Missionary Renegade: The New York Jewish Week - Connectiong the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 25 June 2014 & Friday, 27 June 2014

Saturday, June 28, 2014

The New York Jewish Week - Connectiong the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 25 June 2014 & Friday, 27 June 2014

Wednesday, 25 June 2014
Dear Reader,
When the Presbyterian Church voted last week to divest from three American companies that do business in Israel, it was a blow to Jewish communal organizations, which had lobbied hard against the move. Staff writer Steve Lipman looks at the fallout from the important divestment vote in this week's issue.
NATIONAL
Deep Concern Over Presbyterian Divestment Vote
Ripple effect among other mainline Protestant denominations not seen as leaders survey damage.
Steve Lipman

Staff Writer

Rabbi Rick Jacobs,urges Presbyterians to reject divestment resolution last week in Detroit. Courtesy of URJ

Jewish interfaith leaders and those who fight the global effort to delegitimize Israel were scrambling this week to assess just how much damage was done when the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted Friday to divest from three American companies doing business in the Jewish state.
The vote, by a razor-thin 310-303 margin at the mainline Protestant denomination’s General Assembly last week, comes on the heels of a decision by the pension board of the United Methodist Church to sell its holdings in the British G4S company, which provides security equipment for Israel’s prison system. And it comes six months after the American Studies Association, in a largely symbolic slap at Israel, became the first academic group in the U.S. to call for an academic boycott of the Jewish state.
“There is always concern when a significant [religious] body passes a divestment measure, but there are particular realities in the Presbyterian Church that make it possibly unique,” said Rabbi Noam Marans, who coordinates interfaith relations for the American Jewish Committee.
He called the vote “the church’s ‘Zionism is Racism’ moment,” a reference to an infamous 1975 UN resolution. “Divestment reflects a new level of Israel demonization.”
Yossi Kuperwasser, director general of the Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, who coordinates the country’s response to the BDS movement, called the vote “a disturbing development.”
The economic affect on Israel will be “negligible,” he told The Jewish Week in a phone interview from Jerusalem on Monday. “I don’t believe too many people will follow suit” and adopt similar proposals. “I’m not worried about a domino effect. The Presbyterians themselves were deeply divided on the issue.”
But, Kuperwasser said, adopting a divestment measure helps those who “attempt to paint Israel as a terrible place and Jews as terrible people. The Presbyterians are giving support to such a heinous effort. If you want to contribute to peace, this is not the way. It’s just giving negative incentive to the Palestinians.”
However, Americans for Peace Now, in a statement released Monday, interpreted the vote not as a condemnation of Israel, per se, but of its policies in the West Bank. “While the decision of PC (USA) causes great pain for many of us, the discourse and debate surrounding the [Presbyterians’] decision — this year and in prior years — made clear that it is the occupation, not Israel, that is the focus of PC (USA)’s concerns and frustration,” the statement said. “Anti-Israel forces were quick to claim PC (USA)’s decision, passed by a very narrow margin, as a victory for their odious cause, but that does not make it so.
“The truth — evident to anyone who’s watching and listening to the proceedings or who reads the text of the resolution PC (USA) adopted — is that the decision was explicitly and emphatically grounded in commitment to and concern for Israel, in recognition of Israel and its right to exist with peace and security, and in rejection of boycott, divestment and sanctions efforts targeting Israel,” the APN statement continued.
Close observers of the Protestant world told The Jewish Week that they did not expect the Presbyterian vote to have a ripple effect among other mainline Protestant denominations. (Two smaller Protestant denominations — the Quakers, in 2012, and Mennonites last year — passed divestment resolutions, but the 1.8 million-member Presbyterian Church is by far the largest mainline branch to vote for divestment.)
“The divestment vote will ultimately have no significant effect on the Middle East and instead will further marginalize the already fast declining PC (USA), which is losing almost 100,000 members annually and at this rate won’t exist in less than 20 years,” Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an interdenominational Washington-based Christian think tank with strong Methodist roots, told The Jewish Week in an email interview.
“Of course the PC (USA) vote will sour official relations with Jewish groups. But hopefully there’ll be stronger ties between Jews and individual Presbyterians, most of whom almost certainly don’t support divestment,” Tooley said. “Likely no other major denominations will follow PC (USA) on divestment. It’s not a current issue for the Episcopal Church or other historically liberal mainline churches.”
Antonios Kireopoulos, associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches, an umbrella group of 37 Protestant and Orthodox denominations, agreed. “Each church approaches the issue in its own way.” Asked if the Presbyterian action would harm wider Jewish-Christian relations, Kireopoulos said, “I don’t think so. I haven’t heard any indication of that.”
But Jewish interfaith leaders are anxious nonetheless.
Ethan Felson, vice president and general counsel of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and the group’s point person on divestment, called the vote “devastating.” He added, “We hope it is an isolated situation.”
The AJC’s Rabbi Marans added, “The Jewish community needs to be vigilant. There is reason for concern that [the Presbyterian vote] will embolden others” to support divestment from Israel, though he added that “the particular dynamics of the Presbyterian Church allow fringe voices to be given a hearing that does not happen elsewhere.”
The Methodist Church and United Church of Christ, major Protestant denominations that will hold their national conventions next summer, have not yet announced what proposals they will consider in 2015.
The Presbyterian resolution withdraws $21 million in investments from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. Divestment advocates in Presbyterian circles have claimed that the three companies in which the church had invested profit from the Israeli “occupation” of Palestinian territories.
The group’s General Assembly vote in Detroit, which followed the defeat two years ago, by two votes, of a similar resolution, came a half-year after the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, a Presbyterian advocacy group, issued a study guide, “Zionism Unsettled,” which challenged the history and theological legitimacy of the Zionist movement.
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The Presbyterian vote cast a spotlight on a little-known Jewish organization on the left fringe of the community, Jewish Voice for Peace. Members of the group — which says it is agnostic on the issue of a two-state solution and believes the BDS movement is a legitimate way to fight Israel’s policies in the West Bank — were visible at the Presbyterian gathering in Detroit. They were wearing T-shirts that read, “Another Jew Supporting Divestment,” and were lobbying in favor of the divestment measure.
Rebecca Vilkomerson, the group’s executive director, called the organization’s lobbying success at the Presbyterian conference a result “of years of work within the Presbyterian Church. We were able to show how a greater number of American Jews are in favor of resolutions like this.”
Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz this week, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, former head of the Reform movement, said, “The Presbyterian leadership is not naïve. It knows how the Jewish community is organized. It knows who has a grassroots presence and who does not. And any suggestion that there is significant Jewish support for divestment or that Jewish Voice for Peace represents any more than a tiny sliver of Jewish opinion is simply preposterous.”
Vilkomerson would not comment on her group’s next steps, saying only that she had been in conversation with other mainline Protestant groups.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who spoke at the church’s General Assembly against the divestment proposal, said afterwards, “PC (USA) has by a very narrow margin chosen its preference for a policy of isolation rather than one of engagement. Whatever the intent of some who supported this resolution, this vote will be widely understood as endorsement of and support for the BDS Movement.”
Jewish American organizations that lobbied the Presbyterians to defeat the divestment measure included the Anti-Defamation League, JCPA, URJ and Stand With Us. An open anti-divestment letter, signed by more than 1,700 rabbis from all 50 states, stated that, “placing all the blame on one party, when both bear responsibility, increases conflict and division instead of promoting peace.”
In a veiled reference to Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish leader, who asked for anonymity, described the Presbyterian leadership this way: “[Its] leaders seem to want to remake Judaism in the anti-Zionist image of some of their anti-Zionist Jewish friends.”
Other Christian denominations “have done serious soul-searching about Christian anti-Semitism,” and have taken steps in recent decades to improve interfaith relations, the leader said. “The Presbyterians pretend they have. They were observers in this process.”
The Presbyterian proposal included language that said is was “not to be construed” as “alignment with or endorsement of the global B.D.S.” movement. But observers said it is likely to be presented as a victory for the wider BDS movement, which is designed to put economic and political pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian Authority in the Middle East peace process.
The Presbyterian resolution also reaffirmed Israel’s right to exist, endorsed a two-state solution, encouraged interfaith dialogue and travel to the Holy Land and instructed the church to undertake “positive investment” in endeavors that advance peace and improve the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.
Most Jewish leaders, however, were not convinced.
“Over the past ten years,” said ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, in a statement after the divestment vote, “PC (USA) leaders have fomented an atmosphere of open hostility to Israel within the church, promoted a one-sided presentation of the complex realities of the Middle East, and permitted the presentation of a grossly distorted image of the views of the Jewish community.”

