The New York Jewish Week ~ Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions ~ Wednesday, 30 October 2013
On the eve of the New York City mayoral election, the first one in 12 years without Michael Bloomberg, political writer Adam Dickter looks at concern in the Jewish community over funding to nonprofits, should frontrunner Bill de Blasio be elected.
Angst Over Nonprofit Funding If DeBlasio Wins
Member item reform and promises to the Orthodox await likely mayor-elect.
Adam Dickter, Assistant Managing Editor
Barring a seismic shift in public opinion, as measured by consistent polling, Bill de Blasio is on track to become New York’s 109th mayor in the biggest landslide in decades.
The most recent survey, by Siena College, gives the Democratic nominee and current public advocate a seemingly insurmountable 45-point lead over Republican Joseph Lhota, the former deputy mayor and ex-MTA chief who never seemed to gain traction in the general election cycle. (See accompanying story.)
Succeeding independent Michael Bloomberg after a dozen years in January, de Blasio’s biggest and most immediate challenge would be negotiating postponed deals with the city’s unions and putting together a first budget he has promised will shift priorities to deal with a stark income gap. Reforming police procedure and public education are also high on the agenda.
But a Mayor de Blasio, the first Democrat to hold office since 1993, will also encounter pressures from Jewish groups based on campaign positions he’s taken.
Chasidim and haredi leaders will remind him of his pointed criticism of Bloomberg’s court-challenged consent decree regarding a risky circumcision practice. Others will remember his support for day care vouchers, eliminated by Bloomberg, that have heavily assisted large struggling Orthodox families. He has also said he’d be open to ways of helping religious and other private schools get more public funding, if it doesn’t conflict with the law.
And social service organizations all over the city will be looking for cues about how their contract processes may change.
Although de Blasio doled out funds as a councilman to worthy causes in his Brooklyn district, he later became a stark critic of the member-item process because of its penchant for corruption, and has called for that system to be scrapped.
With no indication of who will succeed Christine Quinn as speaker, it remains to be seen if that leader will be a friend or foe of the mayor, and how he or she views the member-item process which is negotiated in the budget with the mayor.
That uncertainty is causing some anxiety within the organized Jewish social service network at a time when some programs for the needy have already been frozen because of a state probe of misappropriated funds at the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
One Jewish organizational leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his organization has no official statement on the matter as of yet, said he was hopeful an alternative to scrapping member items could be found that also addressed the corruption concerns.
“There are a number of ways one could retool the system,” said the official.
“You could have a pot of money for aging and youth services go through the Council or go through city agencies with Council input. This could have more accountability and I would hope we could engage with the new mayor, whoever that may be, to discuss how to make sure his money is best spent and avoid the political and financial pitfalls we have seen in a very small number of contracts.”
Quinn, during her mayoral campaign, cited new methods of transparency as sufficient reform to avoid corruption.
De Blasio’s campaign did not respond to several requests for an interview. The campaign also did not respond to prior inquiries about his view on a pending matter of religion and law: The Human Rights Commission’s efforts to rein in Orthodox shops in Williamsburg who post modesty rules for customers. Lhota says the rules infringe on religious practice. As mayor, de Blasio might be pressed for a stance on the matter.
De Blasio has formed close ties with Orthodox communities in Brooklyn, during his two terms in the City Council representing a district that includes part of Borough Park.
Although he is outspoken in support of Israel, he may be less likely to speak out on foreign policy as mayor than some of his predecessors.
“He’s not going to be involved in international affairs in the way the late Ed Koch was involved,” says former state Sen. Seymour Lachman, who served alongside de Blasio in a district that overlapped with his Council district. Lachman said a preoccupation with overseas issues, even when they don’t impact an official’s job, was more of an older generation thing.
One exception, however, might be Iran. As public advocate de Blasio was an activist in pressuring American companies not to do business with that country because of its nuclear program and antipathy toward Israel.
Lachman said de Blasio will “be fair and square in issues affecting the Jewish community, like Sabbath observance.”
Prominent Jewish staff members in de Blasio’s campaign, who stand to move to City Hall, include his deputy chief of staff at the office of the public advocate, Avi Fink, who has served as an aide to several local politicians in the past, including Anthony Weiner when he was a congressman in Queens. Fink is the son of a prominent Orthodox rabbi, Reuven Fink of the young Israel of New Rochelle in Westchester and a Queens College graduate.
Also on de Blasio’s current staff is Pinny Ringel, who is a community liaison and previously worked for David Storobin of Brooklyn during his brief tenure in the state Senate, and for Simcha Felder when he was a Councilman.
Other prominent Jews known to be close to de Blasio include Leon Goldenberg, a real estate mogul in Brooklyn who was an early supporter of his mayoral campaign; Yeruchim Silber, a former de Blasio Council aide and currently director of the Borough Park Jewish Community Council and Rabbi Yitzchak Fleischer, a Bobover chasid and founder of the sect’s Bikur Cholim organization.
In a recent interview with Tablet, a Jewish web magazine, Rabbi Fleisher spoke of his early support for de Blasio’s Council aspirations. “He owes me everything,” Fleischer told Tablet. “Without me he wouldn’t be anyplace.”
Others who have de Blasio’s ear include Jonathan Greenspun, the former head of the Community Assistance Unit under Michael Bloomberg who is now a consultant with Mercury Public Affairs. Although Greenspun gave $400 to Lhota in March, he later hosted a fundraiser for de Blasio.
So did Mathew Hiltzik, a former spokesman for the state Democratic Party who now has his own public relations firm (and is a board member of The Jewish Week.)
Bronx businessman and philanthropist Jack Bendheim, a top contributor to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaigns, is also a major de Blasio backer, having contributed the maximum $4,950 in 2012.
