Happy New Year 2016, Friday, January 1, 2015
Dear Reader,
In 2004, Jewish Week editor and publisher Gary Rosenblatt broke the story of Marc Gafni, a rabbi accused repeatedly of sexual misconduct. Gary's followed the story ever since, and this week Gafni was back in the headlines. Read The Jewish Week's leading, comprehensive coverage and the original story.
International
A Rabbi Accused of Sexual Abuse Seeks to Reinvent Himself
Back in 2004, Gary Rosenblatt weighed the evidence and considered Marc Gafni's case.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Marc Gafni. Via youtube.comIs there a statute of limitations for rabbis accused of abuse, and should there be? How does the community determine when someone has done teshuvah, or repentance, as claimed? Can rabbinic ordination be revoked? And when, if ever, do persistent rumors and allegations over a period of years add up to a legitimate story?
Prompting these thoughts in this season of repentance and forgiveness is the continuing saga of Rabbi Mordechai Gafni, 43, who in recent years has become an increasingly influential leader of the Jewish Renewal movement.
Born as Marc Winiarz, he came to New York from the Midwest for high school and college, became a youth leader and rabbi, was accused of sexual abuses and misconduct and started life anew in Israel 13 years ago with an Israeli name. He has left several rabbinic and educational posts, here and in Israel, amid a swirl of rumors and allegations spanning two decades.
Over time Gafni has assumed an increasingly high profile as a charismatic teacher, promoting what he calls a new, post-Orthodox stream of Judaism. He has been featured on Israeli television; written several books, including "Soul Prints: Your Path to Fulfillment," which was made into a PBS special; lectured extensively in the United States and Israel; served on the spiritual advisory council of Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, a national organization based in Philadelphia; led retreats at Elat Chayyim, a Jewish Renewal center in the Catskills; preached frequently at the Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles (see sidebar below); and founded Bayit Chadash ("new home"), a New Age Jewish community in Israel that he said strives "to restore the spark of holy paganism."
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the spiritual leader of the Israeli community of Efrat, called several months ago to tell me he would like to revoke the rabbinic ordination he gave Gafni many years ago when they had a close rabbi-student relationship. Riskin characterized as beyond the bounds of Orthodoxy his former student's theology, described earlier this year in a lengthy profile in Haaretz, the Israeli daily. In the newspaper, Gafni called for restoring a balance between the erotic and the spiritual in Judaism.
For his part, Gafni acknowledged he has moved beyond Orthodoxy. He said he has other ordinations and, in a letter to Riskin this spring, "returned" his smicha to spare his former teacher any further embarrassment.
Dogged by Critics
But the crux of the controversy surrounding Gafni is more about his personal behavior than his theology. For the past two decades he has been dogged by a small, informal network of people, here and in Israel, who charge that he has had a long history of immoral conduct, including sexual contact with and abuse of underage girls.
These critics, including alleged former victims, several rabbis and educators, have urged synagogues and educational institutions not to hire or engage him, and they have stepped up their efforts as Gafni's activities have broadened and become more public after his return from a self-imposed exile of sorts, spending several years writing and studying at Oxford University in England.
Gafni admitted to having "made mistakes in my life," including giving in to a strong temper when he was a young man. But he insisted that while he had adult relationships with women at times when he was single, he has been married for several years to his third wife, he was "never abusive." He said he has done teshuvah, in part by carefully removing himself from potentially tempting situations.
"I don't work with kids, I don't counsel men or women and I don't meet alone with women," he said, anxious to be rid of the old allegations.
"How do I make it be over?" he asked me.
Even Gafni's detractors said he is brilliant, charming and magnetic; even his supporters admitted he has a powerful ego and a spotted past. And he has plenty of detractors and supporters. Indeed, what makes this case so unusual, besides the length of time this issue has been discussed and debated, is the number of prominent rabbis and educators lined up on opposing sides, and the intensity of their convictions.
Avraham Infeld, now the president of Hillel, was heading an educational program in Israel called Melitz when he hired Gafni in the late 1990s, despite pressure not to do so. Infeld has said he had no regrets. Rabbis Saul Berman, who heads the Modern Orthodox group Edah, and Joseph Telushkin, the writer and ethicist, also defended Gafni, asserting that he is a gifted teacher and that they have heard no credible reports against him of improper behavior in the past 15 years or so.
"There is an element of unfairness," Berman said, "in continuing to resuscitate the same old claims, which are not substantiated, and for people not to acknowledge that individuals can change and grow."
Regarding the allegations of sexual misbehavior against Gafni, Riskin said he has been approached by many people over the years with similar patterns of complaints of seductive and harassing behavior toward young women on the part of his former student -- charges he takes seriously.
Other rabbis troubled by Gafni's past behavior and skeptical of his depth of teshuvah include Rabbi Heshie Billet, the former president of the Rabbinical Council of America, and Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual adviser at Yeshiva University, both of whom knew Gafni in his youth.
Blau said he has spoken with a number of women "from the past who said they were victimized, and in no case do I know of his admitting direct responsibility or contacting them to express regret. So what teshuvah has he done?"
In Love or Abusive?
Two women who claim to be victims of Gafni when they were teenagers in New York more than 20 years ago have come forward separately to speak out, though both asked that their full names not be used because they said they still fear the rabbi.
One of the women said Gafni "repeatedly sexually assaulted" her over a nine-month period, beginning when she was 13. The woman said she remains emotionally scarred by the experience, which took place in 1979 and 1980. She asserted that Gafni, who was then a student rabbi, "repeatedly and forcibly sexually assaulted me" when he would stay at her house over Shabbat and sneak into her room in the middle of the night.
"It was a reign of terror and I felt helpless," she said. "He told me that if I told anyone, I would be shamed in the community and I believed him. I was physically afraid of him."
In the mornings, she continued, Gafni would be overcome with guilt and pray fervently, beating his chest and urge her to do teshuvah, as well, since he said his desire for her was her fault.
Only years later was she able to tell her family, and she still feels anger about the experience.
"I had a real spiritual home in Judaism, and he completely destroyed it," the woman said. "My work has been to make peace with my own spirituality because it died after that experience."
When told of the woman's comments, Gafni said he would like the situation to be "healed," adding that his attempt to do so several years ago went unheeded. He pointed out that he was only 19 or 20 at the time of the relationship.
"I was a stupid kid and we were in love," the rabbi said. "She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her."
The second woman, Judy, said that when she was 16 and deeply unhappy at home, she joined a popular Orthodox outreach group for teens that Gafni was leading called JPSY (Jewish Public School Youth), and was drawn to his charisma and concern for her.
During a two-week period when she ran away from home and was staying with Rabbi Gafni, who was then 25 and married, Judy said he abused her sexually on two occasions. Even more upsetting, she said, was that afterward, the rabbi tried to convince her the encounter did not happen, and then harassed her for many months. He threatened to keep her out of Jewish schools (she was seeking to transfer from public school to a yeshiva), called her home at all hours of the night and then hung up, mailed pictures to her home of naked men and had her followed.
"He attempted to destroy my life for a year and a half," she said.
Gafni said that Judy was a troubled, unstable teenager who fabricated the story after he rebuffed her advances.
A woman named Susan, who at the time was a 22-year-old adviser in JPSY, said she believed Judy's account. She said that when she took Judy's side, Gafni made harassing phone calls and threats against her.
"He told me I would regret it," Susan said, adding that the rabbi made inappropriate advances to her, as well.
The rabbi said his version of the episode with Judy was corroborated by a psychologist engaged by Yeshiva University, which housed JPSY at the time. Judy said other psychologists support her account.
Spiritual Signature
The back-and-forth on the charges and explanations have filled many of my notebooks over the past three years, as I have interviewed more than 50 people on this issue. Some investigations have a clear resolution; this one does not.
Defenders of Gafni note the allegations go back many years. They demand more recent proof of wrongdoing and real names to back up the charges. His critics offer, and psychologists affirm, that it is common for abuse victims to speak out only after much time has elapsed, if at all, and to feel embarrassed, if not fearful, about using their names.
Even the criteria of when a public airing of abuse charges constitutes lashon hara, Hebrew for gossip, and when it is an obligation -- to protect people -- is ultimately a judgment call. The determining factor is whether the accused person is a danger to society and may abuse again.
But who is to say when and whether Gafni is free of his acknowledged past "mistakes"?
Two groups in the Renewal movement, Aleph and Elat Chayyim, looked into the allegations against Gafni and found "no evidence of wrongdoing," according to Rabbi Arthur Waskow. (The three women with whom I spoke said they were never contacted.) And Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the acknowledged leader of the Renewal movement, said he is aware of the allegations against Gafni but supports him.
"If you want to find fly specks in the pepper, you can always find them," Schachter-Shalomi said. "But I've watched him teach. He is learned, exciting and charismatic. A good teacher is one who gets people excited."
Indeed, Gafni's followers and admirers said he is a gifted thinker and leader who has helped bring many people closer to Judaism through his writings, lectures and television shows. They said he has done teshuvah, presents no threat to anyone and should be left alone to continue his important teaching.
His critics contend that he is a self-promoter and deceiver who has never been honest with others, or himself, about his behavior. They find his increasing popularity infuriating and worry that his charisma and influence could result in trouble for unsuspecting followers.
In the middle is Gafni, who said that while others portray him as Svengali, he sees himself as a "victim" of a longstanding "witch hunt," motivated primarily by several Orthodox rabbis jealous of his success.
In his writings he described himself as "a flawed human being, forever striving," and urged each of us to establish and craft our "soul print," our personal life story, the "spiritual signature" we leave on the world.
Gafni evokes strong emotions wherever he goes, leaving a mark of darkness or light, depending on how his own "soul print" is perceived.
gary@jewishweek.org
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The more things change, the more they stay the same, of course. As we say goodbye to 2015, enjoy The Jewish Week's two year-end roundups.International
Ten Keepers For 2015
What touched us in the year that was.