steve@jewishweek.org
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We also look at the high drama surrounding John Adams' opera, "The Death of Klinghoffer," and the decision by the Metropolitan Opera to cancel a worldwide simulcast of the work. Staff writer Stewart Ain reports on the ongoing debate, which pits artistic freedom vs. communal sensitivities. Associate editor Jonathan Mark heads out to the Lubavitcher Rebbe's gravesite and takes the measure of the chasidic movement as the 20th anniversary of the death of Menachem Mendel Schneerson nears.
NEW YORK
High Drama Over ‘Klinghoffer’Opera
Met’s move fuels lofty debate about limits of art.
Stewart Ain

Staff Writer

Composer John Adams. Wikimedia Commons

John Adams’ contemporary opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” has been called “perhaps the most controversial opera of the 20th century.”
The opera depicts the brutal killing of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old disabled Jewish American who was shot in 1985 by four Palestinian hijackers while aboard the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. His body — still in its wheelchair — was then hurled overboard.
Last week’s decision by the Metropolitan Opera to cancel its closed-circuit simulcast of next fall’s production of the opera in 2,000 movie theater worldwide — as well as the radio broadcast — has juxtaposed the right of artistic freedom against communal sensitivities.
Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican Center in London, Europe’s largest performing arts center, sent a Twitter message calling the Met’s decision “shocking shortsighted and indefensible.”
But Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and Fordham University law professor, welcomed the news.
“I know it is scandalous for a novelist to say, but to me it was a respectful and responsible thing to do,” he said.
In a statement explaining the decision, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said that although he is convinced the opera is not anti-Semitic, “I’ve also become convinced that there is genuine concern in the international Jewish community that the live transmission of ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ would be inappropriate at this time of rising anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe.”
The statement said the Met would proceed with the scheduled eight performances of the opera beginning Oct. 20 and that “in deference to the daughters of Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer, the Met has agreed to include a message from them both in the Met’s Playbill and on its website.”
The message has not yet been posted. But the Klinghoffer daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, wrote a letter to The New York Times last week explaining their opposition to the opera and objecting to a Times’ editorial that lamented the Met’s decision and calling it “a step backward.” They said they were particularly upset that the Times claimed the opera “gives voice to all sides in this terrible murder.”
They said their father had been singled out solely because he was Jewish and that his “memory is trivialized in an opera that rationalizes terrorism and tries to find moral equivalence between the murderers and the murdered. Imagine if Mr. Adams had written an opera about the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, and sought to balance their worldview with that of those who perished in the twin towers. The outcry would be immediate and overwhelming.”
The sisters also dismissed as an “outrage” the assertion that the opera is a “work of art” that affords viewers a chance to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“These terrorists hijacked an Italian ship with American tourists and murdered an American Jew. What, precisely, did this have to do with Israel? Absolutely nothing. … There is never a justification for terrorism.”
Adams, who was unavailable for comment, offered his own explanation of the opera in a video on the Met’s web page, saying: “Our opera tries to look at the terrorists and the passengers and see humanity in both of them. And for some people that is an egregious mistake. I don’t feel it is. I feel that for all of the brutality and moral wrong that they perpetrated in killing this man, they are still human beings and there still has to be reasons why they did this act. What [librettist] Alice Goodman and I tried to do is to create a work of art that makes people feel, and music is ultimately about feeling.”
In a statement, Adams insisted that his opera “accords great dignity to the memory of Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer, and it roundly condemns his brutal murder. It acknowledges the dreams and the grievances of not only the Israeli but also the Palestinian people, and in no form condones or promotes violence, terrorism or anti-Semitism.”
He added that the Met’s “deeply regrettable decision … goes far beyond issues of ‘artistic freedom,’ and ends in promoting the same kind of intolerance that the opera’s detractors claim to be preventing.”
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and the man who convinced Gelb to cancel the simulcasts, said the Met’s decision was a compromise.
“I shared with him the sensitivities of the children of Klinghoffer and the concern that if this production played on its own in the Viennas and Brussels of the world, it could be used to enhance attitudes towards Jews at a time when anti-Semitism is rising,” he said. “He spoke of artistic freedom and the fact that this a brilliant musical. … I would rather it not play anywhere and he everywhere, and we found a middle ground.”
Asked about those critical of him for objecting to an opera he has not seen, Foxman replied: “I don’t need to see it. I read the libretto and professionals at the ADL read it. The daughters saw it, and that is good enough for me; I accept their judgment.”
Although the Zionist Organization of America insisted in a statement that the opera is anti-Semitic, Foxman said an anti-Semitic section was removed after it was first performed in 1991 and that the opera today is not anti-Semitic. He said one of the terrorists uses anti-Semitic language in speaking about Klinghoffer, but said “that is part of this guy’s character.”
Nevertheless, a Twitter post from ZOA Campus this week insisted: “If an opera is a vehicle for promoting anti-Semitism, it’s anti-Semitic.”
Anthony Tommasini, The Times’ chief classical music critic, called the Met’s decision “a dismaying artistic cave-in.”
“The Jewish vacationers are caricatures, it is said, while the Palestinians are veritably sanctified by the opera’s attempt to explore their suffering,” he wrote. “It is in the nature of art to provoke disagreement. Fine. So, simulcast ‘Klinghoffer’ and let audiences grapple with the piece. …
“Art can offer insight and consolation, yes. It can also challenge, baffle and incense us. This ‘Klinghoffer’ production could have been an invaluable teaching moment for the Met and its audiences. Mr. Gelb could have assembled Middle East historians, religious leaders and the ‘Klinghoffer’ creative team to have a public dialogue, culminating in the simulcast.”
But Foxman questioned the value of such an exercise.
“These are Arab Palestinian terrorists who hijacked a passenger ship with all kinds of tourists and killed an invalid Jew,” he said. “What is there to discuss?”
Rosenbaum said he agreed with Foxman that showing this opera “in Western Europe, where there is an amazing amount of anti-Semitism, would only be throwing lighter fluid over the coals. … You would be giving an opportunity to show the purported righteousness of the cause of the terrorists.”
He compared this controversy to the one generated by the 2005 movie “Munich,” which depicted the effort of Israeli agents to track down and kill members of the Palestinian group that kidnapped and murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 summer Olympics in Germany. Israelis and Palestinians criticized the movie.
“Palestinians criticized it for not letting them state why they did what they did, and Israelis objected because it didn’t depict the Palestinians as being purely savages,” Rosenbaum said. “This is the objection to the opera. We want to see the terrorists as pure savages, and the opera adds a humanity to them.”
He added that audiences who see the production in New York pay top dollar, come in tuxedos and are presumed to be well read enough to understand the complexities and nuances the author is seeking to convey.
New York author Eve Epstein writing in The American Interest said she found the opera nothing but propaganda masquerading as artistic expression.
“This so-called musical masterpiece flirts with incitement to violence and traffics in hate speech, while terrorism is romanticized,” she wrote. “An alarm must be sounded loudly and clearly enough to pierce all moral obfuscation. Met Opera sponsors such as [Michael] Bloomberg, the Toll Brothers, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Neubauer Family Foundation, should not wish to be associated with such a morally bankrupt production. And countless Met subscribers may wish to ask Mr. Gelb one more question: What can we expect at the Met as an encore? An operatic rendering of ‘The Beheading of Daniel Pearl?’”

