Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Brooklyn College Faculty Pulled Into Israel Wars
Amy Sara Clark
New York
New York
Brooklyn College Faculty Pushed Into Israel Wars
‘Zionists off campus’ chats at council meeting moves professors from sidelines to center stage.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
BDS fight has moved onto new ground. Amy Sara Clark/JW
In recent years, the BDS and anti-Israel battles on Brooklyn College’s idyllic campus have been borne largely by Jewish students.
They have pressed administrators to censure professors they believed were unfair to Israel. They have countered pro-Palestinian student activists, set up informational tables on the quad making Israel’s case and written op-eds in the campus newspaper.
Last week, though, the anti-Israel fight landed a right hook squarely on the jaw of the Faculty Council, an influential faculty group, which is headed by an Orthodox Jew. If Brooklyn College’s faculty, including its Jewish members, has largely been on the sidelines in the Israel wars, this week they were in the fight, in the wake of a troubling incident that shook members of the council.
The incident happened on Feb. 16, when a group of students chanting slogans including “Zionists off campus” broke up the council’s meeting.
“I’ve had numerous phone calls from faculty members who were there,” said Yedidyah Langsam, who chairs the council. He said they all reported feeling varying degrees of fear, including one professor who said she left the meeting “trembling.”
The incident has the faculty thinking about lodging a formal complaint, and it has also renewed a debate about tactics when it comes to confronting anti-Israel activity.
There are conflicting reports as to exactly what happened at the Faculty Council meeting, but what everyone interviewed by The Jewish Week agrees on is that about 30 minutes into the meeting, a group of about 10 students walked to the front of the room. They immediately began chanting a list of demands that ranged from support of increased pay for faculty members to calls for divestment from the for-profit prison industry. Langsam, they agree, was forced to adjourn the meeting.
It’s agreed that the students chanted something about Zionism, either “Zionists off campus” or “Zionism off campus,” and that some faculty members cheered and applauded, even after the anti-Zionist chants, although it’s not clear which demands they were cheering for.
Langsam, who wears a kipa, said that when he told the protestors they were out of order, one of the protestors called him a “Zionist something.” He doesn’t remember what the something was but said it was definitely meant as an insult.
(While JTA reported that a professor at the meeting said the protestor called Langsam a “Zionist pig,” none of the four professors at the meeting interviewed by The Jewish Week confirmed that.)
What is clear is that a substantial contingent of professors left the meeting feeling scared.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who within hours of the meeting issued a news release calling for CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken to take action to prevent future disruptions, said that he’s received calls from, as of Tuesday, nine professors.
“There’s a lot of fear,” he told The Jewish Week. “When you’re intimidated and you have fear — fear is a very powerful thing.
“You can sit back and say, ‘What’s the big deal?” he continued. “They interrupted a meeting and they yelled “Zionists out of CUNY. ”’ ... [But] These students didn’t just sit back and chant — they took over the meeting.”
On Tuesday, a week after the demonstration, four of the student protestors apologized to Langsam in his office and agreed to apologize to the Faculty Council as a whole. “I take this as a positive action,” he said in an email.
Kenneth Waltzer, executive director of the newly formed Academic Engagement Network, a coalition of professors working to counter BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activities on campus, said this is the first time he’s heard of a BDS protest targeting faculty rather than students.
He was quick to praise Brooklyn College President Karen Gould’s speedy denouncement of the protest, saying “she was quick to respond and said all the right things.”
The day after the incident Gould sent an email to faculty, staff and students condemning the protest as “disruptive” and “unacceptable” and the “hateful anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish comments” as “especially abhorrent.”
A college spokesman told The Jewish Week that Gould has asked the college’s Office of Judicial Affairs and its legal counsel to investigate the incident “and to take appropriate actions based on their findings.” Asked what penalties the students might be given, the spokesman said it would be “premature to speculate” but that “appropriate action” would be taken.
Langsam and Hikind also praised the quick and forceful response but were skeptical as to whether, in the end, any students would be punished. They pointed to a 2013 incident when four pro-Israel students were thrown out of an anti-Israel forum on campus. While the incident was investigated, no student was disciplined and the dean in charge was given only “a slap on the wrist.”
In response to Gould’s email, student Sarah Aly, who is active in Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), released a statement on her Facebook page that she said was from a group called the Brooklyn College Student Coalition criticizing Gould for conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
“This tactic is often used to disparage any opposition to Zionism and seriously minimizes the reality and severity of actual anti-Jewish sentiment,” the statement reads. Aly did not respond to a request for an interview.
Langsam said there’s no doubt, at least concerning the insult lobbed at him, that the students’ motivation was anti-Semitism.
“I’m not easily identifiable as being Zionist, but I do wear a yarmulke and a beard. It was very clear when she turned around exactly what she meant,” he said.
“This is the first incident that has been directed toward me,” added Langsam, who chairs the computer science department. “I’m not feeling threatened, but there is a serious problem.”
Hillel director Nadya Drukker agreed, both that there is a serious problem and that the incident was “blatantly anti-Semitic.” But unlike most on campus, she sees a silver lining. Perhaps the fact that faculty members were targeted will cause the administration to take more decisive action, she said.
“For the faculty it was definitely an eye-opening experience. The chair of the faculty meeting is an Orthodox Jew and he was personally attacked, so it’s now on a different level,” she said.
Anti-Israel demonstrations on campus, she said, have “unfortunately become a too-common occurrence,” she said. And for the Jewish students at Brooklyn College, many of whom are either Israeli or Orthodox, with family members in Israel, very few of whom are on the liberal, progressive end of the spectrum, anti-Zionism feels no different from anti-Semitism.
“In our community it’s the same — the students don’t see the difference,” she said.
While the administration recently revised the student handbook to address such protests, she says it’s the implementation that matters.
“It’s a systematic problem where we see students break the rules but there are no consequences,” she said. “It’s great to have the rules but the rules need to be enforced. We would love to see the perpetrators of this being identified and disciplinary action of some kind taken.”
As to how to counter BDS, Hillel’s approach is “education, education, education.” “We are doing a lot of the groundwork to make sure that people get the facts,” she said.
Her Hillel also focuses on building bridges with other student groups by letting Jewish and non-Jewish students get to know each other in non-political settings. They’ve had an interfaith trivia night with all religious questions and host an annual Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless that this year got more than 170 students from across the demographic spectrum.
The largest of these initiatives is the weekly meetings of the “Creative Coexistence” club, during which 20 to 30 students get together to work on collective art projects. The Hillel students recruit by approaching other clubs on campus, and over the two and a half years since the UJA Federation-funded project launched, Hillel students have gotten creative, recruiting education students to work on a project on disabilities, and the actuary club to do a paint-by-number workshop.
But despite these successes, she doesn’t want to understate the problem of anti-Israel activity on campus, which she calls “large and deep.”
“It’s definitely a huge concern that keeps me up at night,” she said.
It keeps sophomore Joseph Goldberg up at night as well.
Last semester he started the “972 Committee,” named after Israel’s calling code, to highlight media bias against Israel and provide positive publicity for Israel. His group of about 10 students once had a table featuring optical illusions to discuss the importance of seeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a range of perspectives. Another info table session highlighted philanthropic actions taken by Israel to help other countries. Last week they gave out roses along with flyers giving out factual information about Israel.
Talking to students one-on-one has opened his eyes to just how misinformed students can be, including a conversation with a Caribbean classmate who firmly believes (despite Goldberg saying his grandfather was in a concentration camp) that the Holocaust never took place.
Hikind would like to see an even more direct approach, arguing that students need to counter BDS demonstrations head-on.
“The belief that if we don’t do anything it will just go away, it just doesn’t work that way,” he said.He thinks students need to hold counterdemonstrations, that the campus’ estimated 3,500 Jewish students (out of 17,400) need to show their strength. “We’re not talking about being militant, we’re talking about standing up for our rights,” he said. ---------------------
Klezmer Notes From The Underground
Jonathan Mark
New York
Brooklyn College Faculty Pushed Into Israel Wars
‘Zionists off campus’ chats at council meeting moves professors from sidelines to center stage.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
BDS fight has moved onto new ground. Amy Sara Clark/JW
In recent years, the BDS and anti-Israel battles on Brooklyn College’s idyllic campus have been borne largely by Jewish students.
They have pressed administrators to censure professors they believed were unfair to Israel. They have countered pro-Palestinian student activists, set up informational tables on the quad making Israel’s case and written op-eds in the campus newspaper.
Last week, though, the anti-Israel fight landed a right hook squarely on the jaw of the Faculty Council, an influential faculty group, which is headed by an Orthodox Jew. If Brooklyn College’s faculty, including its Jewish members, has largely been on the sidelines in the Israel wars, this week they were in the fight, in the wake of a troubling incident that shook members of the council.
The incident happened on Feb. 16, when a group of students chanting slogans including “Zionists off campus” broke up the council’s meeting.
“I’ve had numerous phone calls from faculty members who were there,” said Yedidyah Langsam, who chairs the council. He said they all reported feeling varying degrees of fear, including one professor who said she left the meeting “trembling.”
The incident has the faculty thinking about lodging a formal complaint, and it has also renewed a debate about tactics when it comes to confronting anti-Israel activity.
There are conflicting reports as to exactly what happened at the Faculty Council meeting, but what everyone interviewed by The Jewish Week agrees on is that about 30 minutes into the meeting, a group of about 10 students walked to the front of the room. They immediately began chanting a list of demands that ranged from support of increased pay for faculty members to calls for divestment from the for-profit prison industry. Langsam, they agree, was forced to adjourn the meeting.
It’s agreed that the students chanted something about Zionism, either “Zionists off campus” or “Zionism off campus,” and that some faculty members cheered and applauded, even after the anti-Zionist chants, although it’s not clear which demands they were cheering for.
Langsam, who wears a kipa, said that when he told the protestors they were out of order, one of the protestors called him a “Zionist something.” He doesn’t remember what the something was but said it was definitely meant as an insult.
(While JTA reported that a professor at the meeting said the protestor called Langsam a “Zionist pig,” none of the four professors at the meeting interviewed by The Jewish Week confirmed that.)
What is clear is that a substantial contingent of professors left the meeting feeling scared.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who within hours of the meeting issued a news release calling for CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken to take action to prevent future disruptions, said that he’s received calls from, as of Tuesday, nine professors.
“There’s a lot of fear,” he told The Jewish Week. “When you’re intimidated and you have fear — fear is a very powerful thing.
“You can sit back and say, ‘What’s the big deal?” he continued. “They interrupted a meeting and they yelled “Zionists out of CUNY. ”’ ... [But] These students didn’t just sit back and chant — they took over the meeting.”
On Tuesday, a week after the demonstration, four of the student protestors apologized to Langsam in his office and agreed to apologize to the Faculty Council as a whole. “I take this as a positive action,” he said in an email.
Kenneth Waltzer, executive director of the newly formed Academic Engagement Network, a coalition of professors working to counter BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activities on campus, said this is the first time he’s heard of a BDS protest targeting faculty rather than students.
He was quick to praise Brooklyn College President Karen Gould’s speedy denouncement of the protest, saying “she was quick to respond and said all the right things.”
The day after the incident Gould sent an email to faculty, staff and students condemning the protest as “disruptive” and “unacceptable” and the “hateful anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish comments” as “especially abhorrent.”
A college spokesman told The Jewish Week that Gould has asked the college’s Office of Judicial Affairs and its legal counsel to investigate the incident “and to take appropriate actions based on their findings.” Asked what penalties the students might be given, the spokesman said it would be “premature to speculate” but that “appropriate action” would be taken.
Langsam and Hikind also praised the quick and forceful response but were skeptical as to whether, in the end, any students would be punished. They pointed to a 2013 incident when four pro-Israel students were thrown out of an anti-Israel forum on campus. While the incident was investigated, no student was disciplined and the dean in charge was given only “a slap on the wrist.”
In response to Gould’s email, student Sarah Aly, who is active in Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), released a statement on her Facebook page that she said was from a group called the Brooklyn College Student Coalition criticizing Gould for conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
“This tactic is often used to disparage any opposition to Zionism and seriously minimizes the reality and severity of actual anti-Jewish sentiment,” the statement reads. Aly did not respond to a request for an interview.
Langsam said there’s no doubt, at least concerning the insult lobbed at him, that the students’ motivation was anti-Semitism.
“I’m not easily identifiable as being Zionist, but I do wear a yarmulke and a beard. It was very clear when she turned around exactly what she meant,” he said.
“This is the first incident that has been directed toward me,” added Langsam, who chairs the computer science department. “I’m not feeling threatened, but there is a serious problem.”
Hillel director Nadya Drukker agreed, both that there is a serious problem and that the incident was “blatantly anti-Semitic.” But unlike most on campus, she sees a silver lining. Perhaps the fact that faculty members were targeted will cause the administration to take more decisive action, she said.