Robert Goldblum
Managing Editor
Matisyahu: Beats back BDS. Getty ImagesYes, it was a brutal year, from Paris to the streets of Jerusalem to San Bernardino. And yet, as we exit 2015, we mined the year’s news and came up with a few nuggets that catch the light. Here then, 10 stories that shined:
–We’ll Miss (really miss!)… Abe Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League who stepped down in July, for being gutsy, unpredictable, stubborn and 1,000 percent Jewish. End of an era.
–We’re Proud Of… Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt, for making the tricky transition from Israeli basketball to the NBA Finals. (OK, having LeBron helped, but still.) … And of the quirkily misspelled American Pharoah, owned by the Egyptian-born Orthodox Jewish (and Teaneck resident) Ahmed Zayat, for winning the Triple Crown and captivating a nation.
–We’re Blown Away… that “Ida,” an austere black-and-white Holocaust-related film about a nun who carries a Jewish secret, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and that it had one of the longest runs of any film at Film Forum. Restores our faith in the power of simple storytelling, and in the sometimes-shallow Academy voters.
–We’re So Thankful For… Lassana Bathily, the Muslim employee of the kosher market in Paris who shepherded Jewish customers into the shop’s basement, thereby keeping them alive. A real hero, in any religion.
–We’re Awed By… the outpouring of grief for slain U.S. gap-year teen Ezra Schwartz, and then the outpouring of support for his family. We feel like he’s a son to so many of us.
–We’re Of Two Minds About… the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s decision to admit and ordain intermarried rabbis. Right side of history, or a leap too far?
–We’re Of One Mind About… the Reform movement’s far-reaching welcome of LGBTQ Jews. Right side of history. Period.
–We’re Relieved That… President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu seemed to bury the Iran deal hatchet at their White House meeting in November. Optics matter, though the hard feelings may not be far from the surface.
–We Note The Irony Of… an Israeli-developed immunotherapy cancer drug helping to cure President Jimmy Carter’s melanoma. The ex-prez has been tough (really tough) on Israel; Israel, it turns out, has been tender on him. Then again, Israeli hospitals treat terrorists as well as their victims, so we shouldn’t be surprised by the generous spirit.
–We’re Packing For Barcelona and Lisbon… since both Spain and Portugal this year offered citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews. Long time (500-plus years) coming. And speaking of Spain … we’re rapt by rapper Matisyahu’s big-hearted decision to play a Spanish music festival after originally being disinvited because of ugly BDS matters. Art slays politics.
And so bring on 2016.
editor@jewishweek.org---------------------
It was a time of tragedy -- Paris -- and triumph -- the Reform movement's embrace of LGBTQ Jews.
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Also: misbehaving rabbis, Amy Schumer and BDS angst.
The Top 10 Stories That Captivated Our Readers in 2015
The Top 10 Stories That Captivated Our Readers in 2015
ONE: Spiritual Journey
Howard Stern's Daughter Discloses Religious Identity
Carly Stern
Her father is a notorious radio personality; she once performed in the nude; but now, she would rather be studying Torah. Artist and actress Emily Stern is an observant Jew.
TWO: Sauna Rabbi Scandal
Riverdale’s ‘Open Secret’ Goes Public
Gary Rosenblatt
Congregants divided on Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt’s invitations to young men to join him in sauna.
THREE: The Agunah Crisis
Leading Rabbi Deals Big Blow To Agunah Court
Hannah Dreyfus
YU’s Schachter dismisses beit din solution as battle continues in Centrist/Modern Orthodox community.
FOUR: The Year of Amy Schumer
Confessions Of Amy Schumer’s Childhood Rabbi
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, RNS
From 1988 to 1995, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin was Amy Schumer’s—along with a slew of other Jewish comedy figures—rabbi, at Central Synagogue of Nassau County in Rockville Centre, New York.
FIVE: YU Developments
YU Faculty Votes 'No Confidence' In President Joel
Hannah Dreyfus
Yeshiva University faculty and students take unprecedented step to call attention to school's "refusal to take responsibility" for financial woes.
SIX: Special Report
BDS Money Trail Suggests Opaque Funding Network
Mitchell Bard
Campus groups press anti-Israel message with seemingly little money, but gain leverage with allies. A special investigative report.
SEVEN: The Cost Of Living
Modern Orthodoxy Has Its Costs – Not Just Financial
Eli Fischer
When cost of living pushes $300,000, what else is sacrificed?
EIGHT: Tradition
Birth Control, Jewish Law Collide At Stern
Hannah Dreyfus
Rare Forum On Contraception in Jewish Law Draws A Crowd At Stern—And Pushback.
NINE: Investigative Report With WNYC
12-Hour School Day, But Can't Do Math
Hella Winston and Amy Sara Clark
Inside the uphill battle to improve secular education in chasidic yeshivas.
TEN: Breaking Rank
Conservative Rabbis Break Ranks, Rip Bibi On Arab Comments
Stewart Ain
RA becomes first major Jewish group to criticize Likud leader's election day rhetoric; Netanyahu defends statements on MSNBC.---------------------
Happy New Year,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
OPINIONGary Rosenblatt
My ‘Horrorscope’ For 2016
The JW's editor predicts next year's major news stories: Snooki for Veep!
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
OK, so 2015 was a bummer. But we are a people with a tradition of looking to the future with hope — and having a sense of humor.
So here’s my prediction for the major news stories of 2016:
January: In the midst of a winter heat wave, Madison Square Garden cancels Ice Capades show due to melting ice; Republicans abruptly cancel outdoor “Global Warming Is A Myth” rally in Minnesota after key speakers suffer sunstroke.
February: On the eve of Super Tuesday primaries, Donald Trump announces his vice presidential running mate: Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi of the “Jersey Shore” reality MTV show. “Hey, she’s a woman,” Trump notes.
At Super Bowl ceremony in Santa Clara, Calif., NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell trips, hits head against iron goal post and is knocked unconscious. Awakening two days later he mumbles repeatedly, “no concussion.” X-rays reveal nothing.
March: United Nations votes Syrian President Assad as Humanitarian of the Year, crediting him with encouraging Syrians to seek new lives in democratic countries. Israel and Micronesia only countries to vote no; U.S. abstains.
Obama said to be considering another “red line” for Syria. If crossed, it would result in unspecified U.S. punishment. White House sources say “red line” would be somewhere in the Oval Office.
April: On Opening Day, Yankees lose 1-0 when Alex Rodriguez, who was on second base in the ninth inning, rounds third on Carlos Beltran’s lone drive to center field but refuses to score until he checks with his agent. Thrown out easily at home, A-Rod blames fans and media for the loss.
May: Iran shocks world by launching heavy rocket attacks against 11 European and Arab Sunni countries, sending Revolutionary Guard into Paris and London and kidnapping Queen Elizabeth. In response, Secretary of State Kerry invites Tehran to discuss over tea, assures Americans that Iran nuclear rollback “still on track.”
June: Pope Francis invites “all people everywhere” to apply for sainthood. “Who am I to say which of us is imperfect?” says Fran (as he asks to be called), after being named winner of Most Popular Papal Pontiff Ever contest.
On presidential election front, Chris Christie ends campaign, citing unfortunate slogan: “Christie – America’s Bridge To The Future.”
Hillary Clinton flies to Jerusalem, promises not to visit Palestinian President Abbas or kiss his wife; Netanyahu pledges not to announce new settlement construction in Jerusalem until Clinton boards plane for home.
July: New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver holds first press conference in jail, describes High Holiday services schedule for penitentiary penitents at in-house Congregation Ahavat Kessef. Silver notes need to charge for seats, given the expected overflow, and announces additional Daf Yomi classes.
At Democratic convention in Philadelphia, “Hail To Hillary” coronation ceremony delayed due to extended bathroom break.
Republicans, meeting in Cleveland, revamp convention procedures, announce Extreme Boxing matches to determine top candidate. Rubio too young to qualify; Bush begs off; Cruz eliminated for low blows.
Calling opponents “lightweights,” Christie considers re-entering race.
September: At U.N. General Assembly, Abbas threatens to hold his breath until Israel ends occupation. Palestinians respond enthusiastically, promise glorious funeral for him. Israelis note they invented that form of diplomacy. “Yitzhak Shamir held his breath over everything,” Netanyahu says wistfully.
At U.N. podium, Israeli prime minister tears up his speech, whips out crayons and draws crude picture of firecracker, pledging to light it under “The Supreme Leader’s supreme tuchus.”
On eve of High Holidays, Israelis mark inaugural Honor Our Statesmen Day, bringing snacks and adult magazines to jailed former officials.
October: In rare sign of unity, rabbis of all denominations sign statement agreeing that “the High Holidays are officially late this year.” Effort to add amendment encouraging Jews to treat each other with respect and kindness overwhelmingly defeated.
Donald Trump, campaigning in Brooklyn on Yom Kippur, invites chasidim to bull roast, noting, “I’ll supply the bull.”
In the entertainment world, Miss Universe host Steve Harvey files for divorce, tells court he apologizes for mistakenly marrying the wrong woman.
Defiant comedian Bill Cosby plans showbiz comeback, offering free mixed drinks on Ladies Nights; threatens to sue anyone who doesn’t laugh at his jokes.
November: In Playboy interview, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump acknowledges he had first asked Cosby to be his running mate but is now pleased he chose Snooki, “my cute and constant campaign companion.” On election eve, Snooki gives birth to baby boy with huge head of blonde hair; Trump’s invisible wife angrily leaves home.
Trump is elected president in landslide, vows to rename executive mansion “Trump House, repeal women’s voting rights and declare all-out war on “bad guys everywhere.”
Millions of Americans plan mass emigration.
Canada overbooked. EU says, “We’ve got our hands full.” Bibi calls on U.S. Jews to make aliyah. “Plenty of room for you in the West Bank,” he says. Assad invites “every American but the Jews” to settle in Syria…
December: Americans awake from bad dream.
Lame-duck President Obama, quoting Gerald Ford after the Watergate scandal, tells nation: “Our long national nightmare is over.”
Though bipartisan congressional leaders beg him to stay on as president, Obama just smiles and says, “God bless us, every one.”
