Wednesday, 19 August 2015
Dear Reader,
The Reconstructionist movement is on the verge of accepting intermarried students for ordination, a move that tests the boundaries of what it means to be a rabbi today in America. Lisa Hostein, former editor of JTA and the Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia, describes the controversy in a report made possible through The Jewish Week Investigative Journalism Fund.National
A Leap Of Faith Or A Step Too Far?
Ordaining intermarried rabbis could push the Reconstructionist movement to the fringes, or forge a model for the future.
Lisa Hostein
Special To The Jewish Week
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College student Sandra Lawson, under chuppah at right, at her wedding last weekend.
Philadelphia — When Sandra Lawson stood under the chuppah last Saturday, she was doing more than making a lifetime commitment to her partner. She also was setting herself up to test the boundaries of what it means to be a rabbi in America today.
Lawson, an African-American lesbian and a Jew by choice, is a rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in suburban Philadelphia. Her brand-new spouse, Susan Hurrey, is not Jewish.
Unless Hurrey decides to convert before her graduation, Lawson could become one of the first rabbis in the United States to be ordained while openly involved in an interfaith relationship. Her graduating with that status, however, is contingent on whether the RRC faculty decides to change its current policy that bans the admission and graduation of students involved in an interfaith relationship.
“Given the world we live in, with Jewish communities claiming to be welcoming to interfaith families, it’s unfair to expect rabbis to be any different,” said the 45-year-old former military police officer and personal trainer.
The seminary’s faculty is expected to vote to abandon — or amend — the policy sometime after the new academic year begins Aug. 31. As that time nears, the issue is stirring strong debate within the Reconstructionist ranks and in the wider Jewish world.
Some see the move as an inevitable response to a changing Jewish landscape by a denomination that has long paved the way for groundbreaking changes. Critics both within and outside the movement see it as going too far, a divisive step that could splinter the stream and further alienate it from the broader Jewish community.
RRC is “trying in their way to do something proactive in response to the sea changes in American life,” said Rabbi Lester Bronstein, the spiritual leader of Bet Am Shalom Synagogue, a Reconstructionist congregation in White Plains, N.Y., who has been outspoken in his opposition to abandoning the policy altogether. “But this isn’t the way to do it.”
Indeed, the negative feedback, particularly from many Reconstructionist rabbis already in the field, has been so intense that the faculty is now considering several compromise positions.
Rabbi Nina Mandel, the president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, succinctly laid out the issue in describing the views percolating among her group’s some 350 members. They range, she said, “from people who feel this is a change that is long overdue and really reflects their understanding of Reconstructionist values and a Reconstructionist lens on Judaism, to rabbis who feel really strongly that the Jewish value of fostering marriage between two Jews is essential to the continuity of the Jewish people and that rabbis who choose to partner have the responsibility to reflect that.”
The discussion comes at a critical time for the movement. More than 90 years after it was founded by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, a Conservative-ordained rabbi who defined Judaism as the “evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people,” the Reconstructionist stream remains small and financially strapped.
With just over 100 congregations scattered throughout North America, the movement’s new president, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, who sees herself as the “lead evangelist” for “cutting-edge Judaism,” is seeking to articulate a new vision and a raison d’etre for Reconstructionist Judaism.
She describes it as a “small, passionate community of communities,” people who care “deeply about the Jewish present and the Jewish future” and who take an “activist approach” to finding new and experimental ways to “building the Jewish community we want to live in and building the Jewish community we want the next generation to be attracted to and where they can thrive.”
“I am making the case not just for Reconstructionism, but for Judaism,” Rabbi Waxman said in a recent interview in her office at the college, an old mansion set on a wooded estate in Wyncote, Pa. “Everything is open for negotiations.”
Though she declined to explicitly share her position on what internally is being referred to as NJP, the non-Jewish partner issue — she says she doesn’t want to prejudice the outcome — she hints at her view in expressing her philosophy about the need to adapt to a changing Jewish environment.
“I don’t think that visceral responses that are solely grounded in the past and solely grounded in the gut are appropriate to the opportunities and the challenges going forward,” she said.
At a time when identity is increasingly being shaped by choice rather than biology, Rabbi Waxman posited, the key question is: “Can rabbinic leadership emerge out of the 40-plus percent who are in interfaith relations and are creating Jewish homes and Jewish families? We’ve already seen such lay leadership emerge.”
The issue, which was first raised at the college several years ago, is coming to the fore now as a response to both pragmatic and philosophical concerns, according to interviews with RRC officials, Reconstructionist rabbis and students.
Pragmatic because the seminary’s enrollment and applicant pool has been shrinking — just eight students graduated this year, the same number of the incoming class — and the low numbers are threatening the school’s financial well-being and possibly even its accreditation. Opening the doors wider, the thinking goes, would bring in more applicants.
Philosophical because the movement leaders are continually “reconstructing” who and what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.
Financial woes led to a merger in 2012 between the seminary and the congregational arm to form the Jewish Reconstructionist Communities. The movement’s restructuring was “the result of the concern for the future; it was clear we had to be wise and strategic about our use of resources,” said Rabbi Waxman, who took over as president of the merged entity in January 2014.
“How can we most effectively advance the Reconstructionist progressive perspective in the wider world and how can we develop a sustainable model?” she said. “It’s an open question.”
Being open to intermarried rabbis, proponents of the change in policy say, is a natural extension for a movement that sees itself as increasingly diverse and inclusive.
Indeed, the current roster of students — with this year’s incoming class, there will be a total of 46 students, along with 21 full-time, part-time and adjunct faculty on campus —reflects — some would say magnifies — the changing face of American Jewry.
RRC has long been known as a welcoming institution for gay and lesbian students. It was the first movement to accept openly gay students in the mid-1980s, with the Reform seminary following soon after and the Conservative movement doing so only in the past several years. But RRC now is extending that outreach to other non-traditional populations.
“One of the big changes in the Jewish world is the incredible diversity of people who come in and say, ‘I am also Jewish,’ said Rabbi Mandel, the RRA head who serves a small congregation in rural Selinsgrove, Pa. She cited people of color, people who are transgender or are of different sexual orientation and different ethnic backgrounds as groups that seeking entry into Jewish life. These folks, along with many who were raised in interfaith families, are among those looking for a place at RRC, she said.
The 2015 graduating class is emblematic of that shift. Of the eight students ordained as rabbis in early June, one is lesbian, one is transgender and two are Jews by choice.
Sandra Lawson clearly reflects this new face of RRC. As the first African-American student at the seminary, she sees a connection between the increasingly diverse makeup of the student body and the question of rabbis with non-Jewish partners.
“I think it’s an unrealistic burden to ask queer people and Jews of color to find Jewish partners and then not deal with the racism and the homophobia that exists in the Jewish community,” she said, citing instances of people questioning her credentials or harassing her when she is praying.
Lawson, who is expected to graduate in 2018, was involved in the internal RRC process of soliciting student views about changing the policy on non-Jewish partners. While her own partner has said she would convert if necessary in order for Lawson to graduate, Lawson said there are several other students also involved in interfaith relationships, only some of whose partners are on the track toward conversion. (They all presumably met their partners after gaining admission or else their partners were already in the process of converting. College officials would not comment on other students, saying it was private information.)
Lawson said it was clear that both the students and faculty are “overwhelmingly” in favor of changing the policy, with some exceptions in both groups.
When the faculty first voted to eliminate the ban in December 2013, few Reconstructionists outside the college even knew it was happening. The backlash was swift, especially among rabbis and congregations, who argued that such a dramatic change in policy would affect the whole movement. They said that especially in light of the recent merger, the issue merited a wider discussion, even with recognition that a change in admissions policy was the ultimate purview of the RRC faculty.
At that point, RRC officials began to open up the process in advance of a second faculty vote, which is required of all policy changes. They sought input from — and dialogue with — the RRA membership and asked their 100-plus congregations to engage their communities in a discussion and present a consensus position.
In the end, only about 30-plus congregations responded to the call, with the majority of those who did respond expressing support for eliminating the policy, only four opposed and several others saying they could not come to a consensus.
Among the last group was Congregation Or Hadash in Fort Washington, Pa., a congregation with a longstanding special relationship with RRC. Housed at the college for its first several years after it was founded in 1983, Or Hadash served as a “laboratory” congregation for students at the rabbinical school.
Shelley Kapnek Rosenberg, a former president and founding member of Or Hadash whose daughter Jessica is a current rabbinical student at RRC, said she supports a change of policy. “It shows an openness on the part of the college and a realistic notion as to what’s going on in the Jewish world. I don’t think rabbis should be judged by who their partner is.”
At the same time, she said, she recognized that other people in her congregation of 150 families had strong feelings against it, including the concern about adversely affecting relations with the other movements. “We’re already considered a tad out there, and this just might put us more out there with respect to other movements.”
The current president of her synagogue, Jay Cohen, said that after several discussions at the executive committee, board and congregational level, he reported back to RRC that although his congregation was generally in favor of doing away with the policy, there was strong dissent among some congregants who want to keep or modify it. “I wasn’t comfortable writing a majority view,” he said. “I wanted them to know there was a strong minority opinion.”
Helping to shape the debate beyond the college are two rabbis who graduated from RRC a few decades apart and live at opposite ends of the country.
For Lester Bronstein, the rabbi in White Plains, the issue has been painful.
“We are talking about a precedent that fundamentally alters what it means to be the Jewish Reconstructionist movement and to create religious peoplehood,” he wrote in one of two “con” position papers that were circulated among movement leaders.
“It encourages the wrong behaviors without sufficiently encouraging things that would be constructive — like improving Jewish literacy or Jewish modeling for people trying to create a Jewish home,” Rabbi Bronstein said in an interview.
The rabbi, 67, said he understands the argument RRC officials have made that they are turning away potentially good candidates. “I want to welcome these outliers too, but I think the boundaries we have are welcoming enough” without sacrificing the commitment to in-marriage as the model appropriate for rabbinic leadership.
He applauded RRC officials for opening up the process — his congregation was one that engaged in the discussion and was among the handful that reported opposition to lifting the ban — but he still worries about the outcome of the faculty vote.
“I really don’t want to leave the movement and hope they can do something that will keep me in,” he said, hinting that a compromise being discussed that would allow for some flexibility in the ban would be acceptable.
On the other side of the spectrum is Rabbi Mychal Copeland, who sees her personal experience as a living example of why a change is needed.
Rabbi Copeland, 44, graduated from RRC in 2000. She spent her rabbinical school years in a relationship with a woman who wasn’t Jewish but who converted just a few months before her graduation.
She and her partner, Kirsti, whom she has since married, were somewhat “closeted” about their relationship even as they came out as lesbians during her time there, she said. “We didn’t want my partner’s decision concerning conversion to be controlled by others or part of a public debate, so we tried to keep a low profile throughout my five years at the college,” she wrote in a piece supporting a change in policy that was widely circulated.
