Dear Reader,
Will the 12th and most recent
cease-fire in the Gaza war hold? Much of its long-term viability rides on
Israel's insistence that Hamas not be allowed to re-arm and on propping up
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the role of Gaza gatekeeper.
Skeptics abound. Staff Writer Stewart Ain has the story.
ISRAEL NEWS
Cease-Fire Hinges On Strength Of Abbas
Analysts skeptical of PA leader’s ability to monitor Rafa crossing.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Getty Images
In agreeing to yet another cease-fire with Hamas on Tuesday, Israel may get the peace and quiet its citizens have longed for during 50 days of fighting, but the long-term outlook — and the future of the Palestinian Authority — is still very much in doubt.
“I hear Hamas is celebrating,” said Ephraim Sneh, a retired Israeli general and former deputy defense minister. “It’s hollow; it’s not a victory. This so-called achievement could have been achieved without 2,000 dead and a Gaza Strip that is devastated. It has been defeated.”
He said the only thing the conflict proved was that “Gaza can’t be ruled by a government that rejects the State of Israel. The very profound fact is that Gaza and Israel are inseparable from all aspects — the environment, water, commerce — that is the geography; just look at the map.”
Unlike 11 other proposed cease-fires that Israel said Hamas either refused to accept or violated, the current cease-fire is supposed to be open-ended. But many Israelis living in southern Israel told Israeli media that they are skeptical of the agreement, which came just hours after a barrage of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza killed one Israeli in a southern kibbutz and injured several others.
These residents noted that the Israeli government had told them after the last cease-fire that they could return to their homes, but that fighting resumed and a 4-year-old boy was killed by mortar fire last Friday.
And Mordechai Kedar, a professor of Arabic studies at Bar-Ilan University, questioned whether other terrorist groups would honor the truce.
“There are too many groups in Gaza that might not abide by the cease-fire agreement,” he said. “To embarrass Hamas and draw Israel into action again against Hamas, they might continue shooting in spite of the agreement.”
The agreement calls for Israel and Hamas to resume indirect negotiations within a month to discuss the major points that divide them. Among the issues Hamas is expected to raise is its desire for a seaport and an airport, something Kedar said Israel would only agree to if there was “real supervision” to prevent the importation of weapons and equipment that could be used to dig tunnels and build more rockets.
“So the question is not whether the seaport and airport will be built, but who will control them — and this is where Israel and Hamas night clash again,” he said. “Hamas will object to supervision because it wants to smuggle in missiles that the Iron Dome [anti-missile system] cannot deal with.”
The latest truce calls for the reopening of the Rafa border crossing linking the Gaza Strip with Egypt, but only under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority to ensure that no military weapons or equipment enters.
Eran Lerman, deputy national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said providing the PA with such responsibility would be a test so that Israel could determine how much it could be trusted.
“We want a role for the PA and want Hamas undermined, and for the international community to play a role in this process,” he told a conference call organized by American Friends of Likud. “We are sober about the likelihood of this happening overnight. It has to be performance-based and we’ll see it before [the PA] has a larger and larger role. So the Rafa crossing is going to be the first testing ground for the PA’s authority.”
But Kedar questioned whether the PA has the clout to handle such an assignment.
“Nobody in Israel trusts the PA to do a good job because it is afraid of Hamas, and Hamas can blackmail and intimidate and threaten it not to cooperate rather than supervise what is being done under their nose,” he said.
Sneh said he too is dubious about the ability of the PA and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to monitor goods and supplies going into the Gaza Strip.
“I’m afraid that if the military force of Hamas is not destroyed, it would be very difficult for Abbas’ troops to really control the checkpoints,” he said.
But Sneh also insisted that Netanyahu does not want to empower the PA and Abbas.
“He would prefer that Hamas rule in Gaza,” he said. “That is why the Israeli government did not destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2012 and why it wanted to weaken Abu Mazen. …”
Sneh said he would like to see the international community play a role in ensuring that Hamas does not rearm – provided that both Turkey and Qatar are not a party to such efforts.
“They are the paymasters of Hamas and should not enter — every penny raised should go through Ramallah,” he said.
Asked about the reconciliation between Hamas and the PA, Sneh called it “fictitious.”
Lerman cited the Hamas-orchestrated plot foiled recently by the Israeli security service Shin Bet that was designed to oust Abbas and the PA from the West Bank. A senior Hamas official, Salah Al-Aruri, who is based in Turkey and who recently claimed responsibility for plotting the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June, reportedly planned the plot. Two of the men who carried out the abduction and murder are said to be living in Turkey; a third man was arrested by Israel and admitted that the attack was planned and financed by Hamas.
The National Council of Young Israel called this week for the U.S. Justice Department to indict and arrest Al-Aruri for the murder of those teenagers, 16-year-old Naftali Fraenkel, who held dual United States-Israeli citizenship, as well as Eyal Yifrach, 19, and Gilad Shaar, 16.