Gary@jewishweek.org
Editor’s Note: Rabbi David Wolpe is off this week. His Musings column will resume next week.Read More
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THE ARTSBooks
A Bygone Gotham
Two new memoirs evoke an earlier New York.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Morris Dickstein, chronicles his intellectual awakening.Looking back over this year in New York City, with a new Whitney Museum, a new sculpture that shouts OY or YO, depending on what side of the East River you’re on, a new World Trade Center observatory back in use and a much-discussed new novel set here called “City on Fire,” I’m still drawn to an older New York, to pockets of time that are no more.
Two new memoirs beautifully evoke earlier Gotham days. Both by distinguished men of letters who came of age in the 1950s, Morris Dickstein’s “Why Not Say What Happened: A Sentimental Education” and Jack Schwartz’s “The Fine Print: My Life as a Deskman” are stories very well told. Dickstein writes of his trajectory from an Orthodox upbringing in a community of immigrants on the Lower East Side to the Ivy League and academia. Schwartz describes the pre-digital city with its many competing daily newspapers, and his journalistic career included stints at many of them.
A literary critic and professor, Dickstein, 75, chronicles his intellectual awakening; his book is also the story of his family, a love story (with his wife, who is called L), and an account of intellectual clashes and cultural shifts of the times. The title is a line from Robert Lowell’s introspective poem “Epilogue.”
In the opening scene of the memoir, Dickstein recalls a time when he was living in New Haven, newly married and studying at Yale, and finds himself in front of an apartment he had previously lived in, and filled with great curiosity. When no one answers the unlocked door, he lets himself in, feeling as though he is trespassing on his own life. That this past matters to him was clear. And in Dickstein’s fluent style, the incident reminds him of a favorite poem by William Wordsworth about time and memory.
Until he was 9, Dickstein lived on the first floor of a five-story walk-up on Henry Street on the Lower East Side, surrounded by quarreling relatives, with a row of eight or more shtieblach, or tiny synagogues, on the opposite side of the street. The family then moved to Flushing, where they lived across from and then above their dry goods store. (Later, he would review Bernard Malamud’s “The Tenants” and mention parallels with the tiny grocery described in "The Assistant"). The young Dickstein continued to attend the Orthodox Rabbi Jacob Joseph School on Henry Street, traveling by bus and subways on his own to get there. A happy, precocious kid who “spoke early and said clever things,” Dickstein felt loved, protected and worried about — but was not praised to his face for fear of attracting the evil eye.
Dickstein became the orator of his Boy Scout troop, read from the Torah weekly in the family’s Flushing shul, and, toward the end of high school, discovered that if he tucked works of Shakespeare and other books he wanted to read into the large volumes of the Talmud during class, the teachers wouldn’t notice.
Others have written about growing up poor on the Lower East Side, and about exuberant summers working in the Catskills, but Dickstein’s eye is distinctive, with clear memories stretching back decades. I recognize my own grandparents’ colorful yet melancholy Henry Street neighbors in Dickstein’s accounts of his surrogate parents across the hall: a childless couple, he a wheezing bookie who doted on his petite wife who spoke her own version of English.
Columbia College was a leap from RJJ, but Dickstein flourished. Many who graduated from college even more recently than Dickstein will be struck by the detail with which he remembers his courses, themes that engaged him and his precise evolution of thought.
“The things I remember, I remember very powerfully, I almost hallucinate them,” he tells The Jewish Week. “My college studies were life changing experiences, not simply classes. I had very good teachers at Columbia College, who also provided a larger connection to the worlds of New York intellectuals.” Many of the people he studied with, like Lionel Trilling, remained a presence in his life.
“College set me on a path I continue to pursue. Not many stay on the same path. I remained in the university world.” At Columbia, he wrote for “The Spectator,” and then launched a literary review called “The Supplement.”
After his undergraduate years at Columbia (with courses at JTS) and graduate studies at Yale (where he earned his doctorate) with a term at Cambridge, he got his first teaching position at Columbia. He then moved to Queens College, and a few years later received an additional appointment to the Graduate Center at CUNY, where he is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Theatre.
This is a very personal memoir: He writes openly about love, sex, anxiety and psychoanalysis. “If you’re not doing anything that makes you uncomfortable, you’re not being truthful,” he says. “I was determined not to idealize, or to make myself the hero of my own story. He then quotes George Orwell, as he does in the book: “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.”
About how his yeshiva education shaped him, he says, “Probably more than I realize. You can say that literary interpretation and being book-oriented is related to the Talmudic discourses and interpretation that you do in Talmudic analysis.”
Through the book, even as he leaves aside certain Jewish rituals, he continues to observe kashrut. These days, he says he keeps “symbolically kosher,” still making certain distinctions that are meaningful to him that “preserve my connection to my parents and their world, as well as to the history of the Jews.” When his father died in 1992, he would go to shul to say Kaddish and discovered the morning minyan at Ansche Chesed, not far from his Upper West Side home. He wrote about that experience, calling the piece “The Law of Return.”
Dickstein, who has published the cultural histories “Gates of Eden” and “Dancing in the Dark” along with other literary works, recalls hearing playwright David Hare recently talk about publishing a memoir, and how he felt the weight of association with certain times and places. Writing was a way to offload them, to no longer be burdened. Dickstein agrees, “In a sense I’m parking my memories in a volume, both preserving them and detaching myself. “
♦Around the time that Dickstein was writing for “The Spectator,” Jack Schwartz was at City College, writing and editing The City College Campus while also working as a copy boy at The Daily Mirror, a tabloid that was then the flagship Hearst newspaper in New York. Over the next half century — through “the heyday of American print journalism” — he worked at the Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, the Long Island Press and The New York Times, as well as the Paris Herald-Tribune.
His early days at the Mirror, as he recounts in “The Fine Print: My Life as a Deskman,” were peopled with Damon Runyon-esque characters, with lots of shouting, smoking and growling. It wasn’t uncommon for reporters and the men of the rewrite bank to keep a bottle of booze on their desks. One memorable night, he had to fetch a photographer from a nearby bar and race over to Radio City with him to photograph Marilyn Monroe.
Schwartz always has a great story, and he shares his insider’s view with great wit, understated erudition and deep insight. He worked his way up from copy boy, and served as reporter on many beats in newsrooms more dignified than the Mirror, foreign correspondent, creator and editor of a new book section at Newsday, and he worked the “backfield” all over The New York Times. Along the way, he befriended the linotype operators, copy-cutters and truck drivers.
Most of his career was spent as a “deskman,” an intermediary between the reporter and reader — assigning stories, supervising and shaping coverage, rewriting and polishing other people’s copy to the highest standards that they would be pleased to call their own.
“It was not a sentimental education in Flaubert’s terms,” he tells The Jewish Week. “At the beginning, it was a learning experience, and after a while a teaching experience, when I knew enough to impart whatever wisdom I had acquired to others. “
Schwartz, who retired from The New York Times in 2009, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and an International Affairs Reporting Fellow at Columbia and has taught at the Columbia School of Journalism and NYU, and served as a writing mentor at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a most affable guide and a terrific writer. Even as more news is read on computer screens from a range of sources, this is an important story of the people who continue to shape the news that’s fit to print.
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
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FOOD & WINE
Moss Cafe
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Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
22 Jewiest Pop Culture Moments Of 2015
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JEWISH TECHS
Summer Camp For Budding Mark Zuckerbergs
Rabbi Jason Miller
Brainstorm during the week; unplug on Shabbat. Courtesy of Camp Inc.
This summer, the first cohort of young campers will attend a beautiful camp in Boulder to start their journey as entrepreneurs.
Camp Inc. seeks to provide 7th through 12th graders with a unique Jewish summer camp experience that will spur creativity and invention through entrepreneurship. The ultimate goal of this camp for budding business leaders is to promote confidence, independence, leadership and philanthropy, all the while encouraging Jewish values in a dynamic Jewish summer camp community.
More than an MBA program for teens, Camp Inc. promises to teach practical entrepreneurship and real life start up experiences.
Josh Pierce, the chief camp officer, has a strong background in both Jewish camp and business leadership. After selling his event production company in 2011, Pierce, 35, teamed up with the Boulder Jewish Community Center where his friend Jonathan Lev serves as the executive director. Together with Camp Inc.'s Chief Operating Officer Daniel Baer, the three men have traveled the country recruiting campers, as well as startup veterans to serve as mentors and teachers for their inaugural summer: "Not only have I been doing something entrepreneurial by starting an overnight camp from scratch, I will also be able to teach teens how to start their own businesses."
The camp is looking for current Jewish 6th-11th graders who are creative, inventive and show problem-solving ability. "Essentially, we're looking for tinkerers," Pierce explains. "Our camp will appeal to those teens who are constantly asking themselves how they can perform tasks more efficiently."
The idea is that Camp Inc. will model what life should be like for a young person running a startup venture. "We're on a residential camp property with an archery range, sports fields, high ropes elements, hiking and biking," says Pierce. "Just like a real-life entrepreneur who needs breaks and a release from working on their company, campers at Camp Inc. will have plenty of time to enjoy our property's recreational activities."
Startup teams will be formed at camp with guest entrepreneurs who will visit each day to work with the campers and help these teams. Each week will culminate in a pitch day resembling the format of the "Shark Tank" reality television show. Entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists from Boulder and Denver will be on hand to field pitches from the campers. There are two pitch days in each session – the first will allow the campers to validate their idea and receive feedback from real-life entrepreneurs and investors, while on the second pitch day they can win prizes or seed money for their startup. Campers' startups can be a service or a product and can even be a nonprofit organization.
Three days of the week the campers spend their days on camp property with a healthy mix of recreational activities, cabin time and startup planning time. Two days a week they will board buses to go on experiential tours to local companies in the Boulder area where they will meet with entrepreneurs or survey individuals and receive feedback about their products.
Then there will be a full Shabbat experience in which they leave the specialty behind and celebrate the value of community and family. The camp leadership sees this as an opportunity to unplug and teach work-life balance in an entrepreneur's life. In fact, as Lev explains, "The Boulder JCC and Camp Inc. recently joined the National Day of Unplugging through Reboot."
The camp’s business specialist, Abby Schneider, has a doctorate in marketing research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and teaches university level business courses. The bunk counselor, Carolyn Shillinglaw, is a social entrepreneurship major at Tulane University with a Jewish camping background from the Reform movement's URJ camps.