Now the director of Interfaith Family in San Francisco, a group that helps engage interfaith families in Jewish life, Copeland said that ordaining rabbis involved in interfaith relationships would provide an important model that is currently missing.
“We don’t have models for the vast majority of people who are interfaith families and what that looks like — people coming from different backgrounds, engaged in deeply Jewish conversations, values and practice in their homes,” she said in an interview.
Beyond the confines of the Reconstructionist movement, the wider Jewish world is taking notice of — and, in some cases, reacting strongly to — the debate.
Until recently, such a move “would have been unthinkable,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor at Brandeis University and a renowned historian of American Jewish life.
“Endogamy was still a value that was broadly accepted in the liberal movements; the big change now is that intermarriage has become normative,” he said. If it’s considered normative behavior, then “it’s not a great surprise that people say that rabbis ought to be allowed to be intermarried, too.”
The discussion also reflects the changing perspective on what intermarriage represents, he said. If intermarriage was once seen as a statement that you are leaving Judaism and that your children won’t be Jewish, now it’s seen merely as a result of someone falling in love with someone who is not Jewish. “Now you can be intermarried and still feel strongly about being Jewish — and even want to be a rabbi.”
He predicted that the Reform movement would follow the path of the Reconstructionist movement at some point.
As the new academic year at RRC approaches — and with it a likely vote on the matter — several compromise positions are being considered, according to documents being circulated in the movement. Rather than a straight decision to keep or eliminate the current policy to ban the admission and ordination of students with non-Jewish partners, the faculty could decide to remove the prohibition on partnering with non-Jews but add language that makes clear that all students and applicants “be committed to maintaining Jewish homes and raising Jewish children.”
Or they could decide to apply more robustly the term “ordinarily,” which is already in the current policy prohibiting admission or graduation for those in interfaith relationships but generally has been used only in cases where the partner is in the process of converting. In other words, strengthening the caveat “ordinarily” could open the door to others under certain conditions. A third compromise position suggests applying the biblical “category of ger toshav for non-Jews who commit themselves to the Jewish community,” meaning they would be accepted as “resident aliens,” given status within the community if they commit to certain precepts without actually converting.
Underlying the debate are the potential repercussions for the movement as a whole and for rabbinical students in particular should a change in policy occur: Some congregations might decide to disaffiliate, the RRA would have to assess its policy of automatically accepting as members all graduates of the rabbinical seminary and some graduates might encounter obstacles finding jobs.
Even some congregations that conveyed support for a policy change made clear they would not necessarily hire a rabbi who is intermarried.
Waxman said that while she understands all the concerns swirling around the issue, she is impressed by the vitality of the discussion it has engendered. In this, like other contemporary issues the Reconstructionist movement has tackled, Waxman asserted, there is a pattern:
“Where we have led, the Jewish community has almost always followed; when we start to lead there is usually much controversy; and when a particular policy change is widely adopted,” she said, “there is usually very little recognition” that it came from the Reconstructionist movement.
editor@jewishweek.orgIsrael Correspondent Josh Mitnik has the story on a new rabbinic conversion court in Israel, a major move by Religious Zionist rabbis seen as a rebuke to the Chief Rabbinate for its intransigence. And my column explores the case being made by critics of the Iran deal, asserting that a "no" vote in Congress need not lead to war.Israel News
Private Conversions Causing Stir
New effort seen as rebuke to Chief Rabbinate.
Joshua Mitnick
Israel Correspondent
Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch, center in suit, during a session of the new conversion court. Courtesy of Itim
Tel Aviv — Growing up in Belarus, Natya was considered Jewish because of her Jewish father — the son of Holocaust survivors.
But ever since immigrating to Israel six years ago, she has been considered a non-Jew by religious and governmental authorities because of her non-Jewish mother. Though converting to Judaism would allow her to rectify the anomaly for her and her child, the demands of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate were so onerous that Natya — like most of some 350,000 other former Soviet immigrants — preferred to remain in a bureaucratic limbo with her religion undefined.
“I didn’t even try to start,” said Natya, who requested that her real name not be used. “They are doing all of this coercive stuff, and making it more complicated rather than making it easier.”
Last week however, she and her 4-year-old daughter underwent a potentially groundbreaking Jewish conversion ceremony: the conversion was outside the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate, though it was endorsed by several leading Orthodox Israeli rabbis.
The so-called “private” conversion track was unveiled last week despite the pique of the Israeli government religious establishment, touching off a storm of criticism within Orthodox Jewish circles. Mainstream Israeli media dubbed the move a “rebellion.”
Proponents of the move say the conversion court is necessary for Russian immigrants because the rabbinate’s conversion process has so far failed to provide a solution that would allow a large part of Israel’s population to become part of the Jewish people. After fighting for decades to allow Soviet Jewry to immigrate to Israel, Israel needs to take more far-reaching action to make it easier for immigrants to become recognized as Jews, they say.
With marriage and burial in Israel performed by Orthodox religious authorities, easing the obstacles toward conversion is a moral obligation, according to Rabbi Seth Farber, whose nonprofit organization, Itim, worked with prominent figures like Rabbi David Stav and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin to spearhead the establishment of the private conversion court.
“We’ve created leverage against the rabbinate. We said, ‘If you are not going to solve this problem, we’re going to solve it. It’s not only about ideology, it’s about action,’” he said.
“We’re cognizant that this is an act of civil disobedience, but we are also cognizant that this is a unique moment in the history of the Jewish people, and bold actions are required to make systemic change.”
The conversion court initiative has come under withering criticism — not only from ultra-Orthodox authorities who dominate the Rabbinate, but also within the mainline Religious Zionist community. Rabbi Haim Druckman, former director of Israel’s conversion authority and a leading religious Zionist rabbi, called the move an act of “lawlessness.”
“We must not go down this path — it would mean a devastating blow to Judaism and Torah in the country,” Rabbi Druckman said in an interview with Ynet news. “I don’t take issue with the conversion court’s Torah practices, the rabbis are genuine, but if you privatize conversions, then tomorrow a Reform court will be established. I am in principle opposed to privatization of anything connected with the issue of Judaism.”
Israeli religious leaders have grappled with the question of how to treat Russian-speaking immigrants who aren’t Jewish according to traditional religious law, but they’ve so far failed to craft a framework that would appeal to a community that is mostly secular. In the early part of last decade, the government established an educational program and conversion course for army soldiers. Proponents of the private court system say they decided on the move only after efforts at reform through legislation and government decision failed in the last year.
“My intention is not to defy the rabbinate. I was involved in the movement for Soviet Jewry … I became very close to the Russian Jews,” said Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of Efrat and the founder of New York’s Lincoln Square Synagogue.
“After fighting so hard to bring them to Israel under the Law of Return, there are now 350,000 who arrived who are Jewish paternally but not maternally. Individuals came to me after difficult stories about roadblocks they had. There are a large number [of conversion courts] that aren’t being run as they should be. That’s what made me see a ticking bomb problem in Israel.”
The new court system — dubbed “Giyur K’halacha,” or Halachic Conversion — was set up to ease the conversion process for 100,000 pre-adolescents. Current state-dominated courts require the parents and children to lead a fully religious lifestyle, but rabbis involved with the new conversion network said they will not make the same demands. They say their goal is to match the conversion numbers of the Rabbinate’s courts within 18 months. Such a critical mass would eventually force the Chief Rabbinate to recognize the conversions, they argue.
Will the new conversion court system draw immigrants and their children? Though the break with the Rabbinate is unprecedented, many Israelis say that the shift might be too little too late.
“In symbolic terms, with regard to the bond between religion and state in Israel, this is a genuine earthquake. A group of religious Zionists who stood for idea of a centralized Chief Rabbinate are now parting ways,” said Rabbi Uri Regev, a Reform Rabbi and the head of the nonprofit Hidush, which advocates for religious pluralism in Israel. “In regard to conversion and the need to convert hundreds of thousands of immigrants, its significance is exaggerated.”
News of the establishment of the conversion court got extensive coverage in Israel’s Russian-language media, said Roman Yanushevsky, an editor for Israel’s Russian television news broadcast. Despite the interest, Yanushevsky sounded ambivalent about whether immigrants would embrace the court as a solution.
The overwhelming majority of Russian Jews are secular and have soured on the Orthodox religious establishment, which it sees as coercive. That said, there is a respect for Jewish culture and a desire to feel like they are not second-class citizens in Israel.
“They want to live more integrated into Israeli society, rather than live in Mea Shearim,” he said, referencing Jerusalem’s large charedi neighborhood. “Some people are scared to go to the ultra-Orthodox system, there are rumors that they come to check on houses and look in your refrigerators.”
Yanushevsky, a self-described cultural Jew whose mother is not Jewish, said that he started a conversion process while in the Israeli army but dropped out. He said he is unsure about whether he would seek a conversion through the new court.
“Logic says this new court will be more liberal than the Chief Rabbinate, if I can use the world ‘liberal,’” he said. “But they are still Orthodox and they will expect me to become more observant, that is for sure.”
After undergoing the new conversion process, Natya sounded more upbeat. Despite the insult at being treated as a second-class citizen — “When my grandfather was in a concentration camp,” she said, “Hitler didn’t ask him if he had 100 percent Jewish blood” — she remains optimistic about the prospects for change. The private conversion courts give her hope more immigrants will follow her lead, forcing the Chief Rabbinate to change its view.
“I’m telling all my friends about it, people have been dreaming about it all their lives,” she said. “I think eventually Israel will have to recognize it.”
editor@jewishweek.orgGary Rosenblatt
Iran ‘No’ Vote Need Not Lead To War
Critics offer alternatives to bolster current deal.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
With the Obama administration determined to see the Iran nuclear agreement passed in Congress, and increasingly belligerent toward its critics, many opponents of the deal worry that by continuing to wage what appears to be a losing fight in Washington, Israel will pay a heavy price The Day After the mid-September vote.
But several key anti-deal Israeli and American Jewish officials I have spoken to in recent days insist that is not the case. Rather, they say that in addition to the moral imperative of opposing what they view as a catastrophic deal threatening Israel’s security short-term, and America’s down the road, they are driven by the conviction that their sharp criticisms of the historic initiative will pay off in very real terms, win or lose.
As the Jewish communal divide deepens over the agreement, with 340 rabbis from around the country this week signing on to a letter to Congress in support, and the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee joining AIPAC in opposition, the lobbying efforts in Washington intensify. Critics of the agreement acknowledged surprise at how deeply and personally engaged President Obama is in the fight, offering to speak with any member of Congress questioning the deal. “We’re still in the game, but it’s an uphill fight,” said one national Jewish lay leader opposed to the agreement.
Even if, as expected, the president prevails in the congressional vote — it would take a two-thirds vote in both Houses to defeat him — Israel will be better off for having made its case, these insiders believe. They say that despite the open rancor between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the U.S.-Israel relationship is deep and resilient enough to withstand the strains.
