resolution,” he said. For him, this has special relevance, since the past year marked the centenary of the genocide of his own people, the Armenians, for whom direct closure is no longer possible.
In the movie, which begins and ends in a Jewish nursing home in New York, two aging residents bond through the old school tie of their previous incarceration at Auschwitz. On the last night of sitting shiva for his wife of 50 years, Zev, played by Christopher Plummer (“Girl with a Dragon Tattoo,” “The Sound of Music”), is reminded by his former fellow inmate Max, played by Martin Landau, of the pledge he had made to his dying wife: exact retribution from the Nazi commandant responsible for killing their families. Max, having spent his life researching Nazi war criminals with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, knows that the man has entered either the United States or Canada illegally under the assumed name of Rudy Kurlander. As many as four Germans have used that name to get into the country.
While Max, confined to a wheelchair, masterminds the action, it is up to the more able-bodied Zev to track them down and identify the guilty party. Besides Max, Zev is the only living survivor who can remember what the commandant looked like. However, Zev is suffering from increasing memory loss. So Max must write down a list of instructions for him in the form of a letter. Zev must flee the nursing home, travel to a gun shop, and purchase a weapon for the job. His choice is a Glock — from Austria.
Questioned about the morality of his protagonist’s taking justice into his own hands, Egoyan spoke unequivocally about the rightness of the act. “Is there the remotest possibility that their target would ever come within reach of a court of law? Factors of age and physical and mental deterioration, besides the political backtracking above all, would grant him immunity.” The perpetrators and survivors may die at any moment. Closure is of the essence. There is room for compassion, but not here.
Egoyan considers Landau’s portrayal of Max the movie’s tour de force. “All the time he is burning with rage,” he said. “The assumption is that it is directed at his family’s killer, and of course it is, but what really gets him is not so much memory of the mass murder but its contemporary equivalent, Holocaust denial, in which civilized countries participate and which threatens to expunge the victims’ last trace.”
According to a rabbinical saying, angels guide us on the path where we are resolved to go. Egoyan said, “If it is Max’s rage that fuels Zev’s progress, even he could not have dreamed that Zev, who cannot remember the basic facts of everyday existence, such as — poignantly — that his wife of 50 years has died, never mind Max’s complicated instructions, would ever be able to romp back and forth across continents and accomplish the goal for which he has been set up.” Improbably, everyone Zev meets in his travels — hotel receptionists, gun shop owners, border inspectors, security guards — springs to his aid. His sweet ineptitude brings out the best in others, yet the road on which he has set out is engulfed in darkness. “This single character [Zev] is freighted with so much history,” the director mused, confessing that for him the Holocaust had become an obsession.
The only experience Egoyan has personally had of genocide is of its denial.
Born in Cairo in 1960, Egoyan was a toddler when he and his family immigrated to Canada, at a time when Armenian businesses were threatened with nationalization by Egyptian President Nasser’s pan-Arabist movement.
From a very early age he had felt an outsider. “I spent my childhood in Victoria, British Columbia. At the time Victoria was very Anglo and nobody knew what an Armenian was. They thought I was Jewish, Italian, Greek. My goal, like most young people growing up, was to fit in as much as possible.”
Only while attending university in Toronto did he find a viable Armenian community. There he became increasingly involved in issues around the Armenian genocide, which fueled his own sense of identity.
“Only then could I look at the fact that my father’s parents were survivors of that genocide,” he said. At this point our conversation was interrupted when Egoyan’s father phoned in to talk. Respectfully, Atom told him they could speak in another half hour and sent him his love.
“While ‘Ararat,’ the story in part of my own third-generation experience of the Armenian genocide, was concerned with the transmission of trauma over several generations,” he said, “in ‘Remember,’ what was most fascinating is that the trauma was explored by the last living survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. The trauma is direct and still very present in these characters’ lives.”
Unlike the Oscar-winning “Son of Saul,” “Remember” is a suspenseful thriller with a straight timeline, driving toward its climax without any flashbacks on the actual Holocaust and it does not rely on sensational effects. It is a deceptively simple action-packed road movie, completely accessible to the widest possible audience. Despite the seemingly comical premise of having a forgetful 90-year-old as its central protagonist, the director maintains that at its core it is “deeply serious.”
Did the director consider memory loss an adequate metaphor for Holocaust denial? Does the protagonist ultimately act in full knowledge of what he is doing?
“In fact, memory loss due to aging works in reverse to the mechanism of Holocaust denial. “The details of short-term memory — the pathos of Zev’s calling out the name of his wife, “Ruth, Ruth,” in his most unself-conscious and vulnerable moments — are the first to go. “But long-term memory, what is true about the self. … Memory of one’s past does not disappear so fast. He is far from being there. But I am not prepared to say. So much is a matter of interpretation.”
Was there an element of free will, even redemption, in the final double act, not just another “submission to orders?”
“Yes, certainly he did not act simply as a robot in the end, but out of conviction. I think the movie ends as it does because he sees no way of knitting together the person he was with who he had become. But there are countless interpretations. No, I can’t say.”
Does the soul, or the person, have a single identity or are some people so changed by new circumstances as to become totally different human beings?
“Ah, that is the core question of the film, the one the film never articulates, but every viewer is faced with,” he said.
“Remember” opens March 11 at the Angelika Film Center, 18 W. Houston St., (212) 995-2570, angelikafilmcenter.com.
Freema Gottlieb is the author of “The Lamp of God: A Jewish Book of Light and Jewish Folk Art.” She has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement and the Jewish Quarterly, and is a frequent contributor to The Jewish Week’s column Sabbath Week.
Where Donald Trump Stands On Israel And The Jews
Ben Harris| JTA
National
Where Donald Trump Stands On Israel And The Jews
Ben Harris
JTA
Donald Trump speaking to supporters in Louisville, Kentucky, March 1, 2016. JTA
With Donald Trump sweeping to a resounding victory in seven Super Tuesday states Tuesday night, Republicans awoke this morning to the reality that the New York real estate magnate had solidified his status as the front-runner for the party nomination.
And while his candidacy has deeply unsettled many in the GOP establishment, not to mention its influential Jewish donor base, Trump has arguably the closest ties to the American Jewish community of any candidate, from his Jewish daughter and grandchildren to his deep ties to the New York business community.
Here’s a rundown of Trump’s major pronouncements on Jewish issues so far in the 2016 race.
Trump would remain “neutral” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Even more disconcerting to Jewish Republicans than his on-again, off-again, then on-again renunciation of support from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is Trump’s declaration that he would not choose sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Let me sort of be a neutral guy,” Trump said in February. Unwavering support for Israel is a critical Republican talking point in the party’s perpetual (and still largely unsuccessful) efforts to sway a majority of Jewish voters from their longtime dedication to the Democrats. Trump’s comments will likely make that effort more difficult for the Republicans in November.
“Do they both want to make peace?”
In December, Trump expounded on the Middle East conflict in an interview with the AP. Trump said he was interested in making a “lasting peace,” and that required the commitment of both sides, something he wasn’t sure existed, adding: “I have a real question as to one side in particular.” He declined to specify which side that was, but some understood Trump to be questioning Israel’s commitment more than the Palestinians.
Trump would not commit to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
At a Republican Jewish Coalition candidate’s forum in December, Trump demurred when asked if he would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In January, he appeared to shift gears when he promised to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “We are for that 100 percent,” Trump said.
Trump likes Israel’s West Bank security barrier
Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern border and get Mexico to pay for it is a set piece of his campaign stump speech. More than once, Trump has referenced Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank as proof of the wall’s efficacy and the hypocrisy of his opponents in criticizing it. “If you think walls don’t work, all you have to do is ask Israel,” Trump said at a debate in November. In January he tweeted: “Hillary Clinton said that it is O.K. to ban Muslims from Israel by building a WALL, but not O.K. to do so in the U.S. We must be vigilant!”
Trump doesn’t want money from Republican Jewish bigwigs
At the RJC forum, Trump was candid that he did not want or expect support from Republican Jewish donors, but he made the point in a way that seemed to some to traffic in anti-Semitic stereotypes about shadowy Jewish control of political leaders. “You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money,” Trump said. “You want to control your politicians, that’s fine.” Making matters worse, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan later saluted Trump for disavowing Jewish money.
Trump thinks the Iran deal is lousy, but won’t rip it up
The deal-maker extraordinaire has not minced words when it comes to President Obama’s handling of the Iran nuclear negotiations, saying, “Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran and I mean never.” Among his quibbles: Iran got too much money and made no commitment to release American prisoners, and inspections are insufficiently intrusive. But unlike his fellow Republicans, Trump says he would not disavow the deal on Day 1, but would be “so tough” in enforcing it.---------------------
'Sauna' Rabbi Stepping Down; Or Is He? >
Gary Rosenblatt
‘Sauna’ Rabbi Stepping Down; Or Is He?
Riverdale leader’s surprise statement unclear about intentions and timing.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Rabbi Rosenblatt. Via Youtube.com
A brief statement last Wednesday evening from the leadership of the Riverdale Jewish Center, informing members that their embattled rabbi, Jonathan Rosenblatt, “intends to step aside from the senior rabbinate” of the Modern Orthodox congregation, is being scrutinized and parsed in the community this week like a passage from the Talmud.
Raising more questions than answers, the two-sentence message seems to indicate that nine months after published reports described the rabbi’s longtime practice of showering and chatting in the sauna with boys and young men, and six months after he overcame efforts to have him removed from his pulpit, the prominent religious leader will be leaving his post soon in an effort to unify the community. Or will he?
Meyer Koplow, an attorney representing Rabbi Rosenblatt in this issue, told The Jewish Week that the rabbi, eager to leave a positive legacy for his years of service to RJC, initiated this step to help the synagogue community “heal and grow.” Koplow, who offered his services pro bono and is negotiating between the rabbi and the lay leadership, said he expected the issues to be resolved in the next week and then voted on by the congregation.
RJC’s president, Samson Fine, referred a request for comment to the brief statement that was issued.
The controversy, which began over the rabbi’s unusual behavior and later morphed into how the RJC lay leadership has handled the situation, now finds members of the community wondering if Rabbi Rosenblatt, who has led the congregation for more than three decades, is stepping down or just “aside” — and whether he is leaving his pulpit altogether or just “the senior rabbinate,” possibly staying on as rabbi emeritus or scholar-in-residence. And it is unclear when this would take place. Some believe a change in the rabbi’s status is imminent while others point out that his contract extends through July 2018. The statement, which appeared to be purposefully vague, did not indicate timing.
Another key question is whether the estimated 20 percent of the RJC membership that left the congregation last summer and created a breakaway Shabbat prayer group now known as The Riverdale Minyan will consider coming back to RJC — and if so, under what circumstances. The group is leasing space from the nearby Riverdale Temple (Reform) and appears to have coalesced into a thriving, active band of worshippers of all ages, with the younger set heading up a number of active committees, including weeknight lectures for adults and a variety of programs for children. More than 100 families are paying members of the Minyan, which often attracts in excess of 200 people on Shabbat. (It does not hold regular services during the week.)
Several participants noted that while the Minyan may have come together initially out of a shared sense of dissatisfaction with the lay and rabbinic leadership of RJC, it has become an increasingly tight-knit group. Steven Bayme, who resigned from RJC after the rabbi’s sauna activities were first published in The New York Times last May, said the Minyan has become “a real community of people who care about each other.” In particular, he noted that after his son was killed in a car accident last summer, the group became an ongoing “source of enormous support” for him and his family.
Bayme and other attendees interviewed said they left RJC out of a sense of disappointment both with the rabbi’s behavior, described as, at best, inappropriate — especially for a spiritual leader — and frustration with the alleged lack of accountability and transparency by the board leadership, which by all counts has made blunders along the way. The Minyan attendees say they are happy where they are and will be following closely the resolution of the rabbi’s status at RJC, reluctant to come back unless the rabbi leaves, with some calling for the synagogue board to resign as well.
But defenders of the rabbi maintain that the issue has always been “more about power than the shvitz,” as one longtime RJC member put it. The source, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicacy of the situation, asserted that some of those who left had been major funders of the congregation who were unhappy with its direction and chose to leave for a variety of reasons. Supporters of the rabbi also charge those who left were “hypocrites,” noting that the great majority of the congregation knew of the rabbi’s behavior with young men for years and didn’t seem to express outrage until the news became public. Key critics counter that they actively tried to buy out the rabbi’s contract for years but were stymied by concern about legal action since no direct allegations of illegal behavior emerged. Nor have they to this day.
And so it goes.
In interviews with The Jewish Week in recent days, a number of defenders and critics, all of whom asked for anonymity, characterized the situation as very sad, given the deep rift that has resulted in the community. But conflicting narratives have emerged to explain the rabbi’s recent announcement.
One has the rabbi initiating this “step aside” move for the good of the congregation and the community. Another has him heading off a board effort to ensure that he not seek a contract renewal beyond 2018. Still another sees the rabbi as gradually worn down by the loss of key congregants, including several former RJC presidents and major donors, and hoping to negotiate his financial package before Fine, the current president, perceived as sympathetic to the rabbi, completes his term this spring.
All sides see a key issue being who will be in control of the RJC, including its lay and rabbinic leadership, going forward.
Defenders are clearly the majority of the synagogue now, which is believed to have between 500 and 550 member families. The rabbi’s supporters want to assure a dignified conclusion to his tenure. Within a day of Rabbi Rosenblatt’s brief statement, a petition began circulating among congregants, urging that he “continue to have a connection to the RJC… whether he is called the RabbiEmeritus or something else is not important. What is important is his continued presence.”
That’s precisely what a number of worshippers at the Minyan oppose. They want to see the rabbi make a clean break with the congregation so that the rift they believe he caused can begin to heal.
Whether or not those discontented former congregants will ever return to RJC is one of the many questions that may be answered down the road. But for now the focus is on what “stepping aside” means, and when.
Gary Rosenblatt, Editor & Publisher, The Jewish Week---------------------
Stephen Colbert Sings With 'Fiddler On The Roof' Broadway Cast >
National
Stephen Colbert Sings With ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ Broadway Cast
JTA
Screenshot. Via youtube.com
Stephen Colbert sang songs from “Fiddler on the Roof” with members of the cast of the recent Broadway revival.
The “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” host sang “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” and “Tradition” in an opening segment of Tuesday night’s show.
Before the singing, Colbert explained in a comic aside that “Fiddler” is being shown at the Broadway Theater across from CBS’ Ed Sullivan Theater where the “Late Show” is filmed.
“People line up for both of our shows at the same time on 53rd Street,” he said. “Sometimes people get mixed up and they get in the wrong line.”
Colbert sang “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” with a few cast members. That was followed by Danny Burstein, who is starring as Tevye, and other cast members coming on stage for a performance of “Tradition.” Burstein even handed Colbert a fake beard and black hat to wear.
Colbert ended the segment by yelling “L’chaim!”
Featured Video
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/01zWy-oGAMc?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>---------------------
Travel
New Dawn For An Old Jewish Center
Visiting Wrocław, a European Capital of Culture for 2016
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
Wroclaw’s old city, a jumble of cheery Baroque facades in pink, pistachio and daffodil yellow. Wikimedia Commons
One of the proudest buildings in Wrocław, a European Capital of Culture for 2016, is the White Stork Synagogue. Its white-brick neoclassical façade fairly shimmers since a restoration was completed in 2010, the bittersweet revival of a structure that outlived most of the community it today represents.
Here, in what was once a major center of Jewish life, the White Stork Synagogue was the only temple to survive the Holocaust. Like so many survivors, it endured by being in the right place at what was definitely the wrong time — tucked into a neighborhood with so many neighboring non-Jewish businesses that the Nazis felt it too risky to light afire on Kristallnacht, instead ransacking its interior while other temples burned.
The circa-1829 synagogue, first built in the Prussian Kingdom of 1829 by a renowned theater designer, is now the headquarters of Wrocław’s modern Jewish community — and one of the Jewish highlights in a city with a turbulent past. Wrocław, pronounced vrot-swahf (really), has been part of Poland since World War II; before the war it was the German city of Breslau, and before that it passed variously through Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian hands as a strategic outpost of empire.
