The Jewish Week Newsletter-The Jewish Week Connection the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 27 May 2015 "On the eve of the Celebrate Israel Parade, in-depth reports on the growing Israel-American Jewry divide; and more."
Dear Reader,
As New York Jews gear up for the Celebrate Israel Parade on Sunday up Fifth Avenue, the largest pro-Israel celebration of its kind in the world, our focus is on the changing triangular U.S.-Israel-diaspora Jewry relationship.
Staff Writer Orli Santo reports on the remarkable growth - and possible political leanings -- of the Israel American Council, a national group with a New York office, seeking to unite Israeli Americans and connect them to American Jews. The group will sponsor a major Celebrate Israel Festival at Pier 94 on Sunday afternoon.
In U.S., Israelis Claim A Foothold
Can Adelson- and Saban-funded Israeli American Council stay neutral on politics, emphasizing culture?
Orli Santo
Staff Writer
Sheldon Adelson, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Haim Saban at last November’s Israeli American Council conference in Washington.
For years, the great irony of the annual Celebrate Israel Parade up Fifth Avenue is that it attracted just about all of the city’s pro-Israel groups.
Except Israeli-Americans.
That’s changing in a big way this year thanks to a relatively new organization that’s little known, but a major force on the national Jewish scene: the Israeli American Council (IAC). Founded in Los Angeles eight years ago, it has become the largest Israeli-American organization in the U.S. with branches in Boston, Miami, Las Vegas, New Jersey and New York.
As a nonprofit, non-political group, IAC’s mission focuses on Israeli culture, seeking to strengthen the ties among Israeli-Americans and give them a greater voice in Jewish life here. But with most of its funds coming from big-personality philanthropists Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson, skeptics are looking for signs of their right-of-center influence.
They won’t find it here, say Yehudit Feinstein-Mentesh, New York regional director of IAC, and Gil Galanos, a local co-chair. In an interview with The Jewish Week, they noted that the 14 members of its year-old local board have raised or contributed most of the group’s funds since its founding and are committed to specific educational and social goals, especially passing on the Hebrew language to the children of Israeli-Americans.
Lately, though, the primary focus has been on the Celebrate Israel Festival, which will offer music, food, art, sports and more, all with an Israeli flavor. (See The Buzz, Page 30, for details.)
“Politics are completely irrelevant to us … it’s not part of the conversation,” Galanos said. “Right-wing, left-wing, Orthodox, non-Orthodox … we work with everyone, as long as they align with our mission statement and our policies as a nonprofit.”
The fact that the annual Israel parade, a mainstay on the New York Jewish scene, has never been a big draw for local Israelis underscores how different the two communities are.
“Israelis, we don’t march in the parade, everybody knows this,” said Galanos. Recalling his own failed attempts to convince his friends to go, he added that to Israelis, the parade has always been “a Jewish-American thing.”
“In a way, the parade is a symbol of the relationship between the Jewish-American community and the Israeli-American one,” said Feinstein-Mentesh. “If you didn’t grow up in the Jewish-American establishment, if your kids don’t go to Hebrew [or day] school and you aren’t a synagogue member, you will feel like you don’t belong.”
This time around, though, the Israelis may be leading the parade from the rear, creating an elaborate event at Pier 94 on the far West Side for people — Israelis, American Jews and others — to attend after marching, or independently.
The parade up Fifth Avenue is from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The festival is from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. (The annual Israel Day Concert in Central Park, with mostly Orthodox entertainers and a nationalist theme, is from 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.)
“We are uniting people of all ages, backgrounds and interests, from artists to chefs to musicians to athletes, in celebrating the achievements of Israel,” said Ambassador Ido Aharoni, consul general of Israel in New York, whose remarks will kick off the festival.
Hindy Poupko, managing director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of New York, a key partner for the event, said the combination of the parade and festival will offer marchers and spectators “the ultimate double header.”
Astonishing Growth
Looking to the future, the IAC hopes that the parade and the festival will merge into one single event in which both the Israeli and American Jewish communities unite in supporting Israel, and in which the local Israelis play a prominent role.
That may sound ambitious for a local group formed in 2014, but the IAC is already reshaping the Israeli-American community and its role within the larger Jewish one.
Originally named ILC, the Israeli Leadership Club, the IAC was an elite organization from its very start. As the story goes, during Israel’s 2006 Second Lebanon War, the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles attempted to organize a demonstration supporting the state. Few people came, and of those, hardly any were Israelis. As a result, L.A.’s Israeli Consul General Ehud Danoch met with a group of local Israeli power brokers, including Saban, and urged them to create an infrastructure that could rally the Israeli-American community in times of need.
They found it hard going. Far from home and ill at ease with the Jewish American establishment, Israelis in the U.S. were likely to stay away from synagogues and Jewish institutions.
Jacky Teplitzky, a prominent New York real estate broker and former sergeant in the IDF, recalls that when she came to New York from Israel in 1989, she was asked to joint the real estate division of UJA-Federation of New York and help recruit other Israelis. What she discovered was “a big disconnect” between the two groups, and lack of interest among the Israelis.
“I told the UJA people that their approach should not be to expect the Israelis to be donors but to ask them what were their needs. Ask ‘How can we bridge the gap?’” she said.
Teplitzky, a member of the boards of both UJA-Federation and IAC, said she remains passionate about working to narrow the divide, interpreting each community to the other. “We have to find a way to unite,” she said. “Unity brings power.”
IAC in Los Angeles carried out its mission through large-scale community events and a full complement of educational and social programs, implemented first in L.A. and then nationwide. Sifriyat Pijama, for example, a Hebrew and Jewish literacy program for families, is now the largest Hebrew outreach initiative in North America. There’s Mishelanu, a program bringing young Israeli- and Jewish-Americans together on American college campuses; an IAC Taglit Birthright program, formulated especially for second generation Israeli-Americans; Tzav 8, a platform for mobilizing Israeli-Americans to participate in pro-Israeli demonstrations and activities, and more.
Recognizing IAC as a powerful pro-Israel tool, Jewish-American donors began to champion the IAC as well. In 2013, after Sheldon Adelson threw his hefty support behind them, the organization went national.
Ever since, the IAC’s growth has been rapid. Starting with seven members, it now employs over 65. It went from raising less than $500,000 in 2010 to $23.5 million this year (of which Adelson reportedly pledged almost half). The IAC is planning to open a branch in Washington, D.C., dedicated to community building and pro-Israel advocacy on Capitol Hill. They are also looking into setting up shop in Chicago and Philadelphia.
“We understand that our kids, not to mention our grandkids, if they are not connected to the American-Jewish community — we are going to lose them,” said Feinstein-Mentesh of the New York council, whose Hebrew program, Keshet, teaches kids about Israeli culture and Jewish tradition. All of the afterschool programs take place in synagogues, to anchor them in the Jewish American establishment.
In partnering with the JCRC and the Jewish establishment, the IAC may be positioning itself to become a major influence on defining what support for Israel consists of.
Political Bent?
Israeli-Americans hold a range of opinions about how to support their homeland, from those who believe in pushing for a two-state solution to those who push against it. While IAC’s New York branch is probably as politics-free as possible, the national organization does engage in political advocacy, particularly regarding Iran. Its 2014 inaugural Washington conference featured a largely right-leaning roster including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Sen. Lindsey Graham and former independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who criticized President Obama for the pressure he put on Israel and for his policies on Iran. Several weeks ago, the IAC published an ad in the Washington Post calling for the Senate to strike down the president’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran, should it seem risky to them.