De Blasio also has a good relationship with Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind dating back to the 2000 Clinton campaign when, as campaign manager, de Blasio tried to persuade Hikind to back the then-first lady. Although Hikind’s district was too anti-Hillary for that to happen, de Blasio scored a victory of sorts by convincing the Orthodox politician not to back Republican Rick Lazio.
A recent column on the website Politico detailed the key role in the campaign of three top strategists: Emma Wolfe, Anna Greenberg and Rebecca Kirszner Katz.
One de Blasio confidante, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the presumptive mayor’s closest allies while in the Council were Yvette Clarke and Tish James of Brooklyn and Gale Brewer of Manhattan.
“All of them progressive, labor-backed allies,” said the source. Clarke has now moved on to the House of Representatives, while Brewer is poised to be the next Manhattan borough president and James is running unopposed for public advocate.
With the City Council certain to retain a Democratic majority, and Scott Stringer favored to become comptroller, the next election should give that party a level of power it hasn’t experienced in decades, providing ample allies and few obstacles for de Blasio’s agenda if he is elected.
But Lachman, who is director of Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform on Staten Island, said it won’t necessarily be a cakewalk.
“He’s becoming mayor in a very difficult period, and I think he will try to meet the challenges of the times,” said Lachman. “But it’s going to be very difficult because he has progressive principles and at the same time New York City and the state are facing very difficult financial times in the near future.”
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Stewart Ain reports on anger in the Holocaust survivor community over plans by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous to honor an official of Allianz North America. The company's corporate parent is said to have "profited from the deaths" of Jews during the Shoah.
Fresh Outrage Over Plan To Honor Allianz Chief
Some survivors cry foul as Jewish Foundation for the Righteous defends move.
Stewart Ain, Staff Writer
When the German insurance company Allianz bid for the naming rights to the Meadowlands stadium in 2008, there was such an outcry over the company’s past complicity with the Nazis that the talks were called off.
For the past three years, Holocaust survivors have picketed the annual Allianz Championship, a professional golf tournament in Boca Raton, Fla., holding aloft signs claiming Allianz has refused to pay $2.5 billion in Holocaust-era insurance policies.
But now, a Jewish organization is preparing to honor a senior vice president of Allianz North America — and many survivors are stunned by the news.
“What’s happening to us is a shame, and they have the moxy to honor a guy from Allianz?” said Jack Rubin of Boynton Beach, Fla., referring to the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. “Haven’t we suffered enough?”
The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous provides financial aid to more than 600 non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust and preserves their legacy through a national education program.
Rubin is on the executive board of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, which last week sent the Jewish Foundation a letter asking it to cancel its Dec. 3 dinner or to select an honoree other than one “whose corporate parent collaborated with the Nazi regime and profited from the deaths of our loved ones and thousands of other Holocaust victims.”
Allianz insured facilities and personnel at concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau, and its chief executive wore an SS uniform and served as Hitler’s economics minister. During the war, it refused to pay the life insurance policies of Jews, instead sending the money of Jewish beneficiaries to the Nazis.
“It would be a shame and a permanent blot on the organization’s excellent work if JFR were to now dishonor the Jewish victims of the Holocaust by accepting money from Allianz,” the survivors wrote, adding that they were “shocked” and “dismayed” that Allianz was selected.
Stanlee Stahl, the Jewish Foundation’s executive director, declined comment but her organization’s spokesman, Stan Steinreich, issued a statement defending the organization’s choice of honoree.
It said the Allianz executive who is to receive the group’s Recognition of Goodness Award, Peter Lefkin, “has spent many years in Washington advocating in behalf of important causes to Americans and the Jewish community and is worthy of being honored by our organization.”
“While we are sensitive to the feelings expressed by some Holocaust survivors and their families, Allianz never killed anyone and they participated fully in the settlement reached with leading European insurance companies that paid millions of dollars to survivors,” the Jewish Foundation said. “It was the feeling of our board that after nearly 70 years following World War II our community should be able to honor a man who deserves it and that we should be able to look beyond the accusations made against the company that he works for.”
That latter comment raised the ire of Menachem Rosensaft, a leader of the second generation of Holocaust survivors and vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
“We need to be extremely careful, certainly during the lifetime of the survivors, not to suggest that their suffering and their losses are in any way being minimized or disregarded,” he told The Jewish Week.
Steinreich, speaking for the Jewish Foundation, said “Allianz of America is not the same company that sold policies to Jews in Germany and other European countries overrun by the Nazis. It is a different company, owned by different shareholders and run by a new generation of executives.”
But Esther Kandel of Los Angeles, a consultant to Jewish and pro-Israel projects whose father survived Auschwitz, said simply, “Allianz is Allianz.”
Allianz North America is a wholly owned direct subsidiary of Allianz SE based in Munich.
She said she called a senior official of the Jewish Foundation to voice her objection to the honoree.
“I told him that his foundation does outstanding work,” she recalled. “He said he hopes their good work will not be tainted by accepting money from Allianz. I said it will be; don’t take it. I said we don’t want a company that insured Auschwitz giving you money.”
A survivor from New York told The Jewish Week that he spoke with the same official and was told that Allianz was donating $1 million to the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.
Roman Kent, a survivor and president of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, would say only that Lefkin “has been making contributions every year.”
“Allianz today in the U.S. is not the Allianz in Germany,” he insisted. “And we are not honoring Allianz but Peter, who was instrumental in supporting righteous gentiles.”
In its letter last week to the Jewish Foundation, the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA noted that in undisputed Congressional testimony economist Sidney Zubludoff said Allianz’s “unpaid obligations on policies sold to Holocaust victims exceeds $2.5 billion in today’s value.” But instead of paying survivors and their heirs, it said Allianz sponsors sporting events and hires lobbyists “to thwart survivors’ efforts to obtain justice in U.S. courts.”