“For the faculty it was definitely an eye-opening experience. The chair of the faculty meeting is an Orthodox Jew and he was personally attacked, so it’s now on a different level,” she said.
Anti-Israel demonstrations on campus, she said, have “unfortunately become a too-common occurrence,” she said. And for the Jewish students at Brooklyn College, many of whom are either Israeli or Orthodox, with family members in Israel, very few of whom are on the liberal, progressive end of the spectrum, anti-Zionism feels no different from anti-Semitism.
“In our community it’s the same — the students don’t see the difference,” she said.
While the administration recently revised the student handbook to address such protests, she says it’s the implementation that matters.
“It’s a systematic problem where we see students break the rules but there are no consequences,” she said. “It’s great to have the rules but the rules need to be enforced. We would love to see the perpetrators of this being identified and disciplinary action of some kind taken.”
As to how to counter BDS, Hillel’s approach is “education, education, education.” “We are doing a lot of the groundwork to make sure that people get the facts,” she said.
Her Hillel also focuses on building bridges with other student groups by letting Jewish and non-Jewish students get to know each other in non-political settings. They’ve had an interfaith trivia night with all religious questions and host an annual Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless that this year got more than 170 students from across the demographic spectrum.
The largest of these initiatives is the weekly meetings of the “Creative Coexistence” club, during which 20 to 30 students get together to work on collective art projects. The Hillel students recruit by approaching other clubs on campus, and over the two and a half years since the UJA Federation-funded project launched, Hillel students have gotten creative, recruiting education students to work on a project on disabilities, and the actuary club to do a paint-by-number workshop.
But despite these successes, she doesn’t want to understate the problem of anti-Israel activity on campus, which she calls “large and deep.”
“It’s definitely a huge concern that keeps me up at night,” she said.
It keeps sophomore Joseph Goldberg up at night as well.
Last semester he started the “972 Committee,” named after Israel’s calling code, to highlight media bias against Israel and provide positive publicity for Israel. His group of about 10 students once had a table featuring optical illusions to discuss the importance of seeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a range of perspectives. Another info table session highlighted philanthropic actions taken by Israel to help other countries. Last week they gave out roses along with flyers giving out factual information about Israel.
Talking to students one-on-one has opened his eyes to just how misinformed students can be, including a conversation with a Caribbean classmate who firmly believes (despite Goldberg saying his grandfather was in a concentration camp) that the Holocaust never took place.
Hikind would like to see an even more direct approach, arguing that students need to counter BDS demonstrations head-on.
“The belief that if we don’t do anything it will just go away, it just doesn’t work that way,” he said.He thinks students need to hold counterdemonstrations, that the campus’ estimated 3,500 Jewish students (out of 17,400) need to show their strength. “We’re not talking about being militant, we’re talking about standing up for our rights,” he said. ---------------------
Klezmer Notes From The Underground
Jonathan Mark
The Edge Of Town
Subway musician plays Great Yiddish Songbook.
New York
Klezmer Notes From The Underground
Subway musician plays Great Yiddish Songbook.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Dave Tarras and Andy Statman, Isaiah Richardson, Jr. wails in front of the Sixth Street Community Center. Michael Datikash/JW
Much as the Grand Ol’ Opry, when still housed in the old Ryman church, refused for many decades to allow drums on its stage, the better to maintain the “high lonesome” sound of front-porch purity, so it is that Jewish purists and old-timers insist that ruach (spirit) at a Jewish wedding is best generated not by electric guitars but by ruach’s other meaning — wind — or more exactly, wind instruments, such as the clarinet or the flute.
Even when that Jewish music is subterranean, played in a subway station by Isaiah Richardson, Jr., an elegant black man in bow tie and derby, his soulfulness, spirit and ruach overwhelm the surface oddity of the Great Yiddish Songbook winging out of his clarinet.
We met Isaiah — let us call him by his prophetic name — on the Times Square platform of the Uptown No. 2, where he was performing. “I came to Jewish music through the clarinet when I was 13,” he says; he’s now 35. “Every clarinet player knows at least some jazz, and klezmer, somewhat. That’s the history of the instrument, going back to the 1920s,” a time when subways had wicker seats, and Isaiah’s South Bronx neighborhood near Southern Boulevard was thoroughly Jewish, with children often sung to sleep to M.M. Warshawsky’s magnificent lullaby, “Oyfn Prepitchuk,” about learning the Alef-Bet by a fireplace, and the “tears in every letter.”
Isaiah plays it on his clarinet, accompanied by a rumbling train pulling into the station. He first heard that lullaby and the ethereal “Yerushalyim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold) from the soundtrack of “Schindler’s List.”
Once while performing in Hamburg, Isaiah recalls, “I ran off from the band at 8 a.m., taking a two-hour ride to the Neuengamme concentration camp. What I saw brought tears to my eyes. After 30 minutes of walking around, I felt sick. ... The study of music, its culture and the people it comes from is a musician’s life mission.”
Isaiah speaks with reverence of that sweet long ago when Jewish “immigrants were coming to America, (the families) of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, and Dave Taras,” who later mentored the klezmer revival. “Rhapsody in Blue” would be thought a Jewish classic had George Gershwin come of age along the Vistula River instead of the Hudson.
Isaiah says, “My teacher at Juilliard, I didn’t know it at the time but she played klezmer.” Isaiah remembers hearing Benny Goodman’s “And the Angels Sing,” and “all of a sudden, in the middle, there’s klezmer! I thought, ‘Whoa, what was that?’”
Isaiah signed up for a music club that “would send you a CD every month. You checked off what kind of music you liked. I checked jazz, and noticed separate boxes for klezmer and Jewish. I checked them both. I got an album by Andy Statman.” Statman, the Orthodox clarinetist and mandolinist, studied and played with Taras and David Grisman, who worked with Jerry Garcia and played mandolin on the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple.”
“I listened to Statman’s album, I don’t know how many times,” says Isaiah. “I never knew a clarinet that could sound like that. I searched for more. I bought Statman’s book, ‘How to Play Klezmer.’ I later told him and Statman told me, laughing, ‘Oh, you couldn’t have learned very much from that!’ But everything is a beginning. I’m still learning.”
Lyrics matter to Isaiah: “Without lyrics you cannot properly phrase melodies on an instrument. The lyrics began to mean something to me. Many songs are prayers sung to be remembered. It sticks with you, changes who you are as a person. I’ve actually started studying a little Hebrew.”
Isaiah, who grew up in the Bronx neighborhoods of Morris Heights and then the Grand Concourse, knows the blues. One pre-dawn his instruments were stolen from him on the 2 train. At 4 a.m., returning home after a recording session where he played his clarinet, saxophone, Chinese flute, and earned $500 for five tracks, “I was happy. I drank a little bit,” and he was eating his Halal dinner in a styrofoam container. He dozed off. “When I woke up, the Halal food was all the way over there, at one end of the car, and I was over here. My saxophone was gone. My duffel bag that had the clarinet, gone. Flute, harmonica — gone. Everyone in the subway car, they were all just looking at me. I remember the date, Sept. 24, 2010. The only instrument I had was a trumpet, at home.”
Today, Isaiah plays in more than a half-dozen bands; one is Brown Rice Family (formed with two friends, one from Japan, one from Korea). Isaiah, who is not married, studied for two semesters at Shanghai University in 2007, learning Chinese language and music. He adds, “I have become quite famous in Taiwan as a saxophonist who plays Taiwanese music — on a Taiwan-made saxophone.” Isaiah toured in Japan with Brown Rice Family.
He first went to Japan when he was in the Marines, and played in the Marine Corps Band. He credits the Marines and the Marine band as influencing his sharp dress, even if he’s playing in the subway.
For his commuting audience, says Isaiah, “I play 80 percent Jewish music, 10 percent Chinese/Taiwanese music,” and ten percent “depends how I feel. I’m mostly not playing Jewish music (professionally) but in the subway I have total control and play Jewish music because I genuinely want to. If I don’t play it down there, I’m hardly playing it at all, except to myself.”
Isaiah is also a member of Maku SoundSystem, a Columbian band whose website describes the music as carrying “hints of Columbian folklore, psychedelic-rock and Caribbean grooves.” In 2012, Jim Farber, reviewing Maku in the New York Daily News, took note of Isaiah’s unique musical fusion but likely couldn’t believe what he was hearing, attributing Isaiah’s influences to Central America, not Eastern Europe. Farber wrote: “The music erupts with Afro-Colombian rhythms. It also features some of the wildest clarinet playing you’ve ever heard. Though it sounds like a punk take on East European klezmer music, the clarinet has long had a place in Colombian instrumentation.”
Isaiah says, “I don’t plan on playing much in the subway next year.” It causes some to underestimate him. “Some musicians, looking to hire for a show say, ‘Oh, not that guy, he plays in the street.’ Some imagine my (musical) level to be much lower than it is.” He points out that he’s played the Kennedy Center in Washington, Smalls jazz club in the West Village, Lincoln Center, Broadway (“Old Hats”), and for HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.” They also ignore my clarinet and only talk about the saxophone. I play saxophone, yes, because a clarinet cannot cut through the noise of trains. None of this is good for someone trying to establish himself as a clarinetist.”
Isaiah recently e-mailed from Louisiana: “Hey Jonathan, I hear it’s snowing again in New York. I’m in New Orleans right now. Busy year so far. The Carnegie Hall and Blue Note shows last month went well. I was on tour much of last month, with another group,” Monsieur Perine, “from Colombia, that won a 2015 Latin Grammy for best new artist.”
Maybe Cajuns prefer “Jole Blon,” and it increasingly costs more than a Metrocard to hear Isaiah play. But if you’re waiting for the Seventh Avenue local, one day, and hear “Khosen Kallah, Mazal Tov,” Isaiah’s home.
jonathan@jewishweek.org---------------------
Jewish Bush Donors Seen Hesitating On Next Move
Stewart Ain
Subway musician plays Great Yiddish Songbook.
New York
Klezmer Notes From The Underground
Subway musician plays Great Yiddish Songbook.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Dave Tarras and Andy Statman, Isaiah Richardson, Jr. wails in front of the Sixth Street Community Center. Michael Datikash/JW
Much as the Grand Ol’ Opry, when still housed in the old Ryman church, refused for many decades to allow drums on its stage, the better to maintain the “high lonesome” sound of front-porch purity, so it is that Jewish purists and old-timers insist that ruach (spirit) at a Jewish wedding is best generated not by electric guitars but by ruach’s other meaning — wind — or more exactly, wind instruments, such as the clarinet or the flute.
Even when that Jewish music is subterranean, played in a subway station by Isaiah Richardson, Jr., an elegant black man in bow tie and derby, his soulfulness, spirit and ruach overwhelm the surface oddity of the Great Yiddish Songbook winging out of his clarinet.
We met Isaiah — let us call him by his prophetic name — on the Times Square platform of the Uptown No. 2, where he was performing. “I came to Jewish music through the clarinet when I was 13,” he says; he’s now 35. “Every clarinet player knows at least some jazz, and klezmer, somewhat. That’s the history of the instrument, going back to the 1920s,” a time when subways had wicker seats, and Isaiah’s South Bronx neighborhood near Southern Boulevard was thoroughly Jewish, with children often sung to sleep to M.M. Warshawsky’s magnificent lullaby, “Oyfn Prepitchuk,” about learning the Alef-Bet by a fireplace, and the “tears in every letter.”
Isaiah plays it on his clarinet, accompanied by a rumbling train pulling into the station. He first heard that lullaby and the ethereal “Yerushalyim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold) from the soundtrack of “Schindler’s List.”
Once while performing in Hamburg, Isaiah recalls, “I ran off from the band at 8 a.m., taking a two-hour ride to the Neuengamme concentration camp. What I saw brought tears to my eyes. After 30 minutes of walking around, I felt sick. ... The study of music, its culture and the people it comes from is a musician’s life mission.”
Isaiah speaks with reverence of that sweet long ago when Jewish “immigrants were coming to America, (the families) of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, and Dave Taras,” who later mentored the klezmer revival. “Rhapsody in Blue” would be thought a Jewish classic had George Gershwin come of age along the Vistula River instead of the Hudson.
Isaiah says, “My teacher at Juilliard, I didn’t know it at the time but she played klezmer.” Isaiah remembers hearing Benny Goodman’s “And the Angels Sing,” and “all of a sudden, in the middle, there’s klezmer! I thought, ‘Whoa, what was that?’”
Isaiah signed up for a music club that “would send you a CD every month. You checked off what kind of music you liked. I checked jazz, and noticed separate boxes for klezmer and Jewish. I checked them both. I got an album by Andy Statman.” Statman, the Orthodox clarinetist and mandolinist, studied and played with Taras and David Grisman, who worked with Jerry Garcia and played mandolin on the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple.”