While the camp is located in Boulder and plans to draw heavily from the local Denver and Boulder Jewish communities, campers are already registered from Florida, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Michigan, California, Illinois and Arizona.
"We're looking to create to the next generation of entrepreneurs that are connected to Jewish life," Lev said. "Who knows, we might just discover the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg this summer."
Rabbi Jason Miller is an educator, entrepreneur and technology writer from Detroit, Michigan. He's president of Access Computer Technology and blogs at RabbiJason.com.Read More
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POLITICAL INSIDER
Where do your donations go?
Douglas BloomfieldIt's that time of year. The joyous season of giving. No, I'm not talking about Chanukah, Christmas or Kwanza.
It's the time of year when we are flooded with appeals for money, not just in the spirit of generosity in this holiday season but because there's just a few days left to write those checks and get a tax deduction for the entire year.
My phone has been ringing – usually around dinner time – and my mailboxes, electronic and snail, have been filled with appeals for donations. All of them assure me that my badly needed money is going to help the neediest of the needy Jews, all for good causes.
Like most people this is the time of year when we make our donations and our folder of contributions requests is bulging.
Near the top of our list is the local volunteer rescue squad. We've needed – and personally benefitted – from their quick-response EMS services. As the name implies, it is largely operated by volunteers and on a small budget.
There are also many Jewish organizations on our list, or at least were until, as the pleas for money piled up, I came across reports in the Forward and elsewhere about what happens to those contributions.
Right off the top, a huge chunk goes to pay salaries and bonuses of the organizations' top. [Another issue, for another blog, is how they distribute the funds they collect]
Some of the contributions to non-charitable organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are not tax deductible, although I know many people think they are and try to claim them anyway.
Most of the others are bona fide charities and tax deductible. But, where does the money really go?
Compensation packages top half a million dollars annually at more than a dozen organizations, including Jewish Community Federations of Cleveland, Baltimore, New York and Chicago; Brandeis University, Yeshiva University, the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Birthright Israel. Paychecks at more than 30 others range from a quarter million to half a million.
And that doesn't include the bonuses and other benefits.
David Fisher, the top executive at the Birthright Israel Foundation, took home a $90,000 bonus on top of his $586,293 salary in 2014 plus other benefits, Forward reported. Matt Brooks of RJC got a $93,750 bonus, the largest in the newspaper's survey in addition to his $591,105 salary; by comparison, the NJDC, which is on life support, didn't even show up on the list of the top 60 Jewish organizations.
Howard Kohr, AIPAC's executive director, was paid $638,000 in salary in 2014, plus an additional $760,710 in previously earned deferred compensation. The group's revenues that year were nearly $78 million.
Yeshiva University president Richard Joel received a $1.6 million deferred compensation payout on top of his $738,180 salary despite the university's $150 operating deficit, the report noted.
According the Forward, Zionist Organization of America's total revenue in 2014 was just under $4.1 million, of which $440,440, over 10 percent, went to Morton Klein, its president, plus expenses and perqs. Jewish Voice of New York reported that Klein's income from 2008 to 2012 "exceeded 30% of the total donations" the group received during that period.
I'm sure every one of these Jewish leaders thinks' he or she is underpaid and doing the Lord's work, but how many of their contributors realize that their donations are going to pay salaries they could only dream of and bonuses that probably exceed their own income for at least this year if not more?
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political-insider/where-do-your-donations-go#v7Z5JxVhd1AKF22k.99
Read More
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The Jewish Week
A Rabbi Accused of Sexual Abuse Seeks to Reinvent Himself
Back in 2004, Gary Rosenblatt weighed the evidence and considered Marc Gafni's case.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Marc Gafni. Via youtube.comIs there a statute of limitations for rabbis accused of abuse, and should there be? How does the community determine when someone has done teshuvah, or repentance, as claimed? Can rabbinic ordination be revoked? And when, if ever, do persistent rumors and allegations over a period of years add up to a legitimate story?
Prompting these thoughts in this season of repentance and forgiveness is the continuing saga of Rabbi Mordechai Gafni, 43, who in recent years has become an increasingly influential leader of the Jewish Renewal movement.
Born as Marc Winiarz, he came to New York from the Midwest for high school and college, became a youth leader and rabbi, was accused of sexual abuses and misconduct and started life anew in Israel 13 years ago with an Israeli name. He has left several rabbinic and educational posts, here and in Israel, amid a swirl of rumors and allegations spanning two decades.
Over time Gafni has assumed an increasingly high profile as a charismatic teacher, promoting what he calls a new, post-Orthodox stream of Judaism. He has been featured on Israeli television; written several books, including "Soul Prints: Your Path to Fulfillment," which was made into a PBS special; lectured extensively in the United States and Israel; served on the spiritual advisory council of Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, a national organization based in Philadelphia; led retreats at Elat Chayyim, a Jewish Renewal center in the Catskills; preached frequently at the Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles (see sidebar below); and founded Bayit Chadash ("new home"), a New Age Jewish community in Israel that he said strives "to restore the spark of holy paganism."
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the spiritual leader of the Israeli community of Efrat, called several months ago to tell me he would like to revoke the rabbinic ordination he gave Gafni many years ago when they had a close rabbi-student relationship. Riskin characterized as beyond the bounds of Orthodoxy his former student's theology, described earlier this year in a lengthy profile in Haaretz, the Israeli daily. In the newspaper, Gafni called for restoring a balance between the erotic and the spiritual in Judaism.
For his part, Gafni acknowledged he has moved beyond Orthodoxy. He said he has other ordinations and, in a letter to Riskin this spring, "returned" his smicha to spare his former teacher any further embarrassment.
Dogged by Critics
But the crux of the controversy surrounding Gafni is more about his personal behavior than his theology. For the past two decades he has been dogged by a small, informal network of people, here and in Israel, who charge that he has had a long history of immoral conduct, including sexual contact with and abuse of underage girls.
These critics, including alleged former victims, several rabbis and educators, have urged synagogues and educational institutions not to hire or engage him, and they have stepped up their efforts as Gafni's activities have broadened and become more public after his return from a self-imposed exile of sorts, spending several years writing and studying at Oxford University in England.
Gafni admitted to having "made mistakes in my life," including giving in to a strong temper when he was a young man. But he insisted that while he had adult relationships with women at times when he was single, he has been married for several years to his third wife, he was "never abusive." He said he has done teshuvah, in part by carefully removing himself from potentially tempting situations.
"I don't work with kids, I don't counsel men or women and I don't meet alone with women," he said, anxious to be rid of the old allegations.
"How do I make it be over?" he asked me.
Even Gafni's detractors said he is brilliant, charming and magnetic; even his supporters admitted he has a powerful ego and a spotted past. And he has plenty of detractors and supporters. Indeed, what makes this case so unusual, besides the length of time this issue has been discussed and debated, is the number of prominent rabbis and educators lined up on opposing sides, and the intensity of their convictions.
Avraham Infeld, now the president of Hillel, was heading an educational program in Israel called Melitz when he hired Gafni in the late 1990s, despite pressure not to do so. Infeld has said he had no regrets. Rabbis Saul Berman, who heads the Modern Orthodox group Edah, and Joseph Telushkin, the writer and ethicist, also defended Gafni, asserting that he is a gifted teacher and that they have heard no credible reports against him of improper behavior in the past 15 years or so.
"There is an element of unfairness," Berman said, "in continuing to resuscitate the same old claims, which are not substantiated, and for people not to acknowledge that individuals can change and grow."
Regarding the allegations of sexual misbehavior against Gafni, Riskin said he has been approached by many people over the years with similar patterns of complaints of seductive and harassing behavior toward young women on the part of his former student -- charges he takes seriously.
Other rabbis troubled by Gafni's past behavior and skeptical of his depth of teshuvah include Rabbi Heshie Billet, the former president of the Rabbinical Council of America, and Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual adviser at Yeshiva University, both of whom knew Gafni in his youth.
Blau said he has spoken with a number of women "from the past who said they were victimized, and in no case do I know of his admitting direct responsibility or contacting them to express regret. So what teshuvah has he done?"
In Love or Abusive?
Two women who claim to be victims of Gafni when they were teenagers in New York more than 20 years ago have come forward separately to speak out, though both asked that their full names not be used because they said they still fear the rabbi.
One of the women said Gafni "repeatedly sexually assaulted" her over a nine-month period, beginning when she was 13. The woman said she remains emotionally scarred by the experience, which took place in 1979 and 1980. She asserted that Gafni, who was then a student rabbi, "repeatedly and forcibly sexually assaulted me" when he would stay at her house over Shabbat and sneak into her room in the middle of the night.
"It was a reign of terror and I felt helpless," she said. "He told me that if I told anyone, I would be shamed in the community and I believed him. I was physically afraid of him."
In the mornings, she continued, Gafni would be overcome with guilt and pray fervently, beating his chest and urge her to do teshuvah, as well, since he said his desire for her was her fault.
Only years later was she able to tell her family, and she still feels anger about the experience.
"I had a real spiritual home in Judaism, and he completely destroyed it," the woman said. "My work has been to make peace with my own spirituality because it died after that experience."
When told of the woman's comments, Gafni said he would like the situation to be "healed," adding that his attempt to do so several years ago went unheeded. He pointed out that he was only 19 or 20 at the time of the relationship.
"I was a stupid kid and we were in love," the rabbi said. "She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her."
The second woman, Judy, said that when she was 16 and deeply unhappy at home, she joined a popular Orthodox outreach group for teens that Gafni was leading called JPSY (Jewish Public School Youth), and was drawn to his charisma and concern for her.
During a two-week period when she ran away from home and was staying with Rabbi Gafni, who was then 25 and married, Judy said he abused her sexually on two occasions. Even more upsetting, she said, was that afterward, the rabbi tried to convince her the encounter did not happen, and then harassed her for many months. He threatened to keep her out of Jewish schools (she was seeking to transfer from public school to a yeshiva), called her home at all hours of the night and then hung up, mailed pictures to her home of naked men and had her followed.