“The United States must do everything in its power to bring the individuals responsible for the brutal murder of an American citizen to justice and ensure that they answer for the heinous crime that they have committed,” said NCYI President Farley Weiss.
Israel’s decision to settle for an end of hostilities rather than a destruction of Hamas was a deliberate one, according to Lerman.
He said that during the conflict Israel was able to “inflict immense damage on them and their response was limited. Their rocket effort failed miserably largely because of the Iron Dome, whose results were spectacular.”
The real damage from Hamas came from the crude mortar shells that Hamas fired into the communities immediately surrounding the Gaza Strip.
“They are more difficult to detect when they are fired within a five-mile range,” he said. “They took the life of a boy of four and they have taken a toll on civilians and many soldiers.”
It was reported Monday that 70 percent of Israelis living near the Gaza Strip have evacuated their homes.
“Hamas failed in everything they threw at us but they managed to persist because we decided we were not going in to obliterate them until they cried uncle, as the expression used to go,” Lerman said one day before the truce began. “The leadership in Gaza and elsewhere was showing signs of understanding that the game is up and that the suffering of their people would be translated into a growing anger against them.”
Israeli media noted that although there were initial celebrations in Gaza City after the truce took effect, there was a noticeable lack of celebration elsewhere in Gaza, in Jordan or elsewhere in the Arab world.
Regarding Qatar and Turkey, Lerman said it is “time to put pressure on Turkey and even more so on Qatar” to get them to stop supporting Hamas.
“We believe the [Qatar] establishment is penetrated deeply by Muslim Brotherhood elements,” Lerman observed. “The ideological penetration by the Muslim Brotherhood goes a long way in understanding why Qatar is doing this.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
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At summer's end, 160 Jewish Agency shlichim (emissaries) from Israel who served in Jewish camps in the U.S. spent three days together in New York sharing their experiences and processing a difficult but rewarding two months. Several told me how amazed they were at the level of American Jewish support.
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Throughout the war supporters of Israel here have raised funds to provide IDF soldiers with everything from bulletproof vests to underwear to pizza. But as Associate Editor Jonathan Mark notes, Israeli officials are less than enthused about the well-meant gestures.
NEW YORK
Buddy, Can You Spare Some Socks?
Informal charity going to IDF poses ethical problems and facilitates scams, critics say.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Yoni, while serving in Gaza, was assigned to the unit preparing soldiers for burial. The Israel Defense Forces didn’t issue bullet-proof vests to that unit but Yoni wanted one, even if he had to buy it himself. He asked friends in the Baltimore yeshiva community to help him with the cost — $1,534 — and they did. Oh, and there were 79 others in Yoni’s unit who wanted one, too. Within days, Jews from Baltimore raised $122,720 for 80 bullet-proof vests.
In New Jersey, Rabbi Tomer Ronen put out the word that he would be flying to Israel, bringing “care packages” — socks, underwear, T-shirts — to his son’s IDF unit, if anyone would like to contribute. In 24 hours he collected $10,000, filling six duffel bags with nearly 600 pounds of Fruit of the Loom and Hanes.
Reflecting how informal and independent these wartime charities have become, Bnai Akiva’s Camp Moshava raised $5,000, deciding the shopping list as if they were parents on visiting day, based on conversations with relatives in the IDF. The head counselor, flying to Israel to watch her son get inducted into the IDF, delivered the shipment herself. Moshava explained in their fundraising letter, “Tzahal [the IDF] is doing the very best to provide the essential equipment. ... However, there are some basic necessities that are beyond their scope at the current time to provide.”
All over the United States, Jews were exchanging e-mails and social media posts telling each other that almost everything was “beyond the scope of the IDF to provide.” Jews e-mailed that “they heard” Israeli soldiers were without proper boots, socks or bullet-proof vests, deprived of hats, shampoo, wipes, deodorant, underwear, razors, goggles or knee-pads. In Israel, people drove to the front with pizzas, even steak freshly grilled from Maale Adumim. The IDF reported receiving “tens of thousands” of packages.
Lt. Col. (res.) Avinoam Sharon, who worked in the Military Advocate-General Corps, the IDF’s legal wing, told The Jewish Week that many of these ad hoc charities are “bona fide attempts by caring people to do something helpful, some are attempts to feel good or relevant, some are thinly veiled commercial enterprises…. others are simply scams.” These donations could also be illegal, unwanted or unethical.
Illegal, says Sharon, because it is against regulations for anyone in the IDF to ask for gifts of value. The IDF itself, he said, when giving a watch to an officer upon retirement, is not allowed to give a watch valued above $50.
Unwanted, because the IDF asserts that its soldiers are well supplied. After looking the other way while absorbing 50,000 reservists in a month, IDF rules are once again being enforced: soldiers are not allowed to accept or solicit donations for themselves or their unit, or through a third-party. The IDF reiterated that the only acceptable donations are those funneled through IDF affiliates such as LIBI, a fund established in 1980 by the prime minister and IDF chief of staff; Agudah LeMa’an HaChayal (Association for the Wellbeing of Soldiers); and the American-based Friends of the IDF (FIDF).