In terms of Israeli politics, the IAC held receptions during the annual conference of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. As for J Street, its dovish counterpart, “we’re not fully convinced they are pro-Israel,” said Balasha, the CEO of IAC nationally.
The national group also sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to attend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech in Congress, two weeks before the Israeli elections.
Such moves have some Israeli-Americans feeling a little uneasy. One Israeli-American performer told The Jewish Week, “I don’t know if I like their political direction. ... But they do so much for us, and they are so strong in the community, that in any case I won’t open my mouth about it.” He asked not to be named since he often works at IAC-sponsored events.
“We are all pro-Israel. But Israeli Americans do not all agree with the Israeli government’s current policy and actions,” said Gili Getz, co-chair of J Street’s Israeli network in New York. “There are many who oppose its policies and support President Obama’s efforts to reach a two-state solution. I am very concerned that as the IAC grows, for all the good it does for Israeli-Americans, it might misrepresent us, creating the impression that all of us support their views and distorting our voice.”
As for IAC’s Celebrate Israel Festival, he pointed to its headliner, the iconic pop star Rita.
“Rita, are you kidding me? Of course I’ll be there,” he said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Our special Israel Now section includes essays by Yossi Klein Halevi, Yehuda Kurtzer, Gidi Grinstein and Nessa Rapoport exploring the worrisome divide between Israel and American Jews.
Israel Now 2015
Navigating the existential divide. The debate over liberal Zionism. Press freedom under siege. Israeli-Americans
as a bridge.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
And my column reports on signs of that disconnect that were evident at a global Jewish think tank conference here last week.
‘I Love Israel, But Does Israel Love Me?’
Signs of growing disconnect between U.S. Jews and Israel evident at global Jewish think tank conference.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
The four hours of discussion on U.S.-Israel-diaspora Jewry relations was winding down as the dinner hour approached at the annual JPPI (Jewish People Policy Institute)Brainstorming Conference last Monday afternoon in Glen Cove, L.I.
That’s when the fireworks started.
Most of the 25 breakout-session participants sitting around the table, Israelis and Americans, were board members of the Jerusalem-based global think tank, chaired by Stuart Eizenstat, former U.S. ambassador to the European Union. The people in the room included Mideast policy analysts and former policy makers, academics, Jewish communal and religious leaders and a fewinvited guests (myself among them).
One participant described the intense discussion up to that point as “dark.” Indeed, the talk had focused on serious concerns over the widening gulf between American Jews and Israel in recent months, which, the Americans in the room agreed, had reached crisis proportions.
They cited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to speak out in Washington against the administration’s position in the nuclear talks with Iran as striking an unprecedented blow at congressional bipartisanship on Israel, and perceived by the White House as disrespectful.
“The anger is very real and it won’t go away unless we work at it,” asserted a communal leader who was part of a delegation that met with President Obama recently, and others agreed.
(In keeping with the JPPI ground rules on press coverage at the conference, participants are not quoted by name here.)
The all-but-broken Obama-Netanyahu relationship has led American Jews, and especially Democrats in Congress, to feel squeezed, caught between their loyalties to their country and the Jewish homeland.
In addition, the formation of a right-of-center and religiously conservative coalition in Israel that is in no hurry to go back to the peace table and seems poised to reverse gains made on the religious equality front has added to the perception that common ground between Israeli and American Jews is becoming more difficult to find.
There was talk around the table of U.S. rabbis avoiding Israel in their sermons because the topic is too controversial; federation leaders citing donors who refuse to give to the annual campaign now because of Israel’s policies; and the challenge of countering campus descriptions of Israel as an occupying force.
In response, the Israeli moderator said he felt Israel’s faults were being exaggerated, that what he was hearing did not add up to a crisis, and that Israelis have far more pressing problems than women’s rights to pray at the Western Wall.
Talking Past Each Other
At that point, one of the Americans cried out, “Do you understand what you’re saying?” setting off a heated, 25-minute debate that underscored the level of the disconnect between the Americans and Israelis, all of whom have spent significant time in each other’s countries.
The Americans argued that their message had not been heard, and indicated that their struggle to defend Israel at a time when Jerusalem’s democratic values seem to be weakening — this was the day before the controversy over separate buses for Palestinians — was putting a strain on them personally as well as professionally. Especially galling, they said, was that there seemed to be no empathy for their views in the room.
One participant cited a Conservative rabbi’s recent blog post that said, “I love Israel, but does Israel love me?”
The Israelis in the room countered that they understood the Americans’ frustrations but that their concerns paled in comparison to security worries in an increasingly dangerous Mideast. And taking the offensive, they suggested that rather than harp on Israel’s political system, American Jewry should look to its own problems, like growing assimilation.
A liberal American rabbi in the group, acknowledging the critique, replied, “intermarriage is no blessing.” He noted that increasing assimilation within American Jewry adds to the distancing of Israel.
(An academic added that half of U.S. millennials who self-identify as Jews have a non-Jewish parent, and tend to feel less obligated to support Israeli policies they consider illiberal.)
One person observed that the price for American Jews caring deeply about Israel is that they want to be taken seriously when they have differences with Israeli policies. And it seemed apparent from the discussion that the more deeply attached liberal Jews are to Israel, the more pained they are by Jerusalem policies that offend them.
“We are realistic enough to know that our views aren’t going to be translated into policy change in Jerusalem,” one of the Americans said. “But we want to hear some support from the government. We want to know what our realistic expectations should be.”
The answer, unspoken, is not to expect significant change anytime soon.
In all, it was a revealing, painfully honest exchange that left both Americans and Israelis feeling surprised at how little the other side understood them.
A Chance To Be Heard
A key mission of JPPI, founded in 2002, is to bridge those Israel-diaspora gaps. Its officials take pride in the independence and prestigious names associated with the work of the institute, whose mandate is to provide “strategic thinking and proactive policy planning on issues shaping the Jewish future,” according to its literature. Recent JPPI position papers have dealt with a plan for mass aliyah from France, promoting Jewish solidarity in an age of polarization, and whether Israel can be both a Jewish and democratic state.
Avinoam Bar-Yosef, a low-key but influential former journalist, is president and founding director of the group whose board chairs are Ambassadors Eizenstat and Dennis Ross, a veteran Mideast peace coordinator, and Leonid Nevzlin, a businessman and philanthropist who made aliyah from Russia.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Google CEO Eric Schmidt attended a lunch meeting on Tuesday, lending star power to the proceedings, which were attended by about 50 people. Among those presenting at the conference, in addition to Eizenstat and Ross, were Ambassador Martin Indyk, who led the most recent Mideast peace talks as U.S. special envoy; Jewish Agency chair Natan Sharansky; Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor; former Labor Knesset member Anat Wilf; Conference of Presidents head Malcolm Hoenlein; and Mideast expert David Makovsky.
A session on Monday night on the Iran nuclear deal focused on whether Prime Minister Netanyahu will accept President Obama’s apparent offer to engage in serious discussions that would include assurances and compensation for Israel, presumably financial and military, in return for accepting the deal now on the table.
Proponents asserted that Obama is determined to finalize the Iran deal and the window of opportunity for Israel may only be open for a short time. “Once the deal is done, the offers will be off the table,” one analyst said.
Others who know Netanyahu well believe he will not stop his efforts to thwart the deal because he believes sincerely that it will be ruinous for Israel and the region. They reason that he will “double down” on his bet, having already lost the first round, and focus on a post-Obama White House and a more sympathetic ear in the Oval Office in 2017.
Other discussions focused on the dangerous rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the BDS movement on American campuses; suggestions to prevent a U.N. Security Council resolution that would seek to impose a settlement on Israel and the Palestinians; and the need for outreach to minorities in the U.S., particularly Hispanics and blacks, to promote their understanding of Israel in all its complexity.