“I listened to Statman’s album, I don’t know how many times,” says Isaiah. “I never knew a clarinet that could sound like that. I searched for more. I bought Statman’s book, ‘How to Play Klezmer.’ I later told him and Statman told me, laughing, ‘Oh, you couldn’t have learned very much from that!’ But everything is a beginning. I’m still learning.”
Lyrics matter to Isaiah: “Without lyrics you cannot properly phrase melodies on an instrument. The lyrics began to mean something to me. Many songs are prayers sung to be remembered. It sticks with you, changes who you are as a person. I’ve actually started studying a little Hebrew.”
Isaiah, who grew up in the Bronx neighborhoods of Morris Heights and then the Grand Concourse, knows the blues. One pre-dawn his instruments were stolen from him on the 2 train. At 4 a.m., returning home after a recording session where he played his clarinet, saxophone, Chinese flute, and earned $500 for five tracks, “I was happy. I drank a little bit,” and he was eating his Halal dinner in a styrofoam container. He dozed off. “When I woke up, the Halal food was all the way over there, at one end of the car, and I was over here. My saxophone was gone. My duffel bag that had the clarinet, gone. Flute, harmonica — gone. Everyone in the subway car, they were all just looking at me. I remember the date, Sept. 24, 2010. The only instrument I had was a trumpet, at home.”
Today, Isaiah plays in more than a half-dozen bands; one is Brown Rice Family (formed with two friends, one from Japan, one from Korea). Isaiah, who is not married, studied for two semesters at Shanghai University in 2007, learning Chinese language and music. He adds, “I have become quite famous in Taiwan as a saxophonist who plays Taiwanese music — on a Taiwan-made saxophone.” Isaiah toured in Japan with Brown Rice Family.
He first went to Japan when he was in the Marines, and played in the Marine Corps Band. He credits the Marines and the Marine band as influencing his sharp dress, even if he’s playing in the subway.
For his commuting audience, says Isaiah, “I play 80 percent Jewish music, 10 percent Chinese/Taiwanese music,” and ten percent “depends how I feel. I’m mostly not playing Jewish music (professionally) but in the subway I have total control and play Jewish music because I genuinely want to. If I don’t play it down there, I’m hardly playing it at all, except to myself.”
Isaiah is also a member of Maku SoundSystem, a Columbian band whose website describes the music as carrying “hints of Columbian folklore, psychedelic-rock and Caribbean grooves.” In 2012, Jim Farber, reviewing Maku in the New York Daily News, took note of Isaiah’s unique musical fusion but likely couldn’t believe what he was hearing, attributing Isaiah’s influences to Central America, not Eastern Europe. Farber wrote: “The music erupts with Afro-Colombian rhythms. It also features some of the wildest clarinet playing you’ve ever heard. Though it sounds like a punk take on East European klezmer music, the clarinet has long had a place in Colombian instrumentation.”
Isaiah says, “I don’t plan on playing much in the subway next year.” It causes some to underestimate him. “Some musicians, looking to hire for a show say, ‘Oh, not that guy, he plays in the street.’ Some imagine my (musical) level to be much lower than it is.” He points out that he’s played the Kennedy Center in Washington, Smalls jazz club in the West Village, Lincoln Center, Broadway (“Old Hats”), and for HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.” They also ignore my clarinet and only talk about the saxophone. I play saxophone, yes, because a clarinet cannot cut through the noise of trains. None of this is good for someone trying to establish himself as a clarinetist.”
Isaiah recently e-mailed from Louisiana: “Hey Jonathan, I hear it’s snowing again in New York. I’m in New Orleans right now. Busy year so far. The Carnegie Hall and Blue Note shows last month went well. I was on tour much of last month, with another group,” Monsieur Perine, “from Colombia, that won a 2015 Latin Grammy for best new artist.”
Maybe Cajuns prefer “Jole Blon,” and it increasingly costs more than a Metrocard to hear Isaiah play. But if you’re waiting for the Seventh Avenue local, one day, and hear “Khosen Kallah, Mazal Tov,” Isaiah’s home.
jonathan@jewishweek.org---------------------
Jewish Bush Donors Seen Hesitating On Next Move
Stewart Ain
National
Sitting on the sidelines now in midst of
'extremely confused' race.
National
Jewish Bush Donors Seen Hesitating On Next Move
Sitting on the sidelines now in midst of ‘extremely confused’ race.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Frontrunner Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: Super Tuesday could be decisive. Photos by Getty Images
Many of the major Jewish donors who had supported former Gov. Jeb Bush’s failed campaign for president are sitting on the sidelines at the moment, The Jewish Week has learned.
“I spent the last two days on the phone with Jeb Bush supporters — and many of his donors I have known for a long time,” Phil Rosen, a top fundraiser for Mitt Romney in 2012 and now a supporter of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, told The Jewish Week Monday night.
“Almost to a man they said they would come on board [for Rubio] now or soon — they just want to take a day or two break,” he said.
Nick Muzin, an Orthodox Jewish doctor-lawyer who is a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said he too has been working the phones reaching out to Bush supporters “in the last 24 hours.”
“They are receptive to our outreach,” he said. “We are confident we’ll get a number of them.”
Fred Zeidman, a major Republican donor who had supported Bush, said he supported Bush because he believes “only a moderate can beat the Democratic candidate.”
With Bush out of the race after his fourth-place finish in the South Carolina primary last week, Zeidman told The Jewish Week he wants to “sit back, catch my breath and take a look at who is out there and who has the best chance” of winning the Republican presidential nomination.
“We have winnowed the field to great candidates and the question is who has the best chance to beat the eventual Democratic candidate for president,” he added.
Ken Bialkin, like Zeidman a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he too is going to wait for things to shake themselves out.
“The situation now is extremely confused,” he said. “I think that right now the RJC has not seen it necessary to take a position. I have great admiration and respect for each of the candidates. I have not been contacted by any of their campaigns and it is premature from me to express an opinion. My mind is open.”
Zeidman said it is his “guess we will know in the next two weeks” who the Republican nominee will be.
The polls show New York businessman Donald Trump winning most of the upcoming primaries, and by March 15, 60 percent of the Republican delegates will have been chosen. If the polls prove correct, Trump could be well on his way to capturing the nomination next week with the Super Tuesday primaries in 10 states (595 delegates will be chosen — 24 percent of the 2,472 total needed for nomination).
“As long as a Trump nomination seems as inevitable as it does now, they [major Republican donors] are not going to give money to Rubio or Cruz because they do not want to back a loser,” said William Helmreich, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York who has also been a political pollster.
Ester Fuchs, a professor of public affairs and political science at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, noted that part of Trump’s appeal was his decision to fund his campaign himself and to refuse donations.
“Big money buys access and Trump is not interested in their money,” she said. “I’m talking about big money, like Sheldon Adelson.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, Adelson, the billionaire casino owner, had yet to announce whom he would support, although the newspaper he owns, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, endorsed Rubio.
Among Rubio’s major Jewish patrons have been two other billionaires, Norman Braman and Paul Singer.
Fuchs said there are “too many people in the field” to know who is going to be the Republican presidential candidate.
“As it stands, Trump is collecting the delegates,” she observed. “But it’s not over — not over on either side.”
That view was echoed by Melissa Miller, an associate professor in political science who specializes in American politics at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
“Picking whom to donate to now is like picking a winner,” she said. “The most interesting question is might [Ohio Gov.] John [Kasich] pick up some money. There is a possible path for him, but it is a very narrow path. He put his eggs in New Hampshire and nowhere else. For all the non-Trump candidates, the path to victory becomes more and more constricted — and donors know that.”
But at least one former Bush adviser, Jay Lefkowitz, a former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush for Domestic Policy, is now supporting Rubio. He said he believes “Rubio has a greater appeal to the Bush voters than Donald Trump does. … Within the Jewish community, Rubio is a more natural fit than Trump or Cruz.”
“I would expect there will be a move to support Rubio, the real question is whether he can galvanize enough support in the next few weeks,” Lefkowitz added. “With the Florida primary in mid-March, there is not a lot of time to get the momentum rolling.”
Rep. Lee Zeldin of Long Island, the only Republican Jew in Congress and who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate, said he also believes Rubio will “quite possibly” garner the support of most of Bush’s Jewish supporters.
But he too agreed that the “best thing for Trump is for there to be as many other candidates in the race as possible going after each other.”
Zeldin pointed out that “a lot of pro-Israel Republicans in New York I have spoken to seem to be most supportive of other candidates in the race.”
But Sid Dinerstein, a former chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Committee in Florida, said he has found a great deal of support for Trump in the Jewish community there.
“I live in an affluent community that is 60 percent Jewish,” he said. “All my friends are for Trump, who talks very proudly of his Jewish family [his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism] and of his feelings for Israel. … I haven’t endorsed yet, but I would be very comfortable with him as president.”
But Gilbert Kahn, a political science professor at Kean University in Union, N.J., said Trump “is seen in many circles as a lot of hot air.”
“I don’t care what he did in the corporate world, he doesn’t know how to get things done,” he said. “I think Jews have soured on Cruz because he is not winning and is becoming not likeable. He has pushed the religion button too many times.
“Rubio is more complicated. He is becoming more and more the likely choice of what was once called the establishment Republicans — he is more palatable than the extreme characters like Trump and Cruz. But if Kasich gets a real bump out of Super Tuesday – beyond Ohio – I would have to revisit that.”
Kyle Kondik at the University of Virginia Center for Politics said Kasich “does not have much national standing but has significant support of the Jewish business community in Columbus and more broadly across Ohio. I’m talking about [Jewish] donors like Les Wexner, not voters.”
Despite Republican attempts in recent election cycles to woo Jewish voters, Robert Watson, a professor and coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University in Florida, said he believes Jewish support for the Democratic Party will remain strong in November even though it has slipped in recent years. Barack Obama received about 74 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, a percentage that dropped to 69 percent in 2012.
He said Rubio was not “one of the major outspoken champions of Israel … and not well informed on Israel” when he was a Florida state representative.
“He has been an outspoken advocate for Israel in the last few years in the Senate, so the question is whether he is really an outspoken supporter or a Marco-come-lately,” Watson said.
He said Cruz’s “thinly veiled comments at Trump’s New York values smack of old anti-Semitism scare mongering.” And although Trump has been saying “the right things about his support for Israel, he has no voting record. I’m not sure I’m prepared to say that someone who was a grand marshal of the Israel Parade is the person I would support.”
Hillary Clinton, however, had a solid voting record on Israel when she served as New York’s junior senator, Watson said, “and Obama delivered everything Israel asked for [despite] … strained relations with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
The strongest support for the Republican Party has come in recent years from the Orthodox Jewish community. Samuel Heilman, a professor of sociology and Jewish studies at CUNY, said exit polls show Trump’s strength to be among non-college graduates, a profile that fits the ultra-Orthodox.
“I don’t think they were ever going to vote for Bush but they are likely to vote for Trump because of his populist message and that he tells it like it is,” he said.
Helmreich said he has found broad support for Trump here among “a number of middle-class and Harvard-educated doctors, dentists and lawyers. They plan to vote for Trump but begged me not to reveal it because they feel embarrassed to be associated with someone with all of these slogans. … It’s overstated to think he is getting the support of only white working-class people.”---------------------
Summer's Continental Drift
Hilary Danailova
Sitting on the sidelines now in midst of
'extremely confused' race.
National
Jewish Bush Donors Seen Hesitating On Next Move
Sitting on the sidelines now in midst of ‘extremely confused’ race.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Frontrunner Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: Super Tuesday could be decisive. Photos by Getty Images
Many of the major Jewish donors who had supported former Gov. Jeb Bush’s failed campaign for president are sitting on the sidelines at the moment, The Jewish Week has learned.
“I spent the last two days on the phone with Jeb Bush supporters — and many of his donors I have known for a long time,” Phil Rosen, a top fundraiser for Mitt Romney in 2012 and now a supporter of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, told The Jewish Week Monday night.
“Almost to a man they said they would come on board [for Rubio] now or soon — they just want to take a day or two break,” he said.
Nick Muzin, an Orthodox Jewish doctor-lawyer who is a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said he too has been working the phones reaching out to Bush supporters “in the last 24 hours.”
“They are receptive to our outreach,” he said. “We are confident we’ll get a number of them.”
Fred Zeidman, a major Republican donor who had supported Bush, said he supported Bush because he believes “only a moderate can beat the Democratic candidate.”
With Bush out of the race after his fourth-place finish in the South Carolina primary last week, Zeidman told The Jewish Week he wants to “sit back, catch my breath and take a look at who is out there and who has the best chance” of winning the Republican presidential nomination.
“We have winnowed the field to great candidates and the question is who has the best chance to beat the eventual Democratic candidate for president,” he added.
Ken Bialkin, like Zeidman a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he too is going to wait for things to shake themselves out.