It was referring to the thus far futile attempt of survivors to convince Congress to pass legislation giving them the right to sue Allianz and other European insurance companies for unpaid insurance claims.
Kent brushed aside the assertion that Allianz owes survivors billions in unpaid claims.
“They are taking outrageous numbers from the air,” he insisted. “The question is, how long and against whom you can claim? Is the German generation the same that killed our parents and children? It’s not the same. Even the Bible tells us that you cannot hold responsible children for their father’s sins.”
Leo Rechter, founder of the National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors, agreed that Lefkin was not involved in the Holocaust.
“But before you honor somebody, the people he represents have to have a clean record with survivors and have to have made at least a decent effort to compensate the people who had insurance policies,” he said.
Rechter acknowledged that Allianz participated in ICHEIC (the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims), but he said former insurance commissioners and an ICHEIC arbiter concluded that the commission did not pay survivors according to previously established rules.
“It paid less than a fraction of what it was supposed to pay,” he said, referring to the $300 million that was paid. “Only 14,000 people were compensated and the rest got 1,000 as a charity donation. There is nothing we can do about that, but to now turn around and honor the people who are currently responsible for that organization is making a mockery of justice. … Even after 70 years we are hunting down Nazi criminals and putting them on trial. There are some things that cannot be forgotten.”
The American Jewish Committee’s Rabbi Andrew Baker, director for International Jewish Affairs, supported the Jewish Foundation’s choice of honoree and maintained that this is “not an issue of survivors against non-survivors.”
He defended Allianz as one of several German companies that have “done a great deal to address their own obligations for the material losses of the Holocaust.”
“I don’t think that by definition there is any reason why they should not be evaluated as one would any business in terms of being deserving of the honor,” he said. “It seems from the critics that by virtue of it being a German company it is disqualified. ...
“But the company today been a good citizen and tried to make amends and live up to a reputation of being a responsible German company that is now open to its past history and the obligations that flow from it. In recent years it stood up and addressed claims against it for what took place in its name. If it had not participated in the ICHEIC process and commissioned a critical history of its own activities, then it would not be deserving of an honor.”
But survivor David Rubin asked, “If it is such a good company, why not pay the policies owed to survivors and their heirs? Why should it hold onto that money?”
Asked what he planned to do if the Jewish Foundation does not change its honoree, Rubin replied: “We picked Allianz in Florida. But those of us still involved are getting old. I cannot fly to New York and run around in front of a building there. And those survivors in New York who would like to do it are 85- and 90-year-olds.”
Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which opposed the attempt of Allianz to purchase the naming rights to the Meadowlands stadium in 2008, said on Tuesday that while Allianz has sought to atone for past misdeeds, it is “jarring” that the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous would choose to honor someone representing a company associated more with “destruction” than with “rescuing.”
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Israel correspondent Joshua Mitnick reports on a thorn in the side of the Jewish state's high-flying economy - the chronic unemployment of Arab Israelis. Experts say the lack of integration of Arabs in the mainstream economy puts the "start-up nation" at risk.
Jewish-Arab Social Gap Threatens Start-Up Nation
Chronic Arab unemployment is ticking time bomb, say experts at conference on integration.
Joshua Mitnick, Israel Correspondent
Tel Aviv — Israel has basked in international praise the last few years for its technological prowess and for sailing through the global financial crisis with few blows to the economy.
But the picture that emerged from a conference on Tuesday on Arab Israeli integration into the mainstream economy is that the future prosperity of the so-called “start-up nation” is at risk if the policymakers and the private sector don’t take drastic measures to reverse decades-old marginalization of one-fifth of the country’s population.
“We have to understand this is a macro-economic problem. It’s not the problem of a small minority,” said Eran Yashiv, a Tel Aviv University economics professor who recently published a study on the chronic underemployment of Arabs in Israel’s economy.
The failure of Israel to effectively integrate Arabs into the work force “is unprecedented among developed economies,” Yashiv told the conference.
The employment problem is most acute among Arab women, where the labor force participation rate was just 22 percent in 2011, compared to slightly more than 50 percent among Israeli Jews.
Among Arab men, the rate was 62 percent, but the overwhelming majority work in labor-intensive blue-collar jobs that force them to start leaving the workforce for good in their 40s. In addition, most Arab college graduates are unable to find jobs suited to what they studied in college — a challenge that is especially acute.
That’s contributed to a situation in which a disproportionately impoverished population of Arab Israelis is not sharing in the success of the broader Israeli economy.
“We live in two separate states in the same country — the gaps are huge,” said Alean Al-Krenawi, president of Achva Academic College, which is located on the border between central Israel and the Negev. “Arabs and Israelis don’t know each other. … If we are training [Arab] engineers at the Technion, how much of a chance do they have to integrate into the workforce and make a contribution?”
Part of the problem lies with pushing the private companies to open their doors to Arab candidates. The government in recent years has put a placed special focus on encouraging high-tech companies hire Arab programmers for their research and development.
Those inside and outside the high-tech industry say that hiring too often depends on connections formed in the army. At the conference, sponsored by the Prime Minister’s Office and held at Tel Aviv University, Economics Minister Naftali Bennett encouraged high-tech executives to look past prejudices and seek out Arab employees.
Despite a government campaign over the last two years aimed at having high-tech companies hire more Arabs, only 2 percent of employees in the tech sector are Arab. Even though several hundred Israelis of Arab descent have been hired, the tech sector more or less remains closed, said Aiman Saif, director of economic policy for the Arab sector in the Prime Minister’s Office.
“It can’t be that only 2 percent of the employees are from the Arab population,” Saif said in an interview. “What we are saying is that human-resources managers are not aware of the potential in the Arab population. We need to explain to them, ‘Guys, there is a quality sector, and take them into consideration.’”