"He attempted to destroy my life for a year and a half," she said.
Gafni said that Judy was a troubled, unstable teenager who fabricated the story after he rebuffed her advances.
A woman named Susan, who at the time was a 22-year-old adviser in JPSY, said she believed Judy's account. She said that when she took Judy's side, Gafni made harassing phone calls and threats against her.
"He told me I would regret it," Susan said, adding that the rabbi made inappropriate advances to her, as well.
The rabbi said his version of the episode with Judy was corroborated by a psychologist engaged by Yeshiva University, which housed JPSY at the time. Judy said other psychologists support her account.
Spiritual Signature
The back-and-forth on the charges and explanations have filled many of my notebooks over the past three years, as I have interviewed more than 50 people on this issue. Some investigations have a clear resolution; this one does not.
Defenders of Gafni note the allegations go back many years. They demand more recent proof of wrongdoing and real names to back up the charges. His critics offer, and psychologists affirm, that it is common for abuse victims to speak out only after much time has elapsed, if at all, and to feel embarrassed, if not fearful, about using their names.
Even the criteria of when a public airing of abuse charges constitutes lashon hara, Hebrew for gossip, and when it is an obligation -- to protect people -- is ultimately a judgment call. The determining factor is whether the accused person is a danger to society and may abuse again.
But who is to say when and whether Gafni is free of his acknowledged past "mistakes"?
Two groups in the Renewal movement, Aleph and Elat Chayyim, looked into the allegations against Gafni and found "no evidence of wrongdoing," according to Rabbi Arthur Waskow. (The three women with whom I spoke said they were never contacted.) And Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the acknowledged leader of the Renewal movement, said he is aware of the allegations against Gafni but supports him.
"If you want to find fly specks in the pepper, you can always find them," Schachter-Shalomi said. "But I've watched him teach. He is learned, exciting and charismatic. A good teacher is one who gets people excited."
Indeed, Gafni's followers and admirers said he is a gifted thinker and leader who has helped bring many people closer to Judaism through his writings, lectures and television shows. They said he has done teshuvah, presents no threat to anyone and should be left alone to continue his important teaching.
His critics contend that he is a self-promoter and deceiver who has never been honest with others, or himself, about his behavior. They find his increasing popularity infuriating and worry that his charisma and influence could result in trouble for unsuspecting followers.
In the middle is Gafni, who said that while others portray him as Svengali, he sees himself as a "victim" of a longstanding "witch hunt," motivated primarily by several Orthodox rabbis jealous of his success.
In his writings he described himself as "a flawed human being, forever striving," and urged each of us to establish and craft our "soul print," our personal life story, the "spiritual signature" we leave on the world.
Gafni evokes strong emotions wherever he goes, leaving a mark of darkness or light, depending on how his own "soul print" is perceived.
gary@jewishweek.org
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The more things change, the more they stay the same, of course. As we say goodbye to 2015, enjoy The Jewish Week's two year-end roundups.International
Ten Keepers For 2015
What touched us in the year that was.
Robert Goldblum
Managing Editor
Matisyahu: Beats back BDS. Getty ImagesYes, it was a brutal year, from Paris to the streets of Jerusalem to San Bernardino. And yet, as we exit 2015, we mined the year’s news and came up with a few nuggets that catch the light. Here then, 10 stories that shined:
–We’ll Miss (really miss!)… Abe Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League who stepped down in July, for being gutsy, unpredictable, stubborn and 1,000 percent Jewish. End of an era.
–We’re Proud Of… Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt, for making the tricky transition from Israeli basketball to the NBA Finals. (OK, having LeBron helped, but still.) … And of the quirkily misspelled American Pharoah, owned by the Egyptian-born Orthodox Jewish (and Teaneck resident) Ahmed Zayat, for winning the Triple Crown and captivating a nation.
–We’re Blown Away… that “Ida,” an austere black-and-white Holocaust-related film about a nun who carries a Jewish secret, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and that it had one of the longest runs of any film at Film Forum. Restores our faith in the power of simple storytelling, and in the sometimes-shallow Academy voters.
–We’re So Thankful For… Lassana Bathily, the Muslim employee of the kosher market in Paris who shepherded Jewish customers into the shop’s basement, thereby keeping them alive. A real hero, in any religion.
–We’re Awed By… the outpouring of grief for slain U.S. gap-year teen Ezra Schwartz, and then the outpouring of support for his family. We feel like he’s a son to so many of us.
–We’re Of Two Minds About… the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s decision to admit and ordain intermarried rabbis. Right side of history, or a leap too far?
–We’re Of One Mind About… the Reform movement’s far-reaching welcome of LGBTQ Jews. Right side of history. Period.
–We’re Relieved That… President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu seemed to bury the Iran deal hatchet at their White House meeting in November. Optics matter, though the hard feelings may not be far from the surface.
–We Note The Irony Of… an Israeli-developed immunotherapy cancer drug helping to cure President Jimmy Carter’s melanoma. The ex-prez has been tough (really tough) on Israel; Israel, it turns out, has been tender on him. Then again, Israeli hospitals treat terrorists as well as their victims, so we shouldn’t be surprised by the generous spirit.
–We’re Packing For Barcelona and Lisbon… since both Spain and Portugal this year offered citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews. Long time (500-plus years) coming. And speaking of Spain … we’re rapt by rapper Matisyahu’s big-hearted decision to play a Spanish music festival after originally being disinvited because of ugly BDS matters. Art slays politics.
And so bring on 2016.
editor@jewishweek.org---------------------
It was a time of tragedy -- Paris -- and triumph -- the Reform movement's embrace of LGBTQ Jews.
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Also: misbehaving rabbis, Amy Schumer and BDS angst.
The Top 10 Stories That Captivated Our Readers in 2015
The Top 10 Stories That Captivated Our Readers in 2015
ONE: Spiritual Journey
Howard Stern's Daughter Discloses Religious Identity
Carly Stern
Her father is a notorious radio personality; she once performed in the nude; but now, she would rather be studying Torah. Artist and actress Emily Stern is an observant Jew.
TWO: Sauna Rabbi Scandal
Riverdale’s ‘Open Secret’ Goes Public
Gary Rosenblatt
Congregants divided on Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt’s invitations to young men to join him in sauna.
THREE: The Agunah Crisis
Leading Rabbi Deals Big Blow To Agunah Court
Hannah Dreyfus
YU’s Schachter dismisses beit din solution as battle continues in Centrist/Modern Orthodox community.
FOUR: The Year of Amy Schumer
Confessions Of Amy Schumer’s Childhood Rabbi
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, RNS
From 1988 to 1995, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin was Amy Schumer’s—along with a slew of other Jewish comedy figures—rabbi, at Central Synagogue of Nassau County in Rockville Centre, New York.
FIVE: YU Developments
YU Faculty Votes 'No Confidence' In President Joel
Hannah Dreyfus
Yeshiva University faculty and students take unprecedented step to call attention to school's "refusal to take responsibility" for financial woes.
SIX: Special Report
BDS Money Trail Suggests Opaque Funding Network
Mitchell Bard
Campus groups press anti-Israel message with seemingly little money, but gain leverage with allies. A special investigative report.
SEVEN: The Cost Of Living
Modern Orthodoxy Has Its Costs – Not Just Financial
Eli Fischer
When cost of living pushes $300,000, what else is sacrificed?
EIGHT: Tradition
Birth Control, Jewish Law Collide At Stern
Hannah Dreyfus
Rare Forum On Contraception in Jewish Law Draws A Crowd At Stern—And Pushback.
NINE: Investigative Report With WNYC
12-Hour School Day, But Can't Do Math
Hella Winston and Amy Sara Clark
Inside the uphill battle to improve secular education in chasidic yeshivas.
TEN: Breaking Rank
Conservative Rabbis Break Ranks, Rip Bibi On Arab Comments
Stewart Ain
RA becomes first major Jewish group to criticize Likud leader's election day rhetoric; Netanyahu defends statements on MSNBC.---------------------
Happy New Year,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
OPINIONGary Rosenblatt
My ‘Horrorscope’ For 2016
The JW's editor predicts next year's major news stories: Snooki for Veep!
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
OK, so 2015 was a bummer. But we are a people with a tradition of looking to the future with hope — and having a sense of humor.
So here’s my prediction for the major news stories of 2016:
January: In the midst of a winter heat wave, Madison Square Garden cancels Ice Capades show due to melting ice; Republicans abruptly cancel outdoor “Global Warming Is A Myth” rally in Minnesota after key speakers suffer sunstroke.
February: On the eve of Super Tuesday primaries, Donald Trump announces his vice presidential running mate: Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi of the “Jersey Shore” reality MTV show. “Hey, she’s a woman,” Trump notes.
At Super Bowl ceremony in Santa Clara, Calif., NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell trips, hits head against iron goal post and is knocked unconscious. Awakening two days later he mumbles repeatedly, “no concussion.” X-rays reveal nothing.
March: United Nations votes Syrian President Assad as Humanitarian of the Year, crediting him with encouraging Syrians to seek new lives in democratic countries. Israel and Micronesia only countries to vote no; U.S. abstains.
Obama said to be considering another “red line” for Syria. If crossed, it would result in unspecified U.S. punishment. White House sources say “red line” would be somewhere in the Oval Office.
April: On Opening Day, Yankees lose 1-0 when Alex Rodriguez, who was on second base in the ninth inning, rounds third on Carlos Beltran’s lone drive to center field but refuses to score until he checks with his agent. Thrown out easily at home, A-Rod blames fans and media for the loss.
May: Iran shocks world by launching heavy rocket attacks against 11 European and Arab Sunni countries, sending Revolutionary Guard into Paris and London and kidnapping Queen Elizabeth. In response, Secretary of State Kerry invites Tehran to discuss over tea, assures Americans that Iran nuclear rollback “still on track.”
June: Pope Francis invites “all people everywhere” to apply for sainthood. “Who am I to say which of us is imperfect?” says Fran (as he asks to be called), after being named winner of Most Popular Papal Pontiff Ever contest.
On presidential election front, Chris Christie ends campaign, citing unfortunate slogan: “Christie – America’s Bridge To The Future.”