“I expect that if the Iran deal is approved, the administration will want to sit down with Israeli leaders soon after and say ‘OK, now how can we make Israel as strong as possible going forward?” noted one key Israeli official, who, like the others interviewed here, spoke candidly but off the record.
He and the others I spoke with stressed that they do not doubt the president’s sincerity, only his judgment, in saying this agreement will protect Israel.
One official insisted that all the talk about “unbreakable bonds” between Washington and Jerusalem is more than rhetoric, and reflects deep resilience. “We are mishpocha [family], which means we have fights sometimes but we are still family,” the official said. And going to the mat in speaking out against the deal underscores to Washington just how serious Israel’s concerns are, he added.
The fact that leading Arab Gulf states, and most notably Saudi Arabia, have appeared to pivot on the Iran deal in recent days — from vociferous opposition to tacit approval — is an indication of their insecure relationship with Washington, the insiders say. “They are still furious with the administration,” one Jewish leader said, “but they realize their societies don’t promote human rights, democracy and economic freedom with the U.S. They felt they had to give in, at least publicly, to maintain the relationship with Washington.”
Israel, he said, is a different story — one of shared democratic values and strategic interests with the U.S.
But what happens if Congress overrides a presidential veto?
That’s the No. 1 question being asked by most of the undecided members of Congress, according to several people who have met with key Democrats in the House and Senate. They worry that an override could result in the worst of both worlds: a humiliated and bitter Obama; an Iran with no obstacles in its race to build the bomb; and the lifting of international sanctions, allowing Iran to fund terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah with billions of dollars.
The advocates who oppose the deal insist that a congressional override is worth the risk of offending the president because it may well lead to a tougher agreement and a more secure Israel and Mideast. They note that while Obama insists the choice is between a “yes” vote for an agreement that blocks Iran’s path to nuclear arms and a “no” that would lead to another Mideast war, there is a very real alternative — a way to say, in effect, “not yet,” and beef up the agreement.
Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Mideast think tank, makes that case in a piece on The Atlantic website titled “There Is a Path to a Deal With Iran.” It offers several suggestions that he says could strengthen the agreement “without reopening the negotiations” between Iran and the world powers. The proposals include: making public the penalties for Iran violations of the agreement and/or for transferring “windfall funds from sanction relief” to Iranian allies like Hezbollah and Syrian President Assad; bolstering efforts by the U.S. and its allies to block military actions by Iran-supported militia in the region; affirming publicly that the U.S. will use military force to block any attempt by Iran to produce a nuclear bomb; and enhancing Israel’s deterrence capabilities by having the U.S. provide Jerusalem with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the so-called bunker-busting bomb able to do serious damage to Iran’s underground nuclear sites, along with the airplanes to carry the MOP.
Satloff says that those and similar efforts to bolster the Iran agreement could be achieved before or after a vote by Congress. He points out that according to the agreement, the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. are only to be lifted after Iran complies with its promise to rid itself of most of its enriched uranium, stop work on its Arak plutonium reactor and pack away thousands of centrifuges. That could take six to nine months.
“The chances are high that they [the Iranians] would follow through on their commitments … because the deal is simply that good for Iran,” according to Satloff, since Iranian compliance would end United Nations and European sanctions and provide Tehran desperately needed economic relief.
If Congress votes “no” in September, a chastened Obama would have time to toughen up the deal so that Congress could then approve “his new and improved proposal.”
It’s a logical argument, and a practical one in that it does not require going back to the negotiating table with Iran. What’s more, it would give truth to the president’s longstanding insistence that “no deal is better than a bad deal” by bolstering the current agreement and re-establishing the image of an America acting out of conviction and strength rather than anxiety and weakness.
Gary@jewishweek.orgAlso in this issue, controversial Riverdale rabbi to remain in his pulpit; YU rabbi questions women's Talmud study; And a survivor's child confronts painful memories on reading Harper Lee's "Go Set A Watchman."New York
Controversial Riverdale Rabbi To Stay
In hot water for inviting young men to racketball and a shvitz, Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt retains support of shul leadership.
JTA
The Riverdale Jewish Center is sticking by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt. JTA
The Riverdale Jewish Center has decided to keep in place Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, whose sauna chats with naked boys garnered headlines after an exposé in The New York Times in late May.
Rosenblatt, who denied any criminal wrongdoing but apologized for inappropriate behavior, had been fighting efforts by some in his Orthodox congregation to buy out the remaining three years on his contract. Despite the controversy stirred by the article about Rosenblatt’s practice for years of inviting teenage boys and young men for naked heart-to-hearts in the sauna after racquetball games, the rabbi appeared to retain the support of most of his congregants, insiders said.
In a letter sent to congregants on Aug. 13, the synagogue leadership said it had decided that Rosenblatt’s own plan for moving past the scandal was the best of various alternate scenarios for the New York shul, which has been led by Rosenblatt for the last 30 years.
“Rabbi Rosenblatt shared his vision and commitment to continue serving our membership and partnering with the RJC’s lay leaders, staff and community,” said the letter, which was signed by the synagogue’s board chairman, Donald Liss, and president, Samson Fine. “He described how we will strengthen communal bonds between and among our members, maintain the financial stability of our synagogue and enhance the spirit of collaboration that exists between the RJC and the community.
“The last two months have presented the opportunity for our shul to debate and discuss many different points of view, while considering various paths forward,” the letter said. “After carefully considering various scenarios over the last several weeks, we firmly believe that the approach laid out by Rabbi Rosenblatt is an effective and appropriate way forward for the RJC.”
No one cited in the Times story that prompted the firestorm accused Rosenblatt of sexual touching, but several expressed their discomfort with his practices and described his behavior as deeply inappropriate for a rabbi and mentor. At various times, Rosenblatt was told by his congregation’s board or the Rabbinical Council of America to limit his controversial activity.
After the Times published its story, the RJC’s board of directors voted 34-8 to seek a financial settlement to get Rosenblatt to resign his pulpit. But Rosenblatt vowed to stay on, saying that removing him from his position would be a “disproportionate” response. Hundreds of congregants signed a petition backing the rabbi, while far fewer signed a competing petition calling on Rosenblatt to resign.
Rosenblatt’s determination to stay was bolstered by the warm reception he received after rending a dramatic public apology in front of hundreds of congregants at a synagogue gathering in late June.
“This is a crisis created by my own lapses of judgment,” Rosenblatt said, according to a recording of the speech transcribed by a synagogue member and cited in the Times. “I have brought pain to people, shame to my family and I have caused a desecration of the divine name.”
Despite the synagogue’s decision to keep Rosenblatt, who just returned from a six-month sabbatical, as many as 100 families at the 700-member congregation are considering leaving and starting a new congregation in the neighborhood, The New York Jewish Week reported last month. The neighborhood in a section of the Bronx with a large Orthodox population already has several other Orthodox congregations; the largest alternative is the more liberal Orthodox Hebrew Institute of Riverdale led by Rabbi Avi Weiss.
Yehuda Kurtzer, the only man cited by name in The New York Times story who had experienced an invitation from Rosenblatt to join him in the sauna, said he was outraged by the congregation’s lack of action against Rosenblatt.
“Rabbi Rosenblatt has shrewdly managed his way out of this crisis with the advice of counsel, clearly managing his communications along the way, demonizing his opponents, and avoiding any significant fallout,” Kurtzer said in a Facebook post after the letter from synagogue leaders was sent. “He has hurt his students, he has further alienated his accusers, and his continued presence on the pulpit at RJC insults the dignity of our community.”
editor@jewishweek.orgNew York
YU Rabbi Questions Women’s Talmud Study
Though the institution takes pride in its women’s programs, Mordechai Willig calls for re-evaluation
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Participants in YU’s Graduate Program for Advanced Torah Study represent the school’s commitment to educating women.
In what was thought to be a battle already won, Rabbi Mordechai Willig, an influential scholar at Yeshiva University, is questioning the widespread practice of women learning Talmud, a program that YU has expanded with pride in recent years.
In an article published last week, Rabbi Willig, head of the rabbinical seminary at YU since 1973, suggested that the “inclusion of Talmud in curricula for all women in Modern Orthodox schools” be re-evaluated.
“While the gedolim [outstanding rabbis] of the 20th century saw Torah study to be a way to keep women close to our mesorah [tradition], an egalitarian attitude has colored some women’s study of Talmud and led them to embrace and advocate egalitarian ideas and practices which are unacceptable to those very gedolim,” he wrote.
He cited the rise of women’s ordination and egalitarian services as causes to re-evaluate, implying a kind of slippery slope from women’s learning to more liberal forms of Jewish practice.
The article, first posted on a Torah website, struck a nerve in many quarters of an Orthodox community that has touted the advances of and increasing opportunities for serious Talmud study among women. A number of community leaders, educators and students responded swiftly and sharply to Rabbi Willig’s article, mainly on social media.
“This is the type of article that would make me leave YU,” posted one student on Facebook, followed by a chain of more than 100 comments.
The principal of a large Orthodox girl’s high school in Teaneck, N.J., responded with a public Facebook statement defending the study of Talmud for women. “Far from being a subversive force, the movement to advance women’s Talmud Torah continually deepens the avodat Hashem [service of God] of individuals and our community,” wrote Rivka Kahan, principal of Ma’ayanot high school.
Rabbi David Silber, founder and dean of Drisha Institute, which offers advanced studies in Jewish learning for women, told The Jewish Week: “I find it troubling that a Rosh Yeshiva has so little faith in Torah that he imagines that Torah study can be a destructive force in Jewish life.”
Rabbi Willig’s article struck a particularly discordant note at YU in light of the school’s longstanding commitment to women’s Talmud study, even in the face of severe financial strain. Last August, the women’s Graduate Program for Advanced Torah Study (GPATS) was spared from program cuts after a handful of administrators and professors, including the university’s vice president, Rabbi Kenneth Brander, banded together to save the program.
According to a source close to the administration who requested anonymity because of the situation’s sensitive politics, part of the reluctance to continue funding GPATS stemmed from rosh yeshivas at YU who questioned the program’s aims.
Still, under Rabbi Brander’s direction, GPATS hired its first female director, Nechama Price, herself a graduate of the program. Eleven students are enrolled in 2015’s incoming class.
Few other communal leaders responded publicly, though many expressed exasperation in private. Some questioned whether other rabbis at RIETS (the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, YU’s rabbinical school) would publicly take issue with Rabbi Willig, a prominent and highly respected scholar.
Rabbi Willig was not available for comment and no leading figure at YU directly responded to his article. In response to a request for comment from The Jewish Week, a school spokesman offered a statement.
“Yeshiva University encourages and supports the advancement of women’s Torah study at all levels,” it said, “We are proud of the Torah and Talmud study at our Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls, Stern College for Women, Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and the Graduate Program in Advance Talmudic Studies. Our faculty embody a wide range of diverse opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Yeshiva University.”
