Dear Reader,
The continued tensions in Jerusalem are a focus this week as a new kind of improvised intifada seems to be taking hold. Israel correspondent Michele Chabin reports on Jerusalemites stocking up on pepper spray in a bid to ward off potential terror attacks.
ISRAEL NEWS
Pepper Spray Now A Hot Commodity
On the Jerusalem street, coping with tensions — and wondering if the ‘Third Intifada’ has begun.
Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent
Jerusalem — It’s pepper spray time here.
In a sign of the increasingly tense times, where a string of terror attacks in the city and beyond have rattled residents, members of a Jerusalem listserv signed up for bulk orders of pepper spray; they were hoping, presumably, that the spray could stop a terrorist from carrying out an attack. Others asked fellow members how to legally procure a gun permit.
At Defense, an army-and-navy store on Ben Yehuda Street in downtown Jerusalem equipped with IDF uniforms and a large assortment of knives and camping equipment, the owner, who requested anonymity, said business for pepper spray “has been brisk since the war in Gaza started, but especially since Monday’s terror attacks.”
There was no corresponding jump in the sales of knives, he added.
That was a caustic reference to the violence on Monday, in which Palestinian terrorists from the West Bank fatally stabbed Israelis in two separate attacks; one was at a Tel Aviv train station, the other at a bus stop by the entrance of the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut.
Yet an outsider visiting downtown Jerusalem would be hard-pressed to notice much difference from a day or a week ago. Commuters waited patiently at light rail train stops on Jaffa Road despite the fatal vehicular attacks at light rail stations that claimed the lives of three people, including a 3-month-old baby with American citizenship, in recent weeks.
The only security measure discernible to the public were several large cement blocks placed on sidewalks next to the train tracks to prevent terrorists from driving into pedestrians.
“We’re feeling very comfortable here,” said Mitch Gold, a tourist from Baltimore, as he and his wife and parents shopped on bustling Ben Yehuda Street in the heart of downtown. “There is nothing here that would cause us alarm.”
For many Israelis, Monday’s attacks signaled that a wider conflict is developing — one not confined to always-volatile Jerusalem. Some believe the attacks, as well as widespread rioting in east Jerusalem and Arab towns in northern Israel, constitute the start of a third Palestinian uprising. Others hope it’s a blip and that calm will be restored in the near future.
Either way, people in Jerusalem are worried but trying to live their lives as normally as possible.
Emerging from Defense with a small container of pepper spray, a young immigrant from New York who gave her name as Shira said she purchased it to calm her mother’s fears.
“Personally I don’t think it will make a difference in a terror attack, and I don’t think the violence going on now is much worse than what happens in Israel at other times,” she said.
Downtown storeowners don’t agree, especially ones like Sarit Cohen, whose dress shop was destroyed when a Palestinian terrorist blew himself up outside her store on Jaffa Road during the second intifada.
“I hope this isn’t a new intifada but I’m worried,” said Cohen, standing behind the cash register of her empty store, which, until the start of the war in Gaza in July, was packed with Jewish and Arab shoppers.
Cohen, who has three children, including one in the army, said business has dropped more than 50 percent since before the start of the war, when Israelis barely left their homes.
“I have many regular [Arab] customers from east Jerusalem who are afraid to leave their houses due to the rioting in their neighborhoods,” said Cohen, who said she called her customers at home to see how they are faring.
Some of the Arab women are also concerned about being harassed by Jews in west Jerusalem, she said.
Shmuel Katan, the owner of a Ben Yehuda Street store that has sold everything from antique menorahs to Persian rugs since 1960, said business has been down 80 percent since the start of the war in July, and has only gotten worse in recent days.
“Tourists have been scared away but it’s not as if no one is here,” he said, gazing out the window at the pedestrian mall, where people were strolling and eating outside thanks to the spring-like weather. “The problem is that at times like these no one is in the mood to shop.”
Cohen said he is “sure” Israel is in the grips of a third intifada. “They don’t want to live in peace with us,” he said.
The storekeeper expressed the hope that the American Jewish community will organize a series of fairs and invite Israeli storeowners to sell their goods overseas, just as they did during the second intifada.
“That would help us a lot,” he said.
Bar-Ilan University Professor Mordechai Kedar said the ingredients for a new uprising are all present “but we don’t yet see buses blowing up, so I’d say we’re not there yet,” he said.
“But I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens,” he said.
Kedar believes the unrest that gripped east Jerusalem and Arab sections of northern Israel following the murder of east Jerusalem teen Mohammed Abu Khaeder, and more recently by the police shooting of a knife-wielding Arab in Kfar Kanna in the Galilee, who, a video shows, appeared to be running away, is being fueled first and foremost by Islamic fundamentalism.
“There is a connection between what is happening in Israel and what happens to the Palestinians, and there is a connection between the Islamic Movement in Israel and the leadership of Hamas. It’s no accident that the riots in the Arab sector started in Kfar Kanna, the place where Sheikh Kama Khatib, the deputy leader of the Israeli Islamic Movement lives,” he said.
Kedar said the two share the same ideology calling for Israel’s destruction and the establishment of an Islamic state “on Israel’s ruins.”