Stewart@jewishweek.org
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NEW YORK
Twenty Years After, Rebbe Still Inspires
His grave and visitors center expect 50,000 in the coming week.
Jonathan Mark

Associate Editor

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, buried alongside his predecessor, has constant visitors. Michael Datikash/JW

Twenty years ago, the heart of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson began to fail, revive and finally expired in the cool of the night between 1 and 2 a.m. By that Sunday’s dawn (the Hebrew date was Gimmel Tammuz, this year corresponding to the night of June 30 and July 1) chasidim started arriving in Crown Heights by car, subway and chartered planes from every continent. To look at their faces was to think their best friend died, as he had. Many experts were writing the chasidim off, as well. Chabad-Lubavitch was doomed to decline, said the experts, who predicted chaos in the absence of a rebbe and no way to pick a new one. It was a movement supposedly crippled and discredited by its messianists, rivalries and fantasists.
“So what?” said others. The experts were always saying Chabadniks were slightly unhinged: crazy to open Chabad Houses in the Congo, Montana and China; crazy to bring tefillin and lulavs to distant malls and remote colleges; crazy for the rebbe to personally give away, every Sunday morning, $6,000 in single bills, for charity, to anyone who came to him for a blessing; crazy to light large public menorahs in Peru, Hanoi and Appalachia; crazy to publish “Tanya,” Chabad’s philosophy book, in Arabic; crazy to search for every Jew in the world, the rebbe teaching that souls could wait in Heaven for thousands of years, just for chance on earth to do someone else a favor.
Today there are more than 4,000 shluchim families, or emissaries, — triple the number at the time of the rebbe’s 1994 death — doing favors in more than 1,000 locations, in some 80 countries and 48 states. The number of Jews for whom they’ve done favors is beyond calculation.
The numbers keep astounding. For several days next week, for the rebbe’s 20th yahrtzeit, 50,000 Chabadniks and friends are expected to wait on line for as long as several hours for a chance to spend a minute or two with the rebbe in his “Ohel” (literally a tent, but referring to an enclosure around a prominent grave) at the Old Montifiore Cemetery on Francis Lewis Boulevard in Queens.
Even for those who are sure the rebbe is dead, no holy soul really is, says the Zohar. According to that pivotal text of Jewish mysticism, a most sublime soul, “even after he departs from this world … is to be found in all [spiritual] worlds [even] more than in his lifetime [when] he is to be found only in this material world.” That soul’s ember remains at the grave, while in the higher realms that soul continues “to watch, to know, to protect the generation.” This was once conventional wisdom. It was a long-standing custom to go to cemetaries to invite a deceased parent or loved ones to a wedding. The biblical Jacob buried Rachel on the road to what is now Gush Etzion because Jacob had a vision of Jewish captives one day passing her grave; Rachel, from her grave, “crying for her children,” will intercede and comfort them. After Chabad’s sixth rebbe, Yosef Yitzhak, was taken to the Other World in 1950, the new rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, told chasidim to keep writing to the deceased rebbe for blessings: “He will find a way to communicate his answer.”
His chasidim wrote so many letters, first to his predecessor and then to him, that by the end of the rebbe’s 92 years the U.S. Postal Service acknowledged that this rebbe received more mail than anyone else in New York. For years, usually twice a week, the rebbe would take his sacks of letters to the Ohel where he would stand for hours in the four seasons of New York, reading the letters, noting his answers. His chasidim built a small enclosure at the Ohel to protect their rebbe from the elements. After the rebbe’s paralyzing stroke at the Ohel in 1992, from which he never recovered, a mysterious fire burnt the rebbe’s enclosure to the ground. “I’m not saying it was a fire from Heaven,” said a chasid, but how do you know that it wasn’t?
On the day the rebbe was buried, the cemetery closed, as usual, at 4 p.m., but chasidim kept scaling its cyclone fence at all hours. Several young chasidim stayed through the night, in a white, unfurnished mobile home, equipped with sforim (holy books), snacks and soda, parked outside the cemetery, close enough to see the Ohel. The mobile home belonged to a chasid, but no one was quite sure who, as was the norm in their mystical world where things kind of, sort of, managed to always work out.
One of those young chasidim in the mobile home, Abba Refson, recalls that it was “usually around five or six guys.” The vigil wasn’t actually organized, “but someone was always there. The boys,” he said, “were very connected to the rebbe and wanted to stay close to the rebbe. It was the natural reaction of our emotions at the time.”
In the winter of 1995, the Australian philanthropist Joseph Gutnick purchased a one-story home adjacent to the cemetery, about 30 yards from the Ohel. The boys took care of it. “Comfort wasn’t our issue,” said Refson. “The biggest benefit was that people didn’t have to scale the fence anymore, because we got permission to open a back entrance from the house into the cemetery, so people could go to the Ohel day and night.” Like the Kotel, the Ohel hasn’t been without visitors since.
Refson never left. Twenty years later, he is now Rabbi Abba Refson, 42, director of Ohel Chabad-Lubavitch. Even after getting married, he lives walking distance to the Ohel, and is still there seven days a week. “I don’t really have to be here on Shabbos, but I like to be.” The complex, he told us this week, includes a visitor’s center, with free and bottomless offerings of coffee, tea, cookies and cold seltzer; a dozen tables with pen and paper to write letters to the rebbe; a Shabbos residence with pay-what-you-will catered meals; a beautiful but no-frills mikvah ($3 suggested fee for adults, $2 for students); a shul that gets as many as 80 people on Shabbat; a library; and TV and computer screens displaying videos from JEM (jemedia.org), Chabad’s sophisticated production company that offers hundreds of hours of the rebbe at fabrengens (chasidic gatherings blending singing, dancing and teaching); and the rebbe’s Sunday audiences on the “dollars” line.
Hundreds of faxes and e-mails keep coming for the rebbe, requests for blessings, healing or inspiration. “Every hour or so,” said Rabbi Refson, “I take the stack to the Ohel, without reading it, and tear them up as I deposit them by the rebbe.” It was the rebbe’s custom to tear letters in half at the Ohel, surrounded by an enclosure to keep the letters from blowing away. Once a week, Rabbi Refson collects the old mail and and burns it in a small portable stove.
On one of the screens in the center, a video played of the rebbe teaching at a long-ago fabrengen, “When one meets a Jew who is ‘empty’ …. the Torah tells us, ‘do not judge appearances.’ Even that Jew,” said the rebbe, “is full of mitzvos the way a pomegranate is full of seeds. It is only his appearance that the Torah calls empty.”
On the screen, at the fabrengen, young men were dancing to a rollicking “Ufaratzta,” an essential Chabad song, “You shall spread to the sea (west), to the east, to the north and to the Negev (south),” a song that can go on forever, like the coda to “Hey Jude,” or the Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones.” Chasidim in black suits danced through the packed room, their hands on the shoulders of the one in front, future shluchim dancing to the desert, the sea and beyond. Somewhere, a Jew needed a favor.