The incident was the latest among a number of flare-ups in recent years in which influential YU rabbis have made statements that underscored the cultural divide within Modern Orthodoxy.
Price, who directs GPATS, declined to respond directly to Rabbi Willig’s article. But several graduates of the program expressed frustration, citing their positive experiences learning Talmud as a means of increasing not only their knowledge base but their connection to Judaism.
“The Talmud and its commentaries are some of the most demanding and exhilarating study material that the Jewish tradition has to offer. It is good for the Jewish community and for the Torah, for the best minds (women and men) to be focused on it,” wrote GPATS graduate Lynn Kaye, who also completed a doctorate in Talmud at NYU and currently serves as an assistant professor of Near Eastern languages at Ohio State University.
The irony goes deeper than GPATS. The late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the pre-eminent Modern Orthodox rabbinic figure of his time and Rosh Yeshiva at YU, was a proponent of Jewish textual study for women. Rabbi Willig was a student of Rabbi Soloveitchik.
Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University, said Rabbi Willig seems to be attempting to “restore his image as a man of the Orthodox center” after his solution to the crisis of agunah — women chained in Orthodox marriages again their will — met with attacks from rabbis on his religious right. Rabbi Willig also was responsible for drafting the halachic prenuptial agreement, a document that de-incentivizes men from withholding a get (religious divorce document) by inflicting damaging personal costs if they choose to do so.
“As usual, women’s issues are a barometer of attitudes toward modernity, and the same was true years ago when the issue was mixed seating,” wrote Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University in an email. “Since he can hardly back down on the prenup that he created, he is displaying his Orthodox bona fides in a different way.”
Sarna concluded that, from a historical perspective, it is “fascinating” to see elder Jewish leaders questioning well-established positions of their movements because of “unanticipated consequences.”
In online discussions responding to Rabbi Willig’s article there was both anger and resentment from proponents of women’s Torah study and deep respect for his scholarship and stature in the Orthodox community. Rabbi Willig, aside from his position at the rabbinical seminary, is a leading figure on the Rabbinical Council of America’s court, the Beth Din of America. The Beth Din is responsible for adjudicating cases involving conversion, legal disputes and divorce.
Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), said she finds it “troubling” that so few Orthodox community leaders are speaking out against Rabbi Willig’s views. She recalled that she opened her first page of Talmud while an undergraduate at Stern College. “He [Rabbi Willig] is at odds with Modern Orthodoxy, with the university he represents, and with history,” she said. “It doesn’t take much to stand up and strongly say I disagree.”
editor@jewishweek.orgFirst Person
To Kill A Hero
Isaac Steven Herschkopf
Special To The Jewish Week
Dr. Isaac Herschkopf
Do you love the name Atticus?
Most people do. It has increased in popularity for 15 consecutive years. In 2014, it was involuntarily bestowed upon 846 boys and 9 girls. This year, it was the single most popular name on the hip Nameberry.com. Actors Jennifer Love Hewitt, Casey Affleck, Mary-Louise Parker, Daniel Baldwin and Israeli heartthrob Oded Fehr all chose it for their children.
The reason is obvious. The American Film Institute voted that the greatest hero of American film was Atticus Finch of “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Anyone who has ever read the iconic book it is based on, and we all willy-nilly have, has idolized him. The theme of a child belatedly discovering that her father was a hero resonates with all of us.
It is particularly compelling to children of survivors. As we grew up and discovered the reason that they had numbers branded on their arms and the horrifying truth of why they woke up screaming every night, we too belatedly discerned that our parents were heroes. In several columns I have written in this paper, I have called them “The Holiest Generation.” In a memoir I wrote about my father, I compared him to Atticus.
Recently however, after repeatedly insisting that she would never publish another book, Harper Lee released a sequel to “Mockingbird” titled “Go Set a Watchman.” Given its predecessor’s hallowed status, it instantaneously became its imprint’s biggest seller of all time. Its title derives from Isaiah 21:6: “For God has said unto me, go, set a watchman; let him declare what he sees.”
It also, however, instantaneously precipitated controversy. Our beloved Atticus, based on Lee’s own father, is revealed to be an embittered, racist Ku Klux Klansman. Our hero has a side so ugly, it makes it hard to remember his previous nobility.
How disillusioning. How disheartening. How to explain this to thousands of young Atticuses? Some parents have already decided that they couldn’t. They changed their newborns’ names.
Unfortunately, this dilemma is also familiar to children of Holocaust survivors. Our parents might have been heroes for surviving, but that did not mean that they all consistently behaved heroically.
My childhood community in Washington Heights was all survivors. I witnessed first-hand that my father was not alone in beating my mother and me. Though he was the hardest of workers and the noblest of Jews whose religious observance, unlike most, was more real than apparent, as a parent, and a husband, he obviously left a great deal to be desired.
I have spent my entire life endeavoring, too often unsuccessfully, to emulate his many virtues, while attempting, even harder, to distinguish myself from him as a father and husband. To this day, whenever my children or wife say or do something that displeases me, my inveterate instinct is to stop speaking to them the same way that he gave us the silent treatment for days.
I have only managed never to indulge that impulse because, above all, I never want them to feel about me the way that I felt about him.
I have been set a watchman, declaring to my children what I have seen, and my determination not to follow in his footsteps. I know that I, and they, will be damned if I allow the sins of the father to be visited upon his succeeding generations.
In later years, my mother’s sister, a survivor herself, a heroic nurse in charge of the Jewish infirmary at Auschwitz, often observed that she never expected me to become a good father, or husband. It was less a compliment to me, and more a posthumous insult to my father.
It bothered me greatly, but I couldn’t complain. We both knew that what she said was true.
I started writing my memoir 20 years ago when my father passed. I have published over a dozen excerpts from it in this and other publications.
And yet, until this column, like Harper Lee, in “Mockingbird,” I have never revealed his ugly side. Perhaps more tellingly, like Harper Lee for years, I have never published the manuscript itself.
On the surface, I have had my pragmatic reasons: I have never had the time to aggressively pursue an agent or publisher. I have focused on my responsibilities as a parent, husband, physician and friend.
Might there be a more visceral reason beneath the surface?
The title of “Mockingbird” derives from Atticus’ lesson to his daughter Scout/Harper that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Is that the real reason that Lee never published “Watchman” all these decades?
Is that the reason that I have no desire to read the book?
Isn’t it similarly a sin to kill a hero?
Dr. Isaac Herschkopf, is a practicing psychiatrist and business consultant, is the founding president of the NYU-Bellevue Psychiatric Alumni. His work has appeared here and in literary, news and medical publications.And don't miss our special Back To School section with stories on bar/bat mitzvah tutors, addressing the "crisis in prayer," and new legal fights to counter BDS on campus.
Education August 2015
Bar/bat mitzvah tutors and the new ‘gig economy.’ New JTS center reimagines prayer. BDS: the legal fights to come.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Inside This Special Section
Spiritual Innovation at HUC
Going One-On-One For A Rite Of Passage
For Catholic Educators, A Glimpse Of Israel’s Diversity
A Different Kind Of Prayer Education
Brown Vs. Board Of Education
Israeli Unity Through Education?
Pop Music In Touro Poli Sci Class
Pouring Over Their Jewish Lessons
Incubating An ‘Innovation Movement’
BDS: The Legal Fights To Come
Spiritual Innovation at HUC ›Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Our website is there for you anytime of the week for breaking news and exclusive videos, blogs, opinion essays and more.
BETWEEN THE LINES Gary Rosenblatt
Iran ‘No’ Vote Need Not Lead To War
Critics offer alternatives to bolster current deal.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
With the Obama administration determined to see the Iran nuclear agreement passed in Congress, and increasingly belligerent toward its critics, many opponents of the deal worry that by continuing to wage what appears to be a losing fight in Washington, Israel will pay a heavy price The Day After the mid-September vote.
But several key anti-deal Israeli and American Jewish officials I have spoken to in recent days insist that is not the case. Rather, they say that in addition to the moral imperative of opposing what they view as a catastrophic deal threatening Israel’s security short-term, and America’s down the road, they are driven by the conviction that their sharp criticisms of the historic initiative will pay off in very real terms, win or lose.
As the Jewish communal divide deepens over the agreement, with 340 rabbis from around the country this week signing on to a letter to Congress in support, and the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee joining AIPAC in opposition, the lobbying efforts in Washington intensify. Critics of the agreement acknowledged surprise at how deeply and personally engaged President Obama is in the fight, offering to speak with any member of Congress questioning the deal. “We’re still in the game, but it’s an uphill fight,” said one national Jewish lay leader opposed to the agreement.
Even if, as expected, the president prevails in the congressional vote — it would take a two-thirds vote in both Houses to defeat him — Israel will be better off for having made its case, these insiders believe. They say that despite the open rancor between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the U.S.-Israel relationship is deep and resilient enough to withstand the strains.
“I expect that if the Iran deal is approved, the administration will want to sit down with Israeli leaders soon after and say ‘OK, now how can we make Israel as strong as possible going forward?” noted one key Israeli official, who, like the others interviewed here, spoke candidly but off the record.
He and the others I spoke with stressed that they do not doubt the president’s sincerity, only his judgment, in saying this agreement will protect Israel.
One official insisted that all the talk about “unbreakable bonds” between Washington and Jerusalem is more than rhetoric, and reflects deep resilience. “We are mishpocha [family], which means we have fights sometimes but we are still family,” the official said. And going to the mat in speaking out against the deal underscores to Washington just how serious Israel’s concerns are, he added.
The fact that leading Arab Gulf states, and most notably Saudi Arabia, have appeared to pivot on the Iran deal in recent days — from vociferous opposition to tacit approval — is an indication of their insecure relationship with Washington, the insiders say. “They are still furious with the administration,” one Jewish leader said, “but they realize their societies don’t promote human rights, democracy and economic freedom with the U.S. They felt they had to give in, at least publicly, to maintain the relationship with Washington.”
Israel, he said, is a different story — one of shared democratic values and strategic interests with the U.S.
But what happens if Congress overrides a presidential veto?
That’s the No. 1 question being asked by most of the undecided members of Congress, according to several people who have met with key Democrats in the House and Senate. They worry that an override could result in the worst of both worlds: a humiliated and bitter Obama; an Iran with no obstacles in its race to build the bomb; and the lifting of international sanctions, allowing Iran to fund terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah with billions of dollars.
The advocates who oppose the deal insist that a congressional override is worth the risk of offending the president because it may well lead to a tougher agreement and a more secure Israel and Mideast. They note that while Obama insists the choice is between a “yes” vote for an agreement that blocks Iran’s path to nuclear arms and a “no” that would lead to another Mideast war, there is a very real alternative — a way to say, in effect, “not yet,” and beef up the agreement.
Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Mideast think tank, makes that case in a piece on The Atlantic website titled “There Is a Path to a Deal With Iran.” It offers several suggestions that he says could strengthen the agreement “without reopening the negotiations” between Iran and the world powers. The proposals include: making public the penalties for Iran violations of the agreement and/or for transferring “windfall funds from sanction relief” to Iranian allies like Hezbollah and Syrian President Assad; bolstering efforts by the U.S. and its allies to block military actions by Iran-supported militia in the region; affirming publicly that the U.S. will use military force to block any attempt by Iran to produce a nuclear bomb; and enhancing Israel’s deterrence capabilities by having the U.S. provide Jerusalem with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the so-called bunker-busting bomb able to do serious damage to Iran’s underground nuclear sites, along with the airplanes to carry the MOP.
Satloff says that those and similar efforts to bolster the Iran agreement could be achieved before or after a vote by Congress. He points out that according to the agreement, the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. are only to be lifted after Iran complies with its promise to rid itself of most of its enriched uranium, stop work on its Arak plutonium reactor and pack away thousands of centrifuges. That could take six to nine months.
“The chances are high that they [the Iranians] would follow through on their commitments … because the deal is simply that good for Iran,” according to Satloff, since Iranian compliance would end United Nations and European sanctions and provide Tehran desperately needed economic relief.
If Congress votes “no” in September, a chastened Obama would have time to toughen up the deal so that Congress could then approve “his new and improved proposal.”
It’s a logical argument, and a practical one in that it does not require going back to the negotiating table with Iran. What’s more, it would give truth to the president’s longstanding insistence that “no deal is better than a bad deal” by bolstering the current agreement and re-establishing the image of an America acting out of conviction and strength rather than anxiety and weakness.
Gary@jewishweek.org
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MusingsJoin The Fight
Rabbi David Wolpe
Special To The Jewish Week
Rabbi David Wolpe
Much of Judaism teaches acceptance. Who is happy? ask the Rabbis — one who is satisfied with what he has. Surely part of living a good life is to accept and appreciate.
But if traditions can be divided into those that preach acceptance and those that preach unease, surely Judaism stands firmly in the second camp. We need not go so far as Shimon Peres, who likes to say that the greatest Jewish contribution to the world is dissatisfaction. But it is certainly true that the sense of the unfinished, the itch to improve, prevails in Judaism and in Jews.
My friend Joseph Epstein likes to say that he knows smart Jews and lucky Jews, but very few serene Jews. In Judaism such serenity as we are granted comes from the joy of making something better, not accepting something that is worse. One of God’s names is El Shaddai; one rabbinic interpretation is that God is saying “dai” — enough. I’ve done as much as I intend to do. Fixing the rest of the world is now your task. Eschew complacency; leave serenity to calm interludes on mountaintops. Down here, where the world is filled with suffering and brokenness, feel upset, angry, inspired — and join the fight.
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.
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/musings/join-fight#V5TTZBXPUT7gZedo.99
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It’s a great room but where does the baby sleep? Hilary Danailova/JWA Suite Holiday
Hilary Danailova | Travel WriterLast summer a magazine editor asked me to write about traveling with kids. He knew I had a baby daughter, and between my travel beat and the peripatetic nature of our family, he thought I’d have great insights to share.
I told him honestly that Zelda was too young for me to have any real authority on the subject, and I interviewed a dozen friends and travel professionals instead. A persistent theme was the difficulty of finding appropriate lodging — there were woeful tales of overpriced suites, adjoining rooms that didn’t adjoin, families that either stayed with relatives or stayed home until the kids grew up — but I took notes with the dispassionate ear of a journalist.
Fast-forward one year, and I finally understand their complaints. Up to now, we’ve happily traveled with Zelda to the homes of friends and family. But this summer — with my husband, Oggi, eight hours away getting professional training — I was tasked with finding lodgings at the halfway point for weekend family visits. It took a month of missed weekend visits for me to realize that finding appropriate lodgings for a family of three is exponentially more difficult, costly and planning-intensive than booking for two.
When they freak out about travel with young kids, parents usually freak out about flying. Flying is the easy part! You’re going from A to B in a set number of hours, and when those hours are up, you’ll be there — period. Airplanes, unlike a great many lodgings, are designed to handle children. And taking a child on an airplane only costs proportionately more — one extra ticket — or less, if the child is young.
With that child in tow, however, your $70 motel room in the middle of nowhere is no longer even a theoretical option. Most youngsters I know have a bedtime somewhere in the early evening, at which point they require a dark, quiet space to sleep in. When it finally dawned on me that my husband and I would have to sit silently in the dark from 7 p.m. on, I cancelled our hotel reservation and started thinking hard.
What I needed — what all parents need, unless they have a babysitter or are willing to keep the kids up late — was a room with a door I could close. Sometimes, but not usually, this is called a suite. More reliably, it’s called a house or apartment.
I called hotel after hotel, inquiring about the nature of their suites, and that’s how I learned that “suite” has no actual definition: it can mean a very large room, a room with extra beds or a pullout couch, a fancy room with a Jacuzzi, a room with a “partial divider” that doesn’t actually exist, or — very occasionally — adjoining bed and sitting rooms.
Upgrading from a basic hotel room to a suite of the last type meant tripling or quadrupling the price at the same midlevel chain, which felt ridiculous. I scrolled repeatedly through AirBnB home listings, but they were even more expensive. Rates for relatively out-of-the-way places in southern New England were well into the three figures per night, with security deposits and cleaning fees that often doubled the outlay. (Side note: I’m stumped trying to figure out why AirBnB properties in the U.S. are generally so much pricier than their counterparts in Europe.)
After decades of globe-trotting, I was amazed to find myself in such a quandary. Here I was, supposedly a travel expert — and I couldn’t figure out how to sleep with two people in tow!
But as I learned from fellow parents, it’s a common conundrum. And here is an opportunity for some Silicon Valley entrepreneur: There is a major need for a travel-booking site that filters by room type (suite, adjoining rooms and so forth). Kayak, Hotels.com, Expedia — they all allow you to search by number of rooms and number of guests, but nothing more.
“You have to call each place individually and ask how the rooms are set up,” my friend Sam confirmed. “It’s really labor-intensive. But it’s the only way to guarantee you’ll get what you want.”
I tried to think creatively. A room with a balcony or adjoining patio meant we could put Zelda to bed, and then relax just outside; a bed-and-breakfast might have common areas just outside the room. But balconies are hard to find, and lots of bed-and-breakfasts don’t accept young children. And it’s summer; even if there were an affordable solution, somebody has already reserved it.
I admitted defeat and resigned myself to a visit-less August … until good friends blessedly stepped in, offering a vacant apartment while they retreat to a country house. As I write this, Zelda is napping in the bedroom and Oggi and I are enjoying a cup of coffee on the balcony.
But I still don’t know what to do next time. I know a lot of readers have years of experience traveling with kids — so I invite you to share tips and stories with me at hilarasha@gmail.com, and I’ll publish the best ideas in a follow-up column.
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
C/o Getty ImagesFeatured on NYBLUEPRINT
The Fat Jew Commits A Big Fat Comedy No-NoInstagram legend Josh Ostrovky’s days may be numbered
Miriam Groner | Special from the Jewish Week | Books, Comedy, Television
He’s been dubbed the ‘King of Instagram’, brought us White Girl Rose and made the dad bod cool again—but now Instagram sensation, The Fat Jewish, is being called out for plagiarism.
Josh Ostrovsky, 31, from Manhattan’s Upper West side, made a name for himself posting memes on Instagram and performing outlandish antics for his 5.7 million Instagram media followers.
Ostrovsky has parlayed his popularity into a money making operation, signing big brand sponsorships with the likes of Burger King and Virgin mobile. In one Burger King advertisement he poses topless on a floor covered with french fries. In another he tattooed a chicken fry logo on his chest, right below where his trademark ‘Chai’ necklace sits.
He’s signed with One Management as a male model, launched a wine brand, and has a book deal with Hachette Book Group who will publish his debut book, ‘Money, Pizza, Respect,’ in October.
Just this month The Hollywood Reporter (THR) announced that Ostrovsky signed with Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies.
In an interview last month with THR, Ostrovsky spoke about his plans to take over Hollywood and “get uncomfortably famous, develop a raging drug problem, then spiral out of control and surround myself with people who only want to use me while simultaneously alienating people who actually love and care about me.”
But that goal may be a little further out of reach as the internet’s wrath descends upon the comedian. Owners of the original material are calling out Ostrovsky for plagiarising jokes. Well known comedians such as Patton Oswalt and Chelsea Peretti have chimed in to show their support.
The Comedian’s social media feed consists of screenshots of memes and photos from across the internet which he would share along with an uproarious caption.
When asked where he digs his jokes from he recently joked to Yahoo! News that he has a team of interns working out of the waxing room of nail salon in Queens that help him search the Internet for the craziest, most absurd material to share with his fans.
Instagram, which has strict content and plagiarism regulations, has not removed the content or issued a statement. Ostrovsky had not responded to a request for comment, but one can imagine he’s sipping on a glass of White Girl Rose while sitting in a hot tub filled with chili.
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TOP STORIES:National
Jewish Woman Will Be The White House’s First Openly Transgendered Staffer
JTA
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, who is Jewish, is the White House's first openly transgendered staffer. Via motherjones.com
A Jewish woman of color will be the first openly transgendered person to serve in the White House.
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, who was born in Honduras and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts by a single Jewish mother, has been hired as an outreach and recruitment director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, the White House announced Tuesday.
According to Keshet, a Jewish LGBT advocacy group, Freedman-Gurspan “was a powerful leader for trans inclusion” in her Brookline synagogue, Temple Beth Zion, “and mobilized faith leaders in the campaign to pass the Massachusetts Trans Equality Bill,” which went into effect in 2012. She also was active in the Jewish Student Union as an undergraduate at St. Olaf College in Minneapolis.
Freedman-Gurspan, 28, moved to Washington in 2014 to work with the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Although Freedman-Gurspan is the first transgender White House staffer, another Jewish woman, Amanda Simpson, is the first transgender individual to hold a position in the U.S. executive branch. Simpson was appointed by President Obama in 2010 to the position of senior technical adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce.
editor@jewishweek.org New York
Goldie Steinberg, Reportedly The World’s Oldest Jewish Person, Dies At 114
JTA
Goldie Steinberg celebrating her 112th birthday in Long Beach, New York, on Jan. 13, 2013. JTA
Goldie Steinberg, reportedly the world’s oldest known Jewish person, died at age 114.
Steinberg, according to Chabad.org, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s news site, died Sunday at the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Long Beach, New York. She was two months away from her 115th birthday.
Steinberg was born in 1900, one of eight siblings. As a child, she survived the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, in what is now Moldova, in which 49 Jews died and 500 were injured over two days.
In 1923, she moved to the United States. Steinberg lived in New York City, where she married and had two children. She worked as a seamstress until retiring at age 80, and lived independently until age 104.