Hillary Clinton flies to Jerusalem, promises not to visit Palestinian President Abbas or kiss his wife; Netanyahu pledges not to announce new settlement construction in Jerusalem until Clinton boards plane for home.
July: New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver holds first press conference in jail, describes High Holiday services schedule for penitentiary penitents at in-house Congregation Ahavat Kessef. Silver notes need to charge for seats, given the expected overflow, and announces additional Daf Yomi classes.
At Democratic convention in Philadelphia, “Hail To Hillary” coronation ceremony delayed due to extended bathroom break.
Republicans, meeting in Cleveland, revamp convention procedures, announce Extreme Boxing matches to determine top candidate. Rubio too young to qualify; Bush begs off; Cruz eliminated for low blows.
Calling opponents “lightweights,” Christie considers re-entering race.
September: At U.N. General Assembly, Abbas threatens to hold his breath until Israel ends occupation. Palestinians respond enthusiastically, promise glorious funeral for him. Israelis note they invented that form of diplomacy. “Yitzhak Shamir held his breath over everything,” Netanyahu says wistfully.
At U.N. podium, Israeli prime minister tears up his speech, whips out crayons and draws crude picture of firecracker, pledging to light it under “The Supreme Leader’s supreme tuchus.”
On eve of High Holidays, Israelis mark inaugural Honor Our Statesmen Day, bringing snacks and adult magazines to jailed former officials.
October: In rare sign of unity, rabbis of all denominations sign statement agreeing that “the High Holidays are officially late this year.” Effort to add amendment encouraging Jews to treat each other with respect and kindness overwhelmingly defeated.
Donald Trump, campaigning in Brooklyn on Yom Kippur, invites chasidim to bull roast, noting, “I’ll supply the bull.”
In the entertainment world, Miss Universe host Steve Harvey files for divorce, tells court he apologizes for mistakenly marrying the wrong woman.
Defiant comedian Bill Cosby plans showbiz comeback, offering free mixed drinks on Ladies Nights; threatens to sue anyone who doesn’t laugh at his jokes.
November: In Playboy interview, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump acknowledges he had first asked Cosby to be his running mate but is now pleased he chose Snooki, “my cute and constant campaign companion.” On election eve, Snooki gives birth to baby boy with huge head of blonde hair; Trump’s invisible wife angrily leaves home.
Trump is elected president in landslide, vows to rename executive mansion “Trump House, repeal women’s voting rights and declare all-out war on “bad guys everywhere.”
Millions of Americans plan mass emigration.
Canada overbooked. EU says, “We’ve got our hands full.” Bibi calls on U.S. Jews to make aliyah. “Plenty of room for you in the West Bank,” he says. Assad invites “every American but the Jews” to settle in Syria…
December: Americans awake from bad dream.
Lame-duck President Obama, quoting Gerald Ford after the Watergate scandal, tells nation: “Our long national nightmare is over.”
Though bipartisan congressional leaders beg him to stay on as president, Obama just smiles and says, “God bless us, every one.”
Gary@jewishweek.org
Editor’s Note: Rabbi David Wolpe is off this week. His Musings column will resume next week.Read More
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THE ARTSBooks
A Bygone Gotham
Two new memoirs evoke an earlier New York.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Morris Dickstein, chronicles his intellectual awakening.Looking back over this year in New York City, with a new Whitney Museum, a new sculpture that shouts OY or YO, depending on what side of the East River you’re on, a new World Trade Center observatory back in use and a much-discussed new novel set here called “City on Fire,” I’m still drawn to an older New York, to pockets of time that are no more.
Two new memoirs beautifully evoke earlier Gotham days. Both by distinguished men of letters who came of age in the 1950s, Morris Dickstein’s “Why Not Say What Happened: A Sentimental Education” and Jack Schwartz’s “The Fine Print: My Life as a Deskman” are stories very well told. Dickstein writes of his trajectory from an Orthodox upbringing in a community of immigrants on the Lower East Side to the Ivy League and academia. Schwartz describes the pre-digital city with its many competing daily newspapers, and his journalistic career included stints at many of them.
A literary critic and professor, Dickstein, 75, chronicles his intellectual awakening; his book is also the story of his family, a love story (with his wife, who is called L), and an account of intellectual clashes and cultural shifts of the times. The title is a line from Robert Lowell’s introspective poem “Epilogue.”
In the opening scene of the memoir, Dickstein recalls a time when he was living in New Haven, newly married and studying at Yale, and finds himself in front of an apartment he had previously lived in, and filled with great curiosity. When no one answers the unlocked door, he lets himself in, feeling as though he is trespassing on his own life. That this past matters to him was clear. And in Dickstein’s fluent style, the incident reminds him of a favorite poem by William Wordsworth about time and memory.
Until he was 9, Dickstein lived on the first floor of a five-story walk-up on Henry Street on the Lower East Side, surrounded by quarreling relatives, with a row of eight or more shtieblach, or tiny synagogues, on the opposite side of the street. The family then moved to Flushing, where they lived across from and then above their dry goods store. (Later, he would review Bernard Malamud’s “The Tenants” and mention parallels with the tiny grocery described in "The Assistant"). The young Dickstein continued to attend the Orthodox Rabbi Jacob Joseph School on Henry Street, traveling by bus and subways on his own to get there. A happy, precocious kid who “spoke early and said clever things,” Dickstein felt loved, protected and worried about — but was not praised to his face for fear of attracting the evil eye.
Dickstein became the orator of his Boy Scout troop, read from the Torah weekly in the family’s Flushing shul, and, toward the end of high school, discovered that if he tucked works of Shakespeare and other books he wanted to read into the large volumes of the Talmud during class, the teachers wouldn’t notice.
Others have written about growing up poor on the Lower East Side, and about exuberant summers working in the Catskills, but Dickstein’s eye is distinctive, with clear memories stretching back decades. I recognize my own grandparents’ colorful yet melancholy Henry Street neighbors in Dickstein’s accounts of his surrogate parents across the hall: a childless couple, he a wheezing bookie who doted on his petite wife who spoke her own version of English.
Columbia College was a leap from RJJ, but Dickstein flourished. Many who graduated from college even more recently than Dickstein will be struck by the detail with which he remembers his courses, themes that engaged him and his precise evolution of thought.
“The things I remember, I remember very powerfully, I almost hallucinate them,” he tells The Jewish Week. “My college studies were life changing experiences, not simply classes. I had very good teachers at Columbia College, who also provided a larger connection to the worlds of New York intellectuals.” Many of the people he studied with, like Lionel Trilling, remained a presence in his life.
“College set me on a path I continue to pursue. Not many stay on the same path. I remained in the university world.” At Columbia, he wrote for “The Spectator,” and then launched a literary review called “The Supplement.”
After his undergraduate years at Columbia (with courses at JTS) and graduate studies at Yale (where he earned his doctorate) with a term at Cambridge, he got his first teaching position at Columbia. He then moved to Queens College, and a few years later received an additional appointment to the Graduate Center at CUNY, where he is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Theatre.
This is a very personal memoir: He writes openly about love, sex, anxiety and psychoanalysis. “If you’re not doing anything that makes you uncomfortable, you’re not being truthful,” he says. “I was determined not to idealize, or to make myself the hero of my own story. He then quotes George Orwell, as he does in the book: “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.”
About how his yeshiva education shaped him, he says, “Probably more than I realize. You can say that literary interpretation and being book-oriented is related to the Talmudic discourses and interpretation that you do in Talmudic analysis.”
Through the book, even as he leaves aside certain Jewish rituals, he continues to observe kashrut. These days, he says he keeps “symbolically kosher,” still making certain distinctions that are meaningful to him that “preserve my connection to my parents and their world, as well as to the history of the Jews.” When his father died in 1992, he would go to shul to say Kaddish and discovered the morning minyan at Ansche Chesed, not far from his Upper West Side home. He wrote about that experience, calling the piece “The Law of Return.”
Dickstein, who has published the cultural histories “Gates of Eden” and “Dancing in the Dark” along with other literary works, recalls hearing playwright David Hare recently talk about publishing a memoir, and how he felt the weight of association with certain times and places. Writing was a way to offload them, to no longer be burdened. Dickstein agrees, “In a sense I’m parking my memories in a volume, both preserving them and detaching myself. “
♦Around the time that Dickstein was writing for “The Spectator,” Jack Schwartz was at City College, writing and editing The City College Campus while also working as a copy boy at The Daily Mirror, a tabloid that was then the flagship Hearst newspaper in New York. Over the next half century — through “the heyday of American print journalism” — he worked at the Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, the Long Island Press and The New York Times, as well as the Paris Herald-Tribune.
His early days at the Mirror, as he recounts in “The Fine Print: My Life as a Deskman,” were peopled with Damon Runyon-esque characters, with lots of shouting, smoking and growling. It wasn’t uncommon for reporters and the men of the rewrite bank to keep a bottle of booze on their desks. One memorable night, he had to fetch a photographer from a nearby bar and race over to Radio City with him to photograph Marilyn Monroe.
Schwartz always has a great story, and he shares his insider’s view with great wit, understated erudition and deep insight. He worked his way up from copy boy, and served as reporter on many beats in newsrooms more dignified than the Mirror, foreign correspondent, creator and editor of a new book section at Newsday, and he worked the “backfield” all over The New York Times. Along the way, he befriended the linotype operators, copy-cutters and truck drivers.
Most of his career was spent as a “deskman,” an intermediary between the reporter and reader — assigning stories, supervising and shaping coverage, rewriting and polishing other people’s copy to the highest standards that they would be pleased to call their own.
“It was not a sentimental education in Flaubert’s terms,” he tells The Jewish Week. “At the beginning, it was a learning experience, and after a while a teaching experience, when I knew enough to impart whatever wisdom I had acquired to others. “
Schwartz, who retired from The New York Times in 2009, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and an International Affairs Reporting Fellow at Columbia and has taught at the Columbia School of Journalism and NYU, and served as a writing mentor at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a most affable guide and a terrific writer. Even as more news is read on computer screens from a range of sources, this is an important story of the people who continue to shape the news that’s fit to print.