Aside from visiting the Ohel (www.ohelchabad.org), the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s 20th yahrtzeit will be marked with a daylong conference and dinner June 29 at the Queens College Kupferberg Center (soulencounters.org). The event features Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, author of the new book, “My Rebbe,” Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, a member of the rebbe’s secretariat and now the leading administrator of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, director of the global emissary network and chair of Chabad on Campus and more than a dozen other Chabad and academic leaders. There will be guided tours of the Ohel from the conference, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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In a 16-page Special Supplement we look at changes within the Sephardic community in New York. The most striking is the growing numbers of young families and singles flocking to the Upper East Side. And this week, with summer upon us, we offer our Summer Reading section, with a focus on fiction that puts contemporary Israel in the literary spotlight.
Sephardim In NY

Young Families, Singles Flocking to Upper East Side; ‘The Memory Is In Their Taste Buds’: The Lure of Sephardic Food; Safra Synagogue Rabbi’s Growing Empire; Sephardic And Egalitarian at B’nai Jeshurun; Giving Voice to Sephardic Music.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION

Sephardic Wave Rolling Into Manhattan
‘The Memory Is In Their Taste Buds’
Sephardic And Egalitarian
Shabbat Recipe: Dja-jeh Mish Mosh
‘We Want A Seat At The Table’
Yemenite Jewish Music, ‘Set To Beats’
The Sephardic Scene
The Wide World Of Sephardim

Sephardic Wave Rolling Into Manhattan
Steve Lipman

Staff Writer
A member of a Jewish family that came to the United States from Morocco in 1958, attorney Marc Bengualid grew up

Artist's rendering of the 12-story Safra Community Center. Courtesy of Safra Community Center

with “a great deal of Sephardic culture at home.” Most of the other Moroccan Jews who came here moved to the Upper East Side, but his family settled on the Upper West Side.
After college, Bengualid moved to Westchester, where he was a leader of a Sephardic minyan at the Young Israel of Scarsdale. “It wasn’t enough for me,” he said — he wanted a more intensive Sephardic experience. A year and a half ago, Bengualid and his young family decamped to the Upper East Side.
Ellie Cohanim, from an Iranian Jewish family that left its homeland in 1979, grew up in Queens’ Rego Park neighborhood, and, like many Jews with Iranian roots, in Great Neck. Cohanim, who works as a reporter for Shalom TV and in nonprofit management, lived for several recent years in Great Neck, sending her children to the Ramaz day school on the Upper East Side.
A year ago the Cohanim family moved to the Upper East Side.
Rabbi Richard Hidary, from a Syrian Jewish family, grew up, like many local Syrian Jews, in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. He attended Yeshivah of Flatbush, studied for the rabbinate at Yeshiva University and has fond memories of going to his grandmother’s house for Syrian-style Friday night meals. After high school, he lived in Israel several years.
For the last year he has served as the first rabbinic fellow of Congregation Shearith Israel - The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, and lived on the Upper West Side.
The Bengualid, Cohanim and Hidary families are part of a growing number of Sephardic Jews who have settled in Manhattan in recent years. The growth on both sides of Central Park — and, to a lesser degree, further south in Manhattan — is fueled by a number of factors: the lure of day schools like Ramaz that have realized Sephardic students’ unique spiritual needs; the draw of the borough’s rich religious and cultural life; the desire of young Sephardic Jews to break out of their community’s old enclaves; and a growing anti-Semitism in France that has led to heightened emigration in recent years.
“There is a renaissance going on,” said Brigitte Dayan, a journalist with Moroccan Jewish roots who moved to the Upper West Side from Chicago 12 years ago. Kevin Benmoussa, a native of France with a Tunisian background who moved to the Upper West Side a decade ago, put it this way: “We can live a very good Sephardic life in Manhattan.”
A tangible sign of the growth is the 12-story Safra Community Center, which is currently under construction on East 82nd Street just off Lexington Avenue; with a sleek glass façade, it will house a spa, salon, café, exercise and rec rooms and day care facilities. Also on tap is a Sephardic heritage museum, focusing on Syrian Jews — a project of real estate magnate Joseph Sitt.
For its growing number of Sephardic students, Ramaz sponsors a daily Sephardic minyan; Manhattan Day School and the Heschel School have added Sephardic-oriented curricula. For younger students, there is the Sephardic Academy of Manhattan pre-school, which was launched in 2011.
The Sephardic influence is evident on the streets of the Upper East Side. Kosher food establishments offer such items as Persian chicken kebab at Prime Butcher Baker; Yemenite soup at 18, a glatt kosher restaurant; and melawach and shakshuka at the Nargilla Grill in Yorkville.
Now there is a choice of venues that offer Sephardic tefillah. In addition to the established Congregation Edmond J. Safra (the “Safra Synagogue”) on East 63rd Street near Central Park, and the Manhattan Sephardic Congregation two blocks from the East River on East 75th Street, there is Congregation Magen David, which grew from a minyan on the second floor of the 16th Street Synagogue into a new location in the West Village on Sullivan Street.
Rabbi Sion Setton, the YU-ordained spiritual leader of Magen David, said his congregants are attracted by the neighborhood’s “hip Jewish scene.”
“It seems to me that there are hundreds of Sephardic men, women and children who live in the downtown area, and that the numbers are rising,” Rabbi Setton said.
Such Orthodox congregations as Fifth Avenue Synagogue, Park East Synagogue and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, all on the Upper East Side, offer separate prayer services for Sephardic members.
Many “want to pray among people who have the same customs,” said Shearith Israel’s Rabbi Marc Angel, who added that people have left his congregation to join ones that offer a nusach particular to their country of origin. He considers this a gain for the Jewish community. “I don’t consider it competition. Of course it’s good.”
While not all Sephardic Jews strictly follow halacha, they tend to be more traditional than their Ashkenazic peers, and belong to Orthodox synagogues.
In a breakthrough for the non-Orthodox, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side has since January sponsored a monthly Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat service, Bo-i Kallah; it features pan-Sephardic songs and poems (see story on page 38).
The Upper East Side’s intense Jewish atmosphere “has been wonderful for my kids,” Cohanim said. “They have a very strong Sephardi identity and that identity has been reinforced both at the Safra Synagogue and at the Ramaz school where they attend. Our community has a rich and ancient heritage, and many of us want to make sure that the beautiful Sephardi customs and culture get passed on to our children and grandchildren.”
Those customs and that culture have often been overlooked here, in a city dominated by Jews from Eastern European, Ashkenazic backgrounds. A New Yorker who thought “Jewish,” thought Yiddish, pastrami and “Fiddler on the Roof,” not Ladino, shavfka or the cafés of Old Cairo.
Yet, New York City’s Sephardic roots run deep, starting with the city’s first Jewish residents, 23 refugees from Recife, Brazil, who found refuge in Lower Manhattan in 1654. Then there were the refugees who came here from the Ottoman Empire before World War I and lived in “Little Syria” around Washington Street in Lower Manhattan. Or those who settled here, from across the Arab world, after waves of anti-Semitism following the creation of Israel in 1948 left them homeless and stateless.
The number of Sephardic Jews in Manhattan may be as high as about 36,000, said Pearl Beck, director of evaluation research at Ukeles Associates and lead author of “The Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011,” sponsored by UJA-Federation.
The figure has risen steadily in recent decades, Beck said.
And it is likely to keep rising, fed by newcomers from France, mostly members of Sephardic families who had moved there from northern Africa, and are now escaping the increasing anti-Semitism committed by Muslim immigrants from the same northern African countries.
“Nearly 75 percent” of French Jews polled by the Paris-based Siona organization of Sephardic French Jewry are considering emigrating, Haaretz reported last month.
“There is an exponential growth of French Sephardic immigrants to New York, for both religious and economic reasons,” said Dayan, a board member of the West Side Sephardic Synagogue. “The French [Jews] are moving, and they’re not all moving to Israel.”
About Manhattan’s Sephardic revival, Rabbi Angel said, “I would not have foreseen it.”
A member of a family with roots in Turkey and Rhodes who grew up in a Ladino-speaking home, he said that when he became spiritual leader in 1969 of Shearith Israel, there was “no other Sephardic minyan” in the borough. And little knowledge in the general Jewish community of Sephardic ways. “Thirty years ago, no one ever heard of bourekas.”
Today, the phyllo-filled pastry is a staple at many kosher restaurants.
A major mover of the area’s Sephardic revival is Lebanese-born Rabbi Elie Abadie, who is spiritual leader of the Safra Synagogue. He also founded the Sephardic Academy, and is behind the new Safra community center. (See story on page 34.)
Sephardic Jews said the Safra Synagogue and the Academy influenced their decisions to move to, or stay on, the Upper East Side. Young singles and families constitute most of the Sephardic growth in Manhattan; in the past, they would typically head for Manhattan during college or their first years after graduation, and then eventually return to Brooklyn or Great Neck.
“Considerable numbers are moving away from their tight-gripped social and economic environs … perhaps a sign of increased acculturation and separation among a new generation of American-born young people,” said Jeffrey Gurock, professor of American Jewish history at Yeshiva University.
“The ones who move [to Manhattan] are more Americanized and cosmopolitan” than their parents’ or grandparents’ generations, Rabbi Angel said.
Some have familiar Sephardic food items delivered from Brooklyn. Some go back there or to Great Neck for Shabbat or holidays.
Marc Bengualid said he’s heard no criticism from other Sephardic Jews about his decision to move to the Upper West Side. “I know of people” — fellow members of the Sephardic community, he said, “who want to move here from Brooklyn.”
steve@jewishweek.org
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Summer Reading June 2014