Both Saif and Minister Bennett said that Israel’s government will need to consider affirmative action measures to boost employment. Bennett said although he is queasy about government intervention, he said it’s necessary because of a “malfunction” in the labor markets.
Integration of Arab citizens of Israel into the mainstream economy has been cited by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as a necessity for the economy to keep growing long term. Underrepresentation of Arabs is chronic problem in the government, where only 8.5 percent of the employees are Arab, and in government-owned companies as well.
The Israeli government has made economic integration a national priority, and Saif oversees a multi-year plan that’s dispersing about $1.2 billion on public transportation, microfinance, job training and career counseling. It has also pledged to subsidize 25 percent of the salaries of Arab professionals hired by Jewish companies for two years. Broadly, the government wants to create 170,000 new jobs for Arab Israelis by 2020 on top of 130,000 expected to be generated by natural growth of the economy.
Michael Sarel, a chief economist at the Israeli Finance Ministry, painted the economic future for Israel in stark terms: even in an optimistic scenario in which there is a high degree of workforce integration (what he called the “optimistic scenario”), social gaps between Arabs and Jews are projected to widen, albeit modestly, over the next 50 years.
If there is minimal integration, however, inequality in Israel will grow so fast that Israel will be come the country in the world with the largest social gaps. Sarel also predicted that government subsidies will increase so much that Israel’s national debt will more than double over the next five decades as a portion of GDP.
The obstacles to integration are many, and formidable. They range from improving elementary and secondary public school education in Arab municipalities to boosting the number of Arabs attending universities in Israel.
Arab students at universities require additional preparatory courses to fill out core curricula before they start classes. Their language skills are often not strong enough. And they also require an extra layer of social support to ease the transition from Arab towns to Israel’s main cities, said Daoud Bashuti, a Technion University mathematics professor who said that the percentage of Arab students at Israel’s MIT is 20 percent, up from 10 percent a decade ago, and that the dropout rate has been cut by nearly 75 percent.
“There is potential and there is a critical mass of students,” he said. “The problem is job placement. They don’t know how to apply for jobs.”
Once in the job market, Arabs need assistance in preparing resumes and even in help strengthening Hebrew-language conversational skills, said Jihad Awad, who oversees El Fanar, an employment center in the Galilee financed by the government and the Joint Distribution Committee.
On the sidelines of the conference were several of the 2 percent of Arab Israeli engineers employed in Israeli high-tech companies. They said that Arab youths see the success of Israeli start-up entrepreneurs and have the same aspiration. But there’s a gap in confidence and access to investments.
“If Jews think that the sky is the limit, Arabs always see the ceiling,” said Assad Khamaisee, a director of systems at Mellanox Technologies. “When you get a person who has an idea to conquer the world, they always run into financing problems.”
The Arab techies, however, said they were encouraged by the conference and the push toward integration, saying “better late than never.”
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Downtown Seder impresario Michael Dorf remembers the rock legend Lou Reed, who was a regular at the alternative Passover celebration. Singles writer Heather Robinson interviews former "Saturday Night Live" player and new mom Rachel Dratch. And arts writer Gabriela Geselowitz interviews the creators of "The Weiner Monologues," the Off-Broadway show that offers sharp commentary on how the media operates today.
Lou Reed: The Wise Child
Downtown Seder impresario Michael Dorf remembers the iconoclastic rock legend and his role at alternative Passover celebrations.
Michael Dorf, Special To The Jewish Week
Lou participated in one of my first Downtown Seders at the Knitting Factory in 1994. In our version of this ancient ritual, we take the Haggadah and allocate the sections among musicians, thinkers, poets, political figures, etc. Each of the Four Children are represented, and I recall thinking if I should ask Lou to be the “bad” child or the “wise” child. I think that year John Zorn ended up being the bad child and Lou was the Wise Child and read one of his poems.
What was significant about that year was the fact that Lou brought members of his family — an aunt and cousin and a few others from Long Island — and took an entire table at the event. Who knew? Lou was a bit of a family man and I was honored that he felt comfortable bringing his mishpocha to this very alternative Jewish event. Over the years, and with his significant other Laurie Anderson, he participated in our big seder at Lincoln Center, several we produced at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and again here at City Winery. He always was the Wise Child and always read a special poem — from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” to Bob Marley’s “Exodus.”
My relationship with Lou (who died Sunday of liver disease at 71) started when music producer Hal Willner brought him by the construction site of the new Knitting Factory in Tribeca in the fall of 1993. I was both nervous and excited to be giving a tour of our upgraded venue to a musician I had long listened to and who was so important to the history of rock music. Somehow, he did a show there soon after opening and we overly packed the joint. After that, over the next six years he played many special shows at the Knit. During that run, we started drinking a lot of Pinot Noir together, in particular, Domain Drouhin, which was supplied by the photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders who was shooting much of Lou’s life around then. We did several big Pinot dinners at Montrachet, which was around the corner from the club, with the band after shows.
One of my favorite memories was Lou calling me and saying he wanted to bring former Czech Republic President and poet-playwright Vaclav Havel to John Zorn’s Masada show. He knew the space, and asked that we take the upstairs balcony, which held about 50 people, and set up a little food and drink, as he was “hosting” his friend. A few hours before the show we got another call from the office of Madeline Albright, the secretary of state expressing interest to join Havel at the concert. Next thing you know, lots of different Secret Service folks show up.
There was lots of buzz, and Lou and Vaclav finally arrive. We go upstairs, about five of us and eight large Czech guys — Havel's security detail. The show starts and Masada is killin’ it. Then the secretary of state shows up — lots of noisy commotion, more Secret Service. Some formalities happen between he heads of state, and Zorn stops the show. He looks up at us, the entire room goes quiet and looks up at the balcony, and he says, “Shut the f--- up.”