The growing popularity of the Islamic Movement in Israel is “very much connected” to emergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq,” he said. “ISIS has a vast influence on the feelings and emotions and motivations all over the Middle East, including Israel.”
If there is a difference between the two Palestinian uprisings and the wave of Palestinian violence taking place now, Kedar said, it is the fact that Arabs in Israel, not the West Bank or Gaza, are taking the lead.
“You can see the greater intensity this time around, which manifests in the number of incidents and the number of young people taking part in them. For them it is a religious struggle, no doubt about it,” he said.
When it comes to encouraging terrorism and rioting, Kedar said the Palestinian Authority is trying to keep up with Hamas because otherwise “it would lose its legitimacy and popular support.”
Another important component, Kedar said, is the feeling of disenfranchisement many Israeli Arabs feel.
“They claim, with some justification, that the services — the allocation of roads, schools, infrastructure, industry — Israel allocates to its citizens are distributed in an unequal way,” he said.
Further, Kedar said, “we cannot deny that Israel is a state that represents the Jewish aspirations and sovereignty through its flag, its national anthem and its language. It does not embody the national, cultural and religious aspirations of the Arab sector. In fact it negates the aspirations of the Islamic religion, which says Jews must be subservient to Muslims.”
From the young’s viewpoint, the Islamic Movement gets things done while “the old guard are not willing to fight for what they think is important,” he added.
Standing on the line of a cash withdrawal machine on Ben Yehuda Street, Suha Bahar, a middle-aged Arab woman from east Jerusalem, said Arabs in Israel “are frustrated by the stalemate” in the peace talks, “the imprisonment” of Palestinians in the West Bank and “Jewish attempts to take over the Haram al Sharif,” the Arabic name for the Temple Mount.
But Bahar said she “abhors the violence taking place on both sides. Violence is never the solution.”
In the meantime, Joshua Shuman worries about the safety of his three children — two soldiers and a teen — as well as his wife, who teaches Hebrew to Arabs in Shuafat, where many of the clashes between Arab rioters and police are taking place.
“This certainly feels like the start of the third intifada,” he said, “and I’m worried.”
editor@jewishweek.org
The ADL without Abe Foxman? That's soon to become a reality as the defense organization named an Obama administration official, Jonathan Greenblatt, to succeed Foxman next summer. And this week questions are being raised about whether Greenblatt will change direction, and whether his ties to Democratic administrations will have an impact on the organization.
NATIONAL
Questions Over ADL’s Direction In Wake Of Top Pick
Social entrepreneur with strong ties to Democrats to replace the iconic Foxman.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Obama administration official Jonathan Greenblatt, speaking this week in L.A.
For the last generation, the Anti-Defamation League has arguably been the most prominent Jewish organization in the country, and its national director, Abraham Foxman, the voice of American Jewry.
Following the announcement last week that White House aide Jonathan Greenblatt will replace Foxman in July, questions are inevitably being raised about whether a change in leadership will spell a shift in the organization’s direction.
As the movement to boycott Israel gathered steam here and especially in Europe, Foxman seemed to move the defense of Israel front and center in the group’s portfolio of issues. He argued that what some saw as legitimate criticism in Europe of Israeli policy on the West Bank was actually a form of anti-Semitism.
Will the ADL under Greenblatt continue its Israel focus, especially at a time when, in the wake of the Gaza war, some in the community contend that Jews in Europe are more under siege than they have been in years?
And will Greenblatt’s close ties to Democratic administrations bolster the group’s standing with progressives in the Jewish community who may have felt that Foxman moved the group too far to the right on Israel?
Foxman and Greenblatt are studies in contrast — generationally, professionally and stylistically.
Foxman, 74, is entrenched in the Jewish community, serving at the ADL for nearly a half century and as national director since 1987. Greenblatt, 43, is a generation younger than Foxman, and aside from an internship and participation in a leadership development program at ADL, he has spent most of his professional career outside of the Jewish communal world; Greenblatt, a social entrepreneur, is the grandson of a refugee who escaped from Nazi Germany; Foxman, born in what is now Belarus, is a Holocaust survivor and one of the most recognized Jewish figures in the country. Greenblatt is largely unknown outside of government and entrepreneurial circles.
“Clearly, the search committee understood that it was not going to find another Abe Foxman,” said Jerome Chanes, an analyst of Jewish communal affairs and senior fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Jewish Studies.
“They were looking for a CEO,” someone who can raise money and administer a $50 million annual budget, said a Jewish leader close to the search process who asked for anonymity. “They didn’t pick a superstar, a younger Abe. They were clearly looking to bring in someone who looked more progressive” on a variety of domestic and international issues.
Will that translate into a more universalistic approach, with more emphasis put on discrimination against a variety of religious and ethnic groups? And will the ADL try to improve relations between the Obama administration and American Jews, a sizeable number of whom have seen the president as insufficiently supportive of Israel, or continue to criticize administration policies, as Foxman often has done?
“What is the mission of the ADL?” asked Chanes. “The central question for the ADL, and for all Jewish organizations, is can the ADL retool itself to address new realities, especially the diminution of anti-Semitism in the United States?”
Barry Curtiss-Lusher, who headed the ADL’s succession committee, said the choice “isn’t a statement of change.”