“The situation now is extremely confused,” he said. “I think that right now the RJC has not seen it necessary to take a position. I have great admiration and respect for each of the candidates. I have not been contacted by any of their campaigns and it is premature from me to express an opinion. My mind is open.”
Zeidman said it is his “guess we will know in the next two weeks” who the Republican nominee will be.
The polls show New York businessman Donald Trump winning most of the upcoming primaries, and by March 15, 60 percent of the Republican delegates will have been chosen. If the polls prove correct, Trump could be well on his way to capturing the nomination next week with the Super Tuesday primaries in 10 states (595 delegates will be chosen — 24 percent of the 2,472 total needed for nomination).
“As long as a Trump nomination seems as inevitable as it does now, they [major Republican donors] are not going to give money to Rubio or Cruz because they do not want to back a loser,” said William Helmreich, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York who has also been a political pollster.
Ester Fuchs, a professor of public affairs and political science at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, noted that part of Trump’s appeal was his decision to fund his campaign himself and to refuse donations.
“Big money buys access and Trump is not interested in their money,” she said. “I’m talking about big money, like Sheldon Adelson.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, Adelson, the billionaire casino owner, had yet to announce whom he would support, although the newspaper he owns, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, endorsed Rubio.
Among Rubio’s major Jewish patrons have been two other billionaires, Norman Braman and Paul Singer.
Fuchs said there are “too many people in the field” to know who is going to be the Republican presidential candidate.
“As it stands, Trump is collecting the delegates,” she observed. “But it’s not over — not over on either side.”
That view was echoed by Melissa Miller, an associate professor in political science who specializes in American politics at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
“Picking whom to donate to now is like picking a winner,” she said. “The most interesting question is might [Ohio Gov.] John [Kasich] pick up some money. There is a possible path for him, but it is a very narrow path. He put his eggs in New Hampshire and nowhere else. For all the non-Trump candidates, the path to victory becomes more and more constricted — and donors know that.”
But at least one former Bush adviser, Jay Lefkowitz, a former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush for Domestic Policy, is now supporting Rubio. He said he believes “Rubio has a greater appeal to the Bush voters than Donald Trump does. … Within the Jewish community, Rubio is a more natural fit than Trump or Cruz.”
“I would expect there will be a move to support Rubio, the real question is whether he can galvanize enough support in the next few weeks,” Lefkowitz added. “With the Florida primary in mid-March, there is not a lot of time to get the momentum rolling.”
Rep. Lee Zeldin of Long Island, the only Republican Jew in Congress and who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate, said he also believes Rubio will “quite possibly” garner the support of most of Bush’s Jewish supporters.
But he too agreed that the “best thing for Trump is for there to be as many other candidates in the race as possible going after each other.”
Zeldin pointed out that “a lot of pro-Israel Republicans in New York I have spoken to seem to be most supportive of other candidates in the race.”
But Sid Dinerstein, a former chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Committee in Florida, said he has found a great deal of support for Trump in the Jewish community there.
“I live in an affluent community that is 60 percent Jewish,” he said. “All my friends are for Trump, who talks very proudly of his Jewish family [his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism] and of his feelings for Israel. … I haven’t endorsed yet, but I would be very comfortable with him as president.”
But Gilbert Kahn, a political science professor at Kean University in Union, N.J., said Trump “is seen in many circles as a lot of hot air.”
“I don’t care what he did in the corporate world, he doesn’t know how to get things done,” he said. “I think Jews have soured on Cruz because he is not winning and is becoming not likeable. He has pushed the religion button too many times.
“Rubio is more complicated. He is becoming more and more the likely choice of what was once called the establishment Republicans — he is more palatable than the extreme characters like Trump and Cruz. But if Kasich gets a real bump out of Super Tuesday – beyond Ohio – I would have to revisit that.”
Kyle Kondik at the University of Virginia Center for Politics said Kasich “does not have much national standing but has significant support of the Jewish business community in Columbus and more broadly across Ohio. I’m talking about [Jewish] donors like Les Wexner, not voters.”
Despite Republican attempts in recent election cycles to woo Jewish voters, Robert Watson, a professor and coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University in Florida, said he believes Jewish support for the Democratic Party will remain strong in November even though it has slipped in recent years. Barack Obama received about 74 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, a percentage that dropped to 69 percent in 2012.
He said Rubio was not “one of the major outspoken champions of Israel … and not well informed on Israel” when he was a Florida state representative.
“He has been an outspoken advocate for Israel in the last few years in the Senate, so the question is whether he is really an outspoken supporter or a Marco-come-lately,” Watson said.
He said Cruz’s “thinly veiled comments at Trump’s New York values smack of old anti-Semitism scare mongering.” And although Trump has been saying “the right things about his support for Israel, he has no voting record. I’m not sure I’m prepared to say that someone who was a grand marshal of the Israel Parade is the person I would support.”
Hillary Clinton, however, had a solid voting record on Israel when she served as New York’s junior senator, Watson said, “and Obama delivered everything Israel asked for [despite] … strained relations with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
The strongest support for the Republican Party has come in recent years from the Orthodox Jewish community. Samuel Heilman, a professor of sociology and Jewish studies at CUNY, said exit polls show Trump’s strength to be among non-college graduates, a profile that fits the ultra-Orthodox.
“I don’t think they were ever going to vote for Bush but they are likely to vote for Trump because of his populist message and that he tells it like it is,” he said.
Helmreich said he has found broad support for Trump here among “a number of middle-class and Harvard-educated doctors, dentists and lawyers. They plan to vote for Trump but begged me not to reveal it because they feel embarrassed to be associated with someone with all of these slogans. … It’s overstated to think he is getting the support of only white working-class people.”---------------------
Summer's Continental Drift
Hilary Danailova
Travel
Travel
Touring Europe, One Jewish Festival At A Time
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
The Szeroka area of Krakow will be the base of this summer’s annual Jewish Culture Festival. Wikimedia Commons
It’s nearly 60 degrees as I write this column. Spring is on the way and school will be out before you know it, which means now is the ideal time to start planning a European summer vacation. Book in March, and you’ll snare the best airfares (and they are good right now), the best lodging values (the Airbnb steals go fast), and take advantage of an incredibly strong U.S. dollar.
This year, rather than simply touring, why not organize your travel around a local Jewish festival? Celebrations of Jewish music, art, film, food and culture erupt across the Continent all year long, providing memorable, immersive experiences.
The following are some of the more reliably user-friendly events. Some festivals are less appropriate for tourists — with activities primarily in the local language, for example — while others are in limbo, like the hugely popular Berlin Jewish Days of Culture, abruptly cancelled in 2015 after nearly 30 years for financial reasons. With European politics and economics in flux, it’s wise to confirm well in advance — then let loose and dive into Continental Jewish life.
Budapest, Hungary: The Jewish Summer Festival, Aug. 30-Sept. 6. Now in its 19th year, this event is centered on the Continent’s grandest synagogue, in a city whose European Jewish heritage runs deep. All week long, participants can enjoy concerts of Jewish music — ranging from klezmer and string quartets to fusion jazz, cabaret and pipe organ — at the Great Synagogue on Dohány Street, the second largest in the world, and at the Rumbach Street Synagogue. Or sit in the seats of your ancestors at the historic Goldmark Hall, which was the citadel of Jewish cultural life before and even after World War II; during the war itself, the hall was packed every night, since it was the only venue where Jews were permitted to take in opera and theater.
International Sephardi Music Festival, Córdoba, Spain: You don’t need an excuse to spend nights in the gardens of Spain, especially in June, when twilight lingers until 10 p.m. This festival is a lightweight compared to others, but it’s hard to beat the spine-tingling enchantment of Spanish guitar and Ladino laments under the stars, amid the lush, palm-dotted greenery of the Córdoba’s Royal Botanic Garden. Scholars and culture-lovers mingle during a week of concerts and talks on Sephardic music, which are interspersed with Sephardic cooking workshops and tapas in the taverna. This year’s schedule has yet to be confirmed — but as part of Spain’s new Sephardic heritage initiative, the festival is more relevant than ever.
European Days of Jewish Culture, Week of Sept. 4. I write about this event every summer, but this year I’m giving you plenty of notice, which you’ll need to optimally experience this Continent-wide celebration; it spotlights tiny, distinctive Jewish places as well as big-city Jewish life across nearly 30 countries, from Lisbon to Latvia. Over two decades, the onetime “Day of Jewish Culture” has evolved into “Days,” plural, with many communities hosting an entire week of events focused around an annual theme. This year, it’s juicy: “Jewish Languages,” giving visitors the opportunity to explore Ladino and Aramaic, Yiddish, Ethiopian and Judeo-Italian dialects — all through the prism of concerts, lectures, open houses at synagogues and historic Jewish sites, exhibitions and more.
Krakow: Jewish Culture Festival, June 25-July 3. The granddaddy in this category — and a fun, memorable way to anchor a Poland trip — is the Jewish Culture Festival in picturesque Krakow, which began in 1988 in the historic Jewish district of Kazimierz and has evolved into an annual summer rite throughout the city center. From June 25 through July 3, thousands will bop to klezmer in the cobblestoned streets, join English-language tours of Jewish Krakow, eat their way through pierogi workshops, catch the latest Israel pop and poetry in cafés, and generally savor Jewish culture in its myriad modern and historic incarnations. The Festival now has a year-round base at Cheder, a Jewish café and cultural center, which hosts everything from challah workshops to Israeli pop singers.
Copenhagen: Jewish Culture Festival, May 31-June 6. A relatively new event, the sixth annual Copenhagen Jewish Cultural Festival is a chance to hear Jewish music and mingle with local Jews in one of Europe’s most festive cities. Early June is the ideal time to visit Scandinavia: days are long, weather is mild and plazas are filled with open-air revelers. The Festival expresses the multi-ethnic, emphatically cosmopolitan spirit of modern Denmark — with concerts of Persian-Jewish flamenco, Sephardic song, Yidpop and plenty of klezmer. The 12-year-old sponsoring organization, Jewish Culture in Copenhagen, also hosts a monthly Jewish film event (with whisky and chocolate!), concerts, and Jewish heritage trips around Europe.
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/features/travel/touring-europe-one-jewish-festival-time#te13P6Ur0sH5Vvlq.99
---------------------
At Kosher Ski Restaurant In Park City, An Avalanche Of Challenges
Uriel Heilman
Travel
Touring Europe, One Jewish Festival At A Time
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
The Szeroka area of Krakow will be the base of this summer’s annual Jewish Culture Festival. Wikimedia Commons
It’s nearly 60 degrees as I write this column. Spring is on the way and school will be out before you know it, which means now is the ideal time to start planning a European summer vacation. Book in March, and you’ll snare the best airfares (and they are good right now), the best lodging values (the Airbnb steals go fast), and take advantage of an incredibly strong U.S. dollar.
This year, rather than simply touring, why not organize your travel around a local Jewish festival? Celebrations of Jewish music, art, film, food and culture erupt across the Continent all year long, providing memorable, immersive experiences.
The following are some of the more reliably user-friendly events. Some festivals are less appropriate for tourists — with activities primarily in the local language, for example — while others are in limbo, like the hugely popular Berlin Jewish Days of Culture, abruptly cancelled in 2015 after nearly 30 years for financial reasons. With European politics and economics in flux, it’s wise to confirm well in advance — then let loose and dive into Continental Jewish life.
Budapest, Hungary: The Jewish Summer Festival, Aug. 30-Sept. 6. Now in its 19th year, this event is centered on the Continent’s grandest synagogue, in a city whose European Jewish heritage runs deep. All week long, participants can enjoy concerts of Jewish music — ranging from klezmer and string quartets to fusion jazz, cabaret and pipe organ — at the Great Synagogue on Dohány Street, the second largest in the world, and at the Rumbach Street Synagogue. Or sit in the seats of your ancestors at the historic Goldmark Hall, which was the citadel of Jewish cultural life before and even after World War II; during the war itself, the hall was packed every night, since it was the only venue where Jews were permitted to take in opera and theater.
International Sephardi Music Festival, Córdoba, Spain: You don’t need an excuse to spend nights in the gardens of Spain, especially in June, when twilight lingers until 10 p.m. This festival is a lightweight compared to others, but it’s hard to beat the spine-tingling enchantment of Spanish guitar and Ladino laments under the stars, amid the lush, palm-dotted greenery of the Córdoba’s Royal Botanic Garden. Scholars and culture-lovers mingle during a week of concerts and talks on Sephardic music, which are interspersed with Sephardic cooking workshops and tapas in the taverna. This year’s schedule has yet to be confirmed — but as part of Spain’s new Sephardic heritage initiative, the festival is more relevant than ever.