The imprint of this polyglot stew is evident in Wrocław’s colorful appearance, a jumble of cheery Baroque façades in pink, pistachio and daffodil-yellow; ornate Gothic spires; sunny plazas; and peaked tomato-red roofs over well-preserved cobblestone streets (much of Wrocław’s historic core survived the war, though Socialist-era blight was arguably as destructive from an aesthetic point of view). The River Oder cuts through the city, defining island neighborhoods with a series of footbridges. Aesthetically, Wrocław is like Bergen (Norway) meeting Bologna — a magnificent metropolis that is finally getting its well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
What does this mean for tourists? Most of the yearlong European Capital of Culture program will take place during the warmer months, so the schedule of events has not yet been finalized.
But in addition to a lineup of theater, art exhibitions and concerts both indoors and out, Wrocław promises “unconventional” artistic events and concerts throughout the year in “forgotten” spaces like stairwells, historic courtyards and underpasses — the better to reveal a city that itself has been largely overlooked. The largest city in Western Poland and the fourth largest nationally, Wroclaw is also the hub of a vast historical region known as Silesia, and a number of this year’s events showcase Silesian painting, folklore, music and traditional dance.
Few Americans have heard of Silesia, but Wrocław is surprisingly easy to access. LOT, the national carrier, operates a half-dozen daily flights from Warsaw; Lufthansa has international connections to the city’s Nicholas Copernicus Airport, and discount European airlines such as Ryanair and Wizzair connect from London and Paris.
Jewish visitors can make a beeline for the stylish CIZ Café — the Jewish Information Centre, a welcoming spot that serves kosher pastry and artisan-roasted coffee along with itineraries and English-language walking tours. It’s a modern introduction to a community that dates to the 12th century and was renowned for its tradition of scholarship — including the first modern rabbinical seminary in Central Europe, the Jewish Theological Seminary, which opened in 1854 and produced generations of renowned Breslau rabbis.
On the same street where Breslau’s JTS was once located (now Włodkowica Street), that tradition of intellectual ferment has been revived in the form of Chidusz (Hebrew for “innovation”), a monthly magazine published for Wrocław’s roughly 1,000 Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. In its own words — from a just-released English edition — Chidusz aims to be “a Jewish answer to the challenges of today’s world, to co-create a modern Jewish identity in Europe.”
A previous Jewish identity is evident in Wrocław’s two Jewish cemeteries. The so-called “Old Jewish Cemetery,” located in the southeast and established in the 1850s, is a portrait of Jewish Breslau during the German reign. More than 1,200 tombstones are monuments not only to accomplished Jewish scholars, bankers, scientists and other residents, but also to architectural styles ranging from Gothic to Neoclassical to Baroque.
Badly damaged during the war and neglected afterward, the stately burial ground has been restored as a museum of cemetery art. Across town, the New Jewish Cemetery is a vast, jungly green space that’s nearly as intriguing from an architectural point of view, but has a long way to go toward restoration.
Wrocław is a sprawling city, but visitors will spend most of their time prowling the atmospheric streets of the Old Town. Start in the huge central square, explore the Teutonic-style Town Hall, ogle the impressive churches and stroll through open markets filled with fresh flowers and used books. Enlivened by a population of university students, Wrocław is both more beautiful and more diverse than you might expect — and between its revived Jewish heritage and a Continental spotlight, it’s newly worth a look.
Inset Images: Wikimedia Commons
Meet 5 Israeli Companies
Driving Disability Tech
JTA
The New Normal
Meet 5 Israeli Companies Driving Disability Tech
JTA
Paratek makes wheelchair hiking possible. Courtesy of JTA
TEL AVIV (JTA) — After a missile strike during the 1973 Yom Kippur War left Omer Zur’s father paralyzed from the chest down, his dad vowed to continue life as normal. But there was one Israeli pastime he couldn’t enjoy: hiking.
“He’d say, ‘I’ll go in the car and meet you on the other side,’” said Zur, a certified Israeli tour guide. “I said, ‘Why can’t he do this with us?’”
In 2008, Zur decided that he and his wheelchair-user father would complete a 300-mile trek in southern Turkey. With the help of dozens of friends who joined them on segments of the hike, Zur and his father were able to complete the trail, sleep in tents and cook meals over an open fire.
The hike sparked Paratrek, a startup Zur founded in 2014 that aims to make hiking accessible to people with paraplegia by outfitting wheelchairs with accessories that enable them to travel over rough terrain.
The company is one of several startups focused on improving the lives of the nearly 1 million Israelis with disabilities.
A3I — a startup accelerator run by PresenTense, which fosters social entrepreneurship; housed at Beit Issie Shapiro, an Israeli advocacy organization for people with disabilities; and backed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles — has helped launch 22 disability projects in the past two years. Tikkun Olam Makers, a three-day competition where tech entrepreneurs design projects for people with disabilities, had three events in Israel in 2014 and 2015.
“We very much think one of the missing approaches in the world of disability is the entrepreneurial approach,” said Shira Ruderman, director of the Ruderman Family Foundation, which supports A3I. “We wanted to work with organizations that are not disability oriented.”
Here are five Israeli companies helped by A3I that are making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.
Paratrek
Zur and his co-founder, Ziv Demeter, saw no reason why people in wheelchairs should not enjoy a hike. So they outfitted a chair with oversize wheels, mountain bike-style tires and a wide rod in back for easier pushing. A U-shaped harness attached to the front allows it to be pulled like a rickshaw.
Zur and Demeter also act as hiking consultants for would-be hikers. Understanding their clients’ physical limits and where they want to hike, the company can set up a trek and even join in to make sure all goes smoothly.
The pair have set up hikes across Israel, as well as in France and, later this year, in Switzerland. They’re also looking into using rescue equipment to help people with disabilities climb mountainsides.
IC Touch
A pair of glasses normally would be useless to a blind person. But Zeev Zalevsky’s glasses don’t help you see what’s in front of you — they help you feel it.
Zalevsky’s startup, IC Touch, makes glasses that take and process a picture before sending a signal to a set of tiny mirrors that are millimeters from the wearer’s eyes. The mirrors then send a set of vibrations to the cornea that make the cornea “feel” objects in the space around it.
Instead of guiding themselves with a stick or a dog, Zalevsky says, blind people can feel their surroundings with the glasses, even identifying objects up to a half-mile away.
“It’s like if you close your eyes and feel your surroundings with your fingertips, you can imagine what’s in front of you,” said Zalevsky, an engineering professor at Bar-Ilan University. “Instead of reaching out in front of you, the picture comes to your head.”
Gemon
The screen looks a little like the classic 1980s arcade game Frogger, in which an amphibian tries to cross a busy street. In this version, a red car has to maneuver through blue cars to reach an open lane — but instead of using buttons and a joystick, players move the car by raising a pole from one notch to the next. Sensors in each notch capture the motion and project the car’s progress on an iPad.
The game, the initial offering from the startup Gemon, helps strengthen the upper back of people with disabilities or those recovering from an injury. The company aims to “game-ify” rehabilitation to relieve the tedium of staring at an exercise machine all day. Co-founders Tomer Yannay and Ohad Doron are also creating a sensor that can be attached to any workout machine to transform the exercise into a game. Eventually, Yannay says, the games could even appear in health clubs.
Easy Stroll
Adira was eight months pregnant and about to become a single mother, but she had a problem: She couldn’t take her baby for a walk.
Adira is in a wheelchair and can’t push a stroller. So she contacted Dana Yichye-Shwachman, a designer with Jonathan Bar-Or Industrial Design. Yichye-Shwachman responded with Easy Stroll, an aluminum attachment to the wheelchair’s footboard that latches on to a stroller.
Yichye-Shwachman posted a video of the product online and received 30 emails for new orders. She is now creating a prototype that will fit a variety of wheelchairs and strollers.
Siman Shenagish
Few children have to accompany their parents to the bank and explain to them that their account is in overdraft. But for Tal Bousidan, days like that were routine.
Bousidan was born to two deaf parents. With sign-language interpreters in short supply in Israel, he would fill the role for his parents, explaining to them what bank tellers and shop clerks were unable to communicate on their own.
Now a professional sign-language interpreter, Bousidan has created a startup that provides instantaneous Hebrew sign-language translation via tablet computers.
The startup, Siman Shenagish — Hebrew for “accessible sign” — has a pilot running at a health clinic in the southern city of Ashkelon. Deaf patients tap on the iPad, and a full-time translator appears on the screen ready to translate for the doctor. The startup has plans to expand to Tel Aviv, and Bousidan hopes to provide translation in other languages in the future.
This article was part of a series tied to Jewish Disability & Inclusion Awareness Month that is part of our partnership with the Ruderman Family Foundation. Guided by Jewish values, the foundation advocates for and advances the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout the Jewish community. To learn more, visit the foundation’s website.
Last Chance For Closure
Director Atom Egoyan on his new film 'Remember' - a take on memory and revenge, and a very different kind of road movie.
Freema Gottlieb
Special To The Jewish Week
Film
Last Chance For Closure
Director Atom Egoyan on his new film ‘Remember’ — a take on memory and revenge, and a very different kind of road movie.
Freema Gottlieb
Special To The Jewish Week
Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau in a scene from “Remember.” Photos by Sophie Giraud
The phone line between Toronto and New York seemed to crackle with impassioned urgency as the film director Atom Egoyan spoke of his compelling new movie, “Remember,” due to open here next week at the Angelika Film Center.
“Now is the last chance for people who have experienced the Holocaust at first hand to receive some kind of resolution,” he said. For him, this has special relevance, since the past year marked the centenary of the genocide of his own people, the Armenians, for whom direct closure is no longer possible.
In the movie, which begins and ends in a Jewish nursing home in New York, two aging residents bond through the old school tie of their previous incarceration at Auschwitz. On the last night of sitting shiva for his wife of 50 years, Zev, played by Christopher Plummer (“Girl with a Dragon Tattoo,” “The Sound of Music”), is reminded by his former fellow inmate Max, played by Martin Landau, of the pledge he had made to his dying wife: exact retribution from the Nazi commandant responsible for killing their families. Max, having spent his life researching Nazi war criminals with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, knows that the man has entered either the United States or Canada illegally under the assumed name of Rudy Kurlander. As many as four Germans have used that name to get into the country.
While Max, confined to a wheelchair, masterminds the action, it is up to the more able-bodied Zev to track them down and identify the guilty party. Besides Max, Zev is the only living survivor who can remember what the commandant looked like. However, Zev is suffering from increasing memory loss. So Max must write down a list of instructions for him in the form of a letter. Zev must flee the nursing home, travel to a gun shop, and purchase a weapon for the job. His choice is a Glock — from Austria.
Questioned about the morality of his protagonist’s taking justice into his own hands, Egoyan spoke unequivocally about the rightness of the act. “Is there the remotest possibility that their target would ever come within reach of a court of law? Factors of age and physical and mental deterioration, besides the political backtracking above all, would grant him immunity.” The perpetrators and survivors may die at any moment. Closure is of the essence. There is room for compassion, but not here.
Egoyan considers Landau’s portrayal of Max the movie’s tour de force. “All the time he is burning with rage,” he said. “The assumption is that it is directed at his family’s killer, and of course it is, but what really gets him is not so much memory of the mass murder but its contemporary equivalent, Holocaust denial, in which civilized countries participate and which threatens to expunge the victims’ last trace.”
According to a rabbinical saying, angels guide us on the path where we are resolved to go. Egoyan said, “If it is Max’s rage that fuels Zev’s progress, even he could not have dreamed that Zev, who cannot remember the basic facts of everyday existence, such as — poignantly — that his wife of 50 years has died, never mind Max’s complicated instructions, would ever be able to romp back and forth across continents and accomplish the goal for which he has been set up.” Improbably, everyone Zev meets in his travels — hotel receptionists, gun shop owners, border inspectors, security guards — springs to his aid. His sweet ineptitude brings out the best in others, yet the road on which he has set out is engulfed in darkness. “This single character [Zev] is freighted with so much history,” the director mused, confessing that for him the Holocaust had become an obsession.
The only experience Egoyan has personally had of genocide is of its denial.
Born in Cairo in 1960, Egoyan was a toddler when he and his family immigrated to Canada, at a time when Armenian businesses were threatened with nationalization by Egyptian President Nasser’s pan-Arabist movement.
From a very early age he had felt an outsider. “I spent my childhood in Victoria, British Columbia. At the time Victoria was very Anglo and nobody knew what an Armenian was. They thought I was Jewish, Italian, Greek. My goal, like most young people growing up, was to fit in as much as possible.”
Only while attending university in Toronto did he find a viable Armenian community. There he became increasingly involved in issues around the Armenian genocide, which fueled his own sense of identity.
“Only then could I look at the fact that my father’s parents were survivors of that genocide,” he said. At this point our conversation was interrupted when Egoyan’s father phoned in to talk. Respectfully, Atom told him they could speak in another half hour and sent him his love.
“While ‘Ararat,’ the story in part of my own third-generation experience of the Armenian genocide, was concerned with the transmission of trauma over several generations,” he said, “in ‘Remember,’ what was most fascinating is that the trauma was explored by the last living survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. The trauma is direct and still very present in these characters’ lives.”
Unlike the Oscar-winning “Son of Saul,” “Remember” is a suspenseful thriller with a straight timeline, driving toward its climax without any flashbacks on the actual Holocaust and it does not rely on sensational effects. It is a deceptively simple action-packed road movie, completely accessible to the widest possible audience. Despite the seemingly comical premise of having a forgetful 90-year-old as its central protagonist, the director maintains that at its core it is “deeply serious.”
Did the director consider memory loss an adequate metaphor for Holocaust denial? Does the protagonist ultimately act in full knowledge of what he is doing?
“In fact, memory loss due to aging works in reverse to the mechanism of Holocaust denial. “The details of short-term memory — the pathos of Zev’s calling out the name of his wife, “Ruth, Ruth,” in his most unself-conscious and vulnerable moments — are the first to go. “But long-term memory, what is true about the self. … Memory of one’s past does not disappear so fast. He is far from being there. But I am not prepared to say. So much is a matter of interpretation.”
Was there an element of free will, even redemption, in the final double act, not just another “submission to orders?”
“Yes, certainly he did not act simply as a robot in the end, but out of conviction. I think the movie ends as it does because he sees no way of knitting together the person he was with who he had become. But there are countless interpretations. No, I can’t say.”
Does the soul, or the person, have a single identity or are some people so changed by new circumstances as to become totally different human beings?
“Ah, that is the core question of the film, the one the film never articulates, but every viewer is faced with,” he said.
“Remember” opens March 11 at the Angelika Film Center, 18 W. Houston St., (212) 995-2570, angelikafilmcenter.com.
Freema Gottlieb is the author of “The Lamp of God: A Jewish Book of Light and Jewish Folk Art.” She has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement and the Jewish Quarterly, and is a frequent contributor to The Jewish Week’s column Sabbath Week.
Where Donald Trump Stands On Israel And The Jews
Ben Harris| JTA
National
Where Donald Trump Stands On Israel And The Jews
Ben Harris
JTA
Donald Trump speaking to supporters in Louisville, Kentucky, March 1, 2016. JTA
With Donald Trump sweeping to a resounding victory in seven Super Tuesday states Tuesday night, Republicans awoke this morning to the reality that the New York real estate magnate had solidified his status as the front-runner for the party nomination.
And while his candidacy has deeply unsettled many in the GOP establishment, not to mention its influential Jewish donor base, Trump has arguably the closest ties to the American Jewish community of any candidate, from his Jewish daughter and grandchildren to his deep ties to the New York business community.
Here’s a rundown of Trump’s major pronouncements on Jewish issues so far in the 2016 race.
Trump would remain “neutral” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Even more disconcerting to Jewish Republicans than his on-again, off-again, then on-again renunciation of support from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is Trump’s declaration that he would not choose sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Let me sort of be a neutral guy,” Trump said in February. Unwavering support for Israel is a critical Republican talking point in the party’s perpetual (and still largely unsuccessful) efforts to sway a majority of Jewish voters from their longtime dedication to the Democrats. Trump’s comments will likely make that effort more difficult for the Republicans in November.
“Do they both want to make peace?”