“We were looking for our next great leader; we were looking for a successor to continue us on the path that Abe’s had us on,” he said. “This is a statement of continuity. This is not a turn-around. Jonathan has a lot of the same attributes as Abe: his vision, his passion, his Jewish core.”
Curtiss-Lusher said the first priority of the selection committee, which considered more than 500 people for the post, was “passion in the fight against anti-Semitism and bigotry.”
The ADL under Greenblatt will continue its emphasis on fighting anti-Semitism, Curtiss-Lusher said. “We’re the ADL. We’re Jewish.”
He said Greenblatt’s contacts in the White House will be an asset, but that “his connections are much more in the business world than in the political world.”
ADL officials said Greenblatt was not available for interviews this week.
The change atop the organization comes at a time when the place of national Jewish organizations are increasingly taken by local organizations like Jewish federations and Community Relations Councils, Chanes said. “Whoever the [ADL] director is has got to address this large change in the Jewish community,” he said.
Jeffrey Gurock, a professor of American-Jewish history at Yeshiva University, said Greenblatt’s inside-the-Beltway connections at the highest level of the U.S. government will be a boon to the ADL.
“Greenblatt’s extensive background in wider worlds should only assist the organization in getting its messages heard,” Gurock said. “I think there will be more continuity than change with Greenblatt’s appointment. ADL has always been multi-focused, both in response to domestic anti-Semitism, which was its original and historic mandate, and in concern for global Jewry — especially Israel.
“There has long been a recognition that anti-Semitism here is part of a greater malaise of intolerance that has undermined American democracy,” Gurock said. “Now, there may be a more explicit addressing of these issues that seem at first glance to be ‘non-Jewish’ but in reality have ramifications for Jewish life.”
But Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, disagreed. Calling Obama “the most hostile [American president] towards Israel ever,” Klein said, “it is surprising that the ADL would have chosen [a candidate who has served as] a special assistant to this president. This position [of ADL’s leader] demands a political non-partisan. The ADL has chosen a clearly Democratic partisan, with little Jewish background to boot.”
Chanes called the appointment of Greenblatt, who rose to prominence outside the network of major American Jewish organizations, a sign that American Jewry is not grooming young leaders to take top professional positions. “None of [them] want to invest the time or money in developing young professionals. It makes a terrible statement; we have a community that’s largely illiterate in Judaism and Jewish affairs.”
In his remarks at the ADL annual meeting last week where his appointment was announced, Greenblatt called Foxman “a hero in every sense of the word.” A graduate of Tufts and Northwestern universities who has directed the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation since 2011, Greenblatt coordinated a joint effort with the Jewish Federations of North America to provide assistance to Holocaust survivors who live in the United States. His White House portfolio included such public-private partnerships as the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, the “Pay for Success” program and the Social Innovation Fund.
Earlier, he was a co-founder of Ethos Water, a premium bottled water brand that donates a portion of its profits to international clean water programs; he was CEO of GOOD Worldwide Inc., a media company that connected subscribers to “important causes and high-impact nonprofits”; and he founded All for Good, a social enterprise that, according to an ADL press release, “assembled one of the largest databases of volunteer opportunities on the Internet.
And he has served on several nonprofit boards, including the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles and KaBOOM!
In addition to nonprofit work, Greenblatt served as vice president of REALTOR.com; he was responsible for management of a $30 million business unit and of 120 employees.
“I have enjoyed a varied career that has spanned business, nonprofit and public service — but the common thread linking these experiences has been a commitment to tikkum olam, to repair the world, whether by building businesses, creating products, driving policy, or forging partnerships,” Greenblatt said at the ADL meeting.
In citing his paternal grandfather, who lost several family members in the Shoah, and his Iranian-born wife, who fled “the toxin of anti-Semitism” after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran that overthrew the Western-leaning Shah, Greenblatt said “fighting this scourge [of hatred] and advocating for the rights of all is not just an intellectual pursuit — it’s personal for me, a deeply held value, one that has been seared into my soul.”
“The threats that face our community today — including the expanding specter of global anti-Semitism; the continued legitimization of anti-Zionism, and the spreading infection of cyber-hate — are serious and sinister,” he said.
President Obama, in a prepared statement, called Greenblatt “a valued member of my team [who] worked tirelessly to support innovative solutions to America’s challenges. I am confident that Jonathan will build on Abe’s extraordinary legacy.”
As a sign of the increased prominence the ADL attained during Foxman’s tenure as national director, his appointment after the death of his predecessor, Nathan Perlmutter — a respected professional leader little-known outside of the Jewish community and human rights circles — merited only a 6-inch story in this newspaper. Then, no one asked what direction the ADL might take with a new leader at the helm.
steve@jewishweek.org
Also this week, we spotlight Rep.-elect Lee Zeldin, who, with the downfall of Eric Cantor, will soon become the only Jewish member of the House. Zeldin is a Long Island conservative who will now have to negotiate the fault lines in the GOP.
NATIONAL
L.I.’s Zeldin Stepping Into GOP Minefield
Only Republican Jew in the House, Rep.-elect will have to negotiate party’s fault lines.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
As about 30 students started assembling care packages Monday for American troops overseas, Republican Rep.-elect Lee Zeldin unobtrusively slipped in and began talking to several of the veterans present.