European Days of Jewish Culture, Week of Sept. 4. I write about this event every summer, but this year I’m giving you plenty of notice, which you’ll need to optimally experience this Continent-wide celebration; it spotlights tiny, distinctive Jewish places as well as big-city Jewish life across nearly 30 countries, from Lisbon to Latvia. Over two decades, the onetime “Day of Jewish Culture” has evolved into “Days,” plural, with many communities hosting an entire week of events focused around an annual theme. This year, it’s juicy: “Jewish Languages,” giving visitors the opportunity to explore Ladino and Aramaic, Yiddish, Ethiopian and Judeo-Italian dialects — all through the prism of concerts, lectures, open houses at synagogues and historic Jewish sites, exhibitions and more.
Krakow: Jewish Culture Festival, June 25-July 3. The granddaddy in this category — and a fun, memorable way to anchor a Poland trip — is the Jewish Culture Festival in picturesque Krakow, which began in 1988 in the historic Jewish district of Kazimierz and has evolved into an annual summer rite throughout the city center. From June 25 through July 3, thousands will bop to klezmer in the cobblestoned streets, join English-language tours of Jewish Krakow, eat their way through pierogi workshops, catch the latest Israel pop and poetry in cafés, and generally savor Jewish culture in its myriad modern and historic incarnations. The Festival now has a year-round base at Cheder, a Jewish café and cultural center, which hosts everything from challah workshops to Israeli pop singers.
Copenhagen: Jewish Culture Festival, May 31-June 6. A relatively new event, the sixth annual Copenhagen Jewish Cultural Festival is a chance to hear Jewish music and mingle with local Jews in one of Europe’s most festive cities. Early June is the ideal time to visit Scandinavia: days are long, weather is mild and plazas are filled with open-air revelers. The Festival expresses the multi-ethnic, emphatically cosmopolitan spirit of modern Denmark — with concerts of Persian-Jewish flamenco, Sephardic song, Yidpop and plenty of klezmer. The 12-year-old sponsoring organization, Jewish Culture in Copenhagen, also hosts a monthly Jewish film event (with whisky and chocolate!), concerts, and Jewish heritage trips around Europe.
Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/features/travel/touring-europe-one-jewish-festival-time#te13P6Ur0sH5Vvlq.99
---------------------
At Kosher Ski Restaurant In Park City, An Avalanche Of Challenges
Uriel Heilman
Food & Wine
At Kosher Ski Restaurant In Park City, An Avalanche Of Challenges
Laurent Masliah runs the nation’s only slopeside kosher restaurant, Prime at Canyons, in Park City, Utah. JTA
Uriel Heilman
JTA
Park City, Utah – Laurent Masliah likes wine as much as the next Frenchman.
But that’s not why he bought up every last bottle of kosher wine in the state of Utah and is desperately angling for more.
Masliah is the general manager of Prime at Canyons, the nation’s only kosher slope-side restaurant. It’s located in this glitzy Utah ski town at the base of what is now America’s largest ski area – thanks to a gondola, completed last summer, that links Canyons with next-door Park City Mountain.
Between the good food, fantastic skiing and lack of any kosher competition for hundreds of miles in any direction, Prime is doing brisk business. But because the only way to purchase wine in Mormon-majority Utah is via state liquor stores, Masliah is in a bind. He just doesn’t have enough of the stuff. The order he placed three weeks ago with the state store, as required by law, still hasn’t come through.
“I have no cabernet. I’m running low on merlot,” Masliah told JTA in a recent interview at the restaurant. “At this point, I want to make sure I have at least a glass of red and a glass of white to offer customers. My ambitions have sunk pretty low.”
Getting kosher wine is just one of the many unique challenges of running a kosher restaurant on a ski mountain in a remote Western state with hardly any Jews.
There are others. For starters, all the meat and specialty kosher items are trucked in from New York, where the restaurant company’s headquarters and lead eatery, Prime Grill, are located. Getting a mashgiach, or kosher supervisor, in Park City wasn’t easy; there’s almost no Orthodox Jewish population in Utah to speak of (though there are Chabad centers in Park City and Salt Lake City).
Even finding waitstaff is a problem. Most young people who come to Utah for winter are ski bums; waiting tables is a secondary occupation. One of the restaurant’s waitresses was put of commission early in the season after she shattered her ankle skiing. She was back after several weeks, but had to serve while hobbling around on a walking cast. Another waitress is the mashgiach’s wife; the couple, from New York, decided to come to Utah as an adventure.
When it comes to cooking, there are the vicissitudes of preparing food at a high altitude – in this case, 6,800 feet elevation. Baking takes longer, dough rises faster and some dishes require longer cooking times because water boils at a lower temperature. Then there’s the problem of exploding food packages. Because air pressure is lower and gases expand at higher altitudes, bags of chips and other foods often burst open during shipping.
“I was very surprised by how many effects there are to the altitude,” said Masliah, 46, who worked as a ski instructor in France when he was 18. “Almost everything has to be cooked slightly differently.”
Though there has been a kosher restaurant at this site in Canyons’ Silverado Lodge since 2012, this is the eatery’s debut season under the ownership of Prime Grill, one of New York’s premier kosher establishments. (The previous restaurant, called Bistro at Canyons, was run by the resort).
Joey Allaham, owner of the Prime Hospitality Group, said that when he first decided to buy the restaurant this fall – at the behest of Vail Resorts, which owns Park City Mountain and whose CEO, Rob Katz, is a graduate of Ramaz Jewish day school in New York — his wife told him he was crazy. Allaham, a 41-year-old Jew who grew up in Syria and now lives in New York, knew nothing about snow until he came to the United States.
But after he opened Prime at Canyons in early December and flew out to Utah to see how things were going, he said he encountered a level of customer appreciation he had never experienced before.
“When people come down from skiing, all they want to do is have a piece of meat,” Allaham told JTA. “I never saw such excitement in people’s faces to see food. They told me they never had something like this – real kosher food at the mountain. They were used to surviving on tuna fish sandwiches and protein bars.”
The menu at Prime at Canyons has some commonalities with Prime Grill: There’s the steak filet ($49), slow-cooked lamb ribs ($54) and mustard-crusted salmon ($40). But the menu is also adapted for the simpler dishes skiers tend to crave after a day on the slopes, according to Laurent: chili ($18), burgers ($29), nachos ($17), chicken pot pie ($36). It’s less fine dining and more comfort food, he said, and the Utah menu is a bit less expensive than the New York menu.
Prime at Canyons is only open for dinner, but kosher skiers can buy Prime’s prepared kosher sandwiches and wraps (tuna, egg salad, turkey, pastrami, roast beef, peanut butter and jelly) during the day at the mid-mountain Red Pine Lodge. Prime at Canyons also is open on Shabbat, for those who pre-order meals.
Most days, there’s a daily Orthodox minyan prayer service next door, at 4000 Canyons Resort Drive (visitors can sign up online), thanks to the popularity of the ski area and the stewardship of Rabbi Yudi Steiger of Park City’s Chabad.
Despite the myriad challenges, Allaham says the restaurant has been a financial success. And though Masliah has his hands full at night in the dining room, he still has found time to “moonlight”: During the day, he’s a ski instructor on the mountain.
---------------------
Sober Rave At Synagogue: Not What You Think
Maya Klausner
At Kosher Ski Restaurant In Park City, An Avalanche Of Challenges
Laurent Masliah runs the nation’s only slopeside kosher restaurant, Prime at Canyons, in Park City, Utah. JTA
Uriel Heilman
JTA
Park City, Utah – Laurent Masliah likes wine as much as the next Frenchman.
But that’s not why he bought up every last bottle of kosher wine in the state of Utah and is desperately angling for more.
Masliah is the general manager of Prime at Canyons, the nation’s only kosher slope-side restaurant. It’s located in this glitzy Utah ski town at the base of what is now America’s largest ski area – thanks to a gondola, completed last summer, that links Canyons with next-door Park City Mountain.
Between the good food, fantastic skiing and lack of any kosher competition for hundreds of miles in any direction, Prime is doing brisk business. But because the only way to purchase wine in Mormon-majority Utah is via state liquor stores, Masliah is in a bind. He just doesn’t have enough of the stuff. The order he placed three weeks ago with the state store, as required by law, still hasn’t come through.
“I have no cabernet. I’m running low on merlot,” Masliah told JTA in a recent interview at the restaurant. “At this point, I want to make sure I have at least a glass of red and a glass of white to offer customers. My ambitions have sunk pretty low.”
Getting kosher wine is just one of the many unique challenges of running a kosher restaurant on a ski mountain in a remote Western state with hardly any Jews.
There are others. For starters, all the meat and specialty kosher items are trucked in from New York, where the restaurant company’s headquarters and lead eatery, Prime Grill, are located. Getting a mashgiach, or kosher supervisor, in Park City wasn’t easy; there’s almost no Orthodox Jewish population in Utah to speak of (though there are Chabad centers in Park City and Salt Lake City).
Even finding waitstaff is a problem. Most young people who come to Utah for winter are ski bums; waiting tables is a secondary occupation. One of the restaurant’s waitresses was put of commission early in the season after she shattered her ankle skiing. She was back after several weeks, but had to serve while hobbling around on a walking cast. Another waitress is the mashgiach’s wife; the couple, from New York, decided to come to Utah as an adventure.
When it comes to cooking, there are the vicissitudes of preparing food at a high altitude – in this case, 6,800 feet elevation. Baking takes longer, dough rises faster and some dishes require longer cooking times because water boils at a lower temperature. Then there’s the problem of exploding food packages. Because air pressure is lower and gases expand at higher altitudes, bags of chips and other foods often burst open during shipping.
“I was very surprised by how many effects there are to the altitude,” said Masliah, 46, who worked as a ski instructor in France when he was 18. “Almost everything has to be cooked slightly differently.”
Though there has been a kosher restaurant at this site in Canyons’ Silverado Lodge since 2012, this is the eatery’s debut season under the ownership of Prime Grill, one of New York’s premier kosher establishments. (The previous restaurant, called Bistro at Canyons, was run by the resort).
Joey Allaham, owner of the Prime Hospitality Group, said that when he first decided to buy the restaurant this fall – at the behest of Vail Resorts, which owns Park City Mountain and whose CEO, Rob Katz, is a graduate of Ramaz Jewish day school in New York — his wife told him he was crazy. Allaham, a 41-year-old Jew who grew up in Syria and now lives in New York, knew nothing about snow until he came to the United States.
But after he opened Prime at Canyons in early December and flew out to Utah to see how things were going, he said he encountered a level of customer appreciation he had never experienced before.
“When people come down from skiing, all they want to do is have a piece of meat,” Allaham told JTA. “I never saw such excitement in people’s faces to see food. They told me they never had something like this – real kosher food at the mountain. They were used to surviving on tuna fish sandwiches and protein bars.”
The menu at Prime at Canyons has some commonalities with Prime Grill: There’s the steak filet ($49), slow-cooked lamb ribs ($54) and mustard-crusted salmon ($40). But the menu is also adapted for the simpler dishes skiers tend to crave after a day on the slopes, according to Laurent: chili ($18), burgers ($29), nachos ($17), chicken pot pie ($36). It’s less fine dining and more comfort food, he said, and the Utah menu is a bit less expensive than the New York menu.
Prime at Canyons is only open for dinner, but kosher skiers can buy Prime’s prepared kosher sandwiches and wraps (tuna, egg salad, turkey, pastrami, roast beef, peanut butter and jelly) during the day at the mid-mountain Red Pine Lodge. Prime at Canyons also is open on Shabbat, for those who pre-order meals.
Most days, there’s a daily Orthodox minyan prayer service next door, at 4000 Canyons Resort Drive (visitors can sign up online), thanks to the popularity of the ski area and the stewardship of Rabbi Yudi Steiger of Park City’s Chabad.
Despite the myriad challenges, Allaham says the restaurant has been a financial success. And though Masliah has his hands full at night in the dining room, he still has found time to “moonlight”: During the day, he’s a ski instructor on the mountain.
---------------------
Sober Rave At Synagogue: Not What You Think
Maya Klausner
NY Blueprint
Sober Rave At Synagogue: Not What You Think
Daybreaker launches first evening series at Temple Emanu-El for a wild night of conscious clubbing in the Roaring ’20s
Maya Klausner
Sober Rave At Synagogue: Not What You Think
Daybreaker launches first evening series at Temple Emanu-El for a wild night of conscious clubbing in the Roaring ’20s
Maya Klausner
Editor
Nightlife, Singles
A gospel choir belting hymns from the Book of Psalms is not exactly what one expects to find in the twilight hours in a sanctuary of a synagogue on the Upper East Side — let alone a brass band and a beat boxer-violinist duo followed by a sweaty, three-hour dance fest in an enormous basement ballroom. However, most conventional expectations were shattered on Thursday night at the launch event of “Dusk” at Temple Emanu-El on East 65th Street.
Dusk is the new counterpart to Daybreaker, an early-morning (we’re talking 6 a.m.) dance party series that occurs every six weeks; it is where New Yorkers can trade their first-light grogginess and banal pre-work routine for a full-on rave held in secret locations not revealed until moments before the festivities begin.