All the Secret Service folks were about to draw their weapons, Havel and Albright stopped talking, and Lou, who was standing with me off to the side, looked at me and we both started laughing very quietly. He put his arm around me to shield both our laughter and also not have Zorn get madder at us.
It was a highlight of my life. The band continued and everyone was quiet. Lou had a smirk and twinkle in his eye for the rest of the night, and we had a new bond.
Almost as good was the night my wife Sarah and I went to Lou and Laurie’s apartment for dinner. We were very excited to get invited over, just us. We brought a magnum of the Domain Drouhin 1994 that I had secured just in time, and totally ironically, Lou had done the exact same (and there are not than many 1.5m magnums of this stuff out there). Now three liters of wine is doable to drink by four adults in an evening certainly, but Sarah was pregnant with our twins, but not showing or telling anyone yet, so our deal was she would secretly give me her wine glass throughout the evening.
After the first bottle and not yet eating, I had essentially one bottle in me and was getting loopy. Then we decided to not eat there and bring the second magnum to The Spotted Pig restaurant around the corner from their house. There, it was harder to sneak Sarah’s full glass to me to empty, but we did. Laurie didn’t drink at our same pace and finally in some moment of release from inhibition, after a few years of being pretty close, I finally had the drinker’s nerve to ask about some stories from the Velvet Underground. I had always wanted to be cool and not ask, but it finally came out. He was a great sport and told me some things; unfortunately, I can’t remember much detail or the rest of the night.
The last time I saw Lou was when he participated in our Downtown Seder this past March, and he certainly seemed weak getting up on stage. But once he started reading his poem, the energy, humor and genius that he was came out loud and clear. I am grateful for having had connected with this special man — my Wise Child. Rest in peace, Lou!
Michael Dorf is the founder of the Knitting Factory and founder and CEO of City Winery. He is a member of The Jewish Week board of directors.
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SNL's Debbie Downer, On The Upswing
Comedienne Rachel Dratch dishes on dating disasters and an accidental pregnancy.
Heather Robinson, Contributing Editor
From her days as Boston Teen Denise “Zazu” McDonough to her recurring appearance as Debbie Downer on “Saturday Night Live” from 1999 until 2006, Rachel Dratch has amused millions. In 2012, after becoming pregnant by accident at nearly 44, she penned an autobiographical book, “Girl Walks into a Bar: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle” (Gotham), about her journey from singlehood to motherhood and partnership with her baby’s father, John Wahl. While her focus has recently been on Wahl and son Eli, 3, Dratch is gearing up for more comic appearances, including a Nov. 3 comedy showcase in memory of comic Gilda Radner, which will benefit Gilda’s Club Northern New Jersey and feature fellow performers Brooke Shields and Gilbert Gottfried. Dratch spoke with Jewish Week about comedy, motherhood, and her idol, Gilda Radner. This is an edited transcript.
Q: I loved your character Denise from the Boston Teens sketch. Is she rooting for the Boston Red Sox in this year’s World Series?
A: Ah coahse!
How did you come up with that character?
The sketch started out at Second City with Tina Fey and me. It was based on my high school experience [growing up in Lexington, Mass.], kids I remember from classes and woodshop. In one “SNL” episode we listed the nicknames of people from my high school.
What have you been up to recently?
I’m mainly doing mom things. At first, when I wasn’t working on “SNL” I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ But I’m enjoying spending a lot of time with Eli right now. [In terms of acting,] I just did an episode of the “The Middle,” [a sitcom] on ABC where I play a middle school principal.
Tell me about this upcoming benefit show in New Jersey?
I was approached by [writer and producer] Alan Zweibel, who is active with Gilda’s Club. He wrote with Gilda a lot, and they were best buds. He asked me to do it. Gilda was an idol of mine. I was always like, ‘Omigod, I want to be like her.’ So to do something in her memory and to benefit women living with cancer is a great opportunity.
I just watched a video of one of your sketches where your character, Debbie Downer, delivers the line, “Now it’s official. I can’t have children.” Ironic given the way things worked out for you.
Actually, I remember when I delivered that line I was a little afraid of jinxing my self, as far as having kids.
I read that your pregnancy was accidental. But you knew you wanted children?
I had always thought I’d have kids, but I was getting older, [which] caused me anxiety. I was like, ‘Is it something I want or something I just think I’m supposed to want?’ So that was confusing. I thought I might be resentful of being a mother on my own and having to do everything on my own.
Any advice for women on this subject?
Eli’s Dad is in his life and he’s very helpful. So I have another person doing half the stuff, so maybe it’s easy for me to say, but if I could give any advice to [a woman] in that position I’d say investigate single motherhood.
You’ve spoken also about having your child over 40 and not buying into the idea that women can’t.
Since I’ve had a child I’ve met a lot more women over 40 for whom it happened naturally and also with help. My friend from college had a baby at 46 totally naturally. I don’t want to give false hope, but it’s not necessarily like the minute you turn 40 forget about it completely and there’s no hope of ever being a [biological] mother. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping an open mind.
Are you raising Eli to be Jewish?
I had an extreme situation. We were like, ‘Omigod, we’re having a baby!’ We were dating with a newborn, so the Jewish thing was like 100th on the list.
What about now?
We will raise him with Jewish influences. He went to Jewish pre-school last year, and it was fun when he came home singing Shabbat Shalom songs.
“Still Laughing – A Comedy Tribute to Gilda Radner,” will take place Sunday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. at the Bergen County Academies Auditorium in Hackensack, N.J. The show will include standup, SNL clips, and improv. Tickets, $29-$59, are available at Showclix.com.
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Anthony Weiner, The Play
‘The Weiner Monologues’ offers a running commentary on the nature of media and a world where nothing is private.
Gabriela Geselowitz, Jewish Week Correspondent
Oedipus. Macbeth. Anthony Weiner?