In June, key JPPI officials will have their annual meeting with the Israeli cabinet and be given an opportunity to present recommendations.
Based on the conference discussions, those proposals will include calls for finding a humane solution for the 30,000 African workers in Israel threatened with expulsion, and support for more exchange programs that would bring Israeli journalists and policy makers to America so they better appreciate how Judaism is practiced here. On the issues of the Iran talks, the deep strain between the White House and Jerusalem, the dormant peace talks with the Palestinians, and concern that gains in religious equality made in the last several years will be overturned, the message to Israeli lawmakers was the same: Do something.
The call for action was driven home in different settings, in different styles, but the frustration level was consistent.
“We need to speak truth to power,” one American urged, “and to sound the alarm bell on U.S.-Israel relations.”
Another participant, who will be part of the JPPI delegation in the Jerusalem talks, said, “I have no illusions regarding this Knesset, but it’s our responsibility to give them the message.”
How long Jerusalem can ignore or counter diaspora pleas on key issues and still maintain current levels of support remains to be seen.
Also this week, how summer camps are increasingly geared toward teens' academic resumes; a report on farm-to-table Judaism; Germany sending "symbolic payments to child Holocaust survivors; and a look at offerings at the Israel Film Center Festival at the JCC Manhattan.
Camp, The New Internship
With new focus on ‘21st century skill-set,’ camp is fast becoming another data point on a teen’s resume.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Campers at Camp Inc. buckle down. Courtesy of Camp Inc.
When Barbara Rose Welford was looking to enroll her teenage daughter in summer camp, color war and cookouts weren’t enough to catch her eye.
“I’m not a helicopter mom, but I wanted an environment that will position Sarah to achieve her future goals,” said Welford, whose 14-year-old daughter is especially fond of science. “My kid will want to go to MIT one day. I want to make that possible.”
Hyper aware of the competition that will likely face her daughter when college applications roll around in a couple of years, Welford, who is Jewish, opted for the Union For Reform Judaism’s (URJ) Six Points Sci-Tech Academy, a specialty camp in the Boston suburbs that focuses on high-tech education.
“A parent with an ear to the ground won’t treat summer like time off,” she warned.
Digital marketing, video game design and robot programming might very well be the new lanyard making and bug juice. As competition for high school and college heightens, Jewish camps are shifting focus to equip campers with a “21st century skill-set,” according to Jeremy Fingerman, CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC).
For parents’ eager to ensure their child a spot in a top school, specialty camps that focus exclusively on one skill are becoming increasingly appealing, according to Fingerman.
“Campers are looking for a way to differentiate themselves in the market,” said Fingerman, who said the trend toward specialty camps has been growing steadily in recent years. “Skill building programs give campers that necessary edge in high school or college applications. Parents, who are investing significant monetary discretion in camp, want kids to do more than just have fun.”
Camp Inc., a Jewish specialty camp in Boulder, Colo., grooms campers to become first-class entrepreneurs. Mission statement workshops, branding tutorials, handshake practice sessions, digital marketing prep and “Shark Tank”-style pitch competitions have replaced lounging by the lake or hitting around a baseball.
“These kids want to challenge themselves with more than the traditional overnight camp has to offer,” said Camp Inc. director Josh Pierce, a successful entrepreneur who has built and sold several companies. “We definitely deliver.”
Since its 2014 launch as part of FJC’s Specialty Camps Incubator Program, the camp has more than doubled in size, according to Pierce. Attracting nearly 200 campers from Israel, Canada, France, Uruguay and 15 states for the 2015 summer sessions, the camp offers an intensive two weeks culminating in a business pitch to a panel of real investors.
“They’re not just going to camp to have fun — these kids are learning real-world skills from top-notch professionals,” said Pierce, explaining how the campers meet with CEOs and working entrepreneurs. “Aside from the networking opportunities, we pitch camp to campers and staff as a great college resume builder.” The 15 counselors are all business undergraduates or MBA-candidates, he said.
The one glitch in Camp Inc.’s business model: campers are not coming back to camp if they succeed in their business ventures, Pierce said.
“It’s a catch-22,” he said, laughing. “If you create great entrepreneurs, you can’t expect them to come back.”
Though the accomplishments of specialty campers stack up, the question persists: is something lost from the camp experience when the goal of fun is ousted?
Rabbi Isaac Saposnik, executive director of Camp JRF, a traditional Jewish overnight camp in the Pocono Mountains, thinks so.
“There are such heavy expectations placed on kids growing up today — getting ready for high school, for college, for grad school, for that first job,” said Rabbi Saposnik, a member of the Reconstructionist movement. “We, as a summer camp program, entice kids to stay kids a little bit longer, to buck that trend of ‘what’s next?’” he said.
Camp JRF makes an effort to pull campers away from the “rat race” of every day life, he said.
“We teach skills, just not resume skills,” he said.
But Sandy Edwards, associate director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, the grant making foundation behind the specialty camps incubator, thinks specialty camps are the future.
“The trend in the field is clear: camps are embracing specialties,” said Edwards, who helped launch the incubator program in 2009 with five experimental new camps. “Families are attracted by specialties, because it gives their children a defined area of expertise.”
Greg Kellner, director of URJ Six Points Sci-Tech Academy, one of four camps chosen to be in the second incubator cohort, said the new demand is to provide campers with “advanced skills.”
Beginning each morning with the Boker Big Bang, a science experiment to kick off the day, days are filled with video game design, robotics, digital film production, software programming and coding.
“We don’t tell our campers that going here will get you to a particular spot, but it has in the past,” said Kellner, who reports that campers have used what they learn at camp to bolster their middle-school or high-school resumes.
Last year, 159 campers enrolled. This year, Sci-Tech Academy is juggling over 300 applicants.
“The high level of instruction campers receive is unique,” he said, describing one young woman who came to camp knowing nothing about robotics, and now heads the robotics club at her middle school. “They’re gaining tangible skills. It’s an investment in the future.”
While camp is steadily becoming a more high-stakes endeavor for campers, the same is true for counselors. While working at a camp during high school and even college used to be a respectable summer job, the pressure today to list impressive internships and real-world experience is tremendous, said Efrat Levy, board member of Camp Shomria, a progressive Zionist youth camp in the Catskills.
Levy, a deep believer in the value of camp for both campers and staff, is currently working to create a program where Camp Shomria staff members will be able to receive college credit for their work. The initiative is the first of its kind.
“We’re losing staff because of the pressure young adults feel to gain resume-building experience or tangible credit for their time,” said Levy, a one-time camper at Shomria herself. “We’re fighting to add quantifiable value to the camp experience so we can retain more competitive counselors.”
Levy, a professor of education at SUNY Empire State College in upstate New York, is developing a syllabus of six courses relevant to what counselors accomplish at camp. Child development, experimental education, and curriculum development are all part of the curriculum.
“Camp can be the new internship,” she said. “Counselors learn just as much, if not more.”
Mark Gold, the director of JCamp180, a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation that aims to enhance the long-term effectiveness of nonprofit Jewish overnight camps, takes imparting “real-life” skills one step further — to camp directors and board members.
“Camp directors are not just blowing a whistle and swimming in a lake — they are running a multimillion-dollar organization,” said Gold. The need to “professionalize” camps is critical to long-lasting organizational success, he said.
“Camp needs to be run like a business, not a recreational part-time engagement,” he said. “That needs to start at the top. Trustees and professionals need to impart to first level management (counselors) that their job is more than playing softball.”
But according to Gold, professionalizing camp is not so much a change as a reboot.