A few addendums are made from what one might encounter at a raging, late-night New York scene: drugs and alcohol are swapped for cold-pressed juices and fruit-infused water (all organic), and the event always kicks off with a morning meditation — but aside from that it’s difficult to tell the difference between an early Tuesday morning and a late Saturday night. Strobe lights, DJs playing thumping dance music, glow sticks, and the kind of boisterous boogying you once thought you could only emotionally handle under the influence are all part of the experience.
Originating as a social experiment, Daybreaker was founded by Matthew Brimer and Radha Agrawal as a positive, energizing answer to the usual club scene, which they find can often be too focused on the more toxic elements that come with partying. Now Daybreaker is a cultural, countrywide phenomenon hosting events in New York, L.A. and San Francisco, and it will soon be expanding to Sao Palo, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Washington, D.C. and Sydney.
“Daybreaker was never meant to be more than an art project or social experiment to see if people would be willing to wake up in the morning and go to these awesome venues,” Agrawal tells NY Blueprint. “It started out as a fun party where people get together to sweat and dress up, and eventually grew into a really tight community. This is an opportunity for New Yorkers who often feel lonely and lost and may rely on substances to get the courage to make a connection and be themselves. We realized we could create a safe space to foster a real connection among people.”
Launched in December of 2013, the inaugural event, which drew 180 people, was held at Coffee Shop in Union Square. Last night more than 700 people showed up.
“The real goal was to re-contextualize and reimagine Happy Hour. Why does Happy Hour have to be about going to bars after work and getting wasted after sitting at your office all day? We were trying to understand why the idea of happiness is tied to getting drunk,” Agrawal says.
Right from the get-go, the evening transported Dusk-goers through an otherworldly portal where the spiritual and the artistic merged. Before the location was even revealed, more than 700 people gathered on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 65th street. Dressed in the trappings of 1920s flappers and gangsters, so that passersby might have assumed that a new version of “The Great Gatsby” was in the middle of filming. When the venue — the largest synagogue in the country, not the usual underground night club or warehouse where Daybreaker events are typically held — became clear, Dusk had dawned.
Until yesterday, none of these events had taken place in a synagogue. However, many of the group’s traditions, such as sound meditations, speaker series and the overall focus on empowering oneself through inner reflection, lend themselves to many elements within Judaism and spirituality. “We wanted to launch Dusk in a place that felt really epic and sacred, and that blended the worlds of spirituality, meditation, consciousness and dancing and going out,” says Agrawal.
Not to mention the all too familiar Bat/Bar Mitzvah staples that were hard to miss; a ceremonial ritual in the sanctuary followed by a lively celebration in another part of the synagogue — and yep, chair lifting was involved.
“We were waiting for the right opportunity to pop up,” continues Agrawal, who had been coordinating with Seth Cohen from the Schusterman Foundation, which partnered the event. “They were trying to figure out how to get millennials to the synagogue, and we thought what if we do it as synagogue? That would be the perfect marriage of spirituality and nightlife.”
“What captures our imagination about Daybreaker is the way it blends ritual and community in an inspiring and engaging way,” Seth Cohen, Senior Director of the Schusterman Foundation told NY Blueprint. Cohen, 42, who attended law school at the University of Pittsburgh before moving to Atlanta, Ga. 12 years ago, explains that Schusterman became familiar with Agrawal and Brimer at one of the foundations REALITY nitiatives.
Last year Argawal attended their trip to Israel in which they take leaders who are Jewish (as opposed to Jewish leaders) as well as other influencers on an eight-day immersive experience “to see Israel through the prism of their own interests or own network,” said Cohen. It was on this trip that Agrawal was inspired to launch the first Daybreaker event in Tel Aviv. “Daybreaker is the most exhilarating rendition of the Shacharit service that I could ever imagine,” said Cohen. When Daybreaker approached Schusterman with the idea of partnering, Cohen was instantly enthused. “To have some of the most interesting young adults doing some of the most interesting community engagement initiatives? I said, ‘What, wow, yes.’”
"We seek out these experiences of neo-ritualism to reconnet us with the sense of discover that we need and crave,” says Cohen. “Not only do I anticipate us having a relationship with Daybreaker in the future, we want to have a relationship with the rebels and changemakers that are shifting culture in the Jewish world and beyond.”
Agrawal explains that the experience is less about God or being religious and more focused on being more spiritual and conscious. “When the foundation found out about Daybreaker bringing community together, showcasing local artists, doing yoga and meditation, and that all the events were dry, they saw it as the perfect opportunity.”
It’s a message that resonates with Rabbi Allison Tick Brill, assistant rabbi at Temple Emanu-El. “The goals of Dusk are consistent with the goals of Jewish practice, which is to create community, encourage mindful living, and facilitate spiritual experiences,” says Rabbi Tick Brill. Rabbi Tick Brill, 28, who lives in Midtown East, experienced her first Daybreaker event and was amazed at what she saw. “The fact that 750 people came to a synagogue and had an affirming, uplifting experience is an unbelievably powerful thing.”
Inside the cavernous sanctuary, something ethereal swept through the magnificent space as hundreds of Jay Gatsbys, Daisy Buchanans and Nick Carraways sat quietly and intently with their eyes closed as a young woman chanted meditation in hypnotic whispers, asking everyone to “invite the harmony.” Then a gong was gently but continuously struck, sending somniferous reverberations through the air.
“There was a combination of bringing a community together in this really sacred beautiful, historic place where the walls are full of history, with people chanting, praying, mourning, and to bring a new feeling to it through costumes and meditating," said Agrawal. “To be in a house of prayer but not make it about prayer. It was about the community. That’s what made the experience so special.”
After being lulled into an almost drugged state of calm and quiet, a bell was sounded to signal the transition into something new, from internal reverie to alert wakefulness. And then a choir, followed by other singers and musicians, marched through the sanctuary leading the crowd to a downstairs area that had been transformed into a 1920s soiree meets electronic funk dance party.
Fitting the dry rule of the events, the theme was Prohibition. The bar was stocked with fresh-pressed juices like pineapple, apple, mint and organic, sugar-free sodas like black cherry, pomegranate and vanilla. There were baskets filled with gluten-free cheese puffs stationed next to hot, fresh mini-pretzel nuggets, and kale tofu salad was handed out in iced coffee cups with a choice of salad dressings and hot sauces.
Perhaps the most remarkable result of the night was that no one was on their phones. Throughout the entire evening, almost everyone was on the dance floor, letting go, saying “yes,” a mantra chanted repeatedly in the center of the room, and forgetting that there wasn’t a cocktail in their hand.
Guests were a mixed group of Daybreaker regulars and novices. Most of the crowd was creative types; musicians, artists, performers who all seemed united by their sensibility of drive and focus, (reflected in their ability to wake up at 5 a.m. on a week day).
One young woman who had been to a number of the morning events saw the organic connection between the experience and hosting it in a religious environment. “Having it in a synagogue makes sense. It’s a spiritual experience. There’s actually a large group of people here who are part of a vegan organization and focus a lot on spirituality and self-reflection so it fits really well.” A friend of hers who was a Daybreaker newbie said she had been converted, “After this I would definitely wake up early for the morning ones.”
In a surprising twist, the absence of alcohol created another dimension of freedom as everyone was on the same playing field and feeding off of each other’s natural energies. It was clear those who were there went to drink in the experience over a cocktail, and the organic high that swirled through the space made it easy to forget you wouldn’t have to battle a hangover the next day.
“There’s a natural synergy between our work — Daybreaker offers spirituality and community in a nomadic setting,” says Rabbi Tick Brill. “The synagogue offers spirituality and community in a rooted setting — a place to belong and feel at home.”
Each Daybreaker event ends with an enormous group hug, which, in the moment, feels less campy in the moment than it sounds; the hug is followed by the reading of an intention.
“There are many similarities between Daybreaker and Jewish rituals,” says Rabbi Tick Brill. “For example, Daybreaker ends with everyone reading an intention in unison. We end our worship services with a benediction — a closing prayer to seal the service and send people off with blessing.”
Last time the intention was the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. On Thursday night, Agrawal read an excerpt from a Hebrew evening prayer, which began, “Let there be love and understanding among us...”
---------------------
My Special Sister Noa Rubin|
A gospel choir belting hymns from the Book of Psalms is not exactly what one expects to find in the twilight hours in a sanctuary of a synagogue on the Upper East Side — let alone a brass band and a beat boxer-violinist duo followed by a sweaty, three-hour dance fest in an enormous basement ballroom. However, most conventional expectations were shattered on Thursday night at the launch event of “Dusk” at Temple Emanu-El on East 65th Street.
Dusk is the new counterpart to Daybreaker, an early-morning (we’re talking 6 a.m.) dance party series that occurs every six weeks; it is where New Yorkers can trade their first-light grogginess and banal pre-work routine for a full-on rave held in secret locations not revealed until moments before the festivities begin.
A few addendums are made from what one might encounter at a raging, late-night New York scene: drugs and alcohol are swapped for cold-pressed juices and fruit-infused water (all organic), and the event always kicks off with a morning meditation — but aside from that it’s difficult to tell the difference between an early Tuesday morning and a late Saturday night. Strobe lights, DJs playing thumping dance music, glow sticks, and the kind of boisterous boogying you once thought you could only emotionally handle under the influence are all part of the experience.
Originating as a social experiment, Daybreaker was founded by Matthew Brimer and Radha Agrawal as a positive, energizing answer to the usual club scene, which they find can often be too focused on the more toxic elements that come with partying. Now Daybreaker is a cultural, countrywide phenomenon hosting events in New York, L.A. and San Francisco, and it will soon be expanding to Sao Palo, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Washington, D.C. and Sydney.
“Daybreaker was never meant to be more than an art project or social experiment to see if people would be willing to wake up in the morning and go to these awesome venues,” Agrawal tells NY Blueprint. “It started out as a fun party where people get together to sweat and dress up, and eventually grew into a really tight community. This is an opportunity for New Yorkers who often feel lonely and lost and may rely on substances to get the courage to make a connection and be themselves. We realized we could create a safe space to foster a real connection among people.”
Launched in December of 2013, the inaugural event, which drew 180 people, was held at Coffee Shop in Union Square. Last night more than 700 people showed up.
“The real goal was to re-contextualize and reimagine Happy Hour. Why does Happy Hour have to be about going to bars after work and getting wasted after sitting at your office all day? We were trying to understand why the idea of happiness is tied to getting drunk,” Agrawal says.
Right from the get-go, the evening transported Dusk-goers through an otherworldly portal where the spiritual and the artistic merged. Before the location was even revealed, more than 700 people gathered on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 65th street. Dressed in the trappings of 1920s flappers and gangsters, so that passersby might have assumed that a new version of “The Great Gatsby” was in the middle of filming. When the venue — the largest synagogue in the country, not the usual underground night club or warehouse where Daybreaker events are typically held — became clear, Dusk had dawned.
Until yesterday, none of these events had taken place in a synagogue. However, many of the group’s traditions, such as sound meditations, speaker series and the overall focus on empowering oneself through inner reflection, lend themselves to many elements within Judaism and spirituality. “We wanted to launch Dusk in a place that felt really epic and sacred, and that blended the worlds of spirituality, meditation, consciousness and dancing and going out,” says Agrawal.
Not to mention the all too familiar Bat/Bar Mitzvah staples that were hard to miss; a ceremonial ritual in the sanctuary followed by a lively celebration in another part of the synagogue — and yep, chair lifting was involved.
“We were waiting for the right opportunity to pop up,” continues Agrawal, who had been coordinating with Seth Cohen from the Schusterman Foundation, which partnered the event. “They were trying to figure out how to get millennials to the synagogue, and we thought what if we do it as synagogue? That would be the perfect marriage of spirituality and nightlife.”
“What captures our imagination about Daybreaker is the way it blends ritual and community in an inspiring and engaging way,” Seth Cohen, Senior Director of the Schusterman Foundation told NY Blueprint. Cohen, 42, who attended law school at the University of Pittsburgh before moving to Atlanta, Ga. 12 years ago, explains that Schusterman became familiar with Agrawal and Brimer at one of the foundations REALITY nitiatives.
Last year Argawal attended their trip to Israel in which they take leaders who are Jewish (as opposed to Jewish leaders) as well as other influencers on an eight-day immersive experience “to see Israel through the prism of their own interests or own network,” said Cohen. It was on this trip that Agrawal was inspired to launch the first Daybreaker event in Tel Aviv. “Daybreaker is the most exhilarating rendition of the Shacharit service that I could ever imagine,” said Cohen. When Daybreaker approached Schusterman with the idea of partnering, Cohen was instantly enthused. “To have some of the most interesting young adults doing some of the most interesting community engagement initiatives? I said, ‘What, wow, yes.’”