A few minutes later, Zeldin — who wore a lapel pin from Operation Iraqi Freedom in which he served with an infantry battalion during four years of active duty in the Army — took a picture with the Suffolk Community College students and thanked them for their efforts on the eve of Veterans Day.
“There are a lot of people who spend the day not thinking about our veterans, but you do,” he said. “You care. The highlight of a day for a vet deployed is getting these boxes. I remember getting a picture from a third or fifth grader I never met before — it was the best part of the day.”
Zeldin, who was elected last Tuesday, will be the only Republican Jew in the House of Representatives following former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s loss in the primary. The 34-year-old easily defeated six-term Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop with 55 percent of the vote.
But Monday’s college audience might prove among the easiest for him to please as he heads to Washington. His job is set to begin this week with the congressional orientation for newly elected members.
A conservative Republican, Zeldin will find a party divided by internal struggles with moderates in the House and Senate leadership on one side and Tea Party reformers on the other. Each is seeking the upper hand as the Republicans move from backbench kibitzers to lawmakers now that they have captured control of both the Senate and the House.
Despite his conservative credentials, Zeldin, a two-term state senator, speaks like the last nationally prominent New York Republican Jew, the late Sen. Jacob Javits. A liberal, Javits nevertheless argued for diversity within the party.
When asked about the Tea Party, Zeldin replied: “I work with anybody; I work with everybody. I’m my own man. There are times when you are working on an issue that you will align [yourself] based on party or geography or a shared position on a particular issue. You might be working with one person one day on one bill, you might be working with someone else the next day on something else.”
He added, “Every single thing I was able to accomplish in Albany was done by getting the support of Democrats. When you have a Democratic governor, a Democratic State Assembly, and Republicans and Democrats sharing power in the Senate, there is no way to get anything done if you are not willing to work with those on both sides of the aisle.”
Last week’s election was the second time Zeldin had challenged Bishop, 64, for the seat that encompasses the bulk of Suffolk County. The first time, in 2008, Bishop won handily with more than 58 percent of the vote. But Zeldin’s increased name recognition — he was twice elected to the State Senate beginning in 2010 — as well as a strong anti-Obama vote and a massive media blitz that pummeled both candidates swept Zeldin to victory.
Lawrence Levy, executive dean of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, said that although Zeldin can’t go too far afoul of the Tea Party base that helped elect him, he will be a one-termer in that moderate swing district if he doesn’t come across as a pragmatic, get-things-done legislator. He has managed to appeal to the full spectrum of the Republican Party, and has attracted a substantial number of votes from moderates and independents, by coming across as someone who doesn’t put ideology or partisanship above representing everybody in the district.
“If the Republican Party wants to hold this seat in 2016, its leaders will not push him to take extreme positions,” Levy said. “He knows the district and that it is politically and ideologically diverse. The people who decide elections are moderate independents, which is true of a lot of swing suburban districts.”
Among those that had set up tables at Monday’s college event was the PFC Joseph Dwyer Program that helps returning veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
And Regina Pfeifer was there in behalf of the Soldiers Project, which provides free counseling to service members returning from the war. When she saw Zeldin, she rushed up, embraced him and said she had voted for him. When she said she had been upset by the repetitive TV ads against him, Zeldin said he had to stop watching television.
“I was getting ready to vote against myself,” he quipped.
A native Long Islander, Zeldin grew up in Suffolk County and graduated from William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Albany and a law degree from Albany Law School. He became the state’s youngest attorney when he was sworn in at the age of 23. He next embarked on his military career, which Zeldin said has informed his “outlook on foreign policy, understanding threats. … and how to build and participate in a coalition of allies to get something productive done.”
After the military, Zeldin had his own law practice from 2008 until his election to the State Senate.
With respect to his Congressional victory, Zeldin said simply: “There was certainly a lot of significant swing in our favor. They decided they were not happy with the status quo and wanted a better direction for our country.”
He said he, too, is unhappy with the Obama administration’s relationship with “our nation’s strongest ally – Israel. We have a president and an administration that has been less supportive than I would like.” And he said Republican support for Israel “presents an opportunity for the Republican Party to expand its outreach to Jewish Americans [so that they] consider supporting Republicans causes a little more going forward.”
Exit polls last week showed that 65 percent of the Jews who voted supported Democratic candidates.
“I believe we need a stronger, more consistent foreign policy. The president said there would be consequences if chemical weapons were used by Syria, but there weren’t any — and enemies respect only strength.”
Obama’s decision to ease sanctions against Iran was a mistake, Zeldin said, because despite its promises, Iran continues its research efforts to build a nuclear bomb. “I believe sanctions should be increased, not decreased,” he said.
Zeldin said he also would like to repeal Obama’s prime legislative achievement, the Affordable Health Care Act, because “for every one person I come across who tells me it has helped them, I come across more who say it has adversely impacted them and they are not happy. I am hopeful we can get past partisan bickering and improve health care.”
Regarding immigration, Zeldin said he is “greatly concerned that this president will continue to take unilateral actions that he does not have the authority to do. ... It is important that Republicans and Democrats and the White House find common ground and move our country forward.”