“This is what camp was always supposed to do: impart real-world skills,” he said. “We just want to make sure that camp is doing its job.”
Farm-To-Table Judaism
Learning Torah’s lessons in new way.
Merri Rosenberg
Westchester Correspondent
First Hebrew Congregation children made bread from flour they threshed at Eden Village Camp. Merri Rosenberg/JW
Putnam Valley, N.Y. — On a brisk, sunny Sunday morning last month, a group of children, ranging in age from 5 to 12, and their parents walked from the parking lot at the Eden Village Camp here to a wooded clearing overlooking a lake. Two of the older students, prompted at times by the rabbi who accompanied them, led themorning prayer service.
After the service, the children learned to make bread from flour they threshed themselves under the direction of educators at Eden Village Camp. It was all part of an outside-the-box religious school experience that Peekskill’s First Hebrew Congregation, a Conservative synagogue, launched this year.
“We could have done what we did here anyplace,” Rabbi Lee Paskind said about the prayer service. “What we’re going to do next requires a farm. We need to be thinking about what Torah teaches us about the world, about food and our responsibility to people who have food, and people who don’t.
“In America, there’s the big idea that we should be closer to what we eat, that we should have a relationship to our food and the farmers who grow it. Learning about the needs of our area is part of tikkun olam.”
With only 12 students in the Hebrew school, Rabbi Paskind knew they “wanted to kick it up several notches,” he said. “We wanted something really experiential.”
Working with consultant Cyd Weissman from the Jewish Education Project, the synagogue explored various innovative models before developing the Jewish Learning Experience, a hands-on approach, with a focus on tikkun olam.
“We’re about sparking and spreading innovation in Jewish education,” said Weissman, director of congregational learning at the Jewish Education Project, which gave the synagogue a $1,000 grant for the project. What impressed the organization about First Hebrew’s initiative, she said, is that “they’re taking on a serious approach to innovation. They’re countering the force of the old model, where children learned about Judaism. This is lived Judaism, which has deep, rich content.”
It also helped that Rabbi Paskind “took it on very seriously,” said Weissman. The community is “willing to turn things upside down and take a risk. What they produced is something people should pay attention to.”
To entice families, and remove any barriers to inclusion, the program is free for synagogue members for the first two grades (except for a modest book fee).
While the students attend slightly more conventional classes at the school to acquire Hebrew language and prayer skills, it’s emphatically not your typical Hebrew school. It’s not even called Hebrew School anymore. Instead, participation in the Jewish Learning Experience is “project based learning,” said Rabbi Paskind. Besides the farm-to-table program April 26, students have also made posters and comic strips exploring how people should relate to those with disabilities, as well as an Israel-themed fair. Students also helped develop their own siddur.
For 12-year-old Madison Kagan, a seventh grader from Cortlandt Manor, the experience affirmed her sense that “it’s better to be more connected with the environment and growing your food.”
Eden Village Camp, a nonprofit organic farm that is based in Jewish values and traditions, was a fitting setting to inculcate the lessons First Hebrew wants to impart to its students and their families. The farm regularly donates a portion of what it grows to the East Fishkill food pantry and has a garden designed around the Hebrew calendar (for example, growing horseradish and parsley for the month of Nissan, when Passover takes place).
“This is the first year we’re doing this, so we’re learning how to create these projects,” said Rabbi Paskind. “Kids have ownership. The beauty of it is that this is real learning, in the way people learn in solving problems.”
Germany Sending $2,700 To Child Holocaust Survivors
‘Symbolic’ payments meant to recognize late-onsetsymptoms stemming from wartime trauma.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camp survivor Eva Behar shows her number tattoo. Getty Images
People who survived the Holocaust as children received last Friday a payment from the German government of €2,500, about $2,700.
The one-time, symbolic payments were wired to survivors' accounts and came after several years of negotiations between the German government and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The Claims Conference argued that the “unimaginable trauma” survivors experienced as children is only now, as they age, showing up as physical symptoms — such as a higher rate of cancer, osteoporosisbecause of insufficient calcium as a child, and nighttime sweats.
It took several years — and an increasing number of documentary studies proving this assertion — before the German government finally agreed last September that child survivors deserved special recognition and created the Child Survivor Fund.
“They lived under unbelievable conditions of deprivation, and in our negotiations we focused a lot on the late onset of the physical and psychological consequences [of such abuse],” said Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference.
Applications for the money were mailed in January to about 70,000 survivors in 52 countries who the Claims Conference believe are eligible based upon information from other compensation programs it is involved in.
To be eligible, survivors must have been born after Jan. 1, 1928 and been persecuted as Jews in a concentration camp or ghetto (or similar place of incarceration, in accordance with the German Slave Labor Program); or who lived in hiding or under false identity or illegality for at least six months in Nazi-occupied or Axis countries; or were a fetus when their mother suffered any of the persecution described.
Julius Berman, president of the Claims Conference, said in a statement that child survivors “endured devastating separation from parents, witnessed unimaginable atrocities, suffered from malnutrition and hunger, and lived through other persecution that stole their childhoods. All of these have had a cumulative effect and are resulting in late-onset problems that only now are manifesting as physical and psychological symptoms in the survivors’ advanced age.”
Schneider noted that following their liberation, these children “looked forward to building their lives and focused on a career. Later in life, they, like other older people, look back on their past and relive memories. But for these elderly people, those memories are torturous. They have night terrors, emotional triggers and psychological issues. They have osteoporosis because they did not get enough calcium as children.
“So we looked for a way to create a program that recognizes their different problems. And the one option agreed upon was a reimbursement program for the issues and problems that manifest themselves in different ways. It is obviously a symbolic payment. It is not going to change a person’s life, but the money can be used in a way that is most appropriate to address the issues they are facing now,” he said.
Masha Pearl, executive director of The Blue Card, a nonprofit that aids needy Holocaust survivors nationally by providing direct financial assistance, said the $2,700 payment is significant for some child survivors. She noted that about one-third of the 120,000 survivors in the U.S. live at or below the national poverty line.
Of the some 60,000 survivors in the New York metropolitan area, it is estimated that 20,000 to 30,000 of them are indigent – most of them child survivors, Pearl said. The Blue Card, which she described as an “agency of last resort,” has 1,580 clients in the New York area to whom it gives up to $300 per month, in addition to providing medical and emotional care.
The $2,700 payment, she pointed out, is “much more than symbolic” for many of them because “their needs as survivors are so high, and they face more medical problems than the general population.”
Survivors, Pearl said, generally have “poor dental health as a result of malnutrition and neglected dental care,” and that the cost of dentures starts at $2,500. They also often need hearing aids, which average $2,500 per ear, she added.
“The physical horrors of the Holocaust, including malnutrition and exposure to harsh weather, continues to take a toll on survivors’ health,” Pearl said, noting that requests to The Blue Card for help are up 20 percent from last year.
Indigent survivors, she pointed out, receive SSI, Medicaid and German reparations, but often “that still is not enough” because of high co-pays and the need for additional medical supplies that are not covered.
“I spoke with a survivor who said he is trying to find out if he can take half a daily dose instead of a full dose of his medication because the cost is so high,” Pearl said.
“This money will allow a measure of dignity to be restored so that [the child survivor] can pay off money owed to the utility companies, for the medical supplies he needs, and for private transportation so he does not have to always rely on Access-A-Ride,” she added.
Individuals who have not received an application by mail but wish to apply to the Child Survivor Fund may obtain additional information, including full eligibility criteria and application forms, at www.claimscon.org/childsurvivor.