“My grandmother’s life — surviving the pogroms, losing siblings in the Holocaust — it was a history lesson,” said Peter Kutner, Steinberg’s grandson, according to Chabad.org. “She was a very selfless person; she always thought of others.”
Steinberg is survived by her two children, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
editor@jewishweek.org
TOP STORIES:National
Jewish Woman Will Be The White House’s First Openly Transgendered Staffer
JTA
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, who is Jewish, is the White House's first openly transgendered staffer. Via motherjones.com
A Jewish woman of color will be the first openly transgendered person to serve in the White House.
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, who was born in Honduras and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts by a single Jewish mother, has been hired as an outreach and recruitment director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, the White House announced Tuesday.
According to Keshet, a Jewish LGBT advocacy group, Freedman-Gurspan “was a powerful leader for trans inclusion” in her Brookline synagogue, Temple Beth Zion, “and mobilized faith leaders in the campaign to pass the Massachusetts Trans Equality Bill,” which went into effect in 2012. She also was active in the Jewish Student Union as an undergraduate at St. Olaf College in Minneapolis.
Freedman-Gurspan, 28, moved to Washington in 2014 to work with the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Although Freedman-Gurspan is the first transgender White House staffer, another Jewish woman, Amanda Simpson, is the first transgender individual to hold a position in the U.S. executive branch. Simpson was appointed by President Obama in 2010 to the position of senior technical adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce.
editor@jewishweek.org New York
Goldie Steinberg, Reportedly The World’s Oldest Jewish Person, Dies At 114
JTA
Goldie Steinberg celebrating her 112th birthday in Long Beach, New York, on Jan. 13, 2013. JTA
Goldie Steinberg, reportedly the world’s oldest known Jewish person, died at age 114.
Steinberg, according to Chabad.org, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s news site, died Sunday at the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Long Beach, New York. She was two months away from her 115th birthday.
Steinberg was born in 1900, one of eight siblings. As a child, she survived the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, in what is now Moldova, in which 49 Jews died and 500 were injured over two days.
In 1923, she moved to the United States. Steinberg lived in New York City, where she married and had two children. She worked as a seamstress until retiring at age 80, and lived independently until age 104.
“My grandmother’s life — surviving the pogroms, losing siblings in the Holocaust — it was a history lesson,” said Peter Kutner, Steinberg’s grandson, according to Chabad.org. “She was a very selfless person; she always thought of others.”
Steinberg is survived by her two children, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Where Does Bernie Sanders, The Jewish Candidate For President, Stand On Israel?
Ron Kampeas
JTA
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding in Clear Lake, Aug. 14, 2015. JTA
Washington – Bernie Sanders’ best friend is a Zionist who teaches Jewish philosophy, he had a formative experience on a kibbutz and “Saturday Night Live” dubbed him the “old Jew.”
Still, Sanders can’t get away from the inevitable “But where is he on Israel?” question, especially now that the Democratic presidential contender, an Independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, has pulled ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire, the first primary state.
“Do you view yourself as a Zionist?” the left-leaning online magazine Vox asked Sanders in a July 28 interview.
It’s a funny question for Sanders, who if there were an “out and proud” metric for Jews in politics would score high.
Sanders, 73, is best friends with Richard Sugarman, a professor of Jewish philosophy at the University of Vermont who champions Zionism to his left-leaning students. His other best friend – and former chief of staff – is Huck Gutman, a University of Vermont professor of literature who is a passionate aficionado of the poetry of Yehuda Amichai.
When the comedian Sarah Silverman introduced Sanders at an Aug. 10 rally in Los Angeles, she shunted aside for a moment her caustic Jewish shtick.
“His moral compass and sense of values inspires me,” she said. “He always seems to be on the right side of history.”
Silverman ticked off a list of Sanders’ qualifications that align him with positions that polls show American Jews overwhelmingly favor: for same-sex marriage, for civil rights, against the Iraq war. She might have added favoring universally available health care.
“He is a man of the people,” Silverman said. “He has to be; his name is Bernie.”
Fresh out of the University of Chicago and already deeply involved in left-wing activism, Sanders spent several months in the mid-1960s on a kibbutz. The Brooklyn-born and accented Sanders has been shaped by the murder of his father’s extended family in the Holocaust.
“As everyone in this room knows, I am a Jew, an old Jew,” actor Fred Armisen said while playing Sanders in a 2013 “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
Sanders’ well-known pique surfaced in June when Diane Rehm, the NPR talk show host, declaratively told him he had dual U.S.-Israel citizenship, citing an anti-Semitic meme circulating on the Internet.
“Well, no, I do not have dual citizenship with Israel,” Sanders said. “I’m an American. I don’t know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I’m an American citizen, period.”
So where does Bernie Sanders stand on Israel? Here’s a review.
He backs Israel, but he believes in spending less on defense assistance to Israel and more on economic assistance in the Middle East.
Is Sanders a Zionist? Here’s what he told Vox’s Ezra Klein:
“A Zionist? What does that mean? Want to define what the word is? Do I think Israel has the right to exist? Yeah, I do. Do I believe that the United States should be playing an even-handed role in terms of its dealings with the Palestinian community in Israel? Absolutely I do.
“Again, I think that you have volatile regions in the world, the Middle East is one of them, and the United States has got to work with other countries around the world to fight for Israel’s security and existence at the same time as we fight for a Palestinian state where the people in that country can enjoy a decent standard of living, which is certainly not the case right now. My long-term hope is that instead of pouring so much military aid into Israel, into Egypt, we can provide more economic aid to help improve the standard of living of the people in that area.”
He will defend Israel to a hostile crowd, but will also fault Israel – and will shout down hecklers.
At a town hall in Cabot, Vermont, during last summer’s Gaza war, a constituent commended Sanders for not signing onto a Senate resolution that solely blamed Hamas for the conflict, but wondered if he would “go further.”
“Has Israel overreacted? Have they bombed U.N. facilities? The answer is yes, and that is terribly, terribly wrong,” Sanders said.
“On the other hand – and there is another hand – you have a situation where Hamas is sending missiles into Israel – a fact – and you know where some of those missiles are coming from. They’re coming from populated areas; that’s a fact. Hamas is using money that came into Gaza for construction purposes – and God knows they need roads and all the things that they need – and used some of that money to build these very sophisticated tunnels into Israel for military purposes.”
Hecklers interrupted, some shouting epithets.
“Excuse me, shut up, you don’t have the microphone,” Sanders said. “You asked the question, I’m answering it. This is called democracy. I am answering a question and I do not want to be disturbed.”
His critical but supportive posture on Israel has been consistent and has included using assistance as leverage.
As mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1988, Sanders was asked if he backed then-candidate for president Jesse Jackson’s support for the Palestinians during the first intifada. Sanders excoriated what he depicted as Israeli brutality as well as Arab extremism.
“What is going on in the Middle East right now is obviously a tragedy, there’s no question about it. The sight of Israeli soldiers breaking the arms and legs of Arabs is reprehensible. The idea of Israel closing down towns and sealing them off is unacceptable,” he said at a news conference, according to video unearthed by Alternet writer Zaid Jilani. “You have had a crisis there for 30 years, you have had people at war for 30 years, you have a situation with some Arab countries where there are still some Arab leadership calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Israeli citizens.”
Sanders said the United States should exercise the prerogative it has as an economic power.
“We are pouring billions of dollars in arms into Arab countries. We have the clout to demand they and Israel, who we’re also heavily financing, to begin to sit down and work out a sensible solution to the problem which would guarantee the existence of the State of Israel and which would also protect Palestinian rights,” he said.
He doesn’t think the Iran nuclear deal is perfect, but he backs it.
“It’s so easy to be critical of an agreement which is not perfect,” he told CBS News on Aug. 7. “But the United States has to negotiate with, you know, other countries. We have to negotiate with Iran. And the alternative of not reaching an agreement, you know what it is? It’s war. Do we really want another war, a war with Iran? An asymmetrical warfare that will take place all over this world, threatening American troops? So I think we go as far as we possibly can in trying to give peace a chance, if you like. Trying to see if this agreement will work. And I will support it.”
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More National
The Tides That Bind
Ten years after Katrina, the Jews of New Orleans and Houston remain bound by a flood of emotion and caring.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
On the rebound: Congregation Beth Israel in New Orleans after Katrina. Wikimedia Commons
Houston — Ten years ago next week, with Hurricane Katrina barreling toward them, several thousand Jews from New Orleans set out on I-10 to escape the storm. They headed west, passing Baton Rouge, then Lafayette, in the heart of the Louisiana bayou, then Lake Charles, and on across the Texas line through Beaumont and the lyrically named Mont Belvieu.
They were headed for higher ground, and sanctuary, in Houston. The ribbon of highway was a lifeline, 350 miles from ruin to rescue.
Jewish Houston, home to about 40,000 generous souls, opened its doors to the many Jews fleeing New Orleans. It was the start of a process that irrevocably changed both communities over these 10 years, and bound them in a special way, even as New Orleans — both the Jewish community and the wider city — has rebounded in the last decade.
Josh Pershell was 8 years old when his family pulled onto I-10 bound for Houston. Their house, they would later learn, was “completely flooded.” Houston would now be home. “Everyone was very welcoming and supportive,” Pershell, now 18, told The Jewish Week in a recent interview. “They did their best to get us back on our feet.”
After Katrina, Houston Jewry offered housing and office space, moral support and counseling, free synagogue membership and day school enrollment, money and prayer books and other religious supplies for the New Orleans evacuees, several hundred of whom, according to estimates, ended up making Houston their home.
And then, nearly 10 years later, the high water came to Houston, on Memorial Day 2015 — 11 inches of rain in a matter of a few hours, 2,000 buildings destroyed, some of the worst flooding in the city’s history. The damage was heavy in the heart of Houston’s Jewish neighborhood, Meyerland, along Brays Bayou, home to many of its institutions.
The Jews of New Orleans — current and former ones — were among the first to reach out to the Texas city that had given them refuge. For survivors of Katrina, it was déjà vu — images from Houston of flooded buildings, of people wading in waist-deep water, of stranded individuals being rescued by rowboat.
Returning the favor done to him, Josh Pershell, a recent graduate of Houston’s Beren Academy, a Jewish day school, volunteered to help flood-battered families after the Memorial Day deluge. Along with other volunteers, he carried furniture and other ruined items out of homes, and helped people pack their intact belongings.
“I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do, and the rest of my school and my friends were doing it also,” Pershell, now 18, said. “The [Jewish] community as a whole supported all of us” after Katrina.
That the Jews of New Orleans were in a position to have lent a hand after the Houston flooding is an indication of how far the community has come since Katrina hit. In the wake of the Category 5 hurricane, the Jewish population of New Orleans plummeted by more than a third, from 9,500 to 6,000. Today, it’s 10,300. (Buoyed by a network of strengthened levees and wetlands, the city as a whole, which initially lost about 40 percent of its population of nearly 500,000, has grown to 384,000 as of March; yet Louisiana has more young people not in school or working than any state in the nation, a direct result, researchers say, of Katrina.) The local Jewish federation’s annual fundraising campaign, which took a small hit in the wake of the hurricane, has nearly reached the pre-2005 figure $2.8 million; several Jewish institutions, which suffered heavy damage in the waters of Katrina, are located in new buildings.