There was an ethical problem, as well, concern that one soldier with access to American money might be living like “the millionaire” on “Gilligan’s Island,” while another soldier might be living lower-class in his own platoon. When donations are helter-skelter, with outsiders deciding who gets what, said Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak (Jerry) Gershon, national director of FIDF, “It is [a problem] because I’m not sure that the right people are always getting the right things.”
It should be noted that several of the ad hoc “Israel Emergency Funds” formed in the wake of war, have begun allocating their resources to necessities far more urgent than socks and underwear. Riverdale Jewish Center, for example, announced last week that it was allocating the synagogue’s war-related donations to Yad Sarah, a 30-year-old organization specializing in hospitalization, home care and medical costs, to purchase of 60 wheelchairs, along with walkers and canes, for injured soldiers who have returned home.
The FIDF’s Gershon explained that more can be accomplished, and more equitably, when donations are pooled and coordinated. For example, donations to FIDF allow for the grant of $50,000 to each battalion for a week’s rest and recuperation (13,000 soldiers took advantage of this in 2013); assistance to the children of fallen soldiers; the purchase of refrigerators, game rooms, and computer centers for army bases; and the distribution of holiday gifts such as 50,000 mishloach manot packages on Purim.
Sharon, now working on a doctorate in Talmud and Jewish law at the Jewish Theological Seminary, says with every draft notice a letter goes to parents “instructing them not to buy any equipment for their children. The IDF supplies everything necessary, and then some, including orthopedic inserts, toiletries, sunscreen, you name it. You’re not expected to buy your own gear.”
Besides, he adds, “IDF soldiers are prohibited from using [donated] equipment that is not military grade, tested and approved by the IDF. The IDF has very rigorous standards for those things, and as we say in the army, those standards were written in blood.”
Yet need was becoming greed. One paratroopers unit set up a web site resembling a bridal registry. On it, a soldier wrote, “the funding here in the IDF is very limited and therefore there is a lack in better equipment…” Maybe it was August in Gaza, but he complained that jackets “to keep warm in cold weather aren’t provided by the army…. My team and I ask for your help in the form of monetary donations…. [a cold-weather] windbreaker will cost us around $70; quality Asolo brand boots, around $150; flashlight gun attachments, around $100…”
In fact, that unit did not need the boots anymore than the cold-weather jackets. One father of a soldier in that unit e-mailed that “top quality” boots are indeed given to these soldiers for combat but the IDF allows soldiers to wear Asolo boots “for everyday use.” The Asolo boots were “a status symbol…. they make for great bragging rights!”
Jealousy outranked necessity. Haaretz reported a complaint that when the Sayeret Matkal, an elite special operations force, was equipped with expensive mountain boots, “the entire IDF wants the same thing.”
Sharon is stunned by individuals who think they can decide for themselves how to best equip an army. If your son was a policeman, “Would you buy boots or bullet-proof vests, haul’em down to the local precinct and say, hey, its for your SWAT team?”
One constant in almost all the informal wartime appeals was the fear that the sophisticated IDF (and therefore Israel) was in reality overwhelmed, vulnerable, ill-equipped, forced to choose between bullets or boots. And to many Jews an infantalization of the soldiers has crept into perceptions, that our soldiers, fresh out of high school, remain child-like, perhaps a remnant of the Gilad Shalit years when, captured without a fight, his image was that of a helpless little brother. That is not how Americans see the Marines.
“You may have something there,” says Sharon, “the way people sometimes think of Israeli soldiers. Maybe we do infantilize our kids even when they’re in the army, that we have to send them all kinds of stuff and keep taking care of them. We sometimes let our emotions take over, clouding our better judgment.” After all, for the soldiers that died or might die, who wouldn’t want to send them gifts, anything at all, if we could?
FIDF’s Gershon has kind words for the informal charities. “There is something remarkable, unique to our people: Kol Yisroel areivim zeh l’zeh,” the idea that all Jews feel responsible, one for the other. “In times of trouble, every citizen becomes a philanthropist. Every family becomes a charity. Achdut (unity) is great. The soldiers need to feel that the people are supporting them, and the people need to feel that they are standing behind our soldiers. But the IDF says now is the time to [know] that every necessity is in place.”
As for all the underwear, wipes and socks, there was enough, he jokes, for a Target — not the practice range, the store.
jonathan@jewishweek.org
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Also in the mix this week, assessing Met Council's year under David Frankel as CEO; John Zorn to play his first gig at the Village Vanguard next week; an Editorial on "Journalistic Jihad" in the mainstream press; extreme parenting, Jewish style; and a new biography of Rav Kook by Yehuda Mirsky.
NEW YORK
Frankel’s Style Rankled Some Agency Heads
Scandal-plagued Met Council’s outgoing head’s no-nonsense approach rubbed some the wrong way.
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
Rabbi Moshe Wiener, who’s led the Coney Island JCC since 1981. Met Council
As speculation continues on who might replace David Frankel as head of the scandal-plagued Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, more information has come to light about his year as CEO.