Applications must be submitted by survivors, not heirs. However, if an eligible survivor passes away after an application form is received and registered by the Claims Conference, the survivor’s family is entitled to the payment.
The Arts | Film
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
FILM | GEORGE ROBINSON
1
Enjoy the read and see you on Sunday at the Celebrate Israel parade, and more.
Gary Rosenblatt
BETWEEN THE LINES
‘I Love Israel, But Does Israel Love Me?’
Signs of growing disconnect between U.S. Jews and Israel evident at global Jewish think tank conference.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
The four hours of discussion on U.S.-Israel-diaspora Jewry relations was winding down as the dinner hour approached at the annual JPPI (Jewish People Policy Institute)Brainstorming Conference last Monday afternoon in Glen Cove, L.I.
That’s when the fireworks started.
Most of the 25 breakout-session participants sitting around the table, Israelis and Americans, were board members of the Jerusalem-based global think tank, chaired by Stuart Eizenstat, former U.S. ambassador to the European Union. The people in the room included Mideast policy analysts and former policy makers, academics, Jewish communal and religious leaders and a fewinvited guests (myself among them).
One participant described the intense discussion up to that point as “dark.” Indeed, the talk had focused on serious concerns over the widening gulf between American Jews and Israel in recent months, which, the Americans in the room agreed, had reached crisis proportions.
They cited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to speak out in Washington against the administration’s position in the nuclear talks with Iran as striking an unprecedented blow at congressional bipartisanship on Israel, and perceived by the White House as disrespectful.
“The anger is very real and it won’t go away unless we work at it,” asserted a communal leader who was part of a delegation that met with President Obama recently, and others agreed.
(In keeping with the JPPI ground rules on press coverage at the conference, participants are not quoted by name here.)
The all-but-broken Obama-Netanyahu relationship has led American Jews, and especially Democrats in Congress, to feel squeezed, caught between their loyalties to their country and the Jewish homeland.
In addition, the formation of a right-of-center and religiously conservative coalition in Israel that is in no hurry to go back to the peace table and seems poised to reverse gains made on the religious equality front has added to the perception that common ground between Israeli and American Jews is becoming more difficult to find.
There was talk around the table of U.S. rabbis avoiding Israel in their sermons because the topic is too controversial; federation leaders citing donors who refuse to give to the annual campaign now because of Israel’s policies; and the challenge of countering campus descriptions of Israel as an occupying force.
In response, the Israeli moderator said he felt Israel’s faults were being exaggerated, that what he was hearing did not add up to a crisis, and that Israelis have far more pressing problems than women’s rights to pray at the Western Wall.
Talking Past Each Other
At that point, one of the Americans cried out, “Do you understand what you’re saying?” setting off a heated, 25-minute debate that underscored the level of the disconnect between the Americans and Israelis, all of whom have spent significant time in each other’s countries.
The Americans argued that their message had not been heard, and indicated that their struggle to defend Israel at a time when Jerusalem’s democratic values seem to be weakening — this was the day before the controversy over separate buses for Palestinians — was putting a strain on them personally as well as professionally. Especially galling, they said, was that there seemed to be no empathy for their views in the room.
One participant cited a Conservative rabbi’s recent blog post that said, “I love Israel, but does Israel love me?”
The Israelis in the room countered that they understood the Americans’ frustrations but that their concerns paled in comparison to security worries in an increasingly dangerous Mideast. And taking the offensive, they suggested that rather than harp on Israel’s political system, American Jewry should look to its own problems, like growing assimilation.
A liberal American rabbi in the group, acknowledging the critique, replied, “intermarriage is no blessing.” He noted that increasing assimilation within American Jewry adds to the distancing of Israel.
(An academic added that half of U.S. millennials who self-identify as Jews have a non-Jewish parent, and tend to feel less obligated to support Israeli policies they consider illiberal.)
One person observed that the price for American Jews caring deeply about Israel is that they want to be taken seriously when they have differences with Israeli policies. And it seemed apparent from the discussion that the more deeply attached liberal Jews are to Israel, the more pained they are by Jerusalem policies that offend them.
“We are realistic enough to know that our views aren’t going to be translated into policy change in Jerusalem,” one of the Americans said. “But we want to hear some support from the government. We want to know what our realistic expectations should be.”
The answer, unspoken, is not to expect significant change anytime soon.
In all, it was a revealing, painfully honest exchange that left both Americans and Israelis feeling surprised at how little the other side understood them.
A Chance To Be Heard
A key mission of JPPI, founded in 2002, is to bridge those Israel-diaspora gaps. Its officials take pride in the independence and prestigious names associated with the work of the institute, whose mandate is to provide “strategic thinking and proactive policy planning on issues shaping the Jewish future,” according to its literature. Recent JPPI position papers have dealt with a plan for mass aliyah from France, promoting Jewish solidarity in an age of polarization, and whether Israel can be both a Jewish and democratic state.
Avinoam Bar-Yosef, a low-key but influential former journalist, is president and founding director of the group whose board chairs are Ambassadors Eizenstat and Dennis Ross, a veteran Mideast peace coordinator, and Leonid Nevzlin, a businessman and philanthropist who made aliyah from Russia.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Google CEO Eric Schmidt attended a lunch meeting on Tuesday, lending star power to the proceedings, which were attended by about 50 people. Among those presenting at the conference, in addition to Eizenstat and Ross, were Ambassador Martin Indyk, who led the most recent Mideast peace talks as U.S. special envoy; Jewish Agency chair Natan Sharansky; Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor; former Labor Knesset member Anat Wilf; Conference of Presidents head Malcolm Hoenlein; and Mideast expert David Makovsky.
A session on Monday night on the Iran nuclear deal focused on whether Prime Minister Netanyahu will accept President Obama’s apparent offer to engage in serious discussions that would include assurances and compensation for Israel, presumably financial and military, in return for accepting the deal now on the table.
Proponents asserted that Obama is determined to finalize the Iran deal and the window of opportunity for Israel may only be open for a short time. “Once the deal is done, the offers will be off the table,” one analyst said.
Others who know Netanyahu well believe he will not stop his efforts to thwart the deal because he believes sincerely that it will be ruinous for Israel and the region. They reason that he will “double down” on his bet, having already lost the first round, and focus on a post-Obama White House and a more sympathetic ear in the Oval Office in 2017.
Other discussions focused on the dangerous rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the BDS movement on American campuses; suggestions to prevent a U.N. Security Council resolution that would seek to impose a settlement on Israel and the Palestinians; and the need for outreach to minorities in the U.S., particularly Hispanics and blacks, to promote their understanding of Israel in all its complexity.
In June, key JPPI officials will have their annual meeting with the Israeli cabinet and be given an opportunity to present recommendations.
Based on the conference discussions, those proposals will include calls for finding a humane solution for the 30,000 African workers in Israel threatened with expulsion, and support for more exchange programs that would bring Israeli journalists and policy makers to America so they better appreciate how Judaism is practiced here. On the issues of the Iran talks, the deep strain between the White House and Jerusalem, the dormant peace talks with the Palestinians, and concern that gains in religious equality made in the last several years will be overturned, the message to Israeli lawmakers was the same: Do something.
The call for action was driven home in different settings, in different styles, but the frustration level was consistent.
“We need to speak truth to power,” one American urged, “and to sound the alarm bell on U.S.-Israel relations.”
Another participant, who will be part of the JPPI delegation in the Jerusalem talks, said, “I have no illusions regarding this Knesset, but it’s our responsibility to give them the message.”
How long Jerusalem can ignore or counter diaspora pleas on key issues and still maintain current levels of support remains to be seen.