Contemporary Israel In The Literary Spotlight; Three Novels That Span The Globe.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION

Contemporary Israel, In The Literary Spotlight
A World Of Jewish Fiction

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And with the fate of the three kidnapped Israeli students hanging in the balance, we report on rallies here that are keeping their cause front and center.
NEW YORK
‘Don’t Let Time Weaken Our Fervor’
Support for kidnapped Israeli students continues to resonate here.
Hannah Dreyfus

Staff Writer

About 1,000 people turned out Tuesday in Midtown to show their support for three kidnapped Israeli students. Michael Datikash/JW

Two weeks after Israeli teenagers Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, were kidnapped from the West Bank on their way home from school, local demonstrations of solidarity continue apace as “Bring Back Our Boys” efforts resonate throughout the community.
On Tuesday, a rally for the kidnapped teens in front of the Israeli consulate attracted more than 1,000 participants from over 100 organizations. On Second Avenue, the block between 42nd and 43rd street was packed with supporters, Israeli flags and posters bearing the hashtag #BringBackOurBoys. The rally, organized by Strength to Strength and StandWithUs, an international, nonprofit Israel education organization with chapters across North America, featured several speakers including Israeli victim of terror Sarri Singer, Manny Halberstam, an American cousin of Frenkel’s and Israeli Consul General, Ido Aharoni.
Halberstam, 25, warned the cheering crowd “not to let time weaken our faith that the boys will come home, or weaken our fervor in supporting their families.
“The more time that passes, the more the incident fades from our consciousness,” he said. “But it is specifically at this moment, at the two-week point, that it’s most important to keep showing support, because this is the point when the families might start losing hope.”
The rally came on the heels of another gathering Sunday that took place across from the Israeli consulate. The New York region of the Orthodox Union’s NCSY, along with several other Jewish youth organizations, organized the rally, which drew 350 teens out of the 500 people who turned out. Publicity for the event was spread mainly via social media: teens tweeting at one another to come and spread the word.
New York Sen. Charles Schumer addressed the crowd, as did Lade Adeyemi, an adviser to the president of Nigeria. He expressed his strong identification with Israel’s missing boys in light of the kidnapped girls still missing from his native Nigeria. Yet another rally in Staten Island is scheduled for Sunday, June 29.
“For teens, this hit very close to home,” said Jon Ackerman, associate regional director of New York NCSY. “From a lot of my teens I kept hearing ‘That could have been me.’ It’s that closeness that continues driving teens to get involved.”
Tuesday’s rally also attracted a large number of young adults. Ramah Day Camp in Nyack bussed in all of its more than 300 staff members (the campers had not yet arrived). The counselors, the first to arrive at the rally, carried flags, posters and ribbons.
“Coming to a rally like this, I feel a part of something bigger,” said Miles Greenspoon, 19-year-old counselor from Ramah. “As young people, we have to show we care. The three teens we’re representing are our age or younger,” he said.
Yonah Wolf, from White Plains, brought his sons, Mitch, 12, Mikey, 10, and Jake, 6, to the rally.
“Bringing my children here today is part of their education,” Wolf said. “I’m showing them the importance of standing up for Jews around the world. When I was young, my father brought me to rallies for Soviet Jewry, and that’s how I learned to care.” Wolf spoke about the prayer groups that continue to take place in his community synagogue. “It’s one thing to pray, but an event like this take awareness to the next level. For my kids, it makes the situation much more tangible.”
Organizers were happy with the turnout.
“The diversity in the crowd demonstrated that this is not just an ‘Israel’ issue — this is global, humanitarian issue, said StandWithUs regional coordinator, Avi Posnick. “When kids are kidnapped on their way home from school, the world needs to respond.”
Joshua Lookstein, principal of Westchester Day School, who accompanied a group of 75 parents and students from his school, used the event as a teaching moment.
“When Gilad Shalit [the kidnapped Israeli soldier] was returned home, the world saw that rallies like this really work,” Lookstein said. The principal said he is “not going to let this go until the teens are safely home. My students will continue hearing about this and praying for their safe return, just like we did for Shalit.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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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/Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt

The Sounds Of Lubavitch
Editor’s Note: This column first appeared in The Jewish Week in June 1994, 20 years ago, a few days after the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
I never met the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but I was in his presence several times, enough to understand the attraction he had as a holy man to his many followers.
My most vivid recollection was of a "farbrengen," a gathering of the rebbe and many hundreds of his chasidim, I attended when I was a college student in the mid-1960s. Anyone who fails to understand the bond between a rebbe and his chasidim should have come to a farbrengen, during which the Rebbe and his followers would take turns. He would offer insights into the teachings of the Torah for 30 minutes or so, then they would sing spirited and wordless melodies to him for about the same amount of time. This could go on, and usually did, for many hours, far into the night.
When I first looked at the Rebbe from a distance, he was seated at a table amid a sea of black-hatted chasidim in what seemed to be on of the largest and certainly most crowded rooms I had ever been in. What stood out were his piercing blue eyes and crinkly smile as he looked around the room, giving a short, quick nod, then another, then another. I thought he had a nervous tic.
Instead, I soon learned, he was making eye contact with individuals who held up shot glasses of whiskey, waiting for him to acknowledge them before they offered a whispered “l’chaim” to their leader. I was encouraged to try it, and waited my turn before the Rebbe seemed to nod in my direction. I took a swig of scotch in his honor.
Perhaps emboldened by the spirits, I then joined several friends as we made our way up the rafters to the topmost row, our heads almost skimming the ceiling. I’ll never forget the sights and sounds of that room at Lubavitch world headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights. It was a swaying ocean of black-hatted men and yeshiva students, serenading the rebbe with lovely niggunim, or melodies. Most vivid was the symbiotic relationship between the leader and his followers; when he would indicate enthusiasm for the music by pounding his hand on the table, they would double their volume, the sound becoming a roar in the huge room. This, in turn, would move him to pound the table harder, or even rise from his chair a bit, and the sound became greater still.
I thought of that sound on Sunday as I stood opposite 770 for the rebbe’s funeral. It wasn’t a funeral in the traditional sense of the word. There were no eulogies, no services, no public recitation of Psalms, only an ever-growing crowd watching dignitaries enter the building to pay their last respects to the Rebbe and, for many chasidim, to see for themselves that their rebbe was indeed no longer among the living.
But late in the day, when the plain wooden coffin was borne above the crowd and placed into the back of a hearse-like station wagon, a sound erupted from the tens of thousands like nothing I had ever heard. It was a wail of grief, a collective cry that was piercing in its intensity.
I, too, felt a sense of loss. I admired the Rebbe and his mission to make the world a better place, and was impressed with his ability to send emissaries around the world to encourage Jews to perform mitzvot. No place was too out of the way, no mitzvah was too insignificant.
But I still have questions. As an outsider, I did not understand why he did not speak out against the effort within Lubavitch to portray him as the Messiah. Given his control over his followers, a phrase or even a word, seemingly, could have put an end to what proved to be a tragic and deeply divisive strain.
And I was disappointed when, during the Crown Heights riots of three years ago, the Rebbe did not extend a human hand of sympathy to the family of the black youngster who was accidentally killed by a Lubavitch driver. Indeed, the Rebbe had no direct statement to make at a time when a word or a gesture could have gone far to ease the pain.
I’m sure there are reasons for these actions, or, more accurately, inactions, but I have yet to hear one that is not wrapped in the nuance of chasidic logic. To me it meant that despite his greatness as a true Jewish leader, the Rebbe was only human. This week we were reminded of that fact.
Whether the movement he built up can survive the cult of his charisma will be determined in the coming days and months. But I will always remember the sound of grief at his death and, more happily, the joyous roar of song from his chasidim that resounded throughout his life. n
End Note: The words above were written at the height of the messianic mood within Lubavitch, perhaps reflecting a fear of a post-Rebbe era. At the time of the Rebbe’s death many thought the movement would weaken without its gifted charismatic leader or a successor. But in fact Lubavitch has grown in reach, impact and fundraising these last two decades, here and around the world. That growth is a tribute to the lasting memory of the Rebbe and his message, and to the ongoing commitment of his followers to spread his words of faith and love through the fulfillment of mitzvot.
Gary@jewishweek.org
Gary Rosenblatt has been the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week for 20 years and has written more than 1,000 "Between The Lines" columns since 1993. Now a collection of 80 of those columns, ranging from Mideast analysis to childhood remembrances as "the Jewish rabbi's son" in Annapolis, Md., is available. Click here for details.
New York News

Jew Invents Christian Mezuzah: 'Christooza'
Financial advisor from Queens sells Christoozas for $20 a pop.
Hannah Dreyfus - Staff Writer
Thought the Hanukkah bush was the only way to reinvent the wheel? Think again.
Henry Zabarsky, a Jewish man from Queens has started making mezuzahs for Christians, the New York Post reports. His new invention, coined the "Christooza," is a hollow plastic cross containing a Christian prayer instead of the Jewish prayer, "Shema Yisroel." Like the traditional Jewish mezuzah, it's also supposed to be affixed to doorposts.
“I was visiting a client in Rockaway. She’s very religious — Catholic. There were pictures of Jerusalem everywhere, crosses. And I was thinking, Jews have this mezuzah — so why not create one for everyone else?” Zabarsky, a 43-year-old financial advisor said in a recent interview.
Christoozas can be purchased from Zabarsky's website for $20 a piece. Customized blessings are an extra $5 a pop. The website also provides instructions for affixing the Christooza to your doorpost (in three simple steps), and features a blog where you can share your personal Christooza stories and pictures.
editor@jewishweek.org
Food and Wine
The Lighter Side

A veggie-filled frittata is perfect at any summertime meal.
Amy Spiro - Jewish Week Online Columnist
There are days that you want to sit down to a steak and potatoes, and days you want a little bit of a lighter meal. Enter the frittata. Traditionally a breakfast food, I've been known to eat it for lunch or dinner. Throwing in a variety of roasted vegetables keeps it interesting and colorful.
If you want an even "lighter" dish, you can swap out some of the whole eggs for egg whites: two to three whites for every egg you replace, though leave some yolk in there for color, texture and taste. You can try out any combo of vegetables you like - mushrooms, onions, try whatever your fancy!
Amy Spiro is a journalist and writer based in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of the Jerusalem Culinary Institute's baking and pastry track, a regular writer for The Jerusalem Post and blogs at bakingandmistaking.com. She also holds a BA in Journalism and Politics from NYU.
Ingredients:
1 red bell pepper
1 medium carrot
1 medium zucchini
1 tablespoon canola oil
4 eggs
1/3 cup milk
Salt and pepper
Optional: grated parmesan cheese
Recipe Steps:
Cut the pepper into strips. Peel and dice the carrots into coins and slice the zucchini into strips, discarding the center core with the seeds (the high water content will not roast well). Toss the vegetables with the oil and salt and pepper and spread in an even layer on a baking sheet or roasting pan. Roast on 400 F for 10-15 minutes, checking regularly.
Beat together the eggs, milk, salt and pepper until uniform in color. Grease a 9" baking tin with cooking spray, and arrange the vegetables on the bottom. Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables, shaking so it's an even layer. Bake the frittata on 350 F for 20 to 30 minutes until the eggs are set. Serve warm, with optional grated parmesan cheese.
Travel - The Berkshires