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
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FOOD & WINE
Moss Cafe
A real meal, Moss Café’ style. Emily Weisberg
Moss Café in Riverdale feels like an upscale college joint.
Shira Vickar-Fox
Jewish Week Online Columnist
Moss Café in Riverdale is a hot new eatery in the kosher foodie scene. Emily Weisberg and her husband Alex, a doctoral student at New York University, opened the place in June. Reviews about Moss Café with Jewish food stereotypes such as, “you won’t find your bubbe’s brisket here” have it all wrong. The real story of the Weisbergs’ cafe is that it serves delicious, simple vegetarian food that happens to be kosher. “We’re just trying to put ourselves out there as a good vegetable-centric restaurant, a café essentially,” said Weisberg.
I spoke with Emily by phone a few days after enjoying dinner at Moss Café with my husband and 10-year-old son. The place resembles an upscale college hangout. Natural sunlight from a large window combined with white walls and tables give Moss Café an airy, sophisticated feel. The small café (seating for about 24 customers) is located in a commercial area of Riverdale on Johnson Avenue near 235th Street.
Our household is vegetarian so we weren’t scared by words like tofu, kabocha and kale. My son skipped the kid-friendly grilled cheese on whole spelt bread and ordered the cioppino fish stew like his dad; I kvelled. I chose the popular savory bowl — brown rice and quinoa with butternut squash, kale, black-eyed peas and a fried egg on top. Delicious.
I’m glad we ordered an appetizer and a side dish to share because the portions are moderate. (Thankfully we had room for dessert, but more on that later.) It was difficult choosing from the many house-made specialties including fruit jams, gravlax, ricotta cheese, yogurt and red cabbage kraut. We settled on the kraut and a side of toasted sourdough bread with roasted tomato butter. I was disappointed that ricotta was not available that Sunday night but the kraut, served in an adorable mason jar, was wonderful — it was tangy without the sweetness usually associated with health salads.
After speaking with Emily, the absence of ricotta cheese didn’t bother me anymore (the ricotta is made in a small batch, the process takes two days and Sundays are the busiest day of the week). What I learned from our conversation made me respect the passion, idealism and creativity that she channels into every aspect of Moss Café from the interior design, to the menu to the flavorful recipes. I also uncovered a second storyline to her eatery: change.
Emily’s background is in coffee and while living in Jerusalem she envisioned moving to the United States and opening a good coffee shop that served some food. She was surprised by the demand for food but not shocked because Riverdale was a desert of quality kosher eats, according to Weisberg. “The demand on the food was really high. People were thrilled to have good, interesting, creative, local organic food,” she said.
So she reinvisioned Moss Café and turned her first food business into a delicious, pescatarian restaurant that also serves quality coffee. She grinds and brews coffee beans from Stumptown, freshly roasted beans are delivered weekly from Red Hook, Brooklyn. It is important to Emily that the milk for her coffee drinks is just as high quality as the beans; her milk comes from the respected local co-op, Hudson Valley Fresh.
My next visit will have to be during the daytime when I can indulge in her caffeinated treats such as a pumpkin spice latte. Sounds ubiquitous this fall season, but at Moss Café the flavor comes from roasting a kabocha squash and cooking it down with a secret blend of spices.
“We value doing everything from scratch,” she said. “Real food is the key. We don’t use anything artificial.” She estimates that 90 percent of her produce is local, organic and seasonal. Maple syrup, honey and eggs come from farms in New York. “We use oats from Maine, we use four different kinds of flour from New York State and Pennsylvania.”
A hungry customer might not be able to discern the taste of locally milled wheat but the freshness of food shines at Moss Café. Emily’s role is behind the scenes—she plans the menus (based on what’s available from the farms) and develops the recipes. She credits her professionally trained chefs, Jonathan Mendez and Brian Engel, and their talented kitchen staff with bringing the food to life.
My only gripe about our dinner was that the toasted bread came already buttered and we didn’t taste any roasted tomatoes. The menu said “sourdough” not “sourdough rye” but a few pesky caraway seeds did not interfere with the enjoyment of our meal. We didn’t partake of the large craft beer and wine selection, including three beers on tap, but we never pass up dessert. Our favorites included the pumpkin shortbread and vegan, olive oil chocolate cake with espresso glaze. I agreed with the customer sitting next to me who exclaimed, “The chocolate cake is amazing.” Next time, and I plan on a next time, I’ll be sure to enjoy my sweets with a fresh-brewed cup of coffee.
“Things are always changing; our menu is always changing and we’re inspired by the seasons,” Emily said. The lesson: don’t get hooked on a favorite dish or expect to have peach cherry jam available in January. Embrace the change, welcome the fresh and be open to experiencing seasonal delights at Moss Café.
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22 Jewiest Pop Culture Moments Of 2015
Wishing you a happy Jew year Grammy Award style
Maya Klausner
Editor
This Week
Despite the balmy weather, New Year’s is approaching faster than it takes a Kardashian video to go viral (just kidding, that’s impossible). But before we say hello to 2016 we must bid farewell to 2015. It’s only polite.
As a tribute to the upcoming Grammy’s, we’ve rounded up the highlights of the past year in awards fashion. From feeling the Bern to burning Trump, we’ve curated the most glittering gems of 2015 for you to admire one last time.
And the awards go to (in chronological order):
1. Best Camel Ride: Chelsea Handler February '15
Hump day will forever have a new meaning ever since Chelsea Handler took a camel ride in Israel topless. Well, that’s not entirely true — Handler was wearing two Israeli flag pasties. The American comedian and author was touring Israel at the time to raise funds for the Tel HaShomer Center for Integrative Oncology in Ramat Gan, proving that playing it close to the chest can pay off.
2. Best Talk Show Goodbye: Jon Stewart March '15
Jon Stewart started off 2015 by hitting fans with the most devastating news in his 17 years as a comedic, political commentator: he would be retiring from “The Daily Show.” Stewart’s salty quips were replaced with salty tears as he said his goodbyes from the Comedy Central throne, making him that much more loveable.
3. Best Charedi Photo Crop: Kim Kardashian April '15
Pigs are a’ flyin’. Kim Kardashian was removed from a photograph by the media. On a trip to Israel, Kardashian and husband, Kanye West, had lunch at a non-kosher restaurant with the mayor of Jerusalem. A charedi news site photographed the trio, later cropping out the most photographed woman alive, blocking her face with a bill from the lunch. Talk about getting checked.
4. Best RBG Moment: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Gay Marriage May '15
The Notorious R.B.G. is such a pre-eminent force that she merits her own award category. When the same-sex marriage case was heard before the high court, the justice, an outspoken champion of liberal rights, left anti-gay marriage attorney John Bursch speechless when she deftly and brilliantly made the case for the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. R.B.G. for the win.
5. Best Tony Burn: Larry David June '15
Larry David is known for his off-kilter, often cringe-inducing brand of comedy, his corduroys, his love of golf and his unrivaled gift of sublime tactlessness. So when he announced he would be stepping out of his starring role in the Broadway play “Fish in the Dark,” and fellow actor and colleague Jason Alexander would be “stepping in” — calling the long-time friend a “loser” and the lack of Tony nominations a sign of anti-Semitism — it was just par for the course.
6. Best Classy Nude Shoot: Aly Raisman July '15
Jewish gymnast Aly Raisman revealed her athletic excellence when she took home two gold medals at the Olympics. But this past summer she revealed a bit more when she stripped down for ESPN’s annual Body Issue. The 21-year-old athlete, who has a strong Jewish identity, did one of her gold-medal-winning floor routines to “Hava Nagila.”
7. Best (long-awaited) Sequel: Wet Hot American Summer July '15
Summer camp enthusiasts know how to relive the awkward magic of lake rivalries, bunk raids, camp crushes, and, of course, drug montages, with the cult classic starring Michael Showalter and David Wain, both of whom attended Jewish sleep-away camp when they were younger. In authentic, “Wet Hot,” bizarre fashion, the movie released a sequel … 14 years later … in a television series format … in which the same actors play younger versions of themselves.
8. Most Awkward Lawsuit: JDate Suing JSwipe August '15
Jewish dating site JDate laid down the letter of the law when it sued a competitor, Jswipe, for using the character “J”. JDate charged the younger Jewish dating app with intellectual property infringement. Since then JDate has bought JSwipe, so the bizarre story got a happy ending.
9. Best Orthodox Impersonators: Mexican Laborers August '15
The New York gay pride parade had some eccentric characters this year, and we don’t mean the festive participants. A Jewish group hired Mexican laborers to dress as and impersonate Orthodox Jews to rally against same-sex marriage. We don’t approve of the message, but the theatrical commitment deserves an award.
10. Best Plagiarist: The Fat Jew August '15
Josh Ostrovsky, known as the Fat Jew, dominated the comedy scene on social media this past year. He leveraged a number of high-profile, high-paying gigs from his Instagram account alone, (which had 6 million followers at its peak), for its hilarious photographs and captions, but there was one problem: the material wasn’t his to use.
11. Best Acceptance Speech: Amy (Emmy) Schumer September '15
Amy Schumer ruled the world in 2015. From her hit show on Comedy Central to her debut starring film role to her new stand-up special, the female comedian has enchanted the world with her spell of sarcastic, incisive wit. So when she won her first Emmy for “Best Variety Sketch Series” and traded in her typical, verbal fireballs for a flustered, vulnerable acceptance, she showed a whole new endearing side of Amy.
12. Breakout Bar Mitzvah Boy: James Franco October '15
James Franco may be 37, but he only became a man in October. The actor, filmmaker, director and academic Olympian, was bar-mitzvahed on Oct. 17 at the Hollywood Palladium in California as part of fellow actor and best bud Seth Rogen’s Hilarity For Charity fundraiser.
13. Best Reciprocal Impressions: Larry David and Bernie Sanders October '15
Larry David’s best role has always been himself — until this past year. In the cold opening of “Saturday Night Live,” David made a surprise appearance when he came out as presidential candidate and Brooklyn Jew Bernie Sanders, riffing on the Democratic debates with lines like, “I don’t have a super PAC, I don’t even have a backpack, I carry my stuff around loose in my arms, like a professor,” and “Berniesanders.com, check it out. It’s a mess!”