Although most people associated with Met Council’s partner agencies asked that their names not be used in order to protect their relationship with the Met Council, off-the-record discussions with nearly a dozen people closely involved with the anti-poverty group and the agencies it serves provide a fuller picture of what went on behind the scenes during the year that Frankel was at the helm.
Frankel was hired just a week after his predecessor, William Rapfogel, was fired on allegations that he was stealing millions from the organization as part of an insurance overpayment scam. In April he pleaded guilty to stealing $9 million during the two decades he was with the organization and is now serving a 3 1/3 to 10 years in prison.
Frankel, a former New York City finance commissioner, was hired to resuscitate the anti-poverty group’s reputation with donors and government agencies.
“He really was the right person for the right time; he had the credibility and he restored the contracts,” said one person closely associated with the Met Council.
But although he clearly tried to develop personal relationships with the community organizations that work with the Council — many praised his personal visits to agencies, his “pleasant” manner, and obvious desire to learn — some found his Frankel’s non-nonsense style off putting, giving them the impression that he cared more about the bottom line than the needs of the communities the nonprofit served.
“I think David would have done really well as the CFO, but he didn’t understand the moral imperative of the mission of the Met Council,” said one person with close knowledge of the situation.
In an interview with The Jewish Week in March, Frankel commented on his businesslike style, saying, “I’m not naïve enough to think relationships aren’t important. However I just came from government, so I know that it is much more focused on quality and efficiency of the services that you deliver than whose name is on the [office] door.”
A major sticking point came over increased oversight. For years, the Met Council has served as a “fiscal conduit” for seven of the smaller JCCs and community organizations, meaning that the Council handled financial operations such as payroll and bill paying. However, as part of an agreement with the Attorney General and the New York City Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, the Council agreed to put in writing the financial arrangements between it and those agencies in order to provide increased transparency.
However, several people with knowledge of the situation said that the heads of these agencies felt they didn’t have enough say in the new financial agreement and, in fact, didn’t even see a draft of it until two weeks before it was due at the AG’s office.
Several agency heads also felt that Frankel made the oversight more stringent, putting the JCCs on a “much tighter leash” than the AG was requiring.
“In the new agreement, every dollar had to go through the Met Council,” said one person with knowledge of the negotiations.
When the agency heads received the draft of the agreement they balked, refusing to sign it until they could meet with Frankel and discuss possible changes, according to multiple sources. In the end, Frankel did agree to some of the changes and nearly all the agencies signed on. The one exception was the JCC of the Rockaway Peninsula, which, sources said, was about ready to handle their finances on their own — a goal of many of the JCCs.
“They were poised to be independent anyway, so in the face of a stringent agreement, why go down that road?” one observer noted.
The executive director of the JCC of the Rockaway Peninsula declined to comment on the negotiations, and a Met Council spokesman declined to comment on the reason that the JCC of the Rockaway Peninsula did not sign the agreement. However, the spokesman did send a statement noting that in the past year the organization has “made critical improvements to our organization’s policies and procedures” that have “put us on solid footing to expand our programming.”
Due to the administrative changes, the statement says, “every single Met Council social service has undergone an expansion or transformation,” and the organization is able to meet its “clients’ needs more effectively, efficiently, and compassionately than ever before.”
It also noted that though Frankel “will be stepping out of the daily running of the organization” he will continue to help in “finalizing the governance and operational structures that will ensure Met Council’s long-term viability” as “executive chairman.”
As to why Frankel stepped down, in an email to agency heads obtained by The Jewish Week, Frankel suggested that he was doing so because he felt his work at the agency was done.
“I have come to feel very deeply about Met Council ...” he wrote. “However, I also felt I have helped accomplish our primary goal, which was to put us on a path toward ensuring the future of Met Council…”
As for his replacement, several sources have confirmed the report by the Forward newspaper that Lubavitcher Rabbi Moshe Wiener, who heads the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, is under consideration for the post.
Those that know him describe Wiener as an “ideal choice” who can relate to all types.
“He’s a brilliant administrator. He’s well liked in the UJA circles, he’s well liked by everyone,” said one agency head.
“He’s the ultimate professional, his integrity is beyond question [and] … ability to reach out to people of all backgrounds is well proven,” said Ezra Friedlander, a consultant who works with Jewish nonprofits and political organizations.
However, several people who know Wiener well said they doubted he would actually take the job, with once source putting the chances at “less than 10 percent.”
“He’s a shy, quiet guy who doesn’t like to be in the limelight,” one source said, noting that he was extremely invested in the JCCs he’s run for 33 years. “It doesn’t make sense that would leave something so fulfilling,” he said.
As for criticism of Frankel, not one of the nearly dozen people who spoke to The Jewish Week on the subject said they thought it was a mistake to hire him following Rapfogel’s fall.
“He was dealt a very difficult hand and he did a very nice job negotiating with the government,” said one person who works closely with the agencies the organization serves.