In “The Weiner Monologues,” which question the ever-changing meaning of the phrase “private life,” the fallen congressman emerges as something of a modern tragic hero.
“It’s kind of like a Greek tragedy,” said John Oros, co-creator of the play, which opens Nov. 6 at the Access Theater in Manhattan. The found-text play — in which the dialogue is ripped from the headlines, so to speak, and from Weiner’s infamous sexts — follows the former U.S. representative and failed New York City mayoral candidate from the pinnacle of his esteem and influence to his fall, his phoenix-like rebirth, and his second undoing.
The play (the only relation to Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” being the pun in its name) had modest beginnings; it was a 2011 summer project of Hunter College theater students Oros and Jonathan Harper Schlieman. The play was intended as an experiment for actors to lend their own meaning to work on stage. Oros and Schlieman saw modern media as fluid and dynamic, ripe for theatrical reinterpretation.
“There’s so much material out there, and you can go in a million different directions with it,” said Oros of major media issues, noting that the play is far from, and could never be, “completely comprehensive.”
Weiner himself (Devin James Heater) is just one of the characters in the play, which range from nameless archetypes to celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, to Lisa Weiss, one of the women Weiner was sexting with. The actors and creators collaborated closely to build these characters, which reframe the text. The words of journalists commenting on Weiner, suddenly coming out of the mouth of Marilyn Monroe, add a layer of meaning to the Weiner scandal.
The theatrical experiment began to take shape as the Weiner scandal (Part 1) broke in the news — the revelation about the congressman’s lewd sexting photos and messages, and his ultimate resignation from Congress. Oros and Schlieman realized then that Weiner was the perfect central character, the “the archetype of a kind of sleazy politician,” as Schlieman put it. Even the nature of his misdoings was textual and therefore preserved verbatim.
The rich mine of material came not only from Weiner’s Twitter-based offenses, but the seemingly endless parade of commentary from op-ed writers, TV talking heads, bloggers and anyone with a Facebook account.
“Everyone brings their own interpretation to a text,” said Oros, noting that he and Schlieman allowed their actor friends to contribute creatively, helping to establish different meanings to the same journalistic source.
The workshop developed, and the depiction of a politician’s public fall from grace was a success, with a presentation at Hunter College. Oros and Schlieman both graduated (Oros also from the William E. Macaulay Honors College) and, as Oros put it, “We went on with our lives.” (Disclosure: Oros and Schlieman, as well as multiple members of “The Weiner Monologues” team, know this reporter through Hunter College.)
Once Weiner resigned the seat he had held for a dozen years, the cast and creative team, like the public, with its short attention span, put Weiner out their minds. The play, like Weiner’s self-destruction, was supposed to be over.
But when Weiner announced his mayoral candidacy in May, it was the cast that reached out to the show’s creators, suggesting that the story was not over. When Carlos Danger, Weiner’s nom de sext, made his first foray into the public eye, the writers were inclined to agree. And this was even before July, when it came to light that Weiner had continued his online flirtations through at least April 2013, more than a year after he resigned.
“We thought we were done, and then this thing came up,” explained Schlieman, noting that the second scandal’s absurdity is the modern twist on its tragic nature. It became “a kind of fun story as opposed to the really sad parts of it.”
Oros and Schlieman eventually found the means to reproduce and update the work with the help of Joel Bassin of the Hunter College theater department. Then, in a poetic twist of fate, their work began picking up media attention. From Politico to Buzzfeed, the play itself was news, even ensuring that their online Indiegogo campaign has raised well over its $2,500 goal.
The creative team reached out to Weiner to invite him to the original play but never received a response. “We would comp his ticket,” Oros said. But Lisa Weiss (like Weiner, also Jewish) actually reached out to “The Weiner Monologues” team and now has a role in the play.
Oros and Schlieman have spent hours poring over print and online commentary about the Weiner affair, finding more and more material, and cast members contributed to the living work. For them, Weiner is a window into a larger cultural phenomenon. Schlieman says the warning of the work is, “Nothing is private.” Schlieman said the work warns.
As for Weiner’s Jewish identity, the show’s team eschewed stereotypes, but the former congressman’s typical bluntness may speak for itself. “I personally think Judaism is tied very closely to New York identity, whether you’re Jewish or not,” joked Oros.
The work, its creators say, is not meant simply to kick a politician while he is down, but rather to use the arc of Weiner’s story to explore notions about the media in the 21st century, and the drama that society creates for itself. It’s also as much an exploration of the collaborative nature of theater as it is the story of a man who was the gossip mill’s gift that kept on giving.
“We always just try to hit home the point,” of the volatility of the modern, public world, insists Oros. “We don’t try to make any judgment calls. We want to tell the story in the most fun and weird way that we can.”
The show’s team occasionally wonders if Weiner will pop up publicly a third time and set off more digital bells, but in the meantime the two are thrilled with the play’s popularity.
“[‘The Weiner Monologues’] makes for a great headline,” admitted Oros. “It may have just proved that everyone wants a piece of Weiner.”
“The Weiner Monologues” runs Nov. 6-10 at the Access Theater, 380 Broadway, 4th floor. Performances are Wednesday-Sunday at 8 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20/$17 students and seniors. For tickets, visit theweinermonologues.brownpapertickets.com.
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Enjoy the issue,
Rob Goldblum
Managing Editor
P.S. Please check out the newest version of our website faster and easier to navigate and read for breaking stories, videos and exclusive blogs, op-eds and features.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
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NEWS and FEATURES
Sun Never Sets On Chabad's Empire
Nearly 20 years after the Lubavitcher rebbe's death, more than 5,000 emissaries and supporters return to Crown Heights.