In December, Trump expounded on the Middle East conflict in an interview with the AP. Trump said he was interested in making a “lasting peace,” and that required the commitment of both sides, something he wasn’t sure existed, adding: “I have a real question as to one side in particular.” He declined to specify which side that was, but some understood Trump to be questioning Israel’s commitment more than the Palestinians.
Trump would not commit to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
At a Republican Jewish Coalition candidate’s forum in December, Trump demurred when asked if he would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In January, he appeared to shift gears when he promised to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “We are for that 100 percent,” Trump said.
Trump likes Israel’s West Bank security barrier
Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern border and get Mexico to pay for it is a set piece of his campaign stump speech. More than once, Trump has referenced Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank as proof of the wall’s efficacy and the hypocrisy of his opponents in criticizing it. “If you think walls don’t work, all you have to do is ask Israel,” Trump said at a debate in November. In January he tweeted: “Hillary Clinton said that it is O.K. to ban Muslims from Israel by building a WALL, but not O.K. to do so in the U.S. We must be vigilant!”
Trump doesn’t want money from Republican Jewish bigwigs
At the RJC forum, Trump was candid that he did not want or expect support from Republican Jewish donors, but he made the point in a way that seemed to some to traffic in anti-Semitic stereotypes about shadowy Jewish control of political leaders. “You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money,” Trump said. “You want to control your politicians, that’s fine.” Making matters worse, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan later saluted Trump for disavowing Jewish money.
Trump thinks the Iran deal is lousy, but won’t rip it up
The deal-maker extraordinaire has not minced words when it comes to President Obama’s handling of the Iran nuclear negotiations, saying, “Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran and I mean never.” Among his quibbles: Iran got too much money and made no commitment to release American prisoners, and inspections are insufficiently intrusive. But unlike his fellow Republicans, Trump says he would not disavow the deal on Day 1, but would be “so tough” in enforcing it.---------------------
'Sauna' Rabbi Stepping Down; Or Is He? >
Gary Rosenblatt
‘Sauna’ Rabbi Stepping Down; Or Is He?
Riverdale leader’s surprise statement unclear about intentions and timing.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Rabbi Rosenblatt. Via Youtube.com
A brief statement last Wednesday evening from the leadership of the Riverdale Jewish Center, informing members that their embattled rabbi, Jonathan Rosenblatt, “intends to step aside from the senior rabbinate” of the Modern Orthodox congregation, is being scrutinized and parsed in the community this week like a passage from the Talmud.
Raising more questions than answers, the two-sentence message seems to indicate that nine months after published reports described the rabbi’s longtime practice of showering and chatting in the sauna with boys and young men, and six months after he overcame efforts to have him removed from his pulpit, the prominent religious leader will be leaving his post soon in an effort to unify the community. Or will he?
Meyer Koplow, an attorney representing Rabbi Rosenblatt in this issue, told The Jewish Week that the rabbi, eager to leave a positive legacy for his years of service to RJC, initiated this step to help the synagogue community “heal and grow.” Koplow, who offered his services pro bono and is negotiating between the rabbi and the lay leadership, said he expected the issues to be resolved in the next week and then voted on by the congregation.
RJC’s president, Samson Fine, referred a request for comment to the brief statement that was issued.
The controversy, which began over the rabbi’s unusual behavior and later morphed into how the RJC lay leadership has handled the situation, now finds members of the community wondering if Rabbi Rosenblatt, who has led the congregation for more than three decades, is stepping down or just “aside” — and whether he is leaving his pulpit altogether or just “the senior rabbinate,” possibly staying on as rabbi emeritus or scholar-in-residence. And it is unclear when this would take place. Some believe a change in the rabbi’s status is imminent while others point out that his contract extends through July 2018. The statement, which appeared to be purposefully vague, did not indicate timing.
Another key question is whether the estimated 20 percent of the RJC membership that left the congregation last summer and created a breakaway Shabbat prayer group now known as The Riverdale Minyan will consider coming back to RJC — and if so, under what circumstances. The group is leasing space from the nearby Riverdale Temple (Reform) and appears to have coalesced into a thriving, active band of worshippers of all ages, with the younger set heading up a number of active committees, including weeknight lectures for adults and a variety of programs for children. More than 100 families are paying members of the Minyan, which often attracts in excess of 200 people on Shabbat. (It does not hold regular services during the week.)
Several participants noted that while the Minyan may have come together initially out of a shared sense of dissatisfaction with the lay and rabbinic leadership of RJC, it has become an increasingly tight-knit group. Steven Bayme, who resigned from RJC after the rabbi’s sauna activities were first published in The New York Times last May, said the Minyan has become “a real community of people who care about each other.” In particular, he noted that after his son was killed in a car accident last summer, the group became an ongoing “source of enormous support” for him and his family.
Bayme and other attendees interviewed said they left RJC out of a sense of disappointment both with the rabbi’s behavior, described as, at best, inappropriate — especially for a spiritual leader — and frustration with the alleged lack of accountability and transparency by the board leadership, which by all counts has made blunders along the way. The Minyan attendees say they are happy where they are and will be following closely the resolution of the rabbi’s status at RJC, reluctant to come back unless the rabbi leaves, with some calling for the synagogue board to resign as well.
But defenders of the rabbi maintain that the issue has always been “more about power than the shvitz,” as one longtime RJC member put it. The source, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicacy of the situation, asserted that some of those who left had been major funders of the congregation who were unhappy with its direction and chose to leave for a variety of reasons. Supporters of the rabbi also charge those who left were “hypocrites,” noting that the great majority of the congregation knew of the rabbi’s behavior with young men for years and didn’t seem to express outrage until the news became public. Key critics counter that they actively tried to buy out the rabbi’s contract for years but were stymied by concern about legal action since no direct allegations of illegal behavior emerged. Nor have they to this day.
And so it goes.
In interviews with The Jewish Week in recent days, a number of defenders and critics, all of whom asked for anonymity, characterized the situation as very sad, given the deep rift that has resulted in the community. But conflicting narratives have emerged to explain the rabbi’s recent announcement.
One has the rabbi initiating this “step aside” move for the good of the congregation and the community. Another has him heading off a board effort to ensure that he not seek a contract renewal beyond 2018. Still another sees the rabbi as gradually worn down by the loss of key congregants, including several former RJC presidents and major donors, and hoping to negotiate his financial package before Fine, the current president, perceived as sympathetic to the rabbi, completes his term this spring.
All sides see a key issue being who will be in control of the RJC, including its lay and rabbinic leadership, going forward.
Defenders are clearly the majority of the synagogue now, which is believed to have between 500 and 550 member families. The rabbi’s supporters want to assure a dignified conclusion to his tenure. Within a day of Rabbi Rosenblatt’s brief statement, a petition began circulating among congregants, urging that he “continue to have a connection to the RJC… whether he is called the RabbiEmeritus or something else is not important. What is important is his continued presence.”
That’s precisely what a number of worshippers at the Minyan oppose. They want to see the rabbi make a clean break with the congregation so that the rift they believe he caused can begin to heal.
Whether or not those discontented former congregants will ever return to RJC is one of the many questions that may be answered down the road. But for now the focus is on what “stepping aside” means, and when.
Gary Rosenblatt, Editor & Publisher, The Jewish Week---------------------
Stephen Colbert Sings With 'Fiddler On The Roof' Broadway Cast >
National
Stephen Colbert Sings With ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ Broadway Cast
JTA
Screenshot. Via youtube.com
Stephen Colbert sang songs from “Fiddler on the Roof” with members of the cast of the recent Broadway revival.
The “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” host sang “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” and “Tradition” in an opening segment of Tuesday night’s show.
Before the singing, Colbert explained in a comic aside that “Fiddler” is being shown at the Broadway Theater across from CBS’ Ed Sullivan Theater where the “Late Show” is filmed.
“People line up for both of our shows at the same time on 53rd Street,” he said. “Sometimes people get mixed up and they get in the wrong line.”
Colbert sang “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” with a few cast members. That was followed by Danny Burstein, who is starring as Tevye, and other cast members coming on stage for a performance of “Tradition.” Burstein even handed Colbert a fake beard and black hat to wear.
Colbert ended the segment by yelling “L’chaim!”
Featured Video
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New Fears Over Russia's Role In Syria >
Israel News
New Fears Over Russia’s Role In Syria
Is policy reassessment imminent?
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Syria’s Bashar Assad: A boost from Putin.
Tel Aviv — The Quneitra Overlook rest stop at the eastern edge of the Golan Heights border with Syria offers a front-row-seat look into a country decimated by five years of civil war.
One recent morning, the Syrian side of the border seemed normal and quiet. But it’s a calm that belies the changing tide of the fighting that has seen Russia’s military intervention give a major boost to President Bashar Assad and his alliance with Iran and Hezbollah.
Now, as a fragile cease-fire went into effect this week reflecting Russia’s tip in the power balance, will the new geopolitical dynamics at play prompt a rethinking of Israel’s five-year policy of keeping out of the civil war?
“There are worries that the Russian involvement will bring Assad back to life in a way that he will rule the country again under the supervision of Iran,” said Alon Liel, a former director general of the Israeli foreign ministry. “I don’t think Israel is enthusiastic about that.”
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the cease-fire despite skepticism in Israel that it will hold over the long term. Netanyahu reminded the powers involved that Israel reserved the right to intervene to prevent weapons transfers to Hezbollah and to block Shia-allied groups from establishing a new hostile front along the Golan Heights.
“Israel wants to preserve its freedom of action,” said Ofer Zalzberg, an Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“Netanyahu is concerned that there is a period now in which every use of arms is seen as a breach, which endangers the entire cease-fire.” Netanyahu is saying that Israel’s “red lines” are separate from the cease-fire and defending them doesn’t violate it, Zalzberg said.
The bigger question concerns what Israel should do — if anything — in the face of the resurgent Russian-backed axis of Assad, Iran and Hezbollah. Amid the growing possibility that a weak Assad might give a freer hand to Hezbollah and to Iran, already strengthened by the removal of economic sanctions, should Israel change its policy of neutrality on the outcome of the civil war?
“Until now Israel has acted wisely, setting minimal number of red lines,” said Ehud Eiran, a political science professor at the University of Haifa. “Israel has been realistic about its [limited] ability to affect the events in Syria, and I don’t think this is changing.”
Part of that neutrality stemmed from a lack of attractive outcomes: Israeli officials remain split over whether it was preferable for Assad to remain in power as “the devil Israel knows” or whether it prefers a chaotic alliance in its place that could further destabilize its northern neighbor.
Eiran noted that, with the stepped-up Russian involvement, Israel’s room for military action inside of Syria has been constrained. Indeed, the two countries have established a coordination mechanism in recent months to avoid a confrontation.
Despite the concern, analysts have pointed to an upside: Israel can use its dialogue with Russia to communicate to Iran and Syria what its red lines are.
In an article in the Haaretz newspaper last week, military commentator Amos Harel wrote that while Jerusalem isn’t expected to step up military action in Syria, Israel will lobby harder for Western intervention to help the Kurdish and Sunni rebels.
Writing shortly after Russia stepped up its actions in Syria, Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli military intelligence chief, argued that given Moscow’s deepened involvement in the hostilities, Israel should consider more actively trying to topple Assad.
Israel could “find itself in an inferior strategic position,” because Russia’s involvement could provide a “seal of approval” for Iranian activity in Syria for years to come, wrote Yadlin, now the director at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies.
Yadlin argued for tightening Israel’s quiet ties with Saudi Arabia and reaching a reconciliation with Turkey — another enemy of Assad — to pressure the Syrian regime. In recent weeks Turkish leaders have made optimistic statements about finally mending the five-year rift with Israel, though Russia (along with Egypt and Greece) is reportedly trying to dissuade Jerusalem from the rapprochement with Ankara. The former general also suggested that Israel persuade Russia to push Assad aside.
Since the Russian intervention began last summer, Israeli observers have already taken note of the scope of support rolled out for the pro-regime forces: In the southern province of Daraa near the Jordanian border, Russian aircraft have provided air cover for Shiite irregular militias and Hezbollah forces that focused on retaking a town, known as Sheik Miskeen, that is at a strategic crossroads linking the south to Damascus.
“Hezbollah showing up in the south has raised some eyebrows among the Israelis,” said Andrew Tabler, a fellow who focuses on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They think they are down there to set up another front.”
In the last year, Israel is believed to have launched attacks that killed a key Iranian general and high-ranking Hezbollah officers who were in the border area near the Golan.
Two months ago, an Israeli security official looked out to the border and gave a rundown of the diverse variety of militias active along the frontier: In the north near the Hermon were regime forces and regime-allied Druze militias. Near the border town of Quneitra, a mixture of Free Syrian Army and jihadist groups were fighting the regime and among themselves.
Israel has been giving medical care and humanitarian support to Syrians from rebel villages and militants from the border area. Beyond the humanitarian gesture, the goal is to keep the frontier region as quiet as possible and prevent cross-border attacks. “It’s to create a ‘good fence,’” said the official, a reference to an Israeli crossing into Southern Lebanon during the 1980s.
For all the potential troubling fallout, Russian regime forces are still far from the frontier area with Israel — mostly focusing on the north. For the foreseeable future, Jerusalem and Russia want to avoid an entanglement, each for its own interests.
“Israel is careful about Russia; the sense is that [Moscow’s presence] doesn’t play into the hands of Israel,” said Eyal Zisser, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University who is an expert on Syria.
“From the beginning, Israel hasn’t had a clear policy about what we want to happen, and whether we should do anything,” he added. “I don’t see any change.” ---------------------
Israel News
New Fears Over Russia’s Role In Syria
Is policy reassessment imminent?
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Syria’s Bashar Assad: A boost from Putin.
Tel Aviv — The Quneitra Overlook rest stop at the eastern edge of the Golan Heights border with Syria offers a front-row-seat look into a country decimated by five years of civil war.
One recent morning, the Syrian side of the border seemed normal and quiet. But it’s a calm that belies the changing tide of the fighting that has seen Russia’s military intervention give a major boost to President Bashar Assad and his alliance with Iran and Hezbollah.
Now, as a fragile cease-fire went into effect this week reflecting Russia’s tip in the power balance, will the new geopolitical dynamics at play prompt a rethinking of Israel’s five-year policy of keeping out of the civil war?
“There are worries that the Russian involvement will bring Assad back to life in a way that he will rule the country again under the supervision of Iran,” said Alon Liel, a former director general of the Israeli foreign ministry. “I don’t think Israel is enthusiastic about that.”
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the cease-fire despite skepticism in Israel that it will hold over the long term. Netanyahu reminded the powers involved that Israel reserved the right to intervene to prevent weapons transfers to Hezbollah and to block Shia-allied groups from establishing a new hostile front along the Golan Heights.
“Israel wants to preserve its freedom of action,” said Ofer Zalzberg, an Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“Netanyahu is concerned that there is a period now in which every use of arms is seen as a breach, which endangers the entire cease-fire.” Netanyahu is saying that Israel’s “red lines” are separate from the cease-fire and defending them doesn’t violate it, Zalzberg said.
The bigger question concerns what Israel should do — if anything — in the face of the resurgent Russian-backed axis of Assad, Iran and Hezbollah. Amid the growing possibility that a weak Assad might give a freer hand to Hezbollah and to Iran, already strengthened by the removal of economic sanctions, should Israel change its policy of neutrality on the outcome of the civil war?
“Until now Israel has acted wisely, setting minimal number of red lines,” said Ehud Eiran, a political science professor at the University of Haifa. “Israel has been realistic about its [limited] ability to affect the events in Syria, and I don’t think this is changing.”
Part of that neutrality stemmed from a lack of attractive outcomes: Israeli officials remain split over whether it was preferable for Assad to remain in power as “the devil Israel knows” or whether it prefers a chaotic alliance in its place that could further destabilize its northern neighbor.
Eiran noted that, with the stepped-up Russian involvement, Israel’s room for military action inside of Syria has been constrained. Indeed, the two countries have established a coordination mechanism in recent months to avoid a confrontation.
Despite the concern, analysts have pointed to an upside: Israel can use its dialogue with Russia to communicate to Iran and Syria what its red lines are.