But all also agreed that now that the ship was righted, it was time to hand the helm back to someone who had more experience with the work on the ground.
“I think that Frankel will be known as the person who stabilized the Met Council,” said Friedlander. “The Met Council is now on firm footing and now you need someone like Rabbi Wiener, who has been with [a Met Council-affiliated] organization and who can take it to the next level.”
amyclark@jewishweek.org
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NEW YORK
Masada Comes To Jazz Holy Ground
Downtown Jewish music guru John Zorn to play first-ever gig at Village Vanguard.
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
John Zorn: New home for his Radical Jewish Music. Wikimedia Commons
The Village Vanguard is one of the half-dozen most important jazz clubs in the world, a venue that every musician wants on his résumé and one that can launch a career. As John Zorn wrote in a recent e-mail, “It is one of the best rooms in the city for music, with a really heavy history.”
Despite his own impeccable credentials, Zorn, 60, a leading light in jazz and Jewish circles, had never played the Vanguard. But that will change Sept. 2-7 when the club hosts 11 bands associated with the saxophonist-composer-organizer in a live retrospective of his “Book of Angels” compositions for the band Masada, his ensemble that blends forward-thinking jazz and Jewish music. In addition to an appearance with Masada on Sept. 6, Zorn will be guesting on five of the late-night sets that week.
How did the gig come about? The answer is simple: “Debbie Gordon asked me,” Zorn wrote.
Deborah Gordon comes from jazz royalty. Her father Max founded the Village Vanguard and ran the fabled club until his death in 1989 when her mother, Lorraine, took over. Lorraine has long dreamed of having Zorn play the club and she kept urging her daughter to invite him.
After all, Zorn and the younger Gordon went to high school together in the early 1970s — “the UN school,” Zorn noted almost incredulously.
Gordon laughs and recalls that her mother “would tell me, ‘I know you know him and you went to school.’ But I didn’t think he’d want to. He has his own club [The Stone].” A few years ago, our general manager saw him at the Vanguard and passed the idea by him, but it wasn’t right yet.”
Then, as Gordon puts it, “Everything lined up perfectly — boom, boom, boom.”
Eyvind Kang, violist and frequent Zorn collaborator, was playing the Vanguard with the acclaimed jazz guitarist Bill Frissell and noted that he had to run uptown to play a gig with Zorn at Town Hall. Gordon used him to send a message to Zorn: “Tell him ‘Little Debbie Gordon’ — that’s not the name I’d usually give — sends her love and we really want him to be here at the Vanguard. The next day, John e-mailed me and that was that.”
Zorn gave a lot of thought to what he would do for the Vanguard week when it was offered.
He explained, “Rather than playing with one band for the run, I decided to give many different musicians a chance to play at the Vanguard, and I chose bands that would that would really sound GOOD [his emphasis] in that room. In a way it’s as much a retrospective of the downtown scene as it is a Masada festival, 11 bands across six nights.”
That openness and generosity is typical of Zorn, as Gordon notes.
“He’s an embracing, garrulous person,” she says. “Even without having seen John for many years until recently, when we got together if felt like we just transcended all those years in a matter of seconds. We were at home and comfortable with each other as if no time had passed whatsoever, and I lay that firmly at his feet.”
His musical skills aside, Zorn appears to have an immense capacity for friendship and loyalty. For all the jokes about the “downtown mafia,” he has stayed in touch both personally and musically with a large core of talented musicians, and is always expanding that group.
“I keep an eye on people for years and then something clicks,” he wrote.
For Jon Madof, whose band Zion80 is part of the Vanguard week, Zorn has been a pivotal figure.
“It’s hard to express how inspirational and exciting his music is to me,” Madof said last week. “The personal connection that we’ve developed over the past 10 years has made everything else even deeper.”
Rabbi (and saxophonist) Greg Wall, who has been a part of Zorn’s extended musical family and a Tzadik (Zorn’s label) recording artist for even longer. “Making a living playing music in New York, especially Jewish-themed music, he said, “can involve risks of compromising one’s artistic instincts for the sake of increasing performing opportunities and cash flow. Zorn refuses to settle, refuses to play any music that doesn’t resonate deeply, and demands the same from the artists he chooses to record on his label, and appear on stage with.”
Yet Zorn gives musicians a lot of room to express their own personalities, even if they are doing so through his compositions.
“For my own ensembles like Masada, Masada String Quartet, Bar Kochba ... I choose the tunes and arrange the music and conduct on stage,” he wrote. “For most of the other bands, I give them 10 or 12 tunes and let them do their thing. ... For the most part I like to let them work on their own and encourage them to really let their imagination run wild.”
Wall says, “Zorn offers much encouragement and a very long leash,” says Wall. “I don’t think he considers the Masada compositions finished until they are being played by the artists he has chosen to give them to.”
And probably not even then, if sax player Uri Gurvich is any guide. Gurvich, who will be playing with his quartet during the week at the club, wrote, “The compositions, which have a clear, distinct sound, really act as an open platform, and there is a lot of room for interpretation, which makes it challenging and exciting at the same time.”