“Ten years later we’re now stronger than we were before the storm,” said Bradley Bain, president of Congregation Beth Israel, a Modern Orthodox synagogue that moved into a new building two years ago, after being hosted for several years at a New Orleans Reform temple, Congregation Gates of Prayer in the suburb of Metairie.
“We’re very much a better place,” said Michael Weil, executive director of New Orleans’ Jewish federation, who helped coordinate the community-wide recovery effort, which included a campaign to attract new residents. In a telephone interview, he said Jewish New Orleans has moved beyond its initial recovery and rebuilding stages. “We’re actually rejuvenating. It’s a different world now. The community feels good about itself.”
The wider city “has become an incubator for entrepreneurship,” especially in the arts and the restaurant business, Weil said. “The Jewish community has been at the forefront of that.”
The people who left were mostly young families, who needed schools for their children; and senior citizens, who lost their homes, and lacked the resources or strength to rebuild. The people who have come are mostly young professionals, many of them single. “The new Jewish New Orleans is actually younger, in age profile, than before,” Brandeis history professor Jonathan Sarna said.
The Jewish federation’s high-visibility newcomers program, which offered a variety of financial incentives to people who moved to New Orleans, did not play a crucial role in their decision, Weil said. Instead, the city itself, its image as a vibrant place, has served as the main draw. The local economy is healthy, jobs are available. And housing, while not inexpensive, is affordable. “It’s a lot cheaper than New York City, Washington or places like that,” he said.
Weil pointed to several signs of new Jewish life in New Orleans: a Moishe House, an expanded Limmud educational program, a new Hillel House and Chabad Center at Tulane University, a new Chabad day school, an expanded JCC Uptown site and Beth Israel’s new building.
As the Aug. 29 anniversary nears, New Orleans’ synagogues are marking the decade of struggle and resilience by hosting several commemorative events that will culminate in prayer services on the weekend of the anniversary. And in a sign of the giving-back spirit, the New Orleans federation is coordinating TikkuNola volunteer work that features such activities as collecting and distributing school supplies for charter school students.
NationalWhere Does Bernie Sanders, The Jewish Candidate For President, Stand On Israel?
Ron Kampeas
JTA
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding in Clear Lake, Aug. 14, 2015. JTA
Washington – Bernie Sanders’ best friend is a Zionist who teaches Jewish philosophy, he had a formative experience on a kibbutz and “Saturday Night Live” dubbed him the “old Jew.”
Still, Sanders can’t get away from the inevitable “But where is he on Israel?” question, especially now that the Democratic presidential contender, an Independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, has pulled ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire, the first primary state.
“Do you view yourself as a Zionist?” the left-leaning online magazine Vox asked Sanders in a July 28 interview.
It’s a funny question for Sanders, who if there were an “out and proud” metric for Jews in politics would score high.
Sanders, 73, is best friends with Richard Sugarman, a professor of Jewish philosophy at the University of Vermont who champions Zionism to his left-leaning students. His other best friend – and former chief of staff – is Huck Gutman, a University of Vermont professor of literature who is a passionate aficionado of the poetry of Yehuda Amichai.
When the comedian Sarah Silverman introduced Sanders at an Aug. 10 rally in Los Angeles, she shunted aside for a moment her caustic Jewish shtick.
“His moral compass and sense of values inspires me,” she said. “He always seems to be on the right side of history.”
Silverman ticked off a list of Sanders’ qualifications that align him with positions that polls show American Jews overwhelmingly favor: for same-sex marriage, for civil rights, against the Iraq war. She might have added favoring universally available health care.
“He is a man of the people,” Silverman said. “He has to be; his name is Bernie.”
Fresh out of the University of Chicago and already deeply involved in left-wing activism, Sanders spent several months in the mid-1960s on a kibbutz. The Brooklyn-born and accented Sanders has been shaped by the murder of his father’s extended family in the Holocaust.
“As everyone in this room knows, I am a Jew, an old Jew,” actor Fred Armisen said while playing Sanders in a 2013 “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
Sanders’ well-known pique surfaced in June when Diane Rehm, the NPR talk show host, declaratively told him he had dual U.S.-Israel citizenship, citing an anti-Semitic meme circulating on the Internet.
“Well, no, I do not have dual citizenship with Israel,” Sanders said. “I’m an American. I don’t know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I’m an American citizen, period.”
So where does Bernie Sanders stand on Israel? Here’s a review.
He backs Israel, but he believes in spending less on defense assistance to Israel and more on economic assistance in the Middle East.
Is Sanders a Zionist? Here’s what he told Vox’s Ezra Klein:
“A Zionist? What does that mean? Want to define what the word is? Do I think Israel has the right to exist? Yeah, I do. Do I believe that the United States should be playing an even-handed role in terms of its dealings with the Palestinian community in Israel? Absolutely I do.
“Again, I think that you have volatile regions in the world, the Middle East is one of them, and the United States has got to work with other countries around the world to fight for Israel’s security and existence at the same time as we fight for a Palestinian state where the people in that country can enjoy a decent standard of living, which is certainly not the case right now. My long-term hope is that instead of pouring so much military aid into Israel, into Egypt, we can provide more economic aid to help improve the standard of living of the people in that area.”
He will defend Israel to a hostile crowd, but will also fault Israel – and will shout down hecklers.
At a town hall in Cabot, Vermont, during last summer’s Gaza war, a constituent commended Sanders for not signing onto a Senate resolution that solely blamed Hamas for the conflict, but wondered if he would “go further.”
“Has Israel overreacted? Have they bombed U.N. facilities? The answer is yes, and that is terribly, terribly wrong,” Sanders said.
“On the other hand – and there is another hand – you have a situation where Hamas is sending missiles into Israel – a fact – and you know where some of those missiles are coming from. They’re coming from populated areas; that’s a fact. Hamas is using money that came into Gaza for construction purposes – and God knows they need roads and all the things that they need – and used some of that money to build these very sophisticated tunnels into Israel for military purposes.”
Hecklers interrupted, some shouting epithets.
“Excuse me, shut up, you don’t have the microphone,” Sanders said. “You asked the question, I’m answering it. This is called democracy. I am answering a question and I do not want to be disturbed.”
His critical but supportive posture on Israel has been consistent and has included using assistance as leverage.
As mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1988, Sanders was asked if he backed then-candidate for president Jesse Jackson’s support for the Palestinians during the first intifada. Sanders excoriated what he depicted as Israeli brutality as well as Arab extremism.
“What is going on in the Middle East right now is obviously a tragedy, there’s no question about it. The sight of Israeli soldiers breaking the arms and legs of Arabs is reprehensible. The idea of Israel closing down towns and sealing them off is unacceptable,” he said at a news conference, according to video unearthed by Alternet writer Zaid Jilani. “You have had a crisis there for 30 years, you have had people at war for 30 years, you have a situation with some Arab countries where there are still some Arab leadership calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Israeli citizens.”
Sanders said the United States should exercise the prerogative it has as an economic power.
“We are pouring billions of dollars in arms into Arab countries. We have the clout to demand they and Israel, who we’re also heavily financing, to begin to sit down and work out a sensible solution to the problem which would guarantee the existence of the State of Israel and which would also protect Palestinian rights,” he said.
He doesn’t think the Iran nuclear deal is perfect, but he backs it.
“It’s so easy to be critical of an agreement which is not perfect,” he told CBS News on Aug. 7. “But the United States has to negotiate with, you know, other countries. We have to negotiate with Iran. And the alternative of not reaching an agreement, you know what it is? It’s war. Do we really want another war, a war with Iran? An asymmetrical warfare that will take place all over this world, threatening American troops? So I think we go as far as we possibly can in trying to give peace a chance, if you like. Trying to see if this agreement will work. And I will support it.”
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
NationalThe Tides That Bind
Ten years after Katrina, the Jews of New Orleans and Houston remain bound by a flood of emotion and caring.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
On the rebound: Congregation Beth Israel in New Orleans after Katrina. Wikimedia Commons
Houston — Ten years ago next week, with Hurricane Katrina barreling toward them, several thousand Jews from New Orleans set out on I-10 to escape the storm. They headed west, passing Baton Rouge, then Lafayette, in the heart of the Louisiana bayou, then Lake Charles, and on across the Texas line through Beaumont and the lyrically named Mont Belvieu.
They were headed for higher ground, and sanctuary, in Houston. The ribbon of highway was a lifeline, 350 miles from ruin to rescue.
Jewish Houston, home to about 40,000 generous souls, opened its doors to the many Jews fleeing New Orleans. It was the start of a process that irrevocably changed both communities over these 10 years, and bound them in a special way, even as New Orleans — both the Jewish community and the wider city — has rebounded in the last decade.
Josh Pershell was 8 years old when his family pulled onto I-10 bound for Houston. Their house, they would later learn, was “completely flooded.” Houston would now be home. “Everyone was very welcoming and supportive,” Pershell, now 18, told The Jewish Week in a recent interview. “They did their best to get us back on our feet.”
After Katrina, Houston Jewry offered housing and office space, moral support and counseling, free synagogue membership and day school enrollment, money and prayer books and other religious supplies for the New Orleans evacuees, several hundred of whom, according to estimates, ended up making Houston their home.
And then, nearly 10 years later, the high water came to Houston, on Memorial Day 2015 — 11 inches of rain in a matter of a few hours, 2,000 buildings destroyed, some of the worst flooding in the city’s history. The damage was heavy in the heart of Houston’s Jewish neighborhood, Meyerland, along Brays Bayou, home to many of its institutions.
The Jews of New Orleans — current and former ones — were among the first to reach out to the Texas city that had given them refuge. For survivors of Katrina, it was déjà vu — images from Houston of flooded buildings, of people wading in waist-deep water, of stranded individuals being rescued by rowboat.
Returning the favor done to him, Josh Pershell, a recent graduate of Houston’s Beren Academy, a Jewish day school, volunteered to help flood-battered families after the Memorial Day deluge. Along with other volunteers, he carried furniture and other ruined items out of homes, and helped people pack their intact belongings.
“I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do, and the rest of my school and my friends were doing it also,” Pershell, now 18, said. “The [Jewish] community as a whole supported all of us” after Katrina.
That the Jews of New Orleans were in a position to have lent a hand after the Houston flooding is an indication of how far the community has come since Katrina hit. In the wake of the Category 5 hurricane, the Jewish population of New Orleans plummeted by more than a third, from 9,500 to 6,000. Today, it’s 10,300. (Buoyed by a network of strengthened levees and wetlands, the city as a whole, which initially lost about 40 percent of its population of nearly 500,000, has grown to 384,000 as of March; yet Louisiana has more young people not in school or working than any state in the nation, a direct result, researchers say, of Katrina.) The local Jewish federation’s annual fundraising campaign, which took a small hit in the wake of the hurricane, has nearly reached the pre-2005 figure $2.8 million; several Jewish institutions, which suffered heavy damage in the waters of Katrina, are located in new buildings.