"We seek out these experiences of neo-ritualism to reconnet us with the sense of discover that we need and crave,” says Cohen. “Not only do I anticipate us having a relationship with Daybreaker in the future, we want to have a relationship with the rebels and changemakers that are shifting culture in the Jewish world and beyond.”
Agrawal explains that the experience is less about God or being religious and more focused on being more spiritual and conscious. “When the foundation found out about Daybreaker bringing community together, showcasing local artists, doing yoga and meditation, and that all the events were dry, they saw it as the perfect opportunity.”
It’s a message that resonates with Rabbi Allison Tick Brill, assistant rabbi at Temple Emanu-El. “The goals of Dusk are consistent with the goals of Jewish practice, which is to create community, encourage mindful living, and facilitate spiritual experiences,” says Rabbi Tick Brill. Rabbi Tick Brill, 28, who lives in Midtown East, experienced her first Daybreaker event and was amazed at what she saw. “The fact that 750 people came to a synagogue and had an affirming, uplifting experience is an unbelievably powerful thing.”
Inside the cavernous sanctuary, something ethereal swept through the magnificent space as hundreds of Jay Gatsbys, Daisy Buchanans and Nick Carraways sat quietly and intently with their eyes closed as a young woman chanted meditation in hypnotic whispers, asking everyone to “invite the harmony.” Then a gong was gently but continuously struck, sending somniferous reverberations through the air.
“There was a combination of bringing a community together in this really sacred beautiful, historic place where the walls are full of history, with people chanting, praying, mourning, and to bring a new feeling to it through costumes and meditating," said Agrawal. “To be in a house of prayer but not make it about prayer. It was about the community. That’s what made the experience so special.”
After being lulled into an almost drugged state of calm and quiet, a bell was sounded to signal the transition into something new, from internal reverie to alert wakefulness. And then a choir, followed by other singers and musicians, marched through the sanctuary leading the crowd to a downstairs area that had been transformed into a 1920s soiree meets electronic funk dance party.
Fitting the dry rule of the events, the theme was Prohibition. The bar was stocked with fresh-pressed juices like pineapple, apple, mint and organic, sugar-free sodas like black cherry, pomegranate and vanilla. There were baskets filled with gluten-free cheese puffs stationed next to hot, fresh mini-pretzel nuggets, and kale tofu salad was handed out in iced coffee cups with a choice of salad dressings and hot sauces.
Perhaps the most remarkable result of the night was that no one was on their phones. Throughout the entire evening, almost everyone was on the dance floor, letting go, saying “yes,” a mantra chanted repeatedly in the center of the room, and forgetting that there wasn’t a cocktail in their hand.
Guests were a mixed group of Daybreaker regulars and novices. Most of the crowd was creative types; musicians, artists, performers who all seemed united by their sensibility of drive and focus, (reflected in their ability to wake up at 5 a.m. on a week day).
One young woman who had been to a number of the morning events saw the organic connection between the experience and hosting it in a religious environment. “Having it in a synagogue makes sense. It’s a spiritual experience. There’s actually a large group of people here who are part of a vegan organization and focus a lot on spirituality and self-reflection so it fits really well.” A friend of hers who was a Daybreaker newbie said she had been converted, “After this I would definitely wake up early for the morning ones.”
In a surprising twist, the absence of alcohol created another dimension of freedom as everyone was on the same playing field and feeding off of each other’s natural energies. It was clear those who were there went to drink in the experience over a cocktail, and the organic high that swirled through the space made it easy to forget you wouldn’t have to battle a hangover the next day.
“There’s a natural synergy between our work — Daybreaker offers spirituality and community in a nomadic setting,” says Rabbi Tick Brill. “The synagogue offers spirituality and community in a rooted setting — a place to belong and feel at home.”
Each Daybreaker event ends with an enormous group hug, which, in the moment, feels less campy in the moment than it sounds; the hug is followed by the reading of an intention.
“There are many similarities between Daybreaker and Jewish rituals,” says Rabbi Tick Brill. “For example, Daybreaker ends with everyone reading an intention in unison. We end our worship services with a benediction — a closing prayer to seal the service and send people off with blessing.”
Last time the intention was the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. On Thursday night, Agrawal read an excerpt from a Hebrew evening prayer, which began, “Let there be love and understanding among us...”
---------------------
My Special Sister Noa Rubin|
Fresh Ink For Teens
I'm in awe of the intelligent and reflective young woman my little sister, who is autistic, has become.
FRESH INK FOR TEENS IS SPONSORED BY THE JEWISH WEEK
My Special Sister by Noa Rubin
I’m in awe of the intelligent and reflective young woman my little sister, who is autistic, has become.
A Cause For Celebration: Noa Rubin, on the left, helps celebrate her sister Naomi's bat mitzvah. Naomi is on the right. Courtesy Grettel Cortes
“First you, Ron. Harry! Wait for Hermione!” my sister Naomi barked in a British accent while we waited in line for a waterslide. The other kids tried to go in front of us and she said, “No, sorry, but my wizard friends need to go first.” I apologized to the strangers and waited my turn. Later at the pool, a girl from the waterslide pointed to Naomi and whispered to her mother, “That’s the one who was talking to herself!”
When I was 8, I learned about my 6-year-old sister Naomi’s autism. She couldn’t get eye contact quite right and could hardly verbalize her thoughts. Not knowing how to help or connect with a sibling was confusing and intimidating, but I still played with her. Our games lacked structure: sometimes we just watched our favorite movies such as “Peter Pan” over and over. While my friends played board games and Barbies with their sisters, Naomi and I chased each other, pretended to be dogs and drew all over our faces with our mom’s makeup. I accepted our abnormal games because our relationship itself was unconventional.
With help from therapists who came to our house, Naomi became more like my friends’ siblings. Yet, as she became more similar to me — developing more communication skills — it was harder to be patient. My favorite conversations bored her. She was brutally honest, like when she would meet my classmates and reveal my criticisms of them to their faces. I couldn’t yell at Naomi because then she would never learn. I was forced to tap her gently and say, “Hey, when we meet someone new, we just say ‘nice to meet you,’ even when it isn’t nice.” In more challenging circumstances, like when she suddenly transformed into Helen Keller in an elevator, shutting her eyes and feeling around, I had to say, “Naomi, I love that you are inspired by Helen Keller, but this makes other people uncomfortable, so please just pretend in private.” I had to muster all my willpower not to be ashamed.
There were moments when I couldn’t help calling her names, with not-so-nice words like “stupid.” However, yelling and name-calling made her cry or scream, and I realized that if I condemned her for her imagination, she felt even more compelled to defy social rules. If I wanted to help her, I needed to be sensitive and to help shift her love of history and characters into an appropriate space by showing her books and films, such as “Harry Potter.”
Naomi always cared about the underdog, and consequently so did I. In middle school, I always stood up to the bullies who targeted kids with special needs. For the past three years, I have had the pleasure of combining my desire to care for the special needs community with my passion for Judaism as an aid in a special needs Hebrew school. In any social situation where I see a person with special needs, I always sit and listen to him or her because when people give my sister basic dignity, miracles happen. She led my synagogue in prayer and chanted Torah and haftorah at her bat mitzvah last February. In her speech, she discussed overcoming the challenge of having “a learning difference”; it was beautiful and all witnesses sat in awe, myself included, because my sister became a radiant, reflective and intelligent woman.
Being around Naomi has forced me to be vulnerable. Because I’m not bound by trying to make everyone think that my family is perfect, I am honest about myself and my personal struggles. The humility that I have learned from Naomi is paired with a pride in the triumphs of my family, my friends and in my own successes. Naomi’s achievements teach me to emphasize and enjoy capability, not disability. Most important, Naomi has made me a persistent advocate for justice, especially when a situation seems the most impossible.
author's bio:
Noa Rubin is a senior at Milken Community Schools in Los Angeles.
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Gary Rosenblatt's Between The Lines >
Gary Rosenblatt
Funding Day Schools In Philly His Way
A ‘divisive community builder’ sounds like a contradiction in terms. Meet David Magerman.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
David Magerman, a man on a mission to build and sustain a vibrant Orthodox community in Philadelphia, is a tangle of contradictions.
A wealthy hedge fund manager, he finds the consumer-driven life pointless and in the last decade has embraced Orthodox Judaism with great passion.
He insists that the Jewish day school system is broken and that lack of quality education, not money, is the root problem. But he is spending $10 million to $15 million a year to address it through his Kohelet Foundation, dedicated to “generate and support Jewish communal responsibility for day schools.” (Since 2009, Magerman has donated about $60 million to Jewish charitable causes, much of it through his foundation.)
He says he is committed to collaboration in his quest to build and sustain Torah-based schools in his community. But he is criticized for being bossy, abrasive and unwilling to compromise. And though he is by far the biggest donor to Jewish education in the Philadelphia area, he has a strained relationship with many of the leaders of the local Jewish federation because of what is perceived to be his aggressive, my-way-or-the-highway style.
In 2008, two years after Magerman and his family moved from Long Island to Philadelphia in his search for a sustainable observant community, he partnered with the federation to create a “Megafund” to bolster support for local Jewish day schools suffering from the recession. But he grew frustrated with the slow pace and bureaucracy, and soon created Kohelet, which at once supports day schools in the region — “whether or not I agree with their approach,” he points out — and is also at odds with them at times.
With it all, Magerman, 46, has made remarkable progress in re-inventing traditional Jewish life in the Lower Merion area of suburban Philadelphia, viewing his approach as a national model for strengthening a Jewish community. He is single-handedly attracting observant and potentially observant Jews by not only donating generously to every Jewish day school in the area and founding an experimental Yeshiva Lab School, but also by establishing and operating two kosher restaurants — one meat and one dairy — in the neighborhood.
“It’s a holistic approach to improve the quality of Jewish life,” he told me during an interview at The Jewish Week the other day. “I want to make Orthodoxy and the Torah-observant life a positive choice, not a sacrifice for people but something exciting, appealing. So you try to create a community with good Jewish schools, spiritual shuls and good places to eat.”
His method seems to be working. In the last several years the Orthodox population in Lower Merion is believed to have grown significantly, and there are at least four new Orthodox synagogues.
Now, Magerman is about to launch a major national initiative recognizing the creative work of Jewish educators, part of his overall strategy to improve the quality of Jewish day schools. His new Kohelet Prize for excellence in progressive Jewish education, he told The Jewish Week, will offer a $36,000 unrestricted cash prize each year to “up to five educators, or teams of educators, who demonstrate extraordinary accomplishments” in one of five areas: interdisciplinary integration (integrating multiple disciplines in a single multi-week unit, preferably incorporating Judaic and general studies); real-world learning (helping students break down the barriers between school and the world around them); creating an innovative physical learning environment (in use by students for a minimum of six months); differentiated instruction (for a diverse student body within a single-class environment); development of critical and/or creative thinking and risk taking and failure (for a failed project or initiative in any of the five categories above that was developed and fully implemented in a classroom).
Holly Cohen, executive director of the Kohelet Foundation since its founding in 2009, explained that the goal of the prize is to recognize the achievements of individual teachers and groups of teachers around the country.
“We want to awaken the field and to show there are people out there doing innovative work.”
Cohen said a website for the prize is being developed to serve as “a clearing house of ideas” for educators everywhere and to inspire them.
The contest will be launched in early May, with the first round of winners scheduled to be announced at Chanukah time at a two-day Kohelet Foundation conference in Philadelphia.
The prize is the outgrowth of a years-long search by Magerman for models of progressive education that can be applied to Jewish day schools, whose system he describes as “broken.” He modeled his new Yeshiva Lab School on the work of AltSchool, a California-based group of small schools that feature mixed-age classrooms and a “rigorously personalized approach that “develops skills to encourage lifelong learning and success.”
Yeshiva Lab School opened in Philadelphia last fall with a kindergarten and will add a grade each year through eighth grade. (It will soon be competing for enrollment with a Modern Orthodox school that also extends through eighth grade.)
Raised as a Conservative Jew in Miami, Magerman essentially gave up observance while attending the University of Pennsylvania. But after a trip to Israel he was motivated in 2004 to enroll in a weekly, Torah-study-by-phone program run by Partners In Torah, a one-to-one Orthodox initiative developed by Torah Umesorah. He stuck with it for seven years and came to see Torah as the bedrock of Jewish survival.
He said he is seeking to convince more families that a Torah education is a prerequisite to a meaningful Jewish life.
With a background in artificial intelligence, Magerman describes himself as “a systems guy” who tries to figure out ways to make things work, fitting the missing pieces together. Along the way in his attempt to “fix” the day-school dilemma — where tuition costs often exceed academic success — he has, admittedly, butted heads with lay and professional leaders in the Jewish community, whom he has publicly criticized for insufficient support of day schools.
“I wanted to have a direct impact,” he said, on projects he supported, and he became frustrated “when I couldn’t push my ideas.”