At least one thing is certain, as Deborah Gordon noted. Lorraine Gordon “is very excited that John is finally going to be here.”
“John Zorn’s Masada – Angels at the Vanguard,” will be performed at the Village Vanguard (178 Seventh Ave. South, just below 11th St.) Sept. 2-7, with sets at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. Bands performing will include Masada, Zion80, the Uri Gurvich Quartet, the Uri Caine Trio, Erik Friedlander solo, the Eyvind Kang Ensemble, and several others. For a full list of participating musicians and more information, go to http://villagevanguard.com.
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EDITORIAL
Journalistic Jihad
Soon after the second intifada broke out in September 2000, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in Gaza, crouching in fear against a wall with his father, was reportedly killed during gunfire exchange between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. A French news video of the incident was seen around the world, and Israel was accused widely of the killing.
It took more than a dozen years and countless media reports, legal trials and investigations before it was determined by most objective observers that Israel was not responsible for the boy’s death, if indeed he died. “This was a blood libel against Israel,” concluded Yuval Steinitz, who chaired a special Israeli committee of inquiry in 2013. Four years earlier two French media experts who examined the raw footage of the film determined that the only way the boy, Mohammad al-Dura, could have been hit by an Israeli bullet was if it had traveled around a corner.
But of course by the time the infamous case was closed, the damage in terms of Israel’s image had long been done.
What brings the incident to mind now is that the primary narrative of Israeli aggression and over-zealous bombing, as described by mainstream media in this summer’s Gaza war, is being called into question on a number of fronts. But again, it may be too late to change people’s perceptions.
A lengthy piece for Forbes online by investigative journalist Richard Behar accuses mainstream journalists, and especially The New York Times, of a “media intifada” in which Israel is skewered while reporters have allowed themselves to become part of “the Hamas war machine,” whose tactics endanger Gaza civilians and fuel anti-Semitism in the West as the civilian casualties pile up.
Behar cites an Aug. 11 statement by the Foreign Press Association in Israel, not known for its sympathy for Jerusalem, which asserted that Hamas threatens foreign reporters through “blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods.”
A number of foreign journalists, many of them from Europe and now safely out of Gaza, have come forward and said they were intimidated and threatened by Hamas. They acknowledged that they did not report on Hamas operating out of schools, hospitals and mosques while they were in Gaza for fear of their lives. These incidents have been little covered in the U.S. mainstream press. The Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, took exception to the FPA statement, saying it could be “dangerous” to the “credibility” of the foreign press.
But Behar’s exhaustive report asserts that press credibility has been endangered by its own lack of objectivity, its willingness to accept for weeks highly suspect casualty figures provided by Hamas and local UN officials, and its failure to report on Hamas operating and firing out of residential areas, with some of its errant rockets directly responsible for civilian casualties.
Another critique of mainstream media comes from Matti Friedman, a former AP reporter who has covered the Mideast extensively. Writing in Tablet, the online Jewish magazine, he accuses editors and journalists of “severe malfunction” when it comes to reporting on Israel. “Every flaw in Israeli society is aggressively reported” while Palestinian society gets a free pass, Friedman maintains. “Most reporters in Gaza believe their job is to document violence directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians. That is the essence of the Israel story.”
The broader criticism is that Mideast reporting essentially revolves around the Israel-Palestinian conflict rather than the real, and connected, story: the growing radical Islam movement that is sweeping the region and bringing untold chaos and destruction.
One senses that reports like those by Behar and Friedman preach to the converted, giving additional information and confirmation to those who share their views on Israel and media bias but probably not changing the views of Jerusalem’s critics.
Behar agreed with that assessment. “Positions just tend to harden,” he told us. But it’s our obligation” to tell the truth.
He is right. Let’s hope enough thoughtful readers are paying attention.
editor@jewishweek.org
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NATIONAL
Extreme Parenting, Jewish Style
From 'eco-kashrut' to the withholding of breakfast, two Jewish families' parenting styles make for juicy reality TV fodder.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Meet the eco-kosher Adlers, of Westchester. Via BravoTV.com
Molly Goldberg they ain’t.
The Yiddishe mamas on Bravo’s new reality show, “Extreme Guide to Parenting,” are hardly anything like Molly, the archetypal Jewish mother on “The Goldbergs,” a black and white series of television’s early days. They ain’t even Beverly Goldberg, the bighearted, boundary-less matriarch on the contemporary series of the same name.
Shira Adler, for example, one of the mothers on Bravo’s new show, believes she was a monk, a nun and a rabbi in her previous lifetimes.
“I’m sure that has something to do with my religious confusion today!” said Adler, laughing, who works as a past-life regressionist and considers herself a “reconservaform” Jew (some blend of Reconstructionist, Conservative and Reform).
“Extreme Guide to Parenting,” which runs on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m., explores the strange lives of American parents with radical approaches to child-rearing. Two out of the nine families featured on the show are proudly Jewish.