When You’re Down And Troubled…
Rabbi David Wolpe
Special To The Jewish Week
Rabbi David Wolpe
When you are successful the world is at your feet. But what about when you fall?
The boxer Willie Pep made perhaps the most pointed observation on people’s tendency to desert: “The first things to go are your legs. Then it’s your reflexes. And then it’s your friends.”
The Rabbis discuss the tendency of people to befriend those who are wealthy only to abandon them when they suffer a reversal in fortune. Rav Papa said: “At the gate of the shop there are many brothers and friends; at the gate of loss there are neither brothers nor friends.” Raba put it this way: “When the ox is fallen the knife is sharpened” (Shabbat 32a). As a wit once put it: “Not only does he wish his friends to do well, he insists upon it.”
Deep friendships are not dependent upon success or wealth or fame. When Ruth spoke those immortal words to Naomi, “Where you go, I will go” Naomi had no money andno prospects. Genuine friends in life see you plain — not as one surrounded by trappings or power, but a human heart, in God’s image, worthy of love.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.
Heavy Metal
Transforming terror into fantasy lies at the heart of Omer and Tal Golan’s ‘playground’ artwork.
Orli Santo
Calendar Editor
From shrapnel X-rays to virtual playground: The work of Omer and Tal Golan. Courtesy of Omer and Tal Golan
Fifteen years ago, a suicide bomber carrying 15 pounds of explosives laced with bullets and metal scraps grabbed Omer Golan from behind — and blew them both up. Miraculously, Golan survived. Along with his wife, Tal Golan, he went on to become one of the most interesting new-media artists to come out of Israel.
Today, the New York-based husband-and-wife art duo, going under the collective name OMTA, is in the process of using large-scale replicas of the shrapnel extracted from Golan’s body in the most fanciful of ways — to build a children’s playground.
“After years of turning these metal pieces over and over in his hand, they began to resemble merry-go-rounds, slides, seesaws,” the couple wrote in a statement describing the imagined playground, to be called “We Live For Tomorrow.” The idea is to take the metal fragments — and thus the cause of Golan’s suffering — and transform them into objects of play. “It is about acceptance, hope, and healing,” they wrote, “about transforming horror into fantasy.”
A video installation with a digital simulation of the playground — including images of the shrapnel itself and X-rays of it inside Golan’s body — will be presented next week as part of the 14th Street Y’s “LABA” fellowship program. The video installation represents the first step in fleshing out the concept of the actual playground, explained Golan, who plans to start looking for sponsors for it after the show.
Golan said that with this project he and his wife were, as artists, stepping outside of their comfort zone. Specializing in light, playful interactive art, the two normally avoid relating to the terror attack Golan survived. “But I can’t not talk about it anymore, you know?” Golan told The Jewish Week. “It’s not about politics for me — for me it’s my life; it’s who I am.”
The terror attack took place on Dec. 21, 2000. Golan, then an IDF soldier, was sitting in a rest stop in the West Bank, waiting for a ride back to the army base and playing backgammon to pass the time. “I just rolled a gammon, I win” — it was the last coherent thought he had before someone grabbed him from behind, and the world shattered into pieces.
Golan remembers rising from the floor after the explosion to see that the man who grabbed him was dead, his backgammon partner was alive, and that he himself was on fire. He passed out again trying swat out the flames.
He woke up three weeks later in Haifa’s Rambam hospital, in critical condition. He suffered from third-degree burns, partial paralysis and complete deafness. “I was sure that I was already dead,” he noted grimly, “so when I actually woke up in the hospital, it was a nasty surprise.”
Golan slowly regained partial hearing and full use of his limbs, but the shrapnel riddling his body remained a life-threatening problem for years. Two years into his recovery, in between operations, he met his wife to-be. Though neither had any background in the arts, they began to paint together, and quickly fell in love — both with each other and with the medium. Moving with an urgency of people who don’t know how long they have together, they married within a few weeks of meeting, left Israel together (“Too many bad memories,” Omer said) and moved to Amsterdam tostart a new life as artists. In November 2003, after participating in several group exhibitions, they had their first solo exhibit. Along with paintings, it featured a photograph of a shape resembling the map of Israel etched in the scars on Golan’s back. They called it “Roadmap for Peace,” after the 2003 U.S.-backed peace proposal then in the headlines.
Seeking new ways to engage and captivate viewers, the couple broke from traditional art and took to the realm of interactive art. Teaching themselves computer programming, they used motion detectors, live-feed video cameras and large-scale projectors to make the audience both the topic and the medium of their work. Their art often had to do with body image and the mutilation of it: spectators would see their own image projected on a wall, but looped through a line of code that would gradually transform it into something unrecognizable — usually something funny, sometimes something horrific.
James Tunick, owner and manager of the multimedia gallery the IMC LAB (theIMClab.com), where OMTA will be doing a residency this spring, called the couple’s artwork “delightfully original, innovative, and more often than not, technologically groundbreaking.”
The Golans now live in New York, and to this day Omer continues to suffer from various post-traumatic symptoms. But he has come a long way. In 2008, trying to confront his demons, he joined an Israeli-Palestinian art exchange project, initiated by the Bereaved Families Forum, which required him to spend a weekend in the Palestinian village of Beit Jalah, in the environment and in the vicinity of the people he still feared most.
Though he suffered from insomnia, panic attacks and flashbacks for weeks both before and after the journey, it was also a hugely transformative experience for him. “There was I, a former IDF soldier, who was mortally wounded by a suicide bomber, sitting and having a conversation about political art, religion and music with a young Palestinian student and painter, who some years prior to this was in an Israeli prison for a failed attempt to cause an explosion against Israeli soldiers in Nablus,” he wrote in the art blog Artpolitica. “I cannot describe what I felt.”
Golan told The Jewish Week that through the Israeli-Palestinian art exchange project, “I learned firsthand the power of engaging people in conflict resolution through art. ... So what we want to do in ‘We Live for Tomorrow’ is transform the meaning of these pieces of metal extracted from me ... into something happy.”The video installation of the virtual playground will be presented on Thursday, March 5, 7:30 p.m., at the Theatre at the 14th Street Y, 344 E. 14th St., as part of the “LABALIVE” series. For more details see labajournal.com or omta.co.
Branzini At 'The Community Table'
The very urban Jewish Community Center in Manhattan puts out a farm-forward cookbook.
The book reflects its authors' love of farmers markets. Courtesy of the JCC in Manhattan
I want to lunch with Katja Goldman. On a random spring Tuesday she had cold minted pea soup with chopped pea tendrils and grilled chicken breasts with a salad of baby arugula and kale. She lives the way she teaches others to cook. Fresh and locally-sourced ingredients are the hallmarks of her new book, “The Community Table: Recipes & Stories From the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan & Beyond.”
For Goldman, the cookbook was a joyous collaboration with her co-authors Judy Bernstein Bunzl and Lisa Rotmil. “Food brings people together and we wanted it to be a beautiful coffee table book and reflect ... the influences of all the families trying to be seasonal and mindful,” she said in a phone conversation. “It reflects the here and now and what we’re cooking.”
But “The Community Table” belongs on the kitchen counter. Unlike other attractive cookbooks (Yotam Ottolenghi’s “Jerusalem” comes to mind) this one has many easy to follow recipes for anyone with basic kitchen skills. The branzini recipe, perfect for dairy-heavy Shavuot, is a good example.
There are also helpful hints peppered throughout the book. For instance, if you want to skim the fat from your soup while it’s still warm, wet a paper towel and drag it through the soup pot. The fat will cling to the towel.