“Ten years later we’re now stronger than we were before the storm,” said Bradley Bain, president of Congregation Beth Israel, a Modern Orthodox synagogue that moved into a new building two years ago, after being hosted for several years at a New Orleans Reform temple, Congregation Gates of Prayer in the suburb of Metairie.
“We’re very much a better place,” said Michael Weil, executive director of New Orleans’ Jewish federation, who helped coordinate the community-wide recovery effort, which included a campaign to attract new residents. In a telephone interview, he said Jewish New Orleans has moved beyond its initial recovery and rebuilding stages. “We’re actually rejuvenating. It’s a different world now. The community feels good about itself.”
The wider city “has become an incubator for entrepreneurship,” especially in the arts and the restaurant business, Weil said. “The Jewish community has been at the forefront of that.”
The people who left were mostly young families, who needed schools for their children; and senior citizens, who lost their homes, and lacked the resources or strength to rebuild. The people who have come are mostly young professionals, many of them single. “The new Jewish New Orleans is actually younger, in age profile, than before,” Brandeis history professor Jonathan Sarna said.
The Jewish federation’s high-visibility newcomers program, which offered a variety of financial incentives to people who moved to New Orleans, did not play a crucial role in their decision, Weil said. Instead, the city itself, its image as a vibrant place, has served as the main draw. The local economy is healthy, jobs are available. And housing, while not inexpensive, is affordable. “It’s a lot cheaper than New York City, Washington or places like that,” he said.
Weil pointed to several signs of new Jewish life in New Orleans: a Moishe House, an expanded Limmud educational program, a new Hillel House and Chabad Center at Tulane University, a new Chabad day school, an expanded JCC Uptown site and Beth Israel’s new building.
As the Aug. 29 anniversary nears, New Orleans’ synagogues are marking the decade of struggle and resilience by hosting several commemorative events that will culminate in prayer services on the weekend of the anniversary. And in a sign of the giving-back spirit, the New Orleans federation is coordinating TikkuNola volunteer work that features such activities as collecting and distributing school supplies for charter school students.
A few days before Katrina struck, two leaders of the New Orleans-based Jewish Children’s Regional Service, a social work agency and charitable fund that serves seven Southern states, traveled I-10 to Houston to set up a satellite office.
Led by executive director Ned Goldberg and education coordinator Melanie Musser, a small staff of displaced JCRS staffers continued to offer their services, which included personal counseling, advice on obtaining government benefits, and scholarship assistance for universities and summer camps, to New Orleans evacuees. A small JCRS satellite office remains in the JFS headquarters here; after Katrina, the agency’s client base grew by more than 50 percent.
And Goldberg, who again works fulltime in New Orleans after nearly a year in Houston, again, came back here recently to give back. About a month after the Houston flooding, which took place a few days before the start of the official hurricane season, Goldberg was back on I-10 again, this time with a carload of new and gently used Judaica, books and games for flood victims that the agency had collected from its supporters.
“Katrina families were the first to volunteer” to help Houston, said Pat Pollicoff, president of Houston’s Congregation Beth Israel, which suffered heavy water damage on Memorial Day. “They understood.”
A fundraising campaign under the auspices of the New Orleans Jewish federation, which included “dollar for dollar matches” for Houston Jewry from several donors, had raised “$27,470 from donors throughout the state … matched by the Goldring Family and Woldenberg foundations … for a total of $52,470,” the federation reported earlier this month.
“Katrina had a long-term effect on both New Orleans and Houston, creating a unique bond between the people of our two cities,” said Lee Wunsch, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.
Post-Katrina, the Jewish community of Houston was “amazing,” Weil said. “They gave us everything. Everyone was aware of the help Houston gave us.”
“The close relationship with Houston is mutually beneficial,” said Brandeis’ Sarna. “Through the years there have been Jewish communities that have closely assisted one another. Baltimore and Philadelphia have historically been intertwined. In early America, Shearith Israel [in Manhattan] helped various congregations get their start and would then, later, write to them for assistance.”
Houston will likely need the continued help, from New Orleanians as well as others.
Wunsch called the flooding the costliest in the Jewish community’s history. “It will take 18-24 months before things get back to normal,” he said. “The price tag for this is very significant. We’ve estimated the cost … at $3.5 million.”
Wunsch estimated that 500 Jewish families here “had their homes compromised … half will need some kind of community support.”
“Every synagogue has families affected by the flood,” he told New Orleans’ Crescent City Jewish News.
Leading the financial support of the federation’s Houston Flood Relief Fund was the Jewish Federations of North America, which made a $250,000 donation. Much of those relief funds will be allocated to JFS for “direct assistance to affected families,” Wunsch said.
The buildings that sustained the most damage were those of three congregations — Beth Israel, United Orthodox Synagogues, and the Meyerland Minyan — the teen building of the Jewish Community Center, and the JCC’s racquetball courts and toddler gym. They are in various stages of rebuilding and renovation; the affected synagogues, with the approach of the High Holy Days season, are holding worship services in mold-free, repaired rooms, some using texts donated by New Orleans congregations.
Drive through Meyerland and you see storage units in front of many homes, yellow building permits in many windows.
Active in the post-flood volunteer activities here are Chabad Lubavitch of Houston, the national NECHAMA and All Hands organizations, the Dallas-based Texas Torah Institute educational program, and Boy Scout Troop 806, sponsored by the Beth Israel Brotherhood. Several synagogues offered free community-wide barbecues and dinners, and the JCC ran a series of workshops about receiving government benefits, concerts and films.
JFS is still counseling people traumatized by the flooding, and offering a weekly support group, said Linda Burger, the group’s executive director. New faces show up each week, she said.
After the flood, JFS staffers set up a table at the popular Three Brothers kosher bakery, which gave out free challah rolls to flood victims.
The New Orleans JFS offered practical advice in such areas as case management and setting up an effective online communications system, Burger said. “We were very prepared. Katrina taught us not to be afraid to ask for help.”
Members of Houston’s Jewish community who had generously come to the aid of New Orleans a decade ago found themselves in an unfamiliar situation this summer, Burger said. “People said it’s a lot better to be on the giving side than on the receiving side.”
“It’s much easier to give the help,” echoed Beth El’s Pollicoff.
“It’s a humbling thing” to need help — “very humbling,” she said, adding praise for the Jewish community of New Orleans. “It’s tremendous to know we have their emotional support.”
steve@jewishweek.org.Read More
____________________________
The Jewish Week
Led by executive director Ned Goldberg and education coordinator Melanie Musser, a small staff of displaced JCRS staffers continued to offer their services, which included personal counseling, advice on obtaining government benefits, and scholarship assistance for universities and summer camps, to New Orleans evacuees. A small JCRS satellite office remains in the JFS headquarters here; after Katrina, the agency’s client base grew by more than 50 percent.
And Goldberg, who again works fulltime in New Orleans after nearly a year in Houston, again, came back here recently to give back. About a month after the Houston flooding, which took place a few days before the start of the official hurricane season, Goldberg was back on I-10 again, this time with a carload of new and gently used Judaica, books and games for flood victims that the agency had collected from its supporters.
“Katrina families were the first to volunteer” to help Houston, said Pat Pollicoff, president of Houston’s Congregation Beth Israel, which suffered heavy water damage on Memorial Day. “They understood.”
A fundraising campaign under the auspices of the New Orleans Jewish federation, which included “dollar for dollar matches” for Houston Jewry from several donors, had raised “$27,470 from donors throughout the state … matched by the Goldring Family and Woldenberg foundations … for a total of $52,470,” the federation reported earlier this month.
“Katrina had a long-term effect on both New Orleans and Houston, creating a unique bond between the people of our two cities,” said Lee Wunsch, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.
Post-Katrina, the Jewish community of Houston was “amazing,” Weil said. “They gave us everything. Everyone was aware of the help Houston gave us.”
“The close relationship with Houston is mutually beneficial,” said Brandeis’ Sarna. “Through the years there have been Jewish communities that have closely assisted one another. Baltimore and Philadelphia have historically been intertwined. In early America, Shearith Israel [in Manhattan] helped various congregations get their start and would then, later, write to them for assistance.”
Houston will likely need the continued help, from New Orleanians as well as others.
Wunsch called the flooding the costliest in the Jewish community’s history. “It will take 18-24 months before things get back to normal,” he said. “The price tag for this is very significant. We’ve estimated the cost … at $3.5 million.”
Wunsch estimated that 500 Jewish families here “had their homes compromised … half will need some kind of community support.”
“Every synagogue has families affected by the flood,” he told New Orleans’ Crescent City Jewish News.
Leading the financial support of the federation’s Houston Flood Relief Fund was the Jewish Federations of North America, which made a $250,000 donation. Much of those relief funds will be allocated to JFS for “direct assistance to affected families,” Wunsch said.
The buildings that sustained the most damage were those of three congregations — Beth Israel, United Orthodox Synagogues, and the Meyerland Minyan — the teen building of the Jewish Community Center, and the JCC’s racquetball courts and toddler gym. They are in various stages of rebuilding and renovation; the affected synagogues, with the approach of the High Holy Days season, are holding worship services in mold-free, repaired rooms, some using texts donated by New Orleans congregations.
Drive through Meyerland and you see storage units in front of many homes, yellow building permits in many windows.
Active in the post-flood volunteer activities here are Chabad Lubavitch of Houston, the national NECHAMA and All Hands organizations, the Dallas-based Texas Torah Institute educational program, and Boy Scout Troop 806, sponsored by the Beth Israel Brotherhood. Several synagogues offered free community-wide barbecues and dinners, and the JCC ran a series of workshops about receiving government benefits, concerts and films.
JFS is still counseling people traumatized by the flooding, and offering a weekly support group, said Linda Burger, the group’s executive director. New faces show up each week, she said.
After the flood, JFS staffers set up a table at the popular Three Brothers kosher bakery, which gave out free challah rolls to flood victims.
The New Orleans JFS offered practical advice in such areas as case management and setting up an effective online communications system, Burger said. “We were very prepared. Katrina taught us not to be afraid to ask for help.”
Members of Houston’s Jewish community who had generously come to the aid of New Orleans a decade ago found themselves in an unfamiliar situation this summer, Burger said. “People said it’s a lot better to be on the giving side than on the receiving side.”
“It’s much easier to give the help,” echoed Beth El’s Pollicoff.
“It’s a humbling thing” to need help — “very humbling,” she said, adding praise for the Jewish community of New Orleans. “It’s tremendous to know we have their emotional support.”
steve@jewishweek.org.Read More
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