In an article in the Haaretz newspaper last week, military commentator Amos Harel wrote that while Jerusalem isn’t expected to step up military action in Syria, Israel will lobby harder for Western intervention to help the Kurdish and Sunni rebels.
Writing shortly after Russia stepped up its actions in Syria, Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli military intelligence chief, argued that given Moscow’s deepened involvement in the hostilities, Israel should consider more actively trying to topple Assad.
Israel could “find itself in an inferior strategic position,” because Russia’s involvement could provide a “seal of approval” for Iranian activity in Syria for years to come, wrote Yadlin, now the director at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies.
Yadlin argued for tightening Israel’s quiet ties with Saudi Arabia and reaching a reconciliation with Turkey — another enemy of Assad — to pressure the Syrian regime. In recent weeks Turkish leaders have made optimistic statements about finally mending the five-year rift with Israel, though Russia (along with Egypt and Greece) is reportedly trying to dissuade Jerusalem from the rapprochement with Ankara. The former general also suggested that Israel persuade Russia to push Assad aside.
Since the Russian intervention began last summer, Israeli observers have already taken note of the scope of support rolled out for the pro-regime forces: In the southern province of Daraa near the Jordanian border, Russian aircraft have provided air cover for Shiite irregular militias and Hezbollah forces that focused on retaking a town, known as Sheik Miskeen, that is at a strategic crossroads linking the south to Damascus.
“Hezbollah showing up in the south has raised some eyebrows among the Israelis,” said Andrew Tabler, a fellow who focuses on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They think they are down there to set up another front.”
In the last year, Israel is believed to have launched attacks that killed a key Iranian general and high-ranking Hezbollah officers who were in the border area near the Golan.
Two months ago, an Israeli security official looked out to the border and gave a rundown of the diverse variety of militias active along the frontier: In the north near the Hermon were regime forces and regime-allied Druze militias. Near the border town of Quneitra, a mixture of Free Syrian Army and jihadist groups were fighting the regime and among themselves.
Israel has been giving medical care and humanitarian support to Syrians from rebel villages and militants from the border area. Beyond the humanitarian gesture, the goal is to keep the frontier region as quiet as possible and prevent cross-border attacks. “It’s to create a ‘good fence,’” said the official, a reference to an Israeli crossing into Southern Lebanon during the 1980s.
For all the potential troubling fallout, Russian regime forces are still far from the frontier area with Israel — mostly focusing on the north. For the foreseeable future, Jerusalem and Russia want to avoid an entanglement, each for its own interests.
“Israel is careful about Russia; the sense is that [Moscow’s presence] doesn’t play into the hands of Israel,” said Eyal Zisser, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University who is an expert on Syria.
“From the beginning, Israel hasn’t had a clear policy about what we want to happen, and whether we should do anything,” he added. “I don’t see any change.” ---------------------
Election Wildcard Is Now Anti-Semitism >
National
Election Wildcard Is Now Anti-Semitism
Strong Super Tuesday showing by Trump, Clinton sets up likely insider-outsider matchup.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Donald Trump celebrates his victory in seven states on Super Tuesday. All photos by Getty Images.
As both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump emerged as their party’s likely presidential nominees given their impressive Super Tuesday primary victories, anti-Semitism has suddenly surfaced as an issue.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan praised Trump this week for being the “only member who has stood in front of the Jewish community and said, ‘I don’t want your money.’”
He stopped short of endorsing Trump but added, “I like what I’m looking at.”
His comments came after David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Front party who has described the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history,” both endorsed Trump.
“If I were an adviser to the Trump campaign, I would tell him to immediately go before the cameras and repudiate David Duke, Farrakhan and Le Pen,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “When the anti-Semites are circling the wagons, if I were Trump I would say I don’t need their support and don’t want it.”
Trump did so well in election returns Tuesday night because the majority of voters told exit pollsters that they wanted to see an “outsider” in the White House.
Thus, 72 percent of voters in Massachusetts said they voted for Trump because they wanted an outsider while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich both got only 8 percent of the “outsider” vote.
In Alabama, which Trump also won, 64 percent of Trump supporters said they wanted an outsider while Cruz got 12 percent of the “outsider” vote. In Tennessee, Trump received 67 percent of the “outsider” vote compared to 13 percent for Cruz.
In all, Trump won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia and Tennessee. Cruz trumped his rivals in Alaska, Oklahoma and Texas. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio won the state of Minnesota.
National
Election Wildcard Is Now Anti-Semitism
Strong Super Tuesday showing by Trump, Clinton sets up likely insider-outsider matchup.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Donald Trump celebrates his victory in seven states on Super Tuesday. All photos by Getty Images.
As both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump emerged as their party’s likely presidential nominees given their impressive Super Tuesday primary victories, anti-Semitism has suddenly surfaced as an issue.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan praised Trump this week for being the “only member who has stood in front of the Jewish community and said, ‘I don’t want your money.’”
He stopped short of endorsing Trump but added, “I like what I’m looking at.”
His comments came after David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Front party who has described the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history,” both endorsed Trump.
“If I were an adviser to the Trump campaign, I would tell him to immediately go before the cameras and repudiate David Duke, Farrakhan and Le Pen,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “When the anti-Semites are circling the wagons, if I were Trump I would say I don’t need their support and don’t want it.”
Trump did so well in election returns Tuesday night because the majority of voters told exit pollsters that they wanted to see an “outsider” in the White House.
Thus, 72 percent of voters in Massachusetts said they voted for Trump because they wanted an outsider while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich both got only 8 percent of the “outsider” vote.
In Alabama, which Trump also won, 64 percent of Trump supporters said they wanted an outsider while Cruz got 12 percent of the “outsider” vote. In Tennessee, Trump received 67 percent of the “outsider” vote compared to 13 percent for Cruz.
In all, Trump won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia and Tennessee. Cruz trumped his rivals in Alaska, Oklahoma and Texas. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio won the state of Minnesota.
On the Democratic side, Clinton won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Sen. Bernie Sanders defeated Clinton in Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont.
Among Jews, racism has already become an issue in the campaign as a result of Trump’s comments critical of Mexicans and Muslims. Other areas of particular importance to the Jewish community include Israel and the conflict in the Middle East, immigration, health care, education and gun control.
“I’m troubled that Donald Trump does not understand the issues that concern our community,” said Seymour Reich, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “Whether it is David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan or even Israel, he is ambivalent. It is not clear to me that he has thought these things through. His position changes from day to day and it’s troubling.”
He was referring to the fact that last Friday Trump repudiated Duke, but when asked by CNN on Sunday whether he would disavow Duke and other white supremacist groups that are supporting his campaign, he replied: “I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.” Later, he again repudiated Duke on Twitter and in television interviews.
In response to Trump's equivocal reply, the Anti-Defamation League sent to all of the presidential candidates information about Duke, other extremists and hate groups.
“The last thing we want is for white supremacists to use this campaign to mainstream their bigotry,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s CEO. “It is imperative for elected leaders and political candidates like Mr. Trump and others in the public eye to disavow haters such as Duke and the other white supremacists who have endorsed his candidacy. By not disavowing their racism and hatred, Trump gives them and their views a degree of legitimacy.”
Reich said he has a “sense that he [Trump] just shoots from the hip too frequently and that he just doesn’t know the issues. He rambles. He does not use a text. He’s like a loose canon. … The Jewish community needs stability in the White House and sadly, regrettably, Trump does not offer that.”
But there are some conservative Jewish Republicans who are prepared to hold their nose and vote for Trump to keep Clinton from winning the presidency.
Among Jews, racism has already become an issue in the campaign as a result of Trump’s comments critical of Mexicans and Muslims. Other areas of particular importance to the Jewish community include Israel and the conflict in the Middle East, immigration, health care, education and gun control.
“I’m troubled that Donald Trump does not understand the issues that concern our community,” said Seymour Reich, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “Whether it is David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan or even Israel, he is ambivalent. It is not clear to me that he has thought these things through. His position changes from day to day and it’s troubling.”
He was referring to the fact that last Friday Trump repudiated Duke, but when asked by CNN on Sunday whether he would disavow Duke and other white supremacist groups that are supporting his campaign, he replied: “I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.” Later, he again repudiated Duke on Twitter and in television interviews.
In response to Trump's equivocal reply, the Anti-Defamation League sent to all of the presidential candidates information about Duke, other extremists and hate groups.
“The last thing we want is for white supremacists to use this campaign to mainstream their bigotry,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s CEO. “It is imperative for elected leaders and political candidates like Mr. Trump and others in the public eye to disavow haters such as Duke and the other white supremacists who have endorsed his candidacy. By not disavowing their racism and hatred, Trump gives them and their views a degree of legitimacy.”
Reich said he has a “sense that he [Trump] just shoots from the hip too frequently and that he just doesn’t know the issues. He rambles. He does not use a text. He’s like a loose canon. … The Jewish community needs stability in the White House and sadly, regrettably, Trump does not offer that.”
But there are some conservative Jewish Republicans who are prepared to hold their nose and vote for Trump to keep Clinton from winning the presidency.
“As boorish as he is, as occasionally foolish as he is, and how vituperative he can be, I would vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton any day,” Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JTA.
And Fred Zeidman, a major Republican donor who had backed Jeb Bush’s failed candidacy, suggested to JTA that he was prepared to vote for Trump if most Republicans prefer him. “The fact of the matter is we have to go on to defeat the Democratic candidate.”
The Jewish Week has spoken with Jewish Republicans in New York and Florida who say their friends are telling them privately — and sometimes openly — that they plan to vote for Trump. One said his friends don’t want others to know of their support for the New York businessman because to date he has run a campaign of little substance that is largely filled with bravado, slogans and promises “to make America great again.”
But the recent flare-up of the racism and anti-Semitism could complicate things for Jewish Trump supporters.
Among the reasons Trump is turning off Jewish voters is that he is “a vulgarian, coarse, unrefined and [most] Jews have never liked populism of the left or right,” said Bill Schneider, a former CNN political analyst and now a professor of policy, government and international affairs at George Mason University. “They like sophisticated, refined, tolerant candidates.”
Jewish support for Democratic presidential candidates reached a whopping 90 percent when they voted for both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. It has slipped in recent years, dropping to 69 percent in the 2012 election. But should Clinton prove to be her party’s candidate, Jewish support could soar to 90 percent in a contest against Donald Trump, suggested Peter Beinart, a contributing editor at The Atlantic and the National Journal.
“My guess is that Trump will win less than 20 percent — maybe 15 or even 10 percent” of the Jewish vote,” he said. “She will win in a blowout against Trump. He plays poorly against [the majority of] Jews, despite being the grand marshal of the Israel Day Parade. … Most Jews are still attached to the Democratic Party and need something unusual to pull them away. Trump does just the opposite – he will not even get those who naturally go for the Republican.”
Beinart added that Trump’s equivocation on Duke “absolutely hurts him among Jews — and in general.”
When it comes to Israel, an election campaign is typically the season to be very pro-Israel, but Trump’s “neutral” stance has left some Israel supporters puzzled, according to Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.
And Fred Zeidman, a major Republican donor who had backed Jeb Bush’s failed candidacy, suggested to JTA that he was prepared to vote for Trump if most Republicans prefer him. “The fact of the matter is we have to go on to defeat the Democratic candidate.”
The Jewish Week has spoken with Jewish Republicans in New York and Florida who say their friends are telling them privately — and sometimes openly — that they plan to vote for Trump. One said his friends don’t want others to know of their support for the New York businessman because to date he has run a campaign of little substance that is largely filled with bravado, slogans and promises “to make America great again.”
But the recent flare-up of the racism and anti-Semitism could complicate things for Jewish Trump supporters.
Among the reasons Trump is turning off Jewish voters is that he is “a vulgarian, coarse, unrefined and [most] Jews have never liked populism of the left or right,” said Bill Schneider, a former CNN political analyst and now a professor of policy, government and international affairs at George Mason University. “They like sophisticated, refined, tolerant candidates.”
Jewish support for Democratic presidential candidates reached a whopping 90 percent when they voted for both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. It has slipped in recent years, dropping to 69 percent in the 2012 election. But should Clinton prove to be her party’s candidate, Jewish support could soar to 90 percent in a contest against Donald Trump, suggested Peter Beinart, a contributing editor at The Atlantic and the National Journal.
“My guess is that Trump will win less than 20 percent — maybe 15 or even 10 percent” of the Jewish vote,” he said. “She will win in a blowout against Trump. He plays poorly against [the majority of] Jews, despite being the grand marshal of the Israel Day Parade. … Most Jews are still attached to the Democratic Party and need something unusual to pull them away. Trump does just the opposite – he will not even get those who naturally go for the Republican.”
Beinart added that Trump’s equivocation on Duke “absolutely hurts him among Jews — and in general.”
When it comes to Israel, an election campaign is typically the season to be very pro-Israel, but Trump’s “neutral” stance has left some Israel supporters puzzled, according to Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.
“Trump is pursuing a policy that is less rhetorical and more detached so he can be a mediator” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, he said. “He was booed at the Republican Jewish Coalition when he refused to say he would move the American Embassy to Jerusalem. He keeps talking about what an honor it would be to get involved to broker a solution.”
But Steven Spiegel questioned how Trump could be “both positive on Israel and neutral.”
Spiegel, a professor of political science at UCLA and national scholar of the Israel Policy Forum (a group promoting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict), asked, “What does neutrality mean? He says, ‘Trust me, I’m such a great deal maker I can make negotiations work.’ He has also said that if he is elected, there will be a certain amount of surprise. What does that mean about Israel?
“Trump says Germany, Japan, South Korea and other countries must pay more for the American troops based in their countries. What happens to [joint military exercises with] Israel? Does he see Israel as a special case? On Hillary, everyone knows where she stands. She talks of keeping America’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security, its military edge, missile defense and intelligence sharing. She talks of selling Israel the most sophisticated fighter aircraft and that she will push tunnel technology detection. So we’re comparing someone who speaks in broad strokes and about maintaining neutrality with someone who supports Israel and has pressured Israel in the same way other [American leaders] have.”
Miller said he has “never seen a candidate like [Trump]. Based on the statements he has made, there is very little to go on except for slogans. He has not said he is going to shred the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program,” but has been harshly critical of it and of the $150 billion Iran will get that Trump said Iran would use for terrorist activities in much of the world.
“He will have to define himself even more before the [November] election,” he said.
On the other hand, Miller noted, Clinton’s “sensitivities are more pro-Israel, but at the same time she has made comments critical of Israeli settlements and Israeli policy regarding the West Bank. … She would be more predictable as president regarding the Middle East. How much priority she would give to Israel [as president] is unknown.”
Regarding Iran, Clinton said she strongly backs the nuclear agreement.
Foreign policy has received little attention in the campaign to date, something Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, said he would like to see change.
“Sixty-percent of Americans oppose the Iran agreement and the Jewish community is opposed to it,” he said. “Even more Americans are skeptical about Iran with its missile launches, continued support for terrorism … and continued demonstrations chanting death to America and death to Israel.”
“I hope Iran does not become a political football and that the focus can be on Iranian compliance with the agreement,” Hoenlein said.
Spiegel, the UCLA professor, said Trump has business investments in several Arab countries but that he does not know if he has any in Israel.
“You could say this may cause him to have more influence with the Arab countries,” he said. “On the other hand, it may make him more interested in pressuring Israel.” ---------------------
But Steven Spiegel questioned how Trump could be “both positive on Israel and neutral.”
Spiegel, a professor of political science at UCLA and national scholar of the Israel Policy Forum (a group promoting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict), asked, “What does neutrality mean? He says, ‘Trust me, I’m such a great deal maker I can make negotiations work.’ He has also said that if he is elected, there will be a certain amount of surprise. What does that mean about Israel?
“Trump says Germany, Japan, South Korea and other countries must pay more for the American troops based in their countries. What happens to [joint military exercises with] Israel? Does he see Israel as a special case? On Hillary, everyone knows where she stands. She talks of keeping America’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security, its military edge, missile defense and intelligence sharing. She talks of selling Israel the most sophisticated fighter aircraft and that she will push tunnel technology detection. So we’re comparing someone who speaks in broad strokes and about maintaining neutrality with someone who supports Israel and has pressured Israel in the same way other [American leaders] have.”