In addition, Zeldin said he is against common core education standards. He said officials in Albany are “reluctant to change it because they believe they risk … $700 million in federal funding. I believe the federal government needs to give states the flexibility to do what is best for their students regardless of the money being spent.”
An only child, Zeldin was raised in Shirley, L.I. and celebrated his bar mitzvah at B’nai Israel Reform Temple of Oakdale, L.I. He and his wife, Diana, continue to live in Shirley. Although Diana, a Mormon, did not convert to Judaism, Zeldin said the family joined B’nai Israel Reform Temple and that his 8-year-old identical twin daughters, Mikayla and Arianna, will be enrolling in Hebrew school there.
Asked about his upbringing, Zeldin said it was sometimes Reform, sometimes Conservative, “depending on who [in the family] we were with.” In addition to B’nai Israel, the family often attended the Conservative synagogue Farmingdale Jewish Center, where his grandfather is a founder.
Asked if Judaism has influenced his way of thinking, he replied: “There are many important values that help build character when faced with a decision. The best thing you can do when you have a strong sense of right and wrong is to do what your gut tells you is right.”
Although some analysts questioned why Zeldin risked giving up his relatively secure Senate seat to challenge Bishop again, Zeldin said he felt a compunction to run.
“It’s one thing to sit on the sidelines and complain and another to raise your hand and serve,” he said. “This is a great opportunity to make a positive difference, and it required me to leave a safe seat to run.”
editor@jewishweek.org
In our Food and Wine section this week, Amy Kritzer tweaks the standard knish recipe with Thanksgiving in mind.
https://twitter.com/whatjewwannaeat
Our annual Charitable Giving section looks at the rise in teen philanthropy and the growth of the #GivingTuesday project.
Charitable Giving 2014Sizing up the philanthropic landscape, post-Pew. Toward a new metric for funders. Trying to Get Israelis to Give. A Jewish Mother Goes to Bat for the World’s Children.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Teaching Women What They’re Worth
Tuesdays With Charity
Crafting A Sense Of Compassion
What’s New In Jewish Charity World
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Tuesdays With Charity
Henry Timms
Special To The Jewish Week
‘For all the tweets and technology driving #GivingTuesday, we think its progress is a testament to the power of community.’
#GivingTuesday essentially reimagines one of 92Y’s bedrock values: the responsibility we have to do our part to make the world a better place. Our initial idea was simple: After Black Friday and Cyber Monday — two days that are all about consumption — we would try to add “Giving Tuesday,” a day dedicated to compassion; we hoped to spark a national conversation and help people to focus on giving back. We began this project in 2012 with fairly modest goals — we thought if we could get even get 100 organizations working together on this project, that would be a great start. But as it turned out, the reaction was more powerful than we expected. All around the country, people rallied behind the idea of beginning the holiday season with a day dedicated to giving and acts of kindness.
On Nov. 27, 2012, the first #GivingTuesday, 2,500 partner organizations took part. The Associated in Baltimore raised more than $1 million; they were joined by Jewish National Fund, American Jewish World Service and Jewish organizations in, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Indiana, Kansas City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Mayors in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York offered their support, as did major leaders like Bill Gates and the White House. On a local level, communities around the country focused on how they could help each other — through volunteer drives, raising money for individual families in need, stocking food pantries and sharing their own talents for the benefit of others.
In #GivingTuesday Year Two (2013), we saw some further progress. Ten thousand partners around the world joined the movement, and data from a variety of sources indicated a marked increase in online giving that day, compared with #GivingTuesday the previous year. We were honored to see Israel’s #GivingTuesday last year reportedly become Israel’s biggest giving day ever. And we continued to see a huge variety of ways in which people were giving back, from a group in Burundi that organized a blood drive to replenish supplies in the country’s hospitals to residents of a Chico, Calif., homeless shelter who partnered with local businesses to do clean-up projects in downtown Chico. We also saw broad engagement on social media, with people taking to Twitter and Facebook to champion the causes they believed in.
As we approach the third annual #GivingTuesday on Dec. 2, the movement counts 13,000 partners in the U.S., and 3,000 more in eight countries and two regions around the world, from Australia to Canada to the U.K.
But #GivingTuesday is about so much more than the numbers. For all the tweets and technology driving #GivingTuesday, we think its progress is a testament to the power of community, which has always lived at the very core of 92Y. It was a community of people here at 92Y who breathed life into #GivingTuesday, and grew quickly to include our friends at the UN Foundation, who added their voices and expertise. Members of the tech community in New York helped to build the website and create a social media strategy; advisers in the philanthropy community helped to shape the idea of an open-sourced, accessible movement; professional communicators helped us tell the story of #GivingTuesday to new partners and in the media. People everywhere came together to work in common cause. #GivingTuesday has certainly been enabled by technology, but it is driven by community.
We were thrilled and honored this year to have received UJA- Federation of New York’s Riklis Prize for Agency Entrepreneurship, in recognition of our work on this project. And we are so grateful that the UJA-Federation leadership has gotten behind this idea in a big way, helping unite 21 agencies in the UJA-Federation network as #GivingTuesday partners. Further across the country, we are especially pleased that 28 federations will be participating on Dec. 2 this year. To further encourage and support participation at JCCs this year, our friends at JCCA offered a free webinar this fall featuring two of our #Giving Tuesday partners in the Jewish communal world — the JCC in San Francisco and the Associated in Baltimore — who shared their insights and experience to enable others to create successful campaigns.