Congregation Ahavath Sholom in Lenox, which hosts a "nosh and Drosh" text-study group. Barbara Cohen
Jewish Culture's Summer Home
Hilary Larson - Travel Writer
When Rabbi Barbara Cohen settled in the Berkshire mountains 34 years ago, the Jewish community was so small that “the joke always was that everybody was related here,” recalled the Long Island native.
But like everything else in this green, rural corner of northwestern Massachusetts — from local theater to fields of organic beets — the Jewish community has grown and flourished. And just as with other seasonal resorts, a shift from brief vacationing toward second-homeownership and year-round residency has nourished an increasingly multifaceted cultural life — one with a distinctly intellectual bent.
Summer, however, remains the most vibrant and exciting season in the Berkshires. It is when tens of thousands of Jewish families from New York and Boston settle into farmhouses and rental condos, lick ice-cream cones on Main Street in Stockbridge and spread blankets on the lawn at Tanglewood for Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts. And it is when the Jewish event calendar grows so jam-packed that it can be hard to remember there are just 4,000 year-round Jewish residents spread out over the 32 Berkshires towns.
Looking for a debate? The Jewish Theological Seminary, in partnership with Congregation Knesset Israel of Pittsfield, is returning this year with its scholarly lecture series, “Great Debates in Judaism,” featuring professors of Bible and Talmud.
How about Broadway? Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” is onstage at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield with the Berkshire Theatre Group. Meanwhile, “The Phantom of the Opera” fans — and they are legion — will line up to see Jeff Keller, an original Phantom on the Great White Way, as he sings his title role alongside Yiddish favorites in “An Evening With The Phantom,” a benefit for Jewish Federation of the Berkshires.
More eclectic Jewish music? The fifth-annual Summer Celebration of Jewish Music is a series with sources as diverse as Korngold, klezmer, Israeli dance and Yiddish cabaret. And don’t forget late July’s Yidstock, the festival of new Yiddish music (yes, it exists!) at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst.
In between, you can see Fran Lebowitz crack wise in Great Barrington; sip kosher and mevushal varietals at Spirited, a wine bar in Lenox; and dip a toe into Ladino folk songs at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire.
Cinephiles keep busy: There are not one, but two festivals celebrating Jews and the moving picture this summer — Knesset Israel’s Berkshires Jewish Film Festival, a nearly three-decade-old institution with films throughout July and August, and the Jewish-French Film Series, a look at Jewish themes through a Gallic lens, sponsored by Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.
If it sounds like visiting Jews barely have time to relax, that’s fairly accurate, said Rabbi Cohen, spiritual leader of the Reconstructionist Congregation Ahavath Sholom in Lenox. Reached during a Wednesday “Nosh and Drosh” text-study group, she admitted that Berkshires people, as a general rule, aren’t the type to lie on a beach.
“People come to be stimulated, not to relax,” said the rabbi. “Some people joke that their retirement here is busier than when they were working! In the summer, you can do three things every day” – a schedule made pleasant by the cool breezes and fresh mountain air.
Jewish involvement is also “a kind of instant way to become part of the Berkshires,” Rabbi Cohen added, noting that today it is cultural participation, rather than bloodlines, that unites the community.
Her own summer routine involves stopping by her son Phil’s recently-opened bagel shop in Lenox, Bagel & Brew. By day, it’s the place to pick up a fresh bagel with lox; by evening, it evolves into a spot for sampling local craft beers in a relaxed café atmosphere.
Yes, relaxed. Despite all the intellectual ferment, Berkshires regulars almost invariably refer to the area’s natural beauty when asked what they most love about their region. “One of my favorite things to do is go down to the beach on the lake in Lenox,” said Dara Kaufman, the newly installed executive director of The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, which publishes a handy annual summer guide. “We also love taking walks in Canoe Meadows in Pittsfield.”
For those who want to mix culture, Judaism and the great outdoors, Kaufman recommended the Tanglewood Shabbat series. In July and August, Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism, invites worshippers to enjoy a Kabbalat Shabbat service and a picnic dinner on the Tanglewood lawn before settling into concerts by the BSO and the Boston Pops.
There may be more Jewish activity than in decades past, but the rest of the community is growing, too. This summer’s cultural highlight is arguably the grand re-opening of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, one of the nation’s great collections of American art and 19th-century paintings, among other gems.
The Clark’s storied permanent collection — rich with masterworks by Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, John Singer Sargent, Degas and more — has been travelling the world for the past three years, while its Williamstown, Mass., home has undergone a stunning transformation. The new campus will open on July 4 with an Independence Day party, free admission and an evening concert with fireworks.
Opening day will see the unveiling of an 11,000-square-foot building with two floors of galleries, a café and a new museum store. Outdoors, a one-acre reflecting pool anchors a landscape design that connects the Visitor Center to the reconceived original building, where new gallery space will enhance display of the permanent collection. Much of that collection dates from centuries past, but July 4 also marks the opening of “Raw Color: The Circles of David Smith,” an exhibit showcasing the brilliant modernism of the painter and sculptor.
It’s a fitting museum for a community that, for all its rural beauty, has big-city taste in culture. “And we have mountains, we have lakes, we have woods,” explained Paula Hellman of Stockbridge, who just retired as Hevreh’s education director. “We have it all, really.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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Friday, 27 June 2014
Dear Reader,
Huge news here from JW HQ: we've done a huge upgrade on our Food & Wine section.
We've always tried to bring you stellar food and wine coverage, offering recipes, tasting notes and the stories that bring it all home. Now we hope you'll enjoy this stylish, easily browsed format as much as the content.
http://jwfoodandwine.com/
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The latest addition to the page is one of the sweet, clever recipes Amy Spiro is so good at delivering through her Nosh Pit column. Yes, you can make Oreos at home.
The Best Of Both Worlds
Yes, you can make Oreos at home.

For a long time Oreos were a no-go for kosher consumers. Their lard-y filling was just not going to be on the table for most observant Jews. But in the mid 1990s Nabisco finally replaced the lard, rendering Oreos available for all Jews.
Despite the fact that Oreos are now readily available everywhere, I love to try and remake snacks in my own kitchen, and these seemed a fairly easy one to tackle. The crispy chocolate cookie, the gooey vanilla filling are manageable undertakings for a home baker. If you wanted to make things even quicker, you could skip making the filling and use storebought frosting, though the taste and texture will be a little bit different.
If you want to keep the cookies crisp as long as possible, only fill the ones you think will be eaten. As soon as the cookie hits the soft filling (the storebought ones have some magic I don't) they will start to soften up a little. If you want true "Oreo" sized cookies, then use only about a teaspoon of dough at a time.
Amy Spiro is a journalist and writer based in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of the Jerusalem Culinary Institute's baking and pastry track, a regular writer for The Jerusalem Post and blogs at bakingandmistaking.com. She also holds a BA in Journalism and Politics from NYU.
Hide Servings & Times
Yield:
36 cookies
Active Time:
30 min
Total Time:
30 min
Hide Ingredients
For the cookie:
9 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
For the filling:
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
1 teaspoon vanilla
Hide Steps
For the cookies, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Mix in the egg yolk. Add the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt and beat until no streaks of white remain.
On a parchment-paper lined baking sheet drop spoonfuls of dough.
Bake on 375 F for about nine minutes. Remove and cool on a wire rack. Meanwhile, beat together all the ingredients for the frosting.
Meanwhile, beat together all the ingredients for the frosting.
When the cookies are completely cool, spread or pipe an even layer on one cookie, leaving a small border unfrosted. Sandwich together.
lard, Oreos, Nabisco
Hide Recipe By
Amy Spiro, Jewish Week Online Columnist
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Our Sephardi section has been a huge hit. It's got stories on -- of course -- food, and also music and synagogue life.
Sephardim In NY

Sephardic Wave Rolling Into Manhattan
‘The Memory Is In Their Taste Buds’
Sephardic And Egalitarian
Shabbat Recipe: Dja-jeh Mish Mosh
‘We Want A Seat At The Table’
Yemenite Jewish Music, ‘Set To Beats’
The Sephardic Scene
The Wide World Of Sephardim

Sephardic Wave Rolling Into Manhattan
Steve Lipman

Staff Writer
A member of a Jewish family that came to the United States from Morocco in 1958, attorney Marc Bengualid grew up

Artist's rendering of the 12-story Safra Community Center. Courtesy of Safra Community Center

Rabbi David Wolpe

A word for a profoundly Jewish but often disrespected profession: God bless funeral directors.
As a rabbi, I have marveled for many years at the skill and care of funeral directors. My father, a rabbi in Philadelphia, would often recount how his friend, Joseph Levine, would care for those who were bereaved and frightened, and gently guide them. I have seen the same care repeatedly in my own years conducting funerals and meeting with families who had suffered a loss. Death is the most sensitive time; when a funeral director is unkind, the results are devastating. But day after day, a mortuary worker must speak with families whom he or she does not know, and be warm without being cloying, caring without presuming too much, discuss financial arrangements at a time when the family can barely add two and two.
Because my own synagogue has two cemeteries, I have seen this work up close. In the Jewish world we do not sufficiently salute and applaud those who stand on the emotional front lines day after day. They help usher us through our most difficult transitions, and most of them do it with heart and skill. God bless funeral directors.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe
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Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Best,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
The Arts