Miller said he has “never seen a candidate like [Trump]. Based on the statements he has made, there is very little to go on except for slogans. He has not said he is going to shred the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program,” but has been harshly critical of it and of the $150 billion Iran will get that Trump said Iran would use for terrorist activities in much of the world.
“He will have to define himself even more before the [November] election,” he said.
On the other hand, Miller noted, Clinton’s “sensitivities are more pro-Israel, but at the same time she has made comments critical of Israeli settlements and Israeli policy regarding the West Bank. … She would be more predictable as president regarding the Middle East. How much priority she would give to Israel [as president] is unknown.”
Regarding Iran, Clinton said she strongly backs the nuclear agreement.
Foreign policy has received little attention in the campaign to date, something Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, said he would like to see change.
“Sixty-percent of Americans oppose the Iran agreement and the Jewish community is opposed to it,” he said. “Even more Americans are skeptical about Iran with its missile launches, continued support for terrorism … and continued demonstrations chanting death to America and death to Israel.”
“I hope Iran does not become a political football and that the focus can be on Iranian compliance with the agreement,” Hoenlein said.
Spiegel, the UCLA professor, said Trump has business investments in several Arab countries but that he does not know if he has any in Israel.
“You could say this may cause him to have more influence with the Arab countries,” he said. “On the other hand, it may make him more interested in pressuring Israel.” ---------------------
How Are Communities Built? >
A Rabbi's World
How Are Communities Built?
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Skyline of Tampa, Florida from Bayshore Blvd. Wikimedia Commons
My wife and I traveled to Florida over the Presidents Day week to visit with family and some friends. Given the weather that New York experienced in December, we imagined that New York might wind up being the warmer of the two places, but as it turned out, we couldn't have been more wrong! The weather in Florida was spectacularly sunny and warm, and the weather in New York has been equally spectacular, but in the other direction, with record cold temperatures. Through nothing but luck, we definitely won the vacation lottery.
This time away has been a gift for us, a chance to recharge our batteries, spend time with children and grandchildren, and also visit with a number of members of our synagogue, friends of long standing, who spend their winters in Florida. I must admit that, at times, it felt as if we were living in an alternate universe, a completely different reality that made me want to check the calendar and make sure that it was still February. A person could get used to this, I thought to myself more than once. The sun was out, the weather was warm, people were lovely and gracious, shopping in Publix supermarkets makes going back to NYC food stores downright embarrassing, and in general, the anxiety level of people is so much lower than what I'm used to. All good... And all very pleasant to experience.
But one thing that we noticed left us wondering why, and what's the message behind it. Virtually everywhere we visited, in a variety of cities, there were very few neighborhoods that had houses fronting the main streets where the traffic flowed. Almost all of the housing was made up of a seemingly unending series of developments, obviously planned, that had arbitrarily selected names, and were set off from the public by gates or fences. I'm not taking about what we would call here "gated communities," where you have to be admitted by a guard. There were indeed some of those, but most were not guarded in that manner. Rather, the communities were built, very premeditatedly, to be set off from the road, quite private in a not-so-subtle way. There were very few people walking the sidewalks– hardly any, actually– and you could drive long distances on the main streets of the residential sections of the cities and still not see anyone besides the very occasional person, or, for that matter, actual houses.
A Rabbi's World
How Are Communities Built?
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Skyline of Tampa, Florida from Bayshore Blvd. Wikimedia Commons
My wife and I traveled to Florida over the Presidents Day week to visit with family and some friends. Given the weather that New York experienced in December, we imagined that New York might wind up being the warmer of the two places, but as it turned out, we couldn't have been more wrong! The weather in Florida was spectacularly sunny and warm, and the weather in New York has been equally spectacular, but in the other direction, with record cold temperatures. Through nothing but luck, we definitely won the vacation lottery.
This time away has been a gift for us, a chance to recharge our batteries, spend time with children and grandchildren, and also visit with a number of members of our synagogue, friends of long standing, who spend their winters in Florida. I must admit that, at times, it felt as if we were living in an alternate universe, a completely different reality that made me want to check the calendar and make sure that it was still February. A person could get used to this, I thought to myself more than once. The sun was out, the weather was warm, people were lovely and gracious, shopping in Publix supermarkets makes going back to NYC food stores downright embarrassing, and in general, the anxiety level of people is so much lower than what I'm used to. All good... And all very pleasant to experience.
But one thing that we noticed left us wondering why, and what's the message behind it. Virtually everywhere we visited, in a variety of cities, there were very few neighborhoods that had houses fronting the main streets where the traffic flowed. Almost all of the housing was made up of a seemingly unending series of developments, obviously planned, that had arbitrarily selected names, and were set off from the public by gates or fences. I'm not taking about what we would call here "gated communities," where you have to be admitted by a guard. There were indeed some of those, but most were not guarded in that manner. Rather, the communities were built, very premeditatedly, to be set off from the road, quite private in a not-so-subtle way. There were very few people walking the sidewalks– hardly any, actually– and you could drive long distances on the main streets of the residential sections of the cities and still not see anyone besides the very occasional person, or, for that matter, actual houses.
As a resident of New York City (yes, Manhattan people, Queens is New York City!), I found this fascinating. We here are so packed in like sardines, on buses, trains, and even streets, that finding some semblance of personal space takes on larger than life significance. If someone stands too close to us in an elevator, or actually tries to talk to us, we tend to think of that as aggressive behavior. Apartments are small, houses, except in particularly wealthy areas, are on fairly small lots of land, and for better or for worse, we're in each other's faces far too much.
In Florida it felt almost exactly the opposite. Rather than wanting to be left alone, even ignored, it felt to me as if the streets were hungry for people. Where is everyone, I kept thinking. The answer was clear. They were in their insulated communities. The seemingly endless strip malls and shopping centers was where one went to find people, or to restaurants. There are lots and lots of those places. But when it comes to where you live, that's another story entirely.
I am not a sociologist, but I suspect that, if I were, I would have some all-encompassing understanding of what this kind of living represents. It made me think of Robert Putnam's classic work Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Something significant is happening there, something that pulls against the way people most often bond with each other.
And then, of course, being who I am, it made me wonder that the implications of this kind of human settlement are for synagogues.
The original Greek word that gave us today's "synagogue" meant assembly, meaning clearly that the earliest synagogues were places where people would come to be together, either for Jewish prayer in its earliest form, or for other purposes. In the ultimate, it's not all that much different today, at least here in America. In Israel, people go to synagogue to pray...and that's about it. Here, because Jewish identity is not a given in this most pluralistic and open of societies, Jews go to synagogue to be with other Jews, because most of the people they meet during the day, and work with and study with, do not necessarily share their faith. Even when people can't recite the prayers in Hebrew, or aren't particularly familiar with the contours of the service being recited, they come to be with people that they intuitively feel connected to. They share their dreams and fears there, in only on a subliminal level.
When Putnam wrote his book, he was describing the breakdown in America of those ways that people traditionally cohered and created community, symbolized by the decline of bowling leagues and similar activities. I couldn't help but have the feeling that what I was seeing in these kinds of communities in Florida was the next step in this process of withdrawing within one's self, and retreating from involuntary forms of human interaction. It seemed to be saying that we interact when we need to, but not necessarily in serendipitous or casual ways.
I am still asking myself the question of what this means. My instincts tell me that in terms of society as a whole, it's not a positive thing. Something important seems to be to be lost when casual interaction with people is consciously limited. But as a rabbi, it also feels to me as if the role of a synagogue as a place of assembly is even more critical.
All of us who make the synagogue world our primary focus are keenly aware that it's all about community, because without that, neither prayer nor any other activities are likely to flourish there. We work hard to make people, even strangers, feel as if they are welcomed, and to make the synagogue a place "where everybody knows your name." How much more important is that when life outside the synagogue is so isolated from casual interaction?
Two closing thoughts...
First, I in no way intend for these observations to be a global indictment of Florida or its citizens. To a one, the people that we met were gracious and welcoming, and no one has been transformed into a soul-less automaton because of the way Floridians live. Second, I recognize that the phenomenon of set-apart communities has more to do with the way the massive tracts of land have been developed than any conscious effort to change societal modes of interaction. Of course that is true.
But still... After seeing development after development recessed from the main roads of town with nary a house nor a person visible, Putnam's work kept coming to mind. Somehow, in some way that I couldn't quite put my finger on, something important is lost along the way...
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik is the spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens.---------------------
Judaism Unplugged: Why can't I go on Facebook or text on Shabbat? >
Sabbath Week
Judaism Unplugged
Shlomo Riskin
Special To The Jewish Week
Shlomo Riskin
Candlelighting: 5:33 p.m.
Torah: Exodus 35:1–38:20
Haftorah: I Kings 7:40-50
(Ashkenaz); 7:13-26 (Sephard)
Havdalah: 6:34 p.m.
‘Six days, physically creative activities shall be done but the seventh day shall be holy for you, a Sabbath of Sabbaths for the Lord [of love] … you shall not kindle a fire in all of your habitations on the Sabbath day.” [Exodus 35:23].
Why can’t I go on Facebook or text on Shabbat? I understand that it is forbidden for me to get involved in a physically exacting activity such as bricklaying, or working an eight-hour day in the office, but what kind of work is involved in a simple SMS communication to a friend? Is not such human communication the very purpose of Shabbat rest? There certainly is not even a hint of “kindling a fire,” or even the creation of a spark, or the turning on of a light, in sending an SMS: So why is it forbidden? These are the questions I am receiving from more and more young people in the age of the Internet.
What is the proper response? A careful study of Vayalchel’s opening verses clearly teaches that Shabbat is more than a respite from the six days of physical exertion. Yes, it is also that, and for most of humanity, for most of human history, that in itself was a critical necessity towards making life much more livable and enjoyable. But if that were to be the whole point of Shabbat, then one could spend it comfortably relaxing in bed without any activity whatsoever.
That is not what the biblical text is teaching when it states, “The seventh day shall be holy for you, a Sabbath of Sabbaths [Shabbaton, a special day of more than physical rest] for the Lord,” a sacred day dedicated to God and not only to the comfort of your aching body. This point is made by Nachmanides (Ramban) in his commentary on Leviticus 23:24. Ramban explains that “Shabbaton,” when used in the context of Rosh HaShanah, means that in addition to the negative prohibition of work (melacha) on Shabbat, there is also a positive biblical commandment for a recognizable expression of Shabbat menucha (spiritual activity which can be accomplished on the one day in which the individual is freed from his weekday toil), a day dedicated to God. He adds that the word Shabbaton applies this positive principle for every Shabbat and Holy Festival.
Maimonides (Rambam) derives this very same positive biblical commandment from the words in the Ten Commandments regarding the Sabbath, “in order that your gentile manservant and maidservant shall rest like you” [Deut. 5:14] — a positive, spiritual rest which ought to apply to all of humanity. Hence there is a biblical command (Shabbaton or L’ma’an yanuah) not to engage in an activity on Shabbat that is identified with work-related or weekday activities (like using the telephone or text messaging).
It is even a good deal more: If you study the second Mishnah in the seventh chapter of Tractate Shabbat, you will see that the very order of the 39 forbidden activities goes from the production of bread to the production of garments to the production of leather to the acts of building structures.
In effect, the Mishnah is teaching that although it is legitimate to provide for the basic necessities of human existence — food, clothing and shelter — during the six workdays, Shabbat must remind us of the essence and purpose of human life: to make sensitive and sentient contact with the glories of nature surrounding us (the God without) and with the “soul of life” (nishmat chaim) within us (the God within). Shabbat is a day for reflecting upon and expressing the very purpose of our being, the “why” for which I am living, rather than “how” to exist as comfortably as possible.
Indeed, our generation has more technological communication but less real communication than ever before.
We constantly text message but before we can read what came a minute ago, two newer messages have already arrived. We “see” what our “friend” has written, yet we do not hear the sound of his voice, which reflects his truest inner feelings.
I recently read about a young girl who invited her 500 Facebook “friends” to her birthday party and not one of them showed up. I can be in an important meeting with a colleague or employee, but our eyes never make contact; he is looking down at the new messages entering his cellphone. A few weeks ago, I saw a newly minted bride and groom eating “together” at a restaurant, he on his phone and she on her phone. They were not speaking to each other.
Shabbat provides the opportunity to unplug for one day a week in order to more successfully “plug-in” on the other six days. Without that Shabbat respite, you just may become plugged-up.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone, and chief rabbi of Efrat.---------------------
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, New York 10036, United States
---------------------
"Celebrating Sephardic Culture; The food, the music, in photos, and first person." The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions - Brief overview of content within
A JEWISH WEEK SUPPLEMENT - NOW ONLINE
Sephardic Life 2016
Kubbeh in the culinary spotlight, the Sephardic Shylock, and more.
Sephardic Life (2016)
Kubbeh in the culinary spotlight, the Sephardic Shylock, and more.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 (All day)
Inside This Special Section
‘Not All American Jews Are Ashkenazi’
Israel's 'Other Half'
The Jews of Arab lands in the Jewish state.
Israel’s ‘Other Half’
Zion Ozeri
Musician Mike Karuchi, from Morocco, photographed in his home in Beersheva, 2015. Zion Ozeri
Growing up in Israel in the 1950s as a child of Yemenite émigrés, I learned the standard Zionist Israeli narrative. It was of the great sacrifices made by Ashkenazi European Jews — settling and cultivating the land, building kibbutzim and the city of Tel Aviv out of the sand. All of this, decades before the State of Israel won independence in 1948.
Of course, there were already indigenous Jews in the land, in places like Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias — those who lived there for many generations, as well as Jews who arrived in the 19th and early 20th centuries from Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and North Africa. Yet, their story, their history and suffering under Islamic rule, was hardly told. And that narrative was buried further in the years following the Holocaust.
Beginning in the 1990s, with camera in hand, I traveled to Yemen to document the remnants of Jewish life there. The project expanded to Israel, half of whose population is made up of refugees from Arab lands and their descendants. There, I saw people with an immediate and emotional connection to the land — one that is cultural as well as historical and geographical. It is their Israel, too — and mine. And their presence gives lie to the notion that Israelis are mostly colonizing Europeans whose ties to the ancient biblical Jewish land are tenuous. The Zionist narrative, I’ve discovered after years of shooting in Israel, cannot be filtered through a single lens. Here, then, a wider angle.
A book and exhibition of “The Other Half” project, with photos by Zion Ozeri and text by David Suissa, are forthcoming.
Yigal Mizrahi, a musician and actor with family roots in Yemen, Morocco and Algeria. Photographed in Rehovot, 2015.
Galit Giat, an actor and singer, whose family hails from Algeria and Yemen,in her home in Givat Shmuel, near Ramat Gan, 2015.
Journalist and diplomat Yehuda Bar Yeshuah Laloum, from Algeria. Photographed in Beersheva, 2015
The Stuff Of Tradition
An iconic Middle Eastern meat pastry called kubbeh
is enjoying a moment of mainstream popularity
The Stuff Of Tradition
Caroline Lagnado
Special To The Jewish Week
The scene at chef Melanie Shurka’s pop-up kubbeh meal in the East Village. Photos by Michael Datikash/JW
In his popular cookbook “Jerusalem,” celebrity chef Yotam Ottolenghi features his own variation of a traditional dish, wherein he bakes a flat bulgur-flour base with a ground lamb topping and calls it Open Kibbeh. Superstar chef Meir Adoni features kubbeh on the menu of his upscale Tel Aviv restaurant Mizlala. At Kubbeh! The Pop Up, a sold-out, three-night event last week at Manhattan’s Grape and Grain restaurant, Melanie Shurka served beef kubbeh in Kurdish-style lemon and Swiss chard soup.
In homes across the Sephardic world, kubbeh, the iconic meat pastry, are made by hand each week. In some kitchens, they are oblong in shape, fried and served as an appetizer, while in others they are rounded into a ball and cooked in soup. The recipes (and the spelling!) vary — every Middle Eastern country has a version of the dish — but the idea behind the dish known as kubbeh, kibbeh and kobebah is essentially the same.