And of the many, colorful Jewish-mother stereotypes that exist, the matriarchs of these two families leave those clichés in the dust.
Adler, the mother of Emma, 13 and Yonah, 11, defines her parenting method as “eco-kosher, shamanistic.” She refers to herself as the “all-natural diva-mama” and uses specialty aromatherapy sprays, crystals and homeopathy to deal with her son’s ADHD (she does not believe in using medical treatment). She considers Yonah, who struggles with angry outbursts, to be an “Indigo,” someone with extra-sensory capabilities.
What’s Weird About My Mom. . . -- http://www.bravotv.com/video/share/2803328
“It’s like a sixth sense,” explained Adler, 45, whose family lives in Westchester. “Yonah can sense things and see people that other people cannot. He’s beyond the spectrum.”
Marisa Silver-Eisenberg, who considers herself “120% Jewish,” is a chiropractor, personal trainer and fitness junkie from Jericho, N.Y who calls her style “push-parenting.” She wakes her five-year-old son up every morning, quizzing him on U.S presidents and withholding breakfast until he practices writing his name on a white board.
Both mothers say their strong Jewish identity has influenced their parenting techniques.
Silver-Eisenberg’s mother is a first-generation American; her grandparents fled Europe before the Second World War and both were the only survivors from their families. Arriving in American with nothing, Silver-Eisenberg’s grandparents adopted the rigorous work ethic that she now implements with her son, Austen.
“In my family, education and hard work were never a question,” said Silver-Eisenberg in a phone interview. “I’m teaching my son that he has to give 100 percent, just like his grandparents did.”
Attending synagogue remains a part of the Silver-Eisenberg family routine. Austen attended preschool at North Shore Synagogue on Long Island and, aside from services, Marisa and Austen participated in several Mommy and Me workshops.
“The synagogue is where I met my strongest network of friends,” said Silver-Eisenberg. “They are my cheerleaders, and they’ve supported my decision to go on the show.”
While Silver-Eisenberg came from a strong culturally Jewish background, Adler grew up attending Orthodox institutions in Philadelphia. Her father is the former dean of Yeshiva University, Norman Adler. Adler attended Orthodox schools through eighth grade.
“I come from highly intellectual and a highly religious background,” said Adler. “Though I’m definitely not Orthodox anymore, my parenting method is rooted in Jewish tradition.”
Today, Adler works during the high holidays as the assistant cantor for Congregation Kol Ami of White Plains, a large Reform congregation. She also performs interfaith ceremonies as a non-denominational minister and studies kabbalah, the Jewish study of mysticism.
“My eco-conscious lifestyle comes from the Jewish principle of tikkun olam (repairing the world),” she explained.
Both mothers have come under serious criticism since the show aired on August 7th. Articles have accused them of being irresponsible, mentally unstable, cruel and unfit to be parents.
However, the criticism hasn’t fazed either of them.
“Anytime you present yourself in a public forum, you are going to be judged,” said Silver-Eisenberg, who said that Austen was excited to be on TV. “It can’t be helped. But I’m confident in my parenting method and in my family. My son has been flourishing, in school, in sports, in relationships, so if people want to hate, they’re going to hate. It won’t stop me.”
She added that her appearance on the show has motivated many of her patients and clients. “I expect my son to give his all, so I give my all,” she said.
“It is not my job to respond to the world’s negativity,” said Adler. “People have nothing better to do than hate on me for how I’m living my life, instead of living their own lives.”
She said both Emma and Yonah “really enjoy” being seen in the public eye. “This was healthy and helpful for them — they were able to be themselves,” she said.
Despite both women’s conviction that their children are enjoying the attention, child psychology expert Wendy Mogel, Ph.D, feels differently. Mogel, author of the best-selling parenting book “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee,” pointed out the serious problem of airing sensitive family moments, without the child’s consent.
“This is a very advanced form of stage-parenting,” she said in a phone interview. “The child never agreed, and now there is a permanent public record, whether they want it or not.”
She referenced the two young boys from the viral YouTube video, “Charlie bit my finger.” The video, which became an international phenomenon, has since received over 750 million views.
“Like it or not, these two boys have grown up in the shadow of that video,” said Mogel. “There’s something very uncomfortable and unfair about that.”
Mogel noted that reality TV shows feed off of extreme and emotionally unhealthy behavior.
“The more unusual, eccentric or aggressive the behavior, the more likely it will make the cut in the editing room,” she said. When it comes to healthy parenting, the drive to grab viewers ends in disaster.
“The show violates several Jewish teachings,” she continued, listing lashon hara (gossip) and tziut (modesty). “Exposing the flaws and weaknesses of a family’s private relationships is just the opposite of modesty,” she said.
Asked if the show did have any saving grace, Mogel said other parents might be able to learn something from the show. “Many of the people watching might never read parenting books, or go to lectures,” she said. “The show can be instructive for parents who won’t reach this information through another portal.”