Each of the 11 chapters includes descriptions of food, gardening, fitness and other community programs at JCCs across the country. There’s a write up about the Kosher Chili Cookoff in Houston; seniors playing pickleball in Atlanta and honey tasting in San Fransisco.
“It was a celebration of the JCC, but the friendship, the fun and the creative wonderful time that the three of us had on this food journey comes out in this book,” said Goldman.
The women — foodies, gardeners and farmers market lovers — began by culling recipes from popular cooking classes at the JCC Manhattan, such as Exotic Sephardic Shavuot; Middle Eastern Favorites and Light and Quick Summer Shabbat.
The JCC Manhattan, for example, held a contest for the best matzah recipe. The winner, Matzah Brei Sri-Lankan Style, is in the vegetables chapter. Several cups of Napa cabbage, red pepper, jalapenos and curry or basil leaves are sautéed in a spice blend of turmeric, and cumin and mustard seeds. That’s Sri Lanka, and the brei part is the matzah and eggs. It’s a delicious way to use up that half eaten box of matzah sitting in your pantry.
The authors also gathered favorites from the broader JCC community and together developed original recipes.
“We’re hoping this book inspires people to cook and the meditative benefits of pulling meals together and having people come and share food with you at your table,” With these simple and delicious recipes, no one will leave hungry, either.
Yield:
Serves 4Active Time:
15 minTotal Time:
30 minHideIngredients
Special Equipment Needed:
A well-seasoned cast iron skillet
4 branzini (about 1 pound each) with heads and tails on, scaled and gutted
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium fennel bulbs, very thinly sliced, fronds reserved
2 lemons, halved lengthwise, each half cut into eight slices
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Leaves from 4 thyme sprigs
1 to 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing or drizzling
1/2 to 1 cup white wine
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Wash and dry the fish well. Cut 3 diagonal slits into 1 side of each fish. Season the inside of each fish with salt and pepper. Place 2 to 4 fennel slices and a few whole fronds inside the cavity of each fish. In each slit, insert a lemon wedge, some parsley, and a few leaves of the thyme.
Brush both sides of the fish well with olive oil, then lightly season with salt and pepper.
Preheat one 14-inch ovenproof skillet (or 2 smaller ones, each large enough to hold 2 fish) over medium-high heat. When the skillet is hot, pour in just enough oil to coat the bottom, 1 to 2 tablespoons. Carefully position the fish in the skillet, slit sides down, alternating head to tail. (If using 2 pans, divide the oil between both and place 2 fish in each.) Leave the fish undisturbed until the skin is nicely browned, about 5 minutes. Carefully turn the fish, using spatulas if necessary. Cook on the other side until browned, 3 to 4 minutes.
Remove the skillet(s) from the heat. Add enough of the wine to just cover the bottom of the skillet(s), avoiding the crisped skin as you pour. Transfer from the skillet(s) to the oven to finish cooking, about 5 minutes (the fish will feel crisp to the touch).
Remove the skillet(s) from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes. Drizzle with additional olive oil and serve from the skillet(s).
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Jewish Bioethicists Weigh In On Johnson & Johnson Panel
Plan to arbitrate experimental drug requests raises question of whether Jewish law allows doctors to prioritize one life over another.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
The emotional debate over whether companies should allow desperately ill people to have access to experimental drugs was reignited last week after Johnson & Johnsonannounced the appointment of a panel to arbitrate patient requests.
The move, announced by the company on Thursday, is believed to be the first of its kind in the industry. The panel will be headed by bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan of New York University, who has written extensively about the issue of experimental drug availability, known as “compassionate use.”
“Pharmaceutical companies have long regarded all of their information as propriety data, not to be shared with anyone, but this is starting to change,” Caplan told The Jewish Week via email.
Caplan, himself Jewish, noted that different religious traditions will be heard by the panel. He also noted that his Jewish education plays a role in his deep concern for human life.
Though drug companies have been granting emergency access to their unapproved drugs since the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, saying yes leads inevitably to anguished decisions over who should be given the medicine. The lens of Jewish medical ethics adds another level of complexity to the already thorny issue of fairness and equal access to care.
“Within Jewish tradition, one of the strongest mandates is to save a person’s life,” said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, professor of bioethics at American Jewish University and author of a book on modern medical ethics. “However, tradition is not blind to the fact that there are scarce resources.”
Rabbi Dorff also raised the question of collective benefit versus personal benefit, one question that arises if a drug is distributed before testing is completed.
“At whose cost do you provide experiment drugs to those who are desperate?” he said. “Delaying the clinical process could delay the drug being made available to everyone.”
Still, he said, nobody should expect the panel to be able to address all the issues connected to compassionate use. “We all want neat and clean guidelines for how to proceed in tricky matters of life and death,” he said. “But that isn’t possible, and can’t be expected.”
Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney best known for serving as the special master of the Federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, reiterated that while there is no easy way to choose one case over another, the law does provide certain guidelines for the ethical prioritization of patients. He mentioned age, pre-existing conditions, strength, contributory negligence (such as smoking), and, the most equivocal, “intrinsic” worth to society, or “communitarian impact.”
“A doctor who practices medicine and assists others in the healing process might be more highly valued than a busboy,” said Feinberg. “It’s a harsh reality, but life is made up of harsh realities.”
He added that a communitarian ethic, stressing the collective responsibility to assist the individual, is consistent with Jewish thought.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — the community has an obligation to help the individual,” said Feinberg, himself Jewish.
While law may provide certain guidelines for the prioritization of one patient over another, Jewish law adheres to a “first-come, first-serve” methodology, according to Rabbi Moshe Tendler, leading scholar in medical ethics at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school (RIETS).
“Today, everyone must be treated equally,” he said, noting that evaluating the risks versus the benefits of experimental treatment is a critical first step. “We cannot playGod and choose one life over another.”
Though choosing one case over another may be undesirable, the volume of patients seeking compassionate use today makes it necessary, said Rabbi Mark Washofsky, longtime faculty member at Hebrew Union College (HUC-JIR) and author of several responsa, or rabbinic decisions, on Jewish bioethics.
“The panel’s task is reminiscent of the old Jewish discussion: If several people are in the dessert and there’s not enough water to go around, who drinks?” he said. “One school of thought says that we don’t decide, fate must decide. The other way of making the decision is based upon medical effectiveness — who is more likely to benefit?”
Following the Jewish mandate to “heal and be healed,” a decision made on the basis of who will benefit more is a sound decision according to Jewish law, he said. “Most seeking experimental treatments are in an advanced stage of disease,” he said. “If the experts on this panel decide that a particular recipient wouldn’t have a chance of success even if given access to the drug, giving that supply to someone else is an ethically justifiable decision.”
In recent years, families desperate to gain access to unapproved treatments have taken to social media, lobbying for sick loved ones via online campaigns and petitions. Efforts to shame companies into granting their requests have often failed in the past, because drug makers fear that permitting advanced access might interfere with clinical trials.
Still, the question of whether a company is ethically obliged to make such treatments available remains pertinent.
According to Jewish medical ethics expert Rabbi Kenneth Brander, the question of a company’s responsibility to the patient presents conflicting values.
“On the one hand, as long as the drug has been proven by medical experts to be effective and the patient is being encouraged by an expert in the field, then the ‘ill person in front of us’ needs to be our first priority,” said Rabbi Brander, staff adviser of the Medical Ethics Society at Yeshiva University, quoting from a Talmudic discussion about medical precedence.
On the other hand, there is a biblical commandment to heal in a responsible manner, he said.
“One must be guided by both. This means we must insure the efficacy of medicines and leave that process to knowledgeable people with appropriate practice protocols,” he said.