Jonathan Mark - Associate Editor
Thirty-three miles into the Arctic Circle, in the village of Kotzebue, Alaska, where more than 70 percent of the people are Eskimo, the local elementary school had guests one day: two Chabad shluchim (emissaries) from Anchorage, some 550 miles away. The children showed them Eskimo dances from the Inupiat tribe. The shluchim danced chasidic dances. Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz asked, “Did any of you ever meet a Jew?”
One girl raised her hand, yes, and she pointed to her mother, the fifth grade teacher. The mother had intermarried with a native man. The mother asked if the visitors could tell something to the daughter so she’d be proud of being Jewish, a daughter who might never see another Jew again.
In Alaska, with its midnight sun and Yom Kippur fasts that end after 9 p.m., the Jews are conscious of the sun’s coming and going. “Where,” asked one chasid, “is the first place in the world where the sun sets?” The girl knew, New Zealand or Australia. Yes, said the chasid, and Jewish women in the South Pacific are the first in the world to light candles Friday night. And then, he said, as the sun sets, moving west across the sky, candles are lit “bringing peace and light,” in India, in Israel, in New York, in Chicago, in Anchorage. But even then, there is still one place where the sun hasn’t yet set, in the Arctic village of Kotzebue. After all the Jewish women around the globe have said their blessings, said Rabbi Berkowitz, “God and the Jewish people are still waiting for you, the last Jewish girl in the world, to light the Shabbos candles.”
They’ll be coming back to Brooklyn this week, from all over the world, from New Zealand and Australia, India, Israel and Anchorage. Such are the stories that will be told at the annual Kinus HaShluchim (international convention of the emissaries) in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, featuring more than 4,000 shluchim and some 800 balabatim (lay leaders) from 81 different countries. (This group is represented overwhelmingly by those who do not believe that the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is the Messiah.)
The chasidic “new year” (commemorating key events in chasidic history) is celebrated on 19 Kislev (Nov. 22), so this kinus also marks the 20th year since the death of the Lubavitcher rebbe. Aside from workshops and advisories on running Chabad centers in places as different as Vietnam or West Virginia or Berlin, for many shluchim a big part of the kinus will be visiting the rebbe’s grave, known as the Ohel, in Queens. Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila, based in the Congo, e-mails, “It goes without saying that being in the vicinity of the rebbe’s resting place is the essence of our travelling to the convention. It boosts us and helps us regain spiritual vitality.” (A convention for the women emissaries, the shluchos, will be held in January. Emissaries are only sent out if married).
Rabbi Yosef Greenberg, the director of (Chabad) Lubavitch Jewish Center in Alaska, says by phone, “My main reason to come to the kinus is to reconnect with that same inspiration I got when I first was with the rebbe, talking about Alaska. Probably the most important time of the kinus is going to the Ohel, with all the shluchim together. And after all the official events, I love the chasidic fibrinogens (gatherings, often around a table, with spiritual stories, schnapps, old Chabad songs) that take place in the evenings, when we re-live those moments with the rebbe. That’s the real kinus. Everything else is important, of course, but if I get that, that feeling of reconnecting, of spiritual inspiration, that’s worth everything.”
It’s often a family business, but a long-distance one. Alaska’s Rabbi Greenberg, for example, has a brother who’s a shliach in Shanghai, and another in El Paso.
To be a shliach, even in a big city, isn’t easy, says Rabbi Greenberg, and in a small and far-off city, it’s even harder. And yet, “to draw on the rebbe’s spiritual inspiration every morning when I wake up, I’m the luckiest. The rebbe made us shluchim feel that our job is the most important thing in the world. The rebbe spoke to us and it’s very clear. We are the generation after the Holocaust,” says Rabbi Greenberg, who was born in Moscow. “It took away not only six million of our best but it took away the Yiddishkeit, the Jewish life, as we knew it, from so many of our Jews.” Just as the Nazis would go to every last village in any country they entered, to find even a single Jew hiding in a barn, “we have to go to every single place, to find, love and help a Jew,” and sometimes in an Eskimo village in the Arctic, who knows what you’ll find?
After the rebbe died in 1994, The New York Times reported that there were 800 shluchim at the kinus that year. Everyone wondered what would happen to Chabad, particularly the shluchim, without the rebbe. Rabbi Yisrael Deren, the shliach to Connecticut, was quoted, “What we are beginning to realize is that we have nobody to turn to but ourselves. Now it’s showtime.”
Showtime, indeed. Not only have more than 3,500 shluchim established new Chabad centers since 1994, but they continue to be dispatched at a dizzying pace. Asked how many shluchim were in the field, a Chabad spokesman hesitated, “The number I have is only from two weeks ago. The number keeps growing.” Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, a former member of the rebbe’s secretariat and today one of Chabad’s most influential administrators, and twice-named America’s “most influential rabbi” by Newsweek, confirmed that 85 new shluchim have been sent out in the last six months.
Each of the shluchim will return to the kinus with their individual stories and issues. Rabbi Bentolila, director of the Chabad of Central Africa, was sent by the rebbe to the Congo in 1991. Aside from the problem of obtaining kosher food, and staying out of the way of local warlords and outlaw militias during the Congo’s brutal and endless civil war, things are looking good. He e-mails from the Congo (where he gets 30 or 40 Jews every Shabbos) that he now plans, with the support of Nigerian President Jonathan Goodluck, who recently returned from a state visit to Israel, to open the first Chabad branch in Nigeria. (A young Chabad couple is already there doing the advance work). Rabbi Bentolila writes that he is also operating a rabbinical college in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo), “and we just got our third group of rabbinical students from New York who arrived here for a year.” And for those who wondered, back in 1991, if there was any work for a Chabad rabbi in Central Africa, Rabbi Bentolila says, with success in the Congo and Nigeria, “we are on our way to opening up a representation to Ghana.”