Renee Calarco's "The Religion Thing" turns on couples' religious inclinations. Teresa Castracane
What Religion Will The Kid Be?
Ted Merwin - Special To The Jewish Week
Our relationship to our religion changes at different stages in our lives. In Renee Calarco’s new play, “The Religion Thing,” a Jewish man married to a Catholic woman finds himself at both a religious and emotional crossroads when his wife wants to get pregnant. When it premiered in 2012 at Theater J in Washington, D.C., critic Peter Marks of the Washington Post said that the playwright is astute in observing that America’s “biggest taboo isn’t talking about sex … it’s talking about faith.” The New York production, with a new cast and director, began previews this week in Chelsea.
Directed by Douglas Hall, “The Religion Thing” takes place in the young, upper-middle-class social set in the nation’s capital. It centers on a secular Jewish man, Brian (Jamie Geiger), who is married to a lapsed Catholic woman, Mo (Katharine McLeod). When their friends Patti (Danielle O’Farrell) and Jeff (Andrew W. Smith) announce that they have become born-again Christians, Brian and Mo begin to re-examine their feelings about their own respective faiths. Meanwhile, Patti and Jeff turn to their brand of religion to help them to weather a sudden crisis in their own marriage.
Calarco hails from upstate Rochester, where she grew up as a “minimally observant Jew in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood,” with a Catholic extended family. After graduating from SUNY Binghamton, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she still resides. Her play, she told The Jewish Week, is about how religion can suddenly become highly significant in people’s lives. “It’s more important to Mo and to Brian than they are willing to admit,” she said. “Meanwhile, it’s a crucial lifeline for Patti and Jeff — it keeps them grounded, sane and human.”
What makes it especially difficult for Mo and Brian, Calarco explained, is that they have avoided the potentially explosive subject of religion. Only when Mo wants to start a family does the difference in their religions get pushed to the forefront, triggering conflict.
“Brian is surprised how attached he is to his religion,” the playwright noted, “even though he’s been away from it for a while.” This is underlined by the appearance of the ghost of Brian’s grandfather, who insists that Brian redo his wedding with the Jewish rituals that were omitted the first time around. For secular Jews like Brian, Calarco noted, “religion gets planted early and never really goes away.”
“The Religion Thing” opens on Tuesday, July 1 and runs through Friday, Aug. 1 at The Cell Theatre, 338 W. 23rd St. Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 8 p.m., with no performance on Thursday, July 3. For tickets, $25, call TheaterMania at (212) 352-3101 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com.

MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG DEDICATES NEW TORAH SCROLL IN HONOR OF HIS PARENTS AT JERUSALEM MDA STATION
Blogs
THE POLITICAL INSIDER | THE ROSENBLOG | THE NEW NORMAL | A COMIC'S JOURNEY | WELL VERSED
POLITICAL INSIDER
More Than A Kidnapping by Douglas Bloomfield
When is a kidnapping more than a kidnapping? When politicians and others exploit a tragedy to further their agendas. It can also be an opportunity to repair damaged relations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
All of Israel wants to see the three teenagers-- --Gilad Shaer, Eyal Yifrah and Naftali Fraenkel -- kidnapped near Hebron two weeks ago returned safely to their families, and the government and security forces are devoting enormous energy to that task.
Prime Minister Netanyahu still hasn’t produced the “unequivocal proof” he promised about Hamas’s responsibility for the crime but today the Shin Bet named two Hamas suspects, Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha, from the Hebron area, who are the targets of the massive manhunt. Several hundred Palestinians have been arrested in wide sweeps of the region.
Netanyahu has sought to use the kidnapping to force Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to break his reconciliation agreement with Hamas. Along the way the PM accused Abbas of complicity in the abduction by insisting it was a direct result of that unity pact.
Abbas denounced the kidnapping in an unprecedented forum, a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Saudi Arabia. He also offered the help of PA security forces in the search.
Some sought to take advantage of the incident for their own gains.
• One Jewish organization said the best way to help find the boys was to pray and send money to the group.
• The Netanyahu cabinet, always looking for ways to curry favor with the settlement movement, authorized a $1.5 million aid package for the settlements.
• A haredi newspaper said the abduction was God’s punishment for drafting yeshiva students into the IDF.
• Various Israeli and American politicians made highly publicized photo-op visits to the boys’ families.
• Members of Knesset used the tragedy to repeat their calls for annexing much of the West Bank, resuming targeted assassinations, collective punishment and prohibiting future prisoner exchanges.
Behind this tragedy and exploitation, there may also be an unexpected opportunity.
If, as most suspect, it is proven Hamas is behind this incident and Abbas feels compelled to abrogate his ill-advised unity agreement, he could open the door to resuming an Israeli-Palestinian peace dialogue by removing Netanyahu’s excuse for refusing to talk.
That doesn’t mean that the two are ready to make peace, but resuming dialogue will keep alive the two-state solution and make possible repairing the two sides’ frayed relations. But peace will have to wait until there are new leaders in both camps with the political courage and vision to take that historic step.
THE NEW NORMAL
Dr. Wendy Ross: CNN Hero Helping With Autism Inclusion by Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer

Dr. Wendy RossDr. Wendy Ross, a developmental pediatrician in Philadelphia, founder of the nonprofit Autism Inclusion Resources (AIR) has recently been named a "CNN Hero."

As a doctor who regularly diagnosed children who have autism, Ross was heartbroken to hear stories of social isolation from the families whose children she was treating. Because many children with autism become overstimulated in loud, crowded or new environments, parents often opt to keep the family home rather than experience fun family outings, like going to a ball game. But Dr. Ross knew that isolation didn't serve her patients with autism well in the long run.
"If kids are not in the community, building their skills from very young ages, then there's no reason to expect them to be independent one day," Ross said. "It's a social disability. It needs to be addressed in a social setting."
So in 2007, Ross set out to do just that. Today, her nonprofit, Autism Inclusion Resources, helps families affected by autism navigate social situations such as airport travel, sporting events and museum visits.
Ross believes that exposure to social settings with supports can help children and their parents experience success.
“Attending a practice session on an airplane, for example, breaks down the experience into less stressful and costly bites so that when the real deal comes along kids are feeling ready--and parents are too. Some parents just need confidence to try, some need more active support and strategies,” she explains.
One of Ross’s most innovative partnerships took place with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2012. Ross was able to arm all of the Phillies game day employees -- approximately 3,000 people -- with information about autism and how to interact with individuals on the spectrum so that everyone from the ticket takers to the hot dog vendors could help create an atmosphere where families feel supported.
To help prepare families for the event, Ross created a booklet with pictures illustrating each step of the game, from arrival and getting a hot dog to the seventh inning stretch. Then she escorts families to their first game, with tickets donated by the Phillies.
What makes the program truly unique is that each family is also provided a clinician at the game who gives additional support if needed. The ultimate goal is that families will have a successful experience and come back to see games on their own—and take their children to other community events.
One of Ross’ other signature programs has been her airport travel program. Using the same principles, she trains airline and TSA staff at major airports and then guides families through a simulated travel experience, including checking in, going through security and boarding a plane. Standing in line and going through the screening process at security can be especially anxiety-provoking for people who have autism. Since 2010, more than 200 families have benefited from this travel initiative.
When training employees of any kind, Ross belives that it’s essential for them to understand that just because a child looks fine, does not mean they may not have a disability. “All behaviors are not created equal or are a parents fault,” she says. “We need to understand the behaviors and support families. Everyone benefits from inclusion.”
In her “spare time,” Ross has also been active working with the inclusion committee of her synagogue Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley, PA, working with other lay leaders to increase awareness at the shul. “The same accomodations can help families bring their children to be full participants at synagogue—training of entire staffs, social stories, creating “quiet” spaces where children can take a break if overwhelmed,” she explains.
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Saturday, June 28, 2014

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