Still, “messing up testing regimes” is a risk that cannot be underestimated, said Rabbi Warshofsky. “If careful and fastidious trials are the best way to advance medicine, intervening with the orderly development of drugs could cause far-reaching problems,” he said. “Jewish ethics wouldn’t object to making trial drugs available, as long as that doesn’t hurt anyone else,” he said, stressing the qualification. “If the general public is denied access to a drug because protocol has been disrupted for one individual, that could very well qualify as hurting others.”
Though a company does take risks by releasing a drug before it has completed clinical trials, in Jewish law it would be a difficult case to make to withhold treatments once they are in the final experimental stage, said Rabbi J. David Bleich, professor of Jewish Law and Ethics at Cardozo Law School.
“Good science doesn’t always means good ethics,” said Bleich, who has represented the Orthodox perspective on bioethics in front of Congress and in several governmental deliberations. “Until now, pharmaceutical companies have largely made decisions based own their own, internal considerations.” The Johnson & Johnson panel, he said, is a significant improvement.
“They will be faced with difficult, and oftentimes painful, dilemmas,” he concluded. “But these cases will be under the eye of ethical scrutiny in a formal setting for the first time. It’s a huge step forward.”
A Tougher Reform Road To Conversion
Stephen Wise’s revamped program signals new rigor for ‘transformative’ step.
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
Conversion student Melissa Hume and Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch discuss prayers for Shabbat. Michael Datikash/JW
When Johanna Rauth began looking for a synagogue where she could go through the process of converting to Judaism, one program stood out. Instead of taking about 12 months to complete, the program took 18. Instead of requiring an average of 16 weeks of classes, the program required 30. She signed up.
“I liked the way that they took it seriously. I felt that I would really learn there as much as I can learn,” said Rauth, a 31-year-old internist who is currently earning a master’s in public health.
The program is at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, an 800-family Reform synagogue on the Upper West Side. When its leaders decided to increase the requirements of its program a year and a half ago — a move that puts it at odds with much of the rest of the liberal movement — they weren’t sure how potential students would react.
“We assumed that most people would want to go to other programs in the city that expected less of them,” said the synagogue’s senior rabbi, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch.
They were pleasantly surprised. Fourteen students are currently in the program, and two, including Rauth, have completed it. Another five are in conversation with the synagogue about joining the program.
“I think there is a group of people who are exploring Judaism who really take it very, very seriously and they don’t want it to be less than an optimally fulfilling experience,” said Rabbi Hirsch. “They want it to be challenging. ... They realize they’re undergoing a really transformative transition and they’re honored that people want to give them so much attention.”
Melissa Hume, 27, who teaches preschool at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and is in the process of converting, was attracted to the substantive nature of Stephen Wise’s program.
“It really resonated with my personal experience and my interest in learning,” she said. “I just felt like there was so much history and tradition that I didn’t know about, so I knew going in that this was what was going to get me to a place of understanding.”
Stephen Wise Free Synagogue’s decision to revamp its conversion program comes at a time when religious identity has become increasingly fluid.
A study by the Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” released last week, reported that 34 percent of Americans have a religious identity different from the one in which they were raised, up from 28 percent in 2007. If people switching from one Protestant denomination to another are included, the percentage rises to 42. The study also found that 17 percent of Jews were raised in a different religion.
While some Reform congregations have increased the requirements of their conversion programs, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue’s program has “unusually substantial requirements,” said Rabbi Howard Jaffe, who co-chairs the Reform movement’s Joint Commission on Outreach.
“This is more stringent and a more significant commitment than we’ve seen in almost any community ... not only in the Reform movement but outside of the Reform movement,” he said.
“It’s very easy for rabbis to feel pressured into making this happen more quickly then is appropriate ... especially when someone comes forward because they are getting married,” he added. “I am pleased to see an expectation of an 18-month process with such significant requirements because we want to be certain that everyone is as sincere as possible and as committed as possible about becoming Jewish.”
In most Reform congregations, students are first sent off to take an introduction to Judaism class of between 12 and 20 weeks with students from other synagogues. Then they work with a rabbi at their own synagogue for several months, said Jaffe.
Some programs are even shorter. At Judaism by Choice in Los Angeles, students have the option of taking the classes, which run three hours and 15 minutes, twice a week, allowing students to complete the program’s 58.5 hours of conversion coursework in as little as three months.
Rabbi Neal Weinberg, the program’s rabbinic director, said the appropriate length of time for conversion entirely depends on the student’s background. Eighteen months, he said, “could be good for some people who come in not knowing anything.” But, he said, “A lot of people, when they make the decision to convert to Judaism, it’s something they’ve been thinking about for a long time. ... If they know Hebrew already, if they’ve lived in Israel,” a shorter length of study makes sense, he said.
In Stephen Wise Free Synagogue’s revamped program, students attend a weekly two-hour class for 30 weeks taught by Stephen Wise clergy, then spend the summer doing an independent project. They finish the program with a course of individual study with a member of the synagogue’s clergy.
“We wanted to be able to ensure the very high standards that we wanted,” Rabbi Hirsch said. The goal, he said, is to make each student “into a terrific, knowledgeable and articulate Jew. Somebody who would be able to, on their own, live a full Jewish life.”
He added that with the American Jewish community shrinking, “it is very important for all of the congregations to put a lot of attention on embracing people who want to explore becoming a Jew.”
Stephen Wise’s program strongly encourages students’ Jewish partners to participate in the class, to strengthen Judaism for the entire family.
Rauth said her participation in the program got her husband, a secular Israeli, more interested in Judaism. The couple even began watching videos on Jewish topics together in the evening. “It connected my husband again to his Jewish roots,” she said.
In addition to the academic portion of Stephen Wise’s program, students are also required to begin practicing Judaism. “Right from day one ... irrespective of what they feel, they get into the habit of observing Shabbat, of lighting candles, saying blessings over the wine and challah and having people over for Shabbat dinner,” Rabbi Hirsch said.
They are also encouraged to take part in services and other synagogue programs such as Torah study and volunteer work.
“Something that’s very important to us is that our students are fully immersed into the culture of the synagogue right away,” said Associate Rabbi Diana Fersko. “We’ve seen engagement really flourish.”
Rabbi Hirsch agreed. “From the moment they start studying, they come to services on a regular basis, they interact with our clergy on a regular basis, they observe on a weekly basis and they support each other academically as well as emotionally.”
The emotional support is a key aspect of the program. Because the students not only see each other in class but also at services and other synagogue events, they quickly form a cohesive community.
“Because we were all in a similar situation, they [the other students] could really relate to the thoughts I had and the process I went though. We could help each other and encourage each other. It was very, very helpful,” said Rauth, who grew up in Germany and moved to New York with her Israeli husband 18 months ago.
“Judaism is all about community, and being in a class with a lot of people and to go through the process with them is a very good step towards this community feeling,” she added.
Hume, who, in addition to teaching preschool is earning a master’s degree in psychology at Hunter College, also finds the support of the other students helpful.
“It’s nice to have that feeling of not doing it by yourself,” she said. “Everyone who is part of the group is coming to Judaism through totally different paths, but we’re all sharing that transitional moment of really this identity shift, of becoming part of this community that none of us were a part of before.”
Asked if holding a full-time job while attending grad school ever makes her wish the program were less demanding, Hume said that sometimes it does.
“Every once in awhile I think, I wish I could get to the mikvah, I wish we could formalize this, that I could just be Jewish already,” she said. “But I’m always reminded that it’s not just about you becoming Jewish. It’s about you becoming part of the Jewish community and that just takes time and it takes effort. And I have to say I really appreciate that approach.”
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