14. After Larry David’s flawless performance on “SNL,” the Vermont senator himself returned the favor on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” The host asked Sanders what he thought of David’s impression, and in response Sanders put on his L.D. hat (or should we say tan Campers) and hit it out of the park.
15. Sexiest Torah Reading: Scarlett Johansson October '15
Scarlett Johansson has already been named the Sexiest Woman Alive (twice), but this past year her seductive powers reached biblical heights. Johansson read verses from Deuteronomy in soft, breathy whispers as part of a segment called “Sexy Bible” on “Saturday Night Live” alum Mike O’Brien’s radio show, “Sexy Talk Radio.” ... And let us say, amen.
16. Breakout Jew: Jenna Jameson November '15
The former queen of porn may soon be more commonly known as the queen of Shabbat. Jenna Jameson, who is engaged to Israeli financier Lior Bitton, is on the road to Jewish conversion, and she’s got the Instagram documented homemade challahs to prove it.
17. Best Kosher Breakout: Parmigiano-Reggiano November '15
Kosher cheese lovers had a big win this year. For the first time the “king of Italian cheeses” has gained kosher status. Bertinelli and Casieficio Colla unveiled the regal wheel at Milan’s Expo in late October.
18. Mensch of the Year: Peter Gold November '15
Heroes come in many different forms. This year, Peter Gold takes the medal for his valiant behavior when witnessing a gunman assaulting a young woman on the street. The 25-year-old medical student at Tulane University intervened, suffering a bullet wound to the stomach, risking his life to do what most wouldn’t have the kishkes to do.
19. Best Chanukah Revival Song: Adam Sandler’s Latest Chanukah Song November '15
Chanukah 2015 started the moment Adam Sandler unveiled his latest version of “The Hanukkah Song” at Carnegie Hall as a surprise for Judd Apatow’s stand-up special. A cherished, holiday anthem, the tune has undergone a number of reprises: the most recent version including fresh lines like, “We might not have a cartoon with a reindeer that can talk/but we also don’t have polio thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk.”
20. Best Bubbes: The Mah Jong Ladies December '15
Orlando, Fla.’s law enforcers will apparently take any tip seriously. Last month, a group of elderly Jewish women was playing its weekly game of Mah Jong when cops interrupted the festivities after hearing reports of illegal gambling in the senior clubhouse. The women, ages 87-95, were incredulous, one announcing the bust was absurd. Needless to say the policemen were not invited to stay for crocheting.
21. Hottest Duo: Fran Lebowitz and Amy Schumer December '15
This year’s Pirelli calendar, the highly anticipated Italian publication released only to society’s elite, featured two Jewish stars: Cultural critic and writer Fran Lebowitz and comedian, actress and writer Amy Schumer. Both women are known for their stark candor and sharp, sardonic musings on society, and in this particular case, one is known for having forgotten her clothes.
22. Biggest Buffoon: Donald Trump All of 2015
This award was too all encompassing to be pinned down to a specific time in 2015. Instead, here a bunch of the many reasons Trump wins the Biggest Buffoon award by a long shot, all of which we hope he atoned for on Yom Kippur. The problem is all of the buffoonery he has committed since: initiating a ban on all Muslims into the U.S., accusing Jews of only donating money in order to control candidates saying, "You won't vote for me because I don't want your money", comlaining about not being able to contact his Orthodox daughter on Friday night and calling all Jews “good negotiators.” Congratulations Trump, we are sure we’ll see you at next year’s awards.
We hope you enjoyed the ride. Happy Jew Year!
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JEWISH TECHS
Summer Camp For Budding Mark Zuckerbergs
Rabbi Jason Miller
Brainstorm during the week; unplug on Shabbat. Courtesy of Camp Inc.
This summer, the first cohort of young campers will attend a beautiful camp in Boulder to start their journey as entrepreneurs.
Camp Inc. seeks to provide 7th through 12th graders with a unique Jewish summer camp experience that will spur creativity and invention through entrepreneurship. The ultimate goal of this camp for budding business leaders is to promote confidence, independence, leadership and philanthropy, all the while encouraging Jewish values in a dynamic Jewish summer camp community.
More than an MBA program for teens, Camp Inc. promises to teach practical entrepreneurship and real life start up experiences.
Josh Pierce, the chief camp officer, has a strong background in both Jewish camp and business leadership. After selling his event production company in 2011, Pierce, 35, teamed up with the Boulder Jewish Community Center where his friend Jonathan Lev serves as the executive director. Together with Camp Inc.'s Chief Operating Officer Daniel Baer, the three men have traveled the country recruiting campers, as well as startup veterans to serve as mentors and teachers for their inaugural summer: "Not only have I been doing something entrepreneurial by starting an overnight camp from scratch, I will also be able to teach teens how to start their own businesses."
The camp is looking for current Jewish 6th-11th graders who are creative, inventive and show problem-solving ability. "Essentially, we're looking for tinkerers," Pierce explains. "Our camp will appeal to those teens who are constantly asking themselves how they can perform tasks more efficiently."
The idea is that Camp Inc. will model what life should be like for a young person running a startup venture. "We're on a residential camp property with an archery range, sports fields, high ropes elements, hiking and biking," says Pierce. "Just like a real-life entrepreneur who needs breaks and a release from working on their company, campers at Camp Inc. will have plenty of time to enjoy our property's recreational activities."
Startup teams will be formed at camp with guest entrepreneurs who will visit each day to work with the campers and help these teams. Each week will culminate in a pitch day resembling the format of the "Shark Tank" reality television show. Entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists from Boulder and Denver will be on hand to field pitches from the campers. There are two pitch days in each session – the first will allow the campers to validate their idea and receive feedback from real-life entrepreneurs and investors, while on the second pitch day they can win prizes or seed money for their startup. Campers' startups can be a service or a product and can even be a nonprofit organization.
Three days of the week the campers spend their days on camp property with a healthy mix of recreational activities, cabin time and startup planning time. Two days a week they will board buses to go on experiential tours to local companies in the Boulder area where they will meet with entrepreneurs or survey individuals and receive feedback about their products.
Then there will be a full Shabbat experience in which they leave the specialty behind and celebrate the value of community and family. The camp leadership sees this as an opportunity to unplug and teach work-life balance in an entrepreneur's life. In fact, as Lev explains, "The Boulder JCC and Camp Inc. recently joined the National Day of Unplugging through Reboot."
The camp’s business specialist, Abby Schneider, has a doctorate in marketing research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and teaches university level business courses. The bunk counselor, Carolyn Shillinglaw, is a social entrepreneurship major at Tulane University with a Jewish camping background from the Reform movement's URJ camps.
While the camp is located in Boulder and plans to draw heavily from the local Denver and Boulder Jewish communities, campers are already registered from Florida, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Michigan, California, Illinois and Arizona.
"We're looking to create to the next generation of entrepreneurs that are connected to Jewish life," Lev said. "Who knows, we might just discover the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg this summer."
Rabbi Jason Miller is an educator, entrepreneur and technology writer from Detroit, Michigan. He's president of Access Computer Technology and blogs at RabbiJason.com.Read More
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POLITICAL INSIDER
Where do your donations go?
Douglas BloomfieldIt's that time of year. The joyous season of giving. No, I'm not talking about Chanukah, Christmas or Kwanza.
It's the time of year when we are flooded with appeals for money, not just in the spirit of generosity in this holiday season but because there's just a few days left to write those checks and get a tax deduction for the entire year.
My phone has been ringing – usually around dinner time – and my mailboxes, electronic and snail, have been filled with appeals for donations. All of them assure me that my badly needed money is going to help the neediest of the needy Jews, all for good causes.
Like most people this is the time of year when we make our donations and our folder of contributions requests is bulging.
Near the top of our list is the local volunteer rescue squad. We've needed – and personally benefitted – from their quick-response EMS services. As the name implies, it is largely operated by volunteers and on a small budget.
There are also many Jewish organizations on our list, or at least were until, as the pleas for money piled up, I came across reports in the Forward and elsewhere about what happens to those contributions.
Right off the top, a huge chunk goes to pay salaries and bonuses of the organizations' top. [Another issue, for another blog, is how they distribute the funds they collect]
Some of the contributions to non-charitable organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are not tax deductible, although I know many people think they are and try to claim them anyway.
Most of the others are bona fide charities and tax deductible. But, where does the money really go?
Compensation packages top half a million dollars annually at more than a dozen organizations, including Jewish Community Federations of Cleveland, Baltimore, New York and Chicago; Brandeis University, Yeshiva University, the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Birthright Israel. Paychecks at more than 30 others range from a quarter million to half a million.
And that doesn't include the bonuses and other benefits.
David Fisher, the top executive at the Birthright Israel Foundation, took home a $90,000 bonus on top of his $586,293 salary in 2014 plus other benefits, Forward reported. Matt Brooks of RJC got a $93,750 bonus, the largest in the newspaper's survey in addition to his $591,105 salary; by comparison, the NJDC, which is on life support, didn't even show up on the list of the top 60 Jewish organizations.
Howard Kohr, AIPAC's executive director, was paid $638,000 in salary in 2014, plus an additional $760,710 in previously earned deferred compensation. The group's revenues that year were nearly $78 million.
Yeshiva University president Richard Joel received a $1.6 million deferred compensation payout on top of his $738,180 salary despite the university's $150 operating deficit, the report noted.
According the Forward, Zionist Organization of America's total revenue in 2014 was just under $4.1 million, of which $440,440, over 10 percent, went to Morton Klein, its president, plus expenses and perqs. Jewish Voice of New York reported that Klein's income from 2008 to 2012 "exceeded 30% of the total donations" the group received during that period.
I'm sure every one of these Jewish leaders thinks' he or she is underpaid and doing the Lord's work, but how many of their contributors realize that their donations are going to pay salaries they could only dream of and bonuses that probably exceed their own income for at least this year if not more?
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political-insider/where-do-your-donations-go#v7Z5JxVhd1AKF22k.99
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