Learning what not to do as a parent can also be exceptionally valuable, she concluded.
hannah@jewishweek.org
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BOOKS
Reassessing Rav Kook
In new biography, Yehuda Mirsky argues that the founding chief rabbi of Israel’s ideas were co-opted by his son.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
New biography suggests that the views of Israel’s first Ashkenazic chief rabbi were more pluralistic .Courtesy of Yale Universit
While some books offer a good read, and others encapsulate groundbreaking scholarship, Yehudah Mirsky’s “Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution” (Yale University Press) manages to do both.
Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the founding chief rabbi of modern Israel, is read more widely in Israel these days than ever before, and new Hebrew volumes of his work continue to be published. But his extensive writings and teachings are little known in the English-speaking world. Released as part of the Yale University Press’ Jewish Lives series, this is the first biography in English in more than 50 years. Mirsky’s book is timely, for in order to understand the nuances of Religious Zionism as it is embodied today in Israeli politics and society — as well as to understand Jewish spirituality — it’s essential to understand the thinking and leadership of Rav Kook.
Mirsky tries to show how Rav Kook’s teachings have been turned into a political doctrine that he neither intended nor believed in. As the main editor and interpreter of his father’s work after his death, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook heightened the nationalist dimensions, while downplaying the humanistic, universalist, pluralist and peace-seeking elements. The former served to inspire the messianic zeal of the settler movement, particularly after 1967.
A scholar who now teaches at Brandeis University, Mirsky finds Rav Kook even more interesting as a rabbi, philosopher, Talmudist, poet, mystic and tzaddik. Mirsky writes, “The endless play of light and shadow in his mind, at times fevered, at others serene, recasts the conventional ideas of his time in new and complicated patterns.” He also describes Rav Kook as a relentless optimist.
Mirsky read in Hebrew the private notebooks and spiritual diaries of Rav Kook. While he has written a long dissertation about Rav Kook, this is a brief and engaging biography; his footnotes indicate the extent of his research. Mirsky previously served in the U.S. State Department during the Clinton administration and has written for The New Republic, The Economist and other publications. From 2002 to 2012, he lived in Israel and was a fellow at the Van Leer Institute and Jewish People Policy Institute. In an interview, he admits that while working for the State Department, he kept a photo of Rav Kook in his drawer.
The author, who grew up on the Upper West Side, explains that while learning at Yeshivat Gush Etzion, led by Rav Yehuda Amital, in Israel in 1978, he was influenced by Rav Amital’s embrace of Rav Kook’s teachings, particularly his urging of a life of spiritual authenticity and honesty. But it was only after he became very interested in the teachings of Rav Kook that he learned of his own family’s strong connections to the religious leader — that his grandfather was a disciple of Rav Kook.
Mirsky writes that in his study and journals, Rav Kook sought to understand “increasingly powerful and contradictory currents coursing through his time, his soul and the soul of the world.” His journals took on a life of their own; his private notebooks became his own house of learning. “The text he was studying was his own increasingly complicated soul.”
Among his many contradictions, Rav Kook was the greatest theologian of Religious Zionism, yet didn’t join the Zionist movement. He was strictly Orthodox in his observance, and “welcomed heresy as a cleansing bonfire whose embers would yield a new revelation.” He was open to leftists and secularists. Mirsky characterizes his writing as including erudite legal opinions, shimmering mystical visions, “penetrating philosophical and human insight alongside evidence of striking political and social naiveté. An ethical universalist, he also embraced nationalism.
The biography is full of engaging stories, from his childhood as a rabbinic prodigy in Lithuania, and a young man “with a lyrical sensibility and vivid imagination” to his yeshiva studies — he became a disciple of the distinguished dean of Volozhin, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, known by the acronym the Netziv — and his work as a community rabbi to his decision to move to Palestine at age 38 in 1904 and accept the post of rabbi of Jaffa.
While being an administrator was not his strong suit, Rav Kook was most generous in his rabbinic duties to help the needy. He spent a lot of time visiting the sick, regularly giving away his own household possessions. One of his disciples, Rabbi Ya’akov Moshe Charlap, a native Jerusalemite, regarded him as “Tzadik HaDor, the saint, who in Kabbalistic and Hasidic doctrine, takes upon himself the uplifting of his time, and whose soul challenges God’s energies into the world.”
When Marc Chagall visited Palestine in 1931, he was brought by S.Y. Agnon to meet Rav Kook. Mirsky reports that the painter was very taken with Rav Kook and his “holy face” and asked to paint his portrait. Rav Kook demurred, asking, “What good would it do the Jewish people?”
Readers will gain an appreciation of Rav Kook as a man of complexity and contradiction, a visionary who embraced modernity and Orthodoxy. That the rabbi who saw the spiritual light even in those who wouldn’t see it in themselves would be embraced in recent years by some of the less tolerant element in the Zionist tent seems an unfortunate irony.
Mirsky says he tries to refrain from asking again and again, What would Rav Kook have done now, but readers will no doubt wonder. The struggle over Rav Kook’s legacy continues.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
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