Here at 92Y, we’re planning a variety of giving-back programs for #GivingTuesday, including a blood drive and a toy and clothing drive with MommyNearest for people living in homeless shelters around the city.
Last year, the always-inspirational members of our Himan Brown Seniors Program completed their goal of knitting 1,000 hats for children with cancer on #GivingTuesday. This year, we are inviting people of all ages and skill levels to stop by Warburg Lounge at 92Y and help to make scarves and hats to benefit pediatric cancer patients and other people in need.
The 92Y Shababa community has been bringing families together for joyful, intergenerational Jewish experiences, and through the Shababa Network, we are helping to bring that spirit to Jewish communities around the country. On #GivingTuesday, our own “Shababa Mamas” singing group will be visiting local Jewish seniors, and five Shababa Network partners will be bringing joy to nursing homes, shelters, and hospitals in Long Island, Florida and California.
Every year, 92Y’s Educational Outreach programs bring the arts to 10,000 children in NYC’s public schools. On #GivingTuesday, we’ll be hosting a free live webcast at 11 a.m. EST so that schools around the city and across the country can join us for the New York premiere of “Maximus Musicus,” a concert designed to communicate the magic of music through the adventures of a little mouse who leaps, scurries and climbs among the instruments. In addition to the concert, we are making the accompanying curriculum available for free. It’s all at 92y.org/givingtuesday. Please join us on Dec. 2 for #GivingTuesday. Make a plan to celebrate giving that day — pledge to volunteer your time; talk with your children about the importance of giving; make an extra donation to a cause you believe in or an organization that recently inspired you; and take the opportunity to encourage others to do the same.
Former Israeli President Shimon Peres, in conversation recently with UJA-Federation’s CEO Eric Goldstein, explained why he is optimistic about America’s future — because we did not acquire our power by taking, he said, but rather by giving. We hope — in some small way — that #GivingTuesday can help renew the great tradition of giving that has been a core commitment of 92Y for over 140 years. n
Henry Timms is executive director of the 92nd Street Y and founder of #GivingTuesday.
Visit www.givingtuesday.org or www.92Y.org/givingtuesday for ideas about how to participate and to learn more about the movement.
Have a good week.
The Editors.
P.S. Please check out the newest version of our website faster and easier to navigate and read for breaking stories, videos and exclusive blogs, op-eds and features.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
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NEWS and FEATURESRabbi Leonard Matanky, right, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, and Rabbi Steven Pruzansky.
Rabbi Rebuked For 'Nazi' Reference
RCA says Teaneck leader's use of 'Der Sturmer' to criticize The Jewish Week 'crosses the line of decency.'
Staff Report
The president of the Rabbinical Council of America this week issued a rebuke to a colleague for making comments that appeared to compare The Jewish Week to Der Sturmer, the official and virulently anti-Semitic Nazi newspaper.
Rabbi Leonard Matanky of Chicago, president of the major Orthodox rabbinic group in the U.S., spoke out against comments written by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, a member of the organization’s executive committee and rabbi of the 800-member Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, the largest Orthodox synagogue in Teaneck, N.J.,
In an interview with The Jewish Week, Rabbi Matanky said: “I am pained that I have to distance myself from a colleague, but the kind of language that Rabbi Pruzansky used is unacceptable and crosses the line of decency and discourse.”
He noted that if a non-Jew had used such language “we would be up in arms. It simply cannot be condoned, especially coming from a rabbi.”
The Nazi reference appeared in a personal blog by Rabbi Pruzansky that took strong exception to The Jewish Week’s reporting on his recent decision to step down as head of the Beit Din of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County, N.J. He said his move was not prompted by the fact that women were appointed to a new RCA committee to oversee the group’s conversion process and that he had made his decision before the composition of the committee was known.
The Jewish Week article quoted from Rabbi Pruzansky’s blog — he declined to be interviewed — which said “the committee consists of six men and five women, bolstering the trend on the Orthodox left to create quasi-rabbinical functions for women.” He questioned whether there is “a role for women to play” in reviewing the conversion process, which he described as “a purely rabbinical role.”
In an updated post, the rabbi insisted that his decision was not based on women being on the committee but rather on the likelihood that it will “water down the standards” for conversion.
The committee was formed in the wake of the arrest last month of Rabbi Barry Freundel in Washington, D.C., charged with videotaping women undressing to use the mikvah.
Rabbi Pruzansky also was upset that a phrase in The Jewish Week story said he “shared the company” of Rabbi Freundel on the RCA executive committee. He felt it implied that he was “somehow … connected to the alleged malfeasance in D.C.”
The phrase was not intended to suggest that Rabbi Pruzansky was personally involved in the scandal. While The Jewish Week apologized for the phrase in an Editorial last week, it also pointed out that Rabbi Freundel and Rabbi Pruzansky were politically aligned in an unprecedented effort to challenge the RCA’s slate of officers in an off-year election in 2012. They called for the group to resist more open approaches to Orthodoxy. In a bitterly contested election, Rabbi Pruzansky was the only one of the 16 challengers to win a slot; he was elected to the executive committee, where he now serves.