Asked what inspires the young couples who never saw the rebbe to now be the rebbe’s emissary, Rabbi Krinsky says, “What inspires them? They inspire me. They come to us and ask, ‘Where are we needed?’ And we’re not talking six months or a year; we’re talking a lifetime commitment to a community. I don’t think there’s a shliach or a shlucha in the world who won’t say that they feel the rebbe looking over them, 24/7. There’s something about the power of the rebbe’s inspiration.”
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Food and Wine
Mediterranean-Style Sea Bass
Mix up a marinade that enhances the subtle flavors of fresh fish.
Kim Kushner - Special To The Jewish Week
I truly believe that when you start with good quality, fresh fish, you don't need to do too much to it. The fish should taste delicious on its own. The sauce or marinade should simply enhance the flavors that already exist. That's why this recipe works so well. The paste made of sun-dried tomatoes, capers, scallions and garlic is rich but simple. It brings out the flavors of the fish and makes a perfect lunch or dinner dish. It also looks stunning.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons capers, drained
8 oil-packed sun-dried tomato slices, plus 3 tablespoons of the oil
4 scallions, white parts only
2 garlic cloves, peeled
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
6 sea bass fillets, about 6 ounces each, skin removed
Recipe Steps:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Farenheit.
Combine the capers, sun-dried tomatoes and their oil, the scallions, and garlic in the bowl of a food processor and process until a paste forms, about 1 minute.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Place the fillets in a single layer in a baking dish.
Using the back of a spoon, rub the paste all over the tops of the fillets.
The fish can be covered and refrigerated at this point for a few hours.
Bake, uncovered, for about 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. It's done when the thickest part of the fish flakes easily.
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Travel
Australian women on an outing in the early 1900s. Photos Wikimedia Commons
The Perils Of A Woman Traveling Solo
Hilary Larson - Travel Writer
I was speeding down I-95 near Baltimore when something totally unexpected happened: I was racially profiled in America.
As a white Jewish female traveler, I certainly didn’t see this coming. I am part of a demographic that rarely draws the attention of cops. I’d been driving all day; I was tired, and when I saw the flashing blue lights in my rearview, I glanced with a sinking feeling down at my speedometer. Without realizing it, I’d been going 80.
But it turns out the cop wasn’t interested in my lead foot. “Have you ever been arrested?” was his startling greeting as he approached my window with a blinding flashlight in hand, his eyes darting around the interior of my Honda.
I panicked. “Of course not!” I stuttered, handing over my license and registration. He kept on shining the flashlight around the car seats, illuminating a collection of Trader Joe’s bags, a highway atlas and the detritus of all-day car travel.
“Where are the drugs?” he barked. I gave him a bewildered look.
“Come on,” he said with evident exasperation. “I pulled you over because of your Massachusetts plates. A white woman driving alone from Massachusetts? Nine times out of 10, she’s running drugs down the coast. You’re from Massachusetts, you oughtta know that.”
Drugs were one thing, but this was another: “I am not from Massachusetts. I’m driving my parents’ car,” I said angrily, “and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So what’s a white woman doing driving alone all that way? You want me to believe you just drove all the way from Massachusetts by yourself? Why would you do that?”
Ah! There it was, finally — the familiar accusation.
You see, I’ve been traveling on my own since I was 17. While I enjoy the company of others, I relish a solo journey, be it to another neighborhood or another continent. I love to prowl undisturbed, eating babka for dinner if the whim strikes, or spending six straight hours in a museum others might find dull.
But while plenty of women travel solo these days, an unaccompanied female is still, for many, an object of curiosity — and concern.
I first encountered this perception when I was traveling alone through Italy. It was the mid-’90s, and I’d struck up a conversation with a middle-aged lady at a bus stop in La Spezia.
“Who are you traveling with?” she inquired.
“Nobody,” I replied. “I came by myself.”
“All alone? So far away from your family? I can’t believe your mother let you do that!” she clucked, shaking her head. “I would never let my daughter go so far away by herself. I won’t even let her go to Rome to study!”
I discovered that, while attitudes are changing, this point of view is not uncommon throughout Southern Europe and North Africa. Mediterranean societies tend to be more family centered, and many parents still keep a worried eye on daughters’ peregrinations.
A Chilean friend told me I might encounter similar concern in Latin America, where as it happens I’ve always traveled with companions. “Girls travel all around with their boyfriends,” she explained. “But alone, not really.”
I don’t have to venture abroad, however, to run into this attitude. A female colleague of mine expressed surprise and admiration for how “intrepid” I was to drive all around the Eastern Seaboard, finding my way to new places while she barely had the nerve to leave her county.
There is an entire genre of travel writing, from how-to guides to memoirs, that highlights female solo travel — which only points to the fact that, unlike male solo travel, a woman alone is still something out of the ordinary.
“Where is your husband?” is a question I’ve been asked in a variety of languages. Now that I have a husband, I quickly bring him up in conversation with men abroad, hoping to derail any lascivious ideas about single American women.
But I doubt my husband is ever asked, when alone, about his wife.
There is no question that as a solo female, I take certain safety precautions: I deadbolt hotel doors, make sure someone always knows where I am, and walk defensively on streets at night. I try to avoid situations where I am the only female, which means there are places where I am definitely more comfortable traveling with Oggi. Some of these societies — in Asia, particularly — even have designated women-only train or subway cars, to prevent groping by men.
I’ve frequently written about my obsession with packing light, a habit that stems from my solo travel: I don’t want to rely on men to help me with my luggage.
Back on the Maryland highway, this was far from my mind. As the cop asked over and over again what on Earth I was doing traveling by myself — A white woman! All alone! — I tried to convince him I’d never done drugs in my life. But more to the point, I wanted him to realize that where I went, when, and with whom was entirely up to me.
He let me off with a warning.
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