Chef Paula Wolfert writes, “Kibbeh has been called the masterpiece of the Middle Eastern table” in “The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean,” in which she lists 50 varieties of kubbeh and includes 11 recipes.
In many Sephardic families, kubbeh are eaten on Shabbat and holidays. Shurka describes a Mizrahi Shabbat table jam-packed with dishes including a big pot of kubbeh soup from which guests would take their own portions and eat it as a main course.
The possibilities of how to cook kubbeh are many. They can be fried, grilled, baked, poached and even prepared raw, and can be made to accommodate vegetarian, pescatarian, gluten free, and Passover dietary restrictions. Not only do the recipes for the kubbeh themselves vary depending on family tradition, but so can the broth if the kubbeh are served in a soup. The soups fall either within sweet or sour camps and can include lemon, beets, squash, okra, potatoes and eggplant.
Shurka ladling out and serving the Sephardic dumpling. Photos by Michael Datikash/JW
The dumplings are both labor- and time-intensive and require a dexterous hand. The basic procedure is as follows: begin by rolling your dough into a small ball between your hands. Use your thumb to dent the ball, add a spoonful of meat filling, close the ball’s opening, and then either fry the kubbeh or add it to a pot of vegetable soup.
A fan of established Israeli kubbeh joints such as Rahmo and Ima, and the newer stalls at Mahane Yehuda market, I attended a kubbeh workshop in Jerusalem a few years ago. It was taught in the home of an elderly Iraqi matriarch who guided the group in the difficult process of making a pile of small meat-filled dumplings. Frustrated at the end of the session, I was interested to hear that kubbeh are available frozen in some supermarkets.
The lore associated with kubbeh is evocative of olden times. Claudia Roden, an Egyptian-Jewish chef living in England, notes in “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food” that “Some women are known to have a special ‘hand’ or ‘finger’ for making kibbeh.” On her Iraqi cooking website, Recipes by Rachel, the Iraqi-born, Israel-based Rachelle Somekh writes, “those families that practice the more time-consuming method of surrounding a nice-sized meatball with a thin semolina coating were considered to be of noteworthy breeding.”
Shurka, who has heard some of the tales related to kubbeh-making, did not see women’s worth valued by their kubbeh-making skills during the time she spent learning the art of kubbeh from both professional and home cooks. “I didn’t get that sense from the older women I was dealing with,” she said. “From my own experience, the roll of cooking in Sephardi culture is an important one,” Shurka said. “Women, usually the ones to prepare the food, bond over the cooking process by sharing their different recipes with each other. Other than being nourishing, cooking delicious food for your family is a woman’s way of expressing love.”
At her pop-up, Shurka, 34, stayed behind the small restaurant’s bar as she dished out each person’s dinner. Diners who had registered and paid the $50 fee in advance sat at small tables in the narrow, rustic space in the East Village. The four-course tasting menu began with small salads and gondi, Persian chicken and chickpea meatballs. The dessert was a date bar served with chocolate, tahina, and raspberry, which a man near me described as a “Mediterranean Reese’s.”
This was not the first short-term kubbeh joint to pop up in New York. For three weeks in March 2013 people flocked to The Kubbeh Project, which also took temporary residence in the East Village. Some waited for upwards of two hours (myself included) in the cold to enjoy a bowl of kubbeh soup and a cup of tea.
Capitalizing on the food’s growing popularity, Shurka is currently developing a permanent kubbeh-focused restaurant with her fiancé, David Ort. While Shurka’s cuisine is not kosher, she offers vegetarian options and would be open to a kosher spin-off depending on interest. She is hoping to change her menu seasonally and serve Arak-based cocktails in addition to both Israeli and Palestinian beer. For the record Shurka prefers beet broth with her own kubbeh but enjoys experimenting with flavors from across the Middle East, even incorporating spices from her family’s Persian background (her father is Iranian, her mother Ashkenazi from Long Island).
Said Shurka, “it’s not just cooking but curating the experience for people.”
In Florida it felt almost exactly the opposite. Rather than wanting to be left alone, even ignored, it felt to me as if the streets were hungry for people. Where is everyone, I kept thinking. The answer was clear. They were in their insulated communities. The seemingly endless strip malls and shopping centers was where one went to find people, or to restaurants. There are lots and lots of those places. But when it comes to where you live, that's another story entirely.
I am not a sociologist, but I suspect that, if I were, I would have some all-encompassing understanding of what this kind of living represents. It made me think of Robert Putnam's classic work Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Something significant is happening there, something that pulls against the way people most often bond with each other.
And then, of course, being who I am, it made me wonder that the implications of this kind of human settlement are for synagogues.
The original Greek word that gave us today's "synagogue" meant assembly, meaning clearly that the earliest synagogues were places where people would come to be together, either for Jewish prayer in its earliest form, or for other purposes. In the ultimate, it's not all that much different today, at least here in America. In Israel, people go to synagogue to pray...and that's about it. Here, because Jewish identity is not a given in this most pluralistic and open of societies, Jews go to synagogue to be with other Jews, because most of the people they meet during the day, and work with and study with, do not necessarily share their faith. Even when people can't recite the prayers in Hebrew, or aren't particularly familiar with the contours of the service being recited, they come to be with people that they intuitively feel connected to. They share their dreams and fears there, in only on a subliminal level.
When Putnam wrote his book, he was describing the breakdown in America of those ways that people traditionally cohered and created community, symbolized by the decline of bowling leagues and similar activities. I couldn't help but have the feeling that what I was seeing in these kinds of communities in Florida was the next step in this process of withdrawing within one's self, and retreating from involuntary forms of human interaction. It seemed to be saying that we interact when we need to, but not necessarily in serendipitous or casual ways.
I am still asking myself the question of what this means. My instincts tell me that in terms of society as a whole, it's not a positive thing. Something important seems to be to be lost when casual interaction with people is consciously limited. But as a rabbi, it also feels to me as if the role of a synagogue as a place of assembly is even more critical.
All of us who make the synagogue world our primary focus are keenly aware that it's all about community, because without that, neither prayer nor any other activities are likely to flourish there. We work hard to make people, even strangers, feel as if they are welcomed, and to make the synagogue a place "where everybody knows your name." How much more important is that when life outside the synagogue is so isolated from casual interaction?
Two closing thoughts...
First, I in no way intend for these observations to be a global indictment of Florida or its citizens. To a one, the people that we met were gracious and welcoming, and no one has been transformed into a soul-less automaton because of the way Floridians live. Second, I recognize that the phenomenon of set-apart communities has more to do with the way the massive tracts of land have been developed than any conscious effort to change societal modes of interaction. Of course that is true.
But still... After seeing development after development recessed from the main roads of town with nary a house nor a person visible, Putnam's work kept coming to mind. Somehow, in some way that I couldn't quite put my finger on, something important is lost along the way...
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik is the spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens.---------------------
Judaism Unplugged: Why can't I go on Facebook or text on Shabbat? >
Sabbath Week
Judaism Unplugged
Shlomo Riskin
Special To The Jewish Week
Shlomo Riskin
Candlelighting: 5:33 p.m.
Torah: Exodus 35:1–38:20
Haftorah: I Kings 7:40-50
(Ashkenaz); 7:13-26 (Sephard)
Havdalah: 6:34 p.m.
‘Six days, physically creative activities shall be done but the seventh day shall be holy for you, a Sabbath of Sabbaths for the Lord [of love] … you shall not kindle a fire in all of your habitations on the Sabbath day.” [Exodus 35:23].
Why can’t I go on Facebook or text on Shabbat? I understand that it is forbidden for me to get involved in a physically exacting activity such as bricklaying, or working an eight-hour day in the office, but what kind of work is involved in a simple SMS communication to a friend? Is not such human communication the very purpose of Shabbat rest? There certainly is not even a hint of “kindling a fire,” or even the creation of a spark, or the turning on of a light, in sending an SMS: So why is it forbidden? These are the questions I am receiving from more and more young people in the age of the Internet.
What is the proper response? A careful study of Vayalchel’s opening verses clearly teaches that Shabbat is more than a respite from the six days of physical exertion. Yes, it is also that, and for most of humanity, for most of human history, that in itself was a critical necessity towards making life much more livable and enjoyable. But if that were to be the whole point of Shabbat, then one could spend it comfortably relaxing in bed without any activity whatsoever.
That is not what the biblical text is teaching when it states, “The seventh day shall be holy for you, a Sabbath of Sabbaths [Shabbaton, a special day of more than physical rest] for the Lord,” a sacred day dedicated to God and not only to the comfort of your aching body. This point is made by Nachmanides (Ramban) in his commentary on Leviticus 23:24. Ramban explains that “Shabbaton,” when used in the context of Rosh HaShanah, means that in addition to the negative prohibition of work (melacha) on Shabbat, there is also a positive biblical commandment for a recognizable expression of Shabbat menucha (spiritual activity which can be accomplished on the one day in which the individual is freed from his weekday toil), a day dedicated to God. He adds that the word Shabbaton applies this positive principle for every Shabbat and Holy Festival.
Maimonides (Rambam) derives this very same positive biblical commandment from the words in the Ten Commandments regarding the Sabbath, “in order that your gentile manservant and maidservant shall rest like you” [Deut. 5:14] — a positive, spiritual rest which ought to apply to all of humanity. Hence there is a biblical command (Shabbaton or L’ma’an yanuah) not to engage in an activity on Shabbat that is identified with work-related or weekday activities (like using the telephone or text messaging).
It is even a good deal more: If you study the second Mishnah in the seventh chapter of Tractate Shabbat, you will see that the very order of the 39 forbidden activities goes from the production of bread to the production of garments to the production of leather to the acts of building structures.
In effect, the Mishnah is teaching that although it is legitimate to provide for the basic necessities of human existence — food, clothing and shelter — during the six workdays, Shabbat must remind us of the essence and purpose of human life: to make sensitive and sentient contact with the glories of nature surrounding us (the God without) and with the “soul of life” (nishmat chaim) within us (the God within). Shabbat is a day for reflecting upon and expressing the very purpose of our being, the “why” for which I am living, rather than “how” to exist as comfortably as possible.
Indeed, our generation has more technological communication but less real communication than ever before.
We constantly text message but before we can read what came a minute ago, two newer messages have already arrived. We “see” what our “friend” has written, yet we do not hear the sound of his voice, which reflects his truest inner feelings.
I recently read about a young girl who invited her 500 Facebook “friends” to her birthday party and not one of them showed up. I can be in an important meeting with a colleague or employee, but our eyes never make contact; he is looking down at the new messages entering his cellphone. A few weeks ago, I saw a newly minted bride and groom eating “together” at a restaurant, he on his phone and she on her phone. They were not speaking to each other.
Shabbat provides the opportunity to unplug for one day a week in order to more successfully “plug-in” on the other six days. Without that Shabbat respite, you just may become plugged-up.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone, and chief rabbi of Efrat.---------------------
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, New York 10036, United States
---------------------
"Celebrating Sephardic Culture; The food, the music, in photos, and first person." The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions - Brief overview of content within
A JEWISH WEEK SUPPLEMENT - NOW ONLINE
Sephardic Life 2016
Kubbeh in the culinary spotlight, the Sephardic Shylock, and more.
Sephardic Life (2016)
Kubbeh in the culinary spotlight, the Sephardic Shylock, and more.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 (All day)
Inside This Special Section
‘Not All American Jews Are Ashkenazi’
- Paying Vocal Homage To His Roots
- Israel’s ‘Other Half’
- In The Name Of The Father
- The Stuff Of Tradition
- ‘Not All American Jews Are Ashkenazi
Israel's 'Other Half'
The Jews of Arab lands in the Jewish state.
Israel’s ‘Other Half’
Zion Ozeri
Musician Mike Karuchi, from Morocco, photographed in his home in Beersheva, 2015. Zion Ozeri
Growing up in Israel in the 1950s as a child of Yemenite émigrés, I learned the standard Zionist Israeli narrative. It was of the great sacrifices made by Ashkenazi European Jews — settling and cultivating the land, building kibbutzim and the city of Tel Aviv out of the sand. All of this, decades before the State of Israel won independence in 1948.
Of course, there were already indigenous Jews in the land, in places like Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias — those who lived there for many generations, as well as Jews who arrived in the 19th and early 20th centuries from Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and North Africa. Yet, their story, their history and suffering under Islamic rule, was hardly told. And that narrative was buried further in the years following the Holocaust.
Beginning in the 1990s, with camera in hand, I traveled to Yemen to document the remnants of Jewish life there. The project expanded to Israel, half of whose population is made up of refugees from Arab lands and their descendants. There, I saw people with an immediate and emotional connection to the land — one that is cultural as well as historical and geographical. It is their Israel, too — and mine. And their presence gives lie to the notion that Israelis are mostly colonizing Europeans whose ties to the ancient biblical Jewish land are tenuous. The Zionist narrative, I’ve discovered after years of shooting in Israel, cannot be filtered through a single lens. Here, then, a wider angle.
A book and exhibition of “The Other Half” project, with photos by Zion Ozeri and text by David Suissa, are forthcoming.
Yigal Mizrahi, a musician and actor with family roots in Yemen, Morocco and Algeria. Photographed in Rehovot, 2015.
Galit Giat, an actor and singer, whose family hails from Algeria and Yemen,in her home in Givat Shmuel, near Ramat Gan, 2015.
Journalist and diplomat Yehuda Bar Yeshuah Laloum, from Algeria. Photographed in Beersheva, 2015
The Stuff Of Tradition
An iconic Middle Eastern meat pastry called kubbeh
is enjoying a moment of mainstream popularity
The Stuff Of Tradition
Caroline Lagnado
Special To The Jewish Week
The scene at chef Melanie Shurka’s pop-up kubbeh meal in the East Village. Photos by Michael Datikash/JW
In his popular cookbook “Jerusalem,” celebrity chef Yotam Ottolenghi features his own variation of a traditional dish, wherein he bakes a flat bulgur-flour base with a ground lamb topping and calls it Open Kibbeh. Superstar chef Meir Adoni features kubbeh on the menu of his upscale Tel Aviv restaurant Mizlala. At Kubbeh! The Pop Up, a sold-out, three-night event last week at Manhattan’s Grape and Grain restaurant, Melanie Shurka served beef kubbeh in Kurdish-style lemon and Swiss chard soup.
In homes across the Sephardic world, kubbeh, the iconic meat pastry, are made by hand each week. In some kitchens, they are oblong in shape, fried and served as an appetizer, while in others they are rounded into a ball and cooked in soup. The recipes (and the spelling!) vary — every Middle Eastern country has a version of the dish — but the idea behind the dish known as kubbeh, kibbeh and kobebah is essentially the same.
Chef Paula Wolfert writes, “Kibbeh has been called the masterpiece of the Middle Eastern table” in “The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean,” in which she lists 50 varieties of kubbeh and includes 11 recipes.
In many Sephardic families, kubbeh are eaten on Shabbat and holidays. Shurka describes a Mizrahi Shabbat table jam-packed with dishes including a big pot of kubbeh soup from which guests would take their own portions and eat it as a main course.
The possibilities of how to cook kubbeh are many. They can be fried, grilled, baked, poached and even prepared raw, and can be made to accommodate vegetarian, pescatarian, gluten free, and Passover dietary restrictions. Not only do the recipes for the kubbeh themselves vary depending on family tradition, but so can the broth if the kubbeh are served in a soup. The soups fall either within sweet or sour camps and can include lemon, beets, squash, okra, potatoes and eggplant.
Shurka ladling out and serving the Sephardic dumpling. Photos by Michael Datikash/JW
The dumplings are both labor- and time-intensive and require a dexterous hand. The basic procedure is as follows: begin by rolling your dough into a small ball between your hands. Use your thumb to dent the ball, add a spoonful of meat filling, close the ball’s opening, and then either fry the kubbeh or add it to a pot of vegetable soup.
A fan of established Israeli kubbeh joints such as Rahmo and Ima, and the newer stalls at Mahane Yehuda market, I attended a kubbeh workshop in Jerusalem a few years ago. It was taught in the home of an elderly Iraqi matriarch who guided the group in the difficult process of making a pile of small meat-filled dumplings. Frustrated at the end of the session, I was interested to hear that kubbeh are available frozen in some supermarkets.