Rabbi Pruzansky, on a subsequent blog entry entitled “Gary Rosenblatt Lies. Now He Should Apologize,” personalized his attack on The Jewish Week editor and publisher, quoting an anonymous “astute observer” who charged that the publisher “never met a feminist, especially an ‘Orthodox’ one, he hasn’t tripped over his shoes running to worship. Likewise, he’s never met an Orthodox rabbi, especially ones that ignore him, that he hasn’t tried to vilify.”
(Rosenblatt is the son and grandson of Orthodox rabbis and a member of an Orthodox synagogue.)
Rabbi Pruzansky wrote of The Jewish Week: “They should apologize. But, I guess, to follow their way of reporting, both The Jewish Week’s publisher and Julius Streicher [Der Sturmer] published newspapers that dealt a lot with Jews. Same business, I suppose. That’s bad company to be in.”
After a request from RCA leadership, Rabbi Pruzansky removed the “Nazi” paragraph from the blog (though he did not note the change at the time) and insisted he did not mean to compare The Jewish Week to Der Sturmer. “Heaven forefend,” he wrote. “There is no comparison.”
In a third entry on the subject, posted Tuesday and entitled “The Last Word: Gary Rosenblatt Still Lies,” Rabbi Pruzansky said he used an allusion to the Holocaust only to show the flaws in The Jewish Week’s journalism, not to call The Jewish Week a Nazi paper.
“[A]llow me to state unequivocally that Gary Rosenblatt is not a Nazi, and the Jewish Week is not Der Sturmer,” he wrote. “The Jewish Week is adept at a modern form of yellow journalism, in which the use of commonality as comparison is rampant, in which lies are wantonly published and in which targets – especially Orthodox Rabbis, Orthodox Jews and the Holy Torah – are routinely assailed.”
Rabbi Matanky declined to engage in the particulars of the controversy. “This is not an issue about a disagreement or freedom of the press or who got the story right,” he said. “It’s about a rabbi’s use of rhetoric and language that crossed the line of decency.”
Rabbi Pruzansky, in his 20th year at Bnai Yeshurun, is no stranger to controversy. He is widely admired by many of his congregants as bright, learned, articulate, witty, firm in his convictions and a caring pastoral leader. But he is also known for his sharp tongue and strongly held opinions, with little tolerance for those who disagree with him.
RCA members appear divided on Rabbi Pruzansky, with some calling for his removal from the executive committee. Critics maintain that he is in violation of the RCA’s own statement on ethical conduct: “We will do our utmost to ensure that Orthodox organizations gain a reputation for ‘menchlichkeit’ [humanity] and strict adherence to moral and ethical standards that we espouse in our learning and our teaching.”
Others support the rabbi’s viewpoints, if not his language and style.
In a letter to his rabbinic colleagues last Thursday, Rabbi Matanky made reference to the controversy and wrote: “I implore all of our members that as role models of Torah behavior we must always adhere to the rabbinic dictum of ‘chachamim hizaharu bidivreichem’ [wise men, be careful with your words]. This is even more important at this unfortunate time when the kavod [honor] of our profession has been tarnished and rabbis find themselves under ever-increasing scrutiny.”
Amy Sara Clark and Gary Rosenblatt contributed to this report.
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Food and WineBeigel calls the iconic black-and-white their 'trademark' cookie. via beigelsbakery.com
Gentrification Spurs Black-And-White Cookie Company's Move
Amy Sara Clark - Staff Writer
Fans of Beigel's black-and-white cookies can breathe a sigh of relief. The century-old kosher goods company will still supply New York City with its trademark treat, despite the sale of the company’s baking facility, reported earlier this week.
On Wednesday morning, The Daily News reported that a real estate developer had bought the baking facility for the 100-plus-year-old Israel Beigel Baking Company in Clinton Hill, causing fears that the historic company would be shut down.
However, Sam Beigel a member of the family that owns the company, told The Jewish Week Thursday evening that the baking facility is moving to Canarsie and he expects production to continue without pause.
The Israel Beigel Baking Company has been keeping members of the tribe in rugelach and honey cake since the 19th century. The exact date of the company’s birth is unclear, but Joan Nathan reported in the New York Times in 1998 that it had “been in business in Cracow, Poland, for five generations by the time the Germans invaded in 1939.”
During the war, the Germans allowed the Beigel’s to keep their bakery open so they could supply Nazis with bread. Several members of the Beigel family died in concentration camps. The remaining three moved to New York in 1947, Nathan reported.
They rebuilt the company on the Lower East Side and then moved the factory to Williamsburg in the 1950s to expand production, according to Beigel's website. By 1998, the company was churning out more than 10,000 round challahs for Rosh HaShanah, Nathan reported. In the early 2000s it expanded again, tripling its size by moving to Clinton Hill, according to Beigel’s website.
But despite its copious challah production, the company's claim to fame is the black-and-white cookie, which they call their ‘trademark.” According to their website, the company sold more than 50 million of them by the early 2000s.
And now the company is moving again. Beigel’s Clinton Hill factory, a 43,350-square-foot building at 551 Waverly Ave., was bought by Madison Realty Capital for $23.5 million, the Daily News reported. Madison Realty did not respond to a Jewish Week query about the company’s plans for the building, but Beigel said he believed they intended to build an apartment building on the site.