The lore associated with kubbeh is evocative of olden times. Claudia Roden, an Egyptian-Jewish chef living in England, notes in “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food” that “Some women are known to have a special ‘hand’ or ‘finger’ for making kibbeh.” On her Iraqi cooking website, Recipes by Rachel, the Iraqi-born, Israel-based Rachelle Somekh writes, “those families that practice the more time-consuming method of surrounding a nice-sized meatball with a thin semolina coating were considered to be of noteworthy breeding.”
Shurka, who has heard some of the tales related to kubbeh-making, did not see women’s worth valued by their kubbeh-making skills during the time she spent learning the art of kubbeh from both professional and home cooks. “I didn’t get that sense from the older women I was dealing with,” she said. “From my own experience, the roll of cooking in Sephardi culture is an important one,” Shurka said. “Women, usually the ones to prepare the food, bond over the cooking process by sharing their different recipes with each other. Other than being nourishing, cooking delicious food for your family is a woman’s way of expressing love.”
At her pop-up, Shurka, 34, stayed behind the small restaurant’s bar as she dished out each person’s dinner. Diners who had registered and paid the $50 fee in advance sat at small tables in the narrow, rustic space in the East Village. The four-course tasting menu began with small salads and gondi, Persian chicken and chickpea meatballs. The dessert was a date bar served with chocolate, tahina, and raspberry, which a man near me described as a “Mediterranean Reese’s.”
This was not the first short-term kubbeh joint to pop up in New York. For three weeks in March 2013 people flocked to The Kubbeh Project, which also took temporary residence in the East Village. Some waited for upwards of two hours (myself included) in the cold to enjoy a bowl of kubbeh soup and a cup of tea.
Capitalizing on the food’s growing popularity, Shurka is currently developing a permanent kubbeh-focused restaurant with her fiancé, David Ort. While Shurka’s cuisine is not kosher, she offers vegetarian options and would be open to a kosher spin-off depending on interest. She is hoping to change her menu seasonally and serve Arak-based cocktails in addition to both Israeli and Palestinian beer. For the record Shurka prefers beet broth with her own kubbeh but enjoys experimenting with flavors from across the Middle East, even incorporating spices from her family’s Persian background (her father is Iranian, her mother Ashkenazi from Long Island).
Said Shurka, “it’s not just cooking but curating the experience for people.”
'Not All American Jews Are Ashkenazi'
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‘Not All American Jews Are Ashkenazi’
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Mijal Bitton at the American Jewish Historical Society library. Michael Datikash/JW
Mijal (pronounced Michal) Bitton is a doctoral candidate at New York University, where she studies the experience of contemporary Sephardic communities in the United States. She is a doctoral fellow and faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Bitton has been awarded an AVI CHAI fellowship for her studies and is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. A writer and educator, she was born in Argentina, lived in Israel and now resides in Lower Manhattan. She spoke to The Jewish Week via email.
What inspired your choice to focus your doctoral research on the Syrian-Jewish community in N.Y.?
I grew up in a home where Sepharadi life was understood as offering an alternative narrative of what it means to be Jewish in the world and specifically in America. As I began exploring literature in the social scientific study of Jews and other religious/ethnic minorities in the United States, I realized that there is a significant gap in the knowledge of American Sephardim that could shed light on my own narrative. Specifically, Sepharadi Jews who immigrated to the United States from Middle Eastern and Muslim countries in the 20th century are very much understudied — we have yet to develop categories of Jewish-American religiosity and ethnicity devoid of Ashkenazi and Western genealogies. I am conducting this research because I want to help remedy this gap and to enrich scholarship on American Jews and more generally, American religion and ethnicity.
What can the wider Jewish community learn from the Sephardic community?
I cannot comment on what others could learn, but can mention some aspects of Sepharadi living that I appreciate. Specifically, I love many aspects that derive from the emphasis on collective living that is often found in Sepharadic communities. In an America that is characterized by the individualism described in Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone,” societies that produce strong relationships are increasingly valuable. Sepharadi individuals that I interview describe how their lives are infused with meaning and vibrancy by belonging to a socially dense extended family — a community where people know them by name, where they reach out if they need help, and where, as a woman I know once mentioned, “you feel as if you are never alone.”
I also think that Sepharadic communities can offer an important model for how to treat elderly parents and grandparents. I know of many Sepharadi social groups that have arranged their infrastructures in ways that allow the aging generation to actively participate in community life. In this sense, reverence for family translates into care for the elderly.
What about spirituality? Do you find that in the larger Sephardic community, that there is a distinctive sense of spirituality?
I have found in many Sepharadi social groups a certain spiritual “unselfconscious coherence” — borrowing a term from theorist Benedict Anderson. Let me explain. I often hear Ashkenazi individuals describe seeming contradictions in the Sepharadi way of religious living. How come many Sepharadi women dress ‘immodestly’ (according to Jewish Orthodox standards) and still pray with seemingly strong devotion? How come many Sepharadi men do not wear kippot in public yet attend to other religious obligations scrupulously?
I see these seeming contradictions as reflecting an American Sepharadi traditionalism (in Hebrew – Masortiyut) similar to the traditional practice of Mizrahim in Israel. Traditional individuals often feel comfortable taking on some commandments and not others, or appearing “more Jewish” at different times than others, without affecting their own self-perception as religious individuals. Characterizing this compartmentalization is what I understand as an unselfconscious coherence in which individual religious variance is accepted within a coherent narrative of Judaism.
This traditionalism — which challenges the religious-secular binary — helps foster a sense of spirituality that is not necessarily connected with keeping Jewish law, but might be reflected more holistically in people’s daily living. I hear God mentioned constantly in Sepharadi settings that I study; God’s name is present on people’s lips in a very natural way, not necessarily connected to their ritual observance levels.
I have a friend who is from Morocco, who sees Jews from Arab lands as having the potential to help bridge the Arab and Jewish worlds, and to have some role in the peace process in the Middle East. Would you agree?
Your friend’s words might reflect the particular experience of Jews in Morocco, where the local population has shown tolerance and friendship to the Jewish community. This is not the case in all other Sepharadi communities. Many people I speak with are still living with memories of having experienced terrible conditions in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel. Jews in Syria, for example, were held as virtual prisoners (not allowed to leave the country without paying a fine and leaving family members as guarantors behind) for decades. I am not sure that Sepharadi and Mizrahi individuals who still recall their suffering in their countries of origin can help bridge the Arab and Jewish political worlds at this point, since there has been no collective process of reconciliation.
I myself feel a strong affinity for the Arab and Muslim culture that helped shape my Sepharadi Judaism. … I hope that we — as Sepharadi Jews with roots in the Middle East — can draw from our heritage to work towards lasting peace and understanding.
How can the broader North American Jewish community become more sensitive to diversity in ethnicity and religious practice represented by Sepharadi communities?
The most important thing is to begin being careful with our language. Not all American Jews are Ashkenazi. Not all came from Europe. Not all identify as white. Not all follow Ashkenazi halacha. Not all who are religious belong to a Jewish denomination. I hope that American Jewish organizations apply the language and values of diversity to include the experiences of American Sephardim. I would urge teachers who make syllabi to not write “Jewish” if what they mean is Jewish-Ashkenazi. I will never forget walking into high school classes and having to ask teachers to include Sepharadi experiences in classes that were simply termed “Jewish law” or “Jewish history.” I would also ask that individuals and organizations make sure that Sephardim are not viewed or treated as exotic, but simply as another type of American Jews.
Can you share a ritual you practice, that is distinctive to Sephardic homes?
One of my favorite Sephardi rituals is the Havdala ceremony at my grandparents home. My grandparents — who moved to Israel from Melilla, Spain — conduct a lengthy Havdala ceremony that can take over an hour. The ceremony is filled with pizmonim (traditional Jewish songs), berahot (blessings) on food, blessings for all my grandparents’ children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and prayers for those in need. While I have not retained the hour-long ceremony, there is a small minhag (custom) that I — and many Sepharadim — practice. As soon as we say the first Havdala blessing over the wine we laugh — we laugh loudly even if we don’t feel like laughing. We laugh to welcome in the new week and to infuse our days with happiness.
'In The Name Of The Father
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In The Name Of The Father
Caroline Lagnado
Special To The Jewish Week
The author, right, with her sister Evelyn, at summer camp in the Berkshires. Courtesy of Caroline Lagnado
One Saturday afternoon in my Jewish sleepaway camp in the Berkshires, the girls in my bunk and I gathered in a gazebo to hear a Jewish “name expert” tell us the history of our names. On Saturday afternoon, the camp liked to schedule something a little intellectual to make us think, but nothing too strenuous. It was the Sabbath, the day of rest, after all.
Earlier that day we woke up, dressed in summer skirts and dresses, and dutifully attended Shabbat morning services in the “Bet-Am,” the meetinghouse of the camp, a run-down concrete building with camp art projects taped to the walls. Then we ate a festive Shabbat lunch, some kind of chicken dish, which was an upgrade from the camp fare we typically ate, like fish sticks and grilled cheese, in the “heder ochel,” the cafeteria, which contained rows of picnic-style tables covered in white plastic tablecloths.
All of the buildings and spaces in the camp had Hebrew names so that we would learn the language of our people, outside of the daily lessons called “kitah,” the Hebrew word for class. Each Sunday morning the bunks were inspected for cleanliness by the head of our age division. One week my bunk won the coveted prize of cleanliness, “The Golden Ya-eh,” the golden dustpan award.
That summer the sun spotted my face with freckles and covered my back with a sunburn. My hair was starting to get frizzier and much to my mother’s dismay I clomped around in ungainly but fashionable Birkenstock sandals. At least they were good for my feet, my German grandmother, Jenny, said.
I turned 11 that summer and had the top bed of a rickety metal bunk bed that shook when I ascended and descended or when my bunkmate plopped into her bed to rest or write a letter home. Nights when I couldn’t fall asleep, I’d stare up at the roof of the old bunk, where planks of wood met to form an inverted v-shape above our heads. A bunk so old that some of the moms of the girls in my bunk might have spent a summer in it. When there were thunderstorms, I’d stare at that wooden ceiling and hope that the lightning wouldn’t burn down the shabby wooden planks.
I was the only girl in my bunk that summer with a name that was neither “nothing,” meaning a name selected by immigrant forbearers wishing to assimilate, like Green, nor stereotypically Jewish to an American ear like the Eastern European-Jewish names Goldberg and Schwartz.
My dad, a Sephardic Jew, had burdened me with an Italian last name, Lagnado, that invited crinkled eyebrows and was routinely misspelled and mispronounced at my Ashkenazi school and synagogue. Teachers regularly asked if my father had converted. Growing up, the name didn’t ever really feel Jewish enough.
“Log-na-toe” was the common mispronunciation instead of the melodic “La-ni-ado.” Though I found the name beautiful, especially when paired with my first name to form a combination that was heavy on the vowels and European-sounding, it was not an easy name to carry as a girl. My dad was an immigrant from Egypt; he and his family had been refugees when they came to New York in the 1960s. Changing their name never occurred to them.
Despite the fact that it was my first time away from my family and from New York City for so long, I was having a good summer. Though I was shy, I had somehow landed a role in the camp play, a production of “The Lion King,” that someone had translated into Hebrew. I went kayaking on the lake, made art projects, and flirted with the baseball instructor, a guy in his late teens who wore white T-shirts daily and had a scruffy face.
I enjoyed writing letters to my parents, my grandparents, my little sister, and those friends back home in Queens who hadn’t taken the plunge and gone to sleepaway camp yet. They wrote to me too, telling me about summer city things they were doing — backyard barbecues, visits to museums, to botanical gardens and to the beach on Long Island. Sometimes they sent me packages with treats for me and my bunkmates, a glossy copy of Seventeen magazine for us to pore over during rest time, kosher candies and instant soup mix that we could mix with hot tap water; maybe there would be some cash for the camp commissary with which to buy Rolos.
I nervously waited for my turn as each girl from my bunk had the history of her name described by this visiting name authority. One girl’s family, the ancestors of a girl named Shulman, must have been scholars in the old country; the ancestors of the girls whose names were Nadler and Schneider must have been tailors; another’s name, Appelbaum, had something to do with apple trees.
“Hmm,” the expert mumbled in bewilderment when he asked me my name.
“It’s Sephardic,” I tried to explain. I got the crinkled eyebrows I was used to, as well as a mispronunciation, even though I had just said my name out loud. My name seemed to be undecipherable to this Jewish name expert, confirming my fears about my place in the community. I sunk into the gazebo’s wooden bench, hoping that the name guy would just skip over me. And after a few excruciating moments, he did. He declared that he simply didn’t know the origin of my name, and moved onto the next girl.
This year I got married and changed my last name (but not my byline) to Miller, my husband’s assimilationist family name. Eleven- year-old me would have been so jealous.
But I kept Lagnado as my middle name.
Caroline Lagnado covers the visual arts for The Jewish Week.
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/special-sections/sephardim-new-york/name-father#i9fA80lysaju0BA6.99
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"The Secret to Flexibility in Marriage" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, Adar I 23, 5776 · March 3, 2016
This Week's Features:
The Secret to Flexibility in Marriage
What does it mean to love?
By Yacov Barber
The Power of Youth
Watch (7:25) 
Chassidic Melody: Shehashalom Shelo
Watch (4:03) 
Do Jews Believe in Good Luck?The Jewish view on the zodiac
By Avraham Plotkin
Watch (35:54)
Mordechai’s Shock TreatmentThe Megillah in Depth, Chapter 4, Part 1
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch (1:07:16)
Effective LeadershipExploring Rashi on the tribal leaders’ contributions to the Mishkan
By Ari Shishler
Watch (56:10)
Gather for Hakhel!Watch how it’s done!
Watch (4:03)
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
"The Secret to Flexibility in Marriage" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, Adar I 23, 5776 · March 3, 2016This Week's Features:
The Secret to Flexibility in Marriage
What does it mean to love?
By Yacov Barber
The Power of Youth
Watch (7:25) Chassidic Melody: Shehashalom Shelo
Watch (4:03) Do Jews Believe in Good Luck?The Jewish view on the zodiac
By Avraham Plotkin
Watch (35:54) Mordechai’s Shock TreatmentThe Megillah in Depth, Chapter 4, Part 1
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch (1:07:16) Effective LeadershipExploring Rashi on the tribal leaders’ contributions to the Mishkan
By Ari Shishler
Watch (56:10) Gather for Hakhel!Watch how it’s done!
Watch (4:03) Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
My Portion in the World to Come
By Avraham Plotkin
Airs Thursday, March 3 at 7pm ET
By Avraham Plotkin
Airs Thursday, March 3 at 7pm ET
Jewish Wonder Women
Parshah Curiosities: Vayakhel
By Mendel Kaplan
Airs Thursday, March 3 at 8pm ET
Parshah Curiosities: Vayakhel
By Mendel Kaplan
Airs Thursday, March 3 at 8pm ET
Shulchan Aruch, Kavanas HaBrachos 5:1
Laws Relating to Intent when Reciting the Blessings, Part 1
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Friday, March 4 at 6am ET---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Jewish Wonder Women: Parshah Curiosities: Vayakhel - Mendel Kaplan" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, 3 March 2016
Jewish Wonder Women
Parshah Curiosities: Vayakhel
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch
This webcast begins:
Thursday, March 03, 2016 at 8pm ET
About this webcast:
The Torah’s gives a glowing description of the women’s exceptional contributions towards constructing the Mishkan—highlighting the feminine superiority of faith. This class also uncovers intriguing nuggets on the art of spinning goat-hair, a ghost-written prayer, and the special connection to Rosh Chodesh.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Laws Relating to Intent when Reciting the Blessings, Part 1
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Friday, March 4 at 6am ET---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Jewish Wonder Women: Parshah Curiosities: Vayakhel - Mendel Kaplan" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, 3 March 2016Jewish Wonder Women
Parshah Curiosities: Vayakhel
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch
This webcast begins:
Thursday, March 03, 2016 at 8pm ET
About this webcast:
The Torah’s gives a glowing description of the women’s exceptional contributions towards constructing the Mishkan—highlighting the feminine superiority of faith. This class also uncovers intriguing nuggets on the art of spinning goat-hair, a ghost-written prayer, and the special connection to Rosh Chodesh.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
My Portion in the World to Come
By Avraham Plotkin
Airs Thursday, March 3 at 7pm ET
By Avraham Plotkin
Airs Thursday, March 3 at 7pm ET
Shulchan Aruch, Kavanas HaBrachos 5:1
Laws Relating to Intent when Reciting the Blessings, Part 1
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Friday, March 4 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
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"Now on Jewish.TV: My Portion in the World to Come - Avraham Plotkin" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, 3 March 2016
My Portion in the World to Come
By Avraham Plotkin
Watch
This webcast begins:
Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 7pm ET
About this webcast:
Can a Jew lose his/her portion in the world to come? What can be done to restore our place in paradise?