The sale marks yet one more closure of an industrial building to make way for housing as demand continues to rise in Brooklyn — especially in Community District 2, which extends from Brooklyn Heights through Clinton Hill.
“There’s a great deal of gentrification in Community District 2 and developers are looking at any available site for additional residential units,” said Robert Perris, Community District 2’s manager.
“You’re always going to get a higher return from residential development than you’re going to get from industry,” Perris added, “Any site that’s underdeveloped is going to be subject to sales pressure.”
As for how high of a residential tower will be replacing the factory, Perris said the site is zoned for up to 80 feet in height, roughly eight stories.
If built, the building will join a bevy of other concrete-and-stainless steel apartment buildings sprouting up across Brooklyn. It's a trend that has sped up in the last few years as the city recovers from the recession, Perris said.
But for the sake of the black-and-white cookie, let's hope that demand doesn’t reach Canarsie anytime soon.
amyclark@jewishweek.org
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Travel - LONDONHyde Park is London's answer to Central Park and the largest of its royal lawns. Amy Larson
A Walk In The Park
Hilary Larson - Travel Writer
Between the museums, palaces, theaters and pubs, it's easy to spend a week in London entirely indoors. Given the famously drab weather, it is often preferable to do so.
Between the museums, palaces, theaters and pubs, it’s easy to spend a week in London entirely indoors. Given the famously drab weather, it is often preferable to do so.
But every now and again the sky clears, a pale sun bathes the cityscape in a warm light — and it seems a shame to waste such weather in a museum.
If you should chance upon such a spell, don’t feel guilty about neglecting art and history. From royal sightings to Jewish monuments to a glorious collection of parks, there is plenty to see in central London without ever going indoors — or spending a pound. After all, there is nothing more British than a good constitutional.
Victoria Station is many visitors’ arrival point and a fine starting point for a stroll. Walk along Buckingham Palace Road, which takes you past the Royal Mews — where the queen parks her coaches — to the palace itself. While the latter is only open to visitors during August and September (and during a few days in winter, for a much higher price), you can ogle the royal spread from the road.
Naturally, you have to be outside to watch the changing of the guards — daily from April through July, and every other day the rest of the year. But to get an even better view of Buckingham Palace, keep walking to St. James’ Park, the oldest of London’s eight Royal Parks.
Even in the gray heart of London, you are never far from a green oasis. London’s verdant, peaceful parks, with rolling lawns and lush foliage, are a tribute to all that famous rain. St. James’s boasts not only a shimmering lake that runs its length, but also views of three palaces — Buckingham, St. James’s Palace and Westminster, now the Houses of Parliament — as well as 10 Downing St.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that when the prime minister strolls across the park to the Palace, he must contemplate the extraordinary, 82-foot-high fin-de-siècle monument to Queen Victoria, whose marble likeness is crowned by a gold winged Victory statue. Along with Victoria, St. James’ Park is a virtual memorial to prominent recent royals — including monuments to the Queen Mother and King George VI.
Taken together, these displays throughout London’s Royal Parks are more than aesthetic punctuation; they’re a lucid and enjoyable guide to British history, a visual smorgasbord of English pride, nostalgia and taste. (St. James’ Park also has rotating outdoor exhibitions on British history, including the current one spotlighting World War I battlefields.)
The focus is on remembrances of soldiers and veterans in the memorials at Green Park, located just on the other side of the Palace. Green Park is smallest of the Royal Parks (though at 40 acres, this is a high bar indeed); its inviting lawns, spread over the slope of Constitution Hill, are one of the more popular spots for picnics and sunbathing. If your timing is right, you might spot royal guards riding their horses in formation in a training exercise.
There’s even more to see amid the fountains and gardens of Hyde Park, London’s answer to Central Park and the largest of its royal lawns. The lake at its heart is known as the Serpentine, and if you’re feeling romantic, you can rent a rowboat here as well. You can also stop for tea at any of several pretty cafés around the lake, including the Serpentine Bar and Kitchen, where glass walls showcase the scenery.
Here the most prominent memorials recall the 20th century, and as such they are among the most-visited. At the lake’s edge, children play in and around the burbling, granite-enclosed stream of the Princess Diana memorial fountain.
And amid the silver beech trees of the Serpentine Dell, English and Hebrew letters detail a stone marking the Holocaust Memorial Garden. This was Great Britain’s first Holocaust memorial; dedicated in 1983, it is modest but lovely in its restraint, and the site of an annual remembrance service.
The festive side of London Jewish life is also on view outdoors — at the annual Chanukah festivities in Trafalgar Square, which lies just down the Mall from St. James’s Park. Last year more than 7,000 people flooded the square to watch Mayor Boris Johnson light the towering candelabra for the first night of Chanukah, and stayed for concerts by local Jewish choirs and music ensembles.
Though it’s a fairly recent phenomenon, the menorah lighting has become a literal bright spot on the Jewish calendar. Throngs of families come for free doughnuts, hot kosher food, and sightings of the Chabad Chanukah superhero Dreidelman. And it’s just one more reason to enjoy London in the fresh air.
editor@jewishweek.org
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