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Laws Relating to Intent when Reciting the Blessings, Part 1
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Friday, March 4 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
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"Now on Jewish.TV: My Portion in the World to Come - Avraham Plotkin" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, 3 March 2016My Portion in the World to Come
By Avraham Plotkin
Watch
This webcast begins:
Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 7pm ET
About this webcast:
Can a Jew lose his/her portion in the world to come? What can be done to restore our place in paradise?
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Mordechai’s Shock Treatment
The Megillah in Depth, Chapter 4, Part 1
By Mendel Kaplan
Airs Wednesday, March 2 at 7pm ET
The Megillah in Depth, Chapter 4, Part 1
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Airs Wednesday, March 2 at 7pm ET
Shulchan Aruch, Netilas Yodayim 4:19-21 (First Edition)
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 16
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"Great Jewish Things Happening In Orlando!" Orlando Center for Jewish Development for Thursday, 3 March 2016
Great Things are Happening in Orlando!
www.OCJD.org
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, March 3 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Great Jewish Things Happening In Orlando!" Orlando Center for Jewish Development for Thursday, 3 March 2016Great Things are Happening in Orlando!
www.OCJD.org
info@OCJD.org
Orlando Center for Jewish Development
The Orlando Center for Jewish Development, OCJD for short, was founded to help further Orthodox life in Orlando by supporting orthodox programs to meet our goal of building Orlando from the inside and out.
Orlando Center for Jewish Development
The Orlando Center for Jewish Development, OCJD for short, was founded to help further Orthodox life in Orlando by supporting orthodox programs to meet our goal of building Orlando from the inside and out.
One such program is the Orlando Torah Academy, one of Orlando’s orthodox day schools. A few weeks ago, Orlando Torah Academy set up an innovative Crowdfunding/ Lending campaign to purchase the school building. The campaign, which has received media coverage and attestations, raised over $1 million in just two and a half weeks. The total currently sits at around 1.3 million dollars to the goal of 1.8 million dollars and a deadline of March 15th 2015. Orlando Torah Academy has grown by 500% over the past 5 years and has had remarkable success.The next couple of weeks are critical for the school; the purchase of the building will allow Orlando Torah Academy to continue its success.
Read the full articles in the Matzav, Yeshiva World, Jewish Press, and front page of Yated.
Disney Is Not The Only Place For Magic In Orlando
[Communicated] Historic Crowd Funding Campaign – Be A Part of Saving Orlando Torah Academy From Losing Its Building
The first ever of its kind crowd funding campaign kicks into high gear to help this vital school buy its building by March 15 and avoid the risk of losing its home and closing down.
Torah Umesorah and Eastern Union join forces to create the vehicle so that Klal Yisroel can help Orlando Torah Academy continue doing their chashuva work for the Jewish community of Orlando.
Crowd funding is all the rage these days, but it has never before been used to help a yeshiva buy its building and secure its future. UNTIL TODAY. Historically, if a yeshiva needed a loan for their building, they would go to a bank, or to a small group of wealthy people who would lend the yeshiva the money at agreed upon terms.
A different way to borrow money is by crowd funding, where tens, hundreds or thousands of people combine small amounts to form one big loan.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE.
Prior to 2010, the Jewish children of Orlando had no local choice but to attend public school, as there was no Jewish day school. That all changed when Rabbi Yehuda Schepansky and Rabbi Avraham Wachsman, two young, idealistic Musmachim of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, moved to Orlando with their families to found Orlando Torah Academy and lay the foundation for a Torah community. They were just 28 and 32 years old, respectively, when they embarked on their mission.
Six short years ago, OTA opened its doors with just 12 children enrolled. Today, OTA, a member of Torah Umesorah’s vast network of Jewish day schools, has grown to almost 60 students with a bright future for continued growth ahead. OTA rents space within an office building, and students come from homes spanning the spectrum of Jewish backgrounds and traditions.
The future seemed promising, until OTA-and with it the very cornerstone of the community-found itself facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
The landlord of the building OTA occupies was about to go into contract to sell it to a company that wanted to occupy the whole building, and therefore would not have renewed the school’s lease. The Rabbis successfully convinced the owner to sell the building to them instead, at the same price of $1.8 million. Although the building is worth that amount, OTA has only been given until March 15thto raise the entire $1.8 million needed to purchase the building.
“Although we didn’t have an exact plan when we went into contract, we felt that we didn’t have a choice but to proceed,” said Rabbi Schepansky. “We need this building to continue the work we started, and we know that as long as we do our hishtadlus, the Ribbono Shel Olam will take care of the rest.”
CLICK HERE TO DONATE.
Yitzchok Rowe runs Hatzalah in Queens, NY and owns a business in Orlando. He spends time in the community twice a month. “This is a challenge far beyond the capabilities of Orlando’s small Jewish community, and the responsibility now rests on the shoulders of all of Klal Yisroel,” he says. R’ Rowe continues: “Rabbis Wachsman and Schepansky have not just built a yeshiva in the midbar of Orlando; they are saving lives and rejuvenating yiddishkeit!”
Layer upon layer of hashgacha pratis led to Rabbis Wachsman and Schepansky meeting Ira Zlotowitz, President of Eastern Union, a national commercial mortgage brokerage. This past Shabbos, Ira and his family were guests of their warm and vibrant Orlando community.
“My wife and I were blown away by what these two dynamic leaders accomplished and what the community is doing,” said Ira Zlotowitz. “We were inspired and knew that if others heard their story they would be inspired too.”
This past Motzei Shabbos they launched a crowd funding campaign called “40 for $40k”. Duvy Perkowski of Duvys Media has created a user-friendly and secure crowd-funding platform and website, pro-bono, and an LLC has been created to act as the vehicle for this campaign.
Crowd Lending OTA, LLC will be run by Rabbi Zvi Bloom, executive director of Torah Umesorah, Ira Zlotowitz, President of Eastern Union Funding, David Goldis, a tax accountant based in Ft. Lauderdale, and Yitzchok Rowe, CEO of BSD Health Care Consultants and head of Hatzalah in Queens.
As the name of the campaign suggests, OTA is looking for 40 ambassadors to commit to lend $40k. But in order to make the campaign as successful as possible and as easy as possible for many people to participate in this great mitzvah, any loan $1,200 or above will be accepted and appreciated. The ambassadors will each commit to lending the balance remaining by the March 15th deadline, up to $40k per ambassador.
“It was truly amazing that within minutes after Shabbos all the pieces came together, and bySunday night almost $300k in new loans had been pledged,” said Rabbi Wachsman. “In the previous 6 weeks all we had was $275k in total donations for the building.”
“None of us are embarking on this worthy campaign to make a profit; we are confident that this is an endeavor that will be blessed by Hakadosh Baruch Hu and that our profits will manifest themselves in the neshamos of the Jewish children of Orlando,” says Ira Zlotowitz.
Jeffrey Zwick, a prominent commercial real estate transactional attorney in NY, will be creating, pro-bono, all of the legal documents to ensure that anyone that wants to be part of this historic crowd funding event will be protected.
“This endeavor will be handled in the most professional manner,” says David Goldis, President of CG Accounting Corp, a Ft. Lauderdale, FL based tax accounting and consulting firm. “It will prove to be a win-win for everyone involved.”
“These are Hashem’s children, just like the children of New York, New Jersey, Chicago or Yerushalayim. Klal Yisroel can’t turn away and say ‘it’s not our town’. The call must be answered today!” says Rabbi Zvi Bloom. “Torah Umesorah is proud to be part of this crowd funding initiative.”
To donate, lend or become one of the 40 ambassadors, CLICK HERE.
{Matzav.com Newscenter}
For those who wish to donate to the community so that Orlando can continue to grow and make its resources available to both residents and tourists please click the donate button below. The OCJD is a 501c3 dedicated to growing the Jewish resources in Orlando. If you have specific designations for your donation please indicate the designation and it will be allocated appropriately. If you are donating to any cause that is currently running a raffle or contest, you will be automatically entered as per the contest guidelines.
Orlando appreciates your help.
Read the full articles in the Matzav, Yeshiva World, Jewish Press, and front page of Yated.
Disney Is Not The Only Place For Magic In Orlando
[Communicated] Historic Crowd Funding Campaign – Be A Part of Saving Orlando Torah Academy From Losing Its Building
The first ever of its kind crowd funding campaign kicks into high gear to help this vital school buy its building by March 15 and avoid the risk of losing its home and closing down.
Torah Umesorah and Eastern Union join forces to create the vehicle so that Klal Yisroel can help Orlando Torah Academy continue doing their chashuva work for the Jewish community of Orlando.
Crowd funding is all the rage these days, but it has never before been used to help a yeshiva buy its building and secure its future. UNTIL TODAY. Historically, if a yeshiva needed a loan for their building, they would go to a bank, or to a small group of wealthy people who would lend the yeshiva the money at agreed upon terms.
A different way to borrow money is by crowd funding, where tens, hundreds or thousands of people combine small amounts to form one big loan.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE.
Prior to 2010, the Jewish children of Orlando had no local choice but to attend public school, as there was no Jewish day school. That all changed when Rabbi Yehuda Schepansky and Rabbi Avraham Wachsman, two young, idealistic Musmachim of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, moved to Orlando with their families to found Orlando Torah Academy and lay the foundation for a Torah community. They were just 28 and 32 years old, respectively, when they embarked on their mission.
Six short years ago, OTA opened its doors with just 12 children enrolled. Today, OTA, a member of Torah Umesorah’s vast network of Jewish day schools, has grown to almost 60 students with a bright future for continued growth ahead. OTA rents space within an office building, and students come from homes spanning the spectrum of Jewish backgrounds and traditions.
The future seemed promising, until OTA-and with it the very cornerstone of the community-found itself facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
The landlord of the building OTA occupies was about to go into contract to sell it to a company that wanted to occupy the whole building, and therefore would not have renewed the school’s lease. The Rabbis successfully convinced the owner to sell the building to them instead, at the same price of $1.8 million. Although the building is worth that amount, OTA has only been given until March 15thto raise the entire $1.8 million needed to purchase the building.
“Although we didn’t have an exact plan when we went into contract, we felt that we didn’t have a choice but to proceed,” said Rabbi Schepansky. “We need this building to continue the work we started, and we know that as long as we do our hishtadlus, the Ribbono Shel Olam will take care of the rest.”
CLICK HERE TO DONATE.
Yitzchok Rowe runs Hatzalah in Queens, NY and owns a business in Orlando. He spends time in the community twice a month. “This is a challenge far beyond the capabilities of Orlando’s small Jewish community, and the responsibility now rests on the shoulders of all of Klal Yisroel,” he says. R’ Rowe continues: “Rabbis Wachsman and Schepansky have not just built a yeshiva in the midbar of Orlando; they are saving lives and rejuvenating yiddishkeit!”
Layer upon layer of hashgacha pratis led to Rabbis Wachsman and Schepansky meeting Ira Zlotowitz, President of Eastern Union, a national commercial mortgage brokerage. This past Shabbos, Ira and his family were guests of their warm and vibrant Orlando community.
“My wife and I were blown away by what these two dynamic leaders accomplished and what the community is doing,” said Ira Zlotowitz. “We were inspired and knew that if others heard their story they would be inspired too.”
This past Motzei Shabbos they launched a crowd funding campaign called “40 for $40k”. Duvy Perkowski of Duvys Media has created a user-friendly and secure crowd-funding platform and website, pro-bono, and an LLC has been created to act as the vehicle for this campaign.
Crowd Lending OTA, LLC will be run by Rabbi Zvi Bloom, executive director of Torah Umesorah, Ira Zlotowitz, President of Eastern Union Funding, David Goldis, a tax accountant based in Ft. Lauderdale, and Yitzchok Rowe, CEO of BSD Health Care Consultants and head of Hatzalah in Queens.
As the name of the campaign suggests, OTA is looking for 40 ambassadors to commit to lend $40k. But in order to make the campaign as successful as possible and as easy as possible for many people to participate in this great mitzvah, any loan $1,200 or above will be accepted and appreciated. The ambassadors will each commit to lending the balance remaining by the March 15th deadline, up to $40k per ambassador.
“It was truly amazing that within minutes after Shabbos all the pieces came together, and bySunday night almost $300k in new loans had been pledged,” said Rabbi Wachsman. “In the previous 6 weeks all we had was $275k in total donations for the building.”
“None of us are embarking on this worthy campaign to make a profit; we are confident that this is an endeavor that will be blessed by Hakadosh Baruch Hu and that our profits will manifest themselves in the neshamos of the Jewish children of Orlando,” says Ira Zlotowitz.
Jeffrey Zwick, a prominent commercial real estate transactional attorney in NY, will be creating, pro-bono, all of the legal documents to ensure that anyone that wants to be part of this historic crowd funding event will be protected.
“This endeavor will be handled in the most professional manner,” says David Goldis, President of CG Accounting Corp, a Ft. Lauderdale, FL based tax accounting and consulting firm. “It will prove to be a win-win for everyone involved.”
“These are Hashem’s children, just like the children of New York, New Jersey, Chicago or Yerushalayim. Klal Yisroel can’t turn away and say ‘it’s not our town’. The call must be answered today!” says Rabbi Zvi Bloom. “Torah Umesorah is proud to be part of this crowd funding initiative.”
To donate, lend or become one of the 40 ambassadors, CLICK HERE.
{Matzav.com Newscenter}
For those who wish to donate to the community so that Orlando can continue to grow and make its resources available to both residents and tourists please click the donate button below. The OCJD is a 501c3 dedicated to growing the Jewish resources in Orlando. If you have specific designations for your donation please indicate the designation and it will be allocated appropriately. If you are donating to any cause that is currently running a raffle or contest, you will be automatically entered as per the contest guidelines.
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Top Happenings
Started only a handful of years ago, the Orthodox Community in Orlando has really made some amazing strides in the past few years. It is growing into a warm, welcoming, laid-back, out of town community with a strong foundation of Torah resources and values. Below are some of the highlights of the great things happening in Orlando.
Orlando Torah Center, an orthodox Ashkenazic shul, has been welcomed into the OU family as an OU member shul. In addition to regular minyanim, it hosts a large variety of weekly shiurim for men and women. Read the OU press release.
OVO (Orthodox Vaad of Orlando) a local hecsher has been officially recognized by the CRC and has started to grant its hechsher to local establishments such as Kosher Grill.Click for the CRC listing.
The Orlando Jewish community has started construction of an Eruv and phase one completion is just weeks away. There is currently a raffle available with a grand prize of two round trip tickets from NYC to Orlando and a private jet tour of NYC.
Over the past few years the Winn Dixie supermarket has expanded its kosher section to three aisles and its own dedicated freezer and refrigerated space.
Chabad of South Orlando has bought a new building featuring a shul, social hall, school and soon to be Mikvah.
A weekday Sephardic Minyan headed by Rabbi Avshalom Baskin has started in the past year and is growing.
The number of families living within phase one of the Eruv has tripled within the past few years.
www.OCJD.org---------------------
Over the past few years the Winn Dixie supermarket has expanded its kosher section to three aisles and its own dedicated freezer and refrigerated space.
Chabad of South Orlando has bought a new building featuring a shul, social hall, school and soon to be Mikvah.
A weekday Sephardic Minyan headed by Rabbi Avshalom Baskin has started in the past year and is growing.
The number of families living within phase one of the Eruv has tripled within the past few years.
www.OCJD.org---------------------
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