Mentioning the name “Magerman” in the Philadelphia Jewish community can evoke eye-rolls. There is often an acknowledgment that he is investing more in Jewish life there than anyone. But that doesn’t necessarily prompt expressions of praise and gratitude.
Magerman shrugs off the criticism.
He says he is working on his interpersonal skills, noting that he has come to realize that dealing with people is more complicated than working with computers. “I’m learning,” he said, when asked about getting along with others. “I make an effort to bring in stakeholders.” He said he has “a chevrah [group] of friends and families who want the things I want” in terms of educational objectives. “I try to achieve my goals without disenfranchising others. It’s a balancing act. No one likes change, but it’s necessary. And people appreciate it when it’s over.”
Magerman said the most important lesson he has learned is that “you have to respect the mission of the organization you support, and my goal is to find ones that overlap with my mission.”
Magerman is well aware that only a small percentage of American Jews value day school enough to enroll their children. But he is committed to providing Jewish day-school education not only to his own four children but also to the next generation.
“It’s a Torah-values crisis,” he said. “The community has to see it as an imperative. I am using the money I’ve earned with God’s help to do these outsize things. If we can improve the quality, we can make a difference.”
Gary@jewishweek.org---------------------
Rabbi David Wolpe's Musings >
Musings
Children Of The Book
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David Wolpe
In Judaism, learning is part of piety. While the ideal of the simple, righteous person exists in Judaism, far more common is the person whose reverence flows from erudition. A Talmid chacham, a learned individual, is also assumed to be a good person.
Of course that is not always the case, but in Judaism the belief has long been that the more you know, the better you will be. Ancient historian Arnaldo Momilgiano observes: “In Athens and Rome thinking about religion usually made people less religious, among Jews the more you thought about religion the more religious you became.” Study was indispensible to growing spiritually. So it was then and so it is today.
The great question for Jewish survival is whether our children will learn. Jewish education may not quicken the philanthropic pulse like anti-Semitism or Israel, but as the Rabbis taught, the future of the world “depends upon the breath of schoolchildren.” If our children do not breathe the air of our tradition, learn its language and its lore, we will fade away. To all our children adrift in the secular sea, we throw an ancient lifeline — a book.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book is “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press). ---------------------
In Sanders, Ex-Chasids See A Kindred Spirit >
New York
In Sanders, Ex-Chasids See A Kindred Spirit
For those who left the religious fold, the Vermont senator epitomizes their newfound values.
Hella Winston
Special Correspondent
Bernie Sanders’ humanist political values, not his Jewishness, per se, have earned the respect of a unique constituency. Getty
For Shulem Deen, it’s that Bernie Sanders is a “passionate and principled elected official — a species I once thought could not exist.”
For Esther Mohadeb, it’s that the Vermont senator comes across “as a mensch, a person of integrity,” and that “he was a champion of women’s rights and LGBT rights before it was the cool thing to do.”
Ari Mandel stresses Sanders’ views on foreign policy, which he sees as consistent with his own belief that America has overreached in trying to be the world’s policeman, “sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Besides their relative youth (ranging in age from 26 to 41), Deen, Mohadeb and Mandel are joined in another crucial way — they all grew up in the New York-area charedi world, and then, after a period of soul searching, left the fold.
Deen, 41, who grew up in Borough Park and also lived in the Skverer community of upstate New Square, is the author of the award-winning memoir “All Who Go Do Not Return,” which chronicles in bittersweet fashion his upbringing in and journey out of the chasidic community. Mandel, 33, was raised in the Nikolsburg chasidic community in Monsey, N.Y., and now administers a 1,600-member OTD (“off the derech,” or the religious path) Facebook group. Mohadeb, 26, left her Satmar community in Williamsburg two-plus years ago and now lives in Brooklyn’s Kensington section and works as a web developer.
That the three are backing Sanders — who was beaten last Saturday by Hillary Clinton by 52-47 percent in the Nevada Democratic caucuses — is both surprising, given their upbringing in religiously conservative communities, and not so surprising, perhaps, given where they ended up. And they are not alone among ex-chasidim, who seem, anecdotally at least, to be solidly in Sanders’ camp. Admittedly, they are a small subset of the Orthodox community, itself a small (but fast- growing) part of the overall Jewish community, which tends to vote overwhelmingly Democratic in national elections. But as more institutions and support groups emerge to serve the growing numbers of those who no longer identify as ultra-Orthodox, and as their media profile grows, their voices may become more significant in Orthodox community debates and in the wider Jewish community.
“There is a lot of support for Bernie in our group,” Mandel told The Jewish Week, referring to his Facebook group. He noted that former chasidim tend to be questioners who “got to where they are” by challenging the beliefs and practices of their communities, and thus may in Sanders see something of a kindred spirit. He also added that if Sanders were not in the race, most people in his group would “probably support Hillary [Clinton]” over any of the Republicans.
And in this way they are starkly at odds with their communities of origin, which tend to vote for conservative candidates, at least in national elections (in local and state elections the chasidic community typically backs Democrats).
“I haven’t cast a vote in nearly two decades, but I will vote in this year’s Democratic primaries,” began a recent Deen Facebook post. The post featured a video of Sanders from 1995 excoriating a fellow lawmaker on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for using an anti-gay slur during a debate about The Clean Water Act.
“Now my ears may have been playing a trick on me, but I thought I heard the gentleman a moment ago say something about quote unquote homos in the military. Was I right in hearing that expression,” a visibly angry Sanders asks.
After Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) replies that Sanders heard correctly, the Vermont senator, punching the air repeatedly with his left hand, said: “You used the word homos in the military. You have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line. I think that they are owed an apology.”
The video opened Deen’s eyes to what a politician could be. “For curing my jadedness alone, Bernie Sanders deserves my vote.”
But Sanders’ passion and principle are not the only things about him that have motivated Deen to participate in the political process. It’s also his message about a “rigged” system controlled by elites in which the concerns of ordinary citizens are ignored that resonates. To Deen, Sanders could easily be speaking about the chasidic world.
“For me, it really ties into the world I come from because that was where I experienced my first disillusionment about the political process,” Deen said.
In the chasidic community, people are generally expected to vote as they are instructed by their leaders, in a bloc — something Deen says the leadership correctly touts as the source of the community’s political power.
I'm in awe of the intelligent and reflective young woman my little sister, who is autistic, has become.
FRESH INK FOR TEENS IS SPONSORED BY THE JEWISH WEEK
My Special Sister by Noa Rubin
I’m in awe of the intelligent and reflective young woman my little sister, who is autistic, has become.
A Cause For Celebration: Noa Rubin, on the left, helps celebrate her sister Naomi's bat mitzvah. Naomi is on the right. Courtesy Grettel Cortes
“First you, Ron. Harry! Wait for Hermione!” my sister Naomi barked in a British accent while we waited in line for a waterslide. The other kids tried to go in front of us and she said, “No, sorry, but my wizard friends need to go first.” I apologized to the strangers and waited my turn. Later at the pool, a girl from the waterslide pointed to Naomi and whispered to her mother, “That’s the one who was talking to herself!”
When I was 8, I learned about my 6-year-old sister Naomi’s autism. She couldn’t get eye contact quite right and could hardly verbalize her thoughts. Not knowing how to help or connect with a sibling was confusing and intimidating, but I still played with her. Our games lacked structure: sometimes we just watched our favorite movies such as “Peter Pan” over and over. While my friends played board games and Barbies with their sisters, Naomi and I chased each other, pretended to be dogs and drew all over our faces with our mom’s makeup. I accepted our abnormal games because our relationship itself was unconventional.
With help from therapists who came to our house, Naomi became more like my friends’ siblings. Yet, as she became more similar to me — developing more communication skills — it was harder to be patient. My favorite conversations bored her. She was brutally honest, like when she would meet my classmates and reveal my criticisms of them to their faces. I couldn’t yell at Naomi because then she would never learn. I was forced to tap her gently and say, “Hey, when we meet someone new, we just say ‘nice to meet you,’ even when it isn’t nice.” In more challenging circumstances, like when she suddenly transformed into Helen Keller in an elevator, shutting her eyes and feeling around, I had to say, “Naomi, I love that you are inspired by Helen Keller, but this makes other people uncomfortable, so please just pretend in private.” I had to muster all my willpower not to be ashamed.
There were moments when I couldn’t help calling her names, with not-so-nice words like “stupid.” However, yelling and name-calling made her cry or scream, and I realized that if I condemned her for her imagination, she felt even more compelled to defy social rules. If I wanted to help her, I needed to be sensitive and to help shift her love of history and characters into an appropriate space by showing her books and films, such as “Harry Potter.”
Naomi always cared about the underdog, and consequently so did I. In middle school, I always stood up to the bullies who targeted kids with special needs. For the past three years, I have had the pleasure of combining my desire to care for the special needs community with my passion for Judaism as an aid in a special needs Hebrew school. In any social situation where I see a person with special needs, I always sit and listen to him or her because when people give my sister basic dignity, miracles happen. She led my synagogue in prayer and chanted Torah and haftorah at her bat mitzvah last February. In her speech, she discussed overcoming the challenge of having “a learning difference”; it was beautiful and all witnesses sat in awe, myself included, because my sister became a radiant, reflective and intelligent woman.
Being around Naomi has forced me to be vulnerable. Because I’m not bound by trying to make everyone think that my family is perfect, I am honest about myself and my personal struggles. The humility that I have learned from Naomi is paired with a pride in the triumphs of my family, my friends and in my own successes. Naomi’s achievements teach me to emphasize and enjoy capability, not disability. Most important, Naomi has made me a persistent advocate for justice, especially when a situation seems the most impossible.
author's bio:
Noa Rubin is a senior at Milken Community Schools in Los Angeles.
---------------------
MORE HEADLINES:
Gary Rosenblatt's Between The Lines >
Gary Rosenblatt
Funding Day Schools In Philly His Way
A ‘divisive community builder’ sounds like a contradiction in terms. Meet David Magerman.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
David Magerman, a man on a mission to build and sustain a vibrant Orthodox community in Philadelphia, is a tangle of contradictions.
A wealthy hedge fund manager, he finds the consumer-driven life pointless and in the last decade has embraced Orthodox Judaism with great passion.
He insists that the Jewish day school system is broken and that lack of quality education, not money, is the root problem. But he is spending $10 million to $15 million a year to address it through his Kohelet Foundation, dedicated to “generate and support Jewish communal responsibility for day schools.” (Since 2009, Magerman has donated about $60 million to Jewish charitable causes, much of it through his foundation.)
He says he is committed to collaboration in his quest to build and sustain Torah-based schools in his community. But he is criticized for being bossy, abrasive and unwilling to compromise. And though he is by far the biggest donor to Jewish education in the Philadelphia area, he has a strained relationship with many of the leaders of the local Jewish federation because of what is perceived to be his aggressive, my-way-or-the-highway style.
In 2008, two years after Magerman and his family moved from Long Island to Philadelphia in his search for a sustainable observant community, he partnered with the federation to create a “Megafund” to bolster support for local Jewish day schools suffering from the recession. But he grew frustrated with the slow pace and bureaucracy, and soon created Kohelet, which at once supports day schools in the region — “whether or not I agree with their approach,” he points out — and is also at odds with them at times.
With it all, Magerman, 46, has made remarkable progress in re-inventing traditional Jewish life in the Lower Merion area of suburban Philadelphia, viewing his approach as a national model for strengthening a Jewish community. He is single-handedly attracting observant and potentially observant Jews by not only donating generously to every Jewish day school in the area and founding an experimental Yeshiva Lab School, but also by establishing and operating two kosher restaurants — one meat and one dairy — in the neighborhood.
“It’s a holistic approach to improve the quality of Jewish life,” he told me during an interview at The Jewish Week the other day. “I want to make Orthodoxy and the Torah-observant life a positive choice, not a sacrifice for people but something exciting, appealing. So you try to create a community with good Jewish schools, spiritual shuls and good places to eat.”
His method seems to be working. In the last several years the Orthodox population in Lower Merion is believed to have grown significantly, and there are at least four new Orthodox synagogues.
Now, Magerman is about to launch a major national initiative recognizing the creative work of Jewish educators, part of his overall strategy to improve the quality of Jewish day schools. His new Kohelet Prize for excellence in progressive Jewish education, he told The Jewish Week, will offer a $36,000 unrestricted cash prize each year to “up to five educators, or teams of educators, who demonstrate extraordinary accomplishments” in one of five areas: interdisciplinary integration (integrating multiple disciplines in a single multi-week unit, preferably incorporating Judaic and general studies); real-world learning (helping students break down the barriers between school and the world around them); creating an innovative physical learning environment (in use by students for a minimum of six months); differentiated instruction (for a diverse student body within a single-class environment); development of critical and/or creative thinking and risk taking and failure (for a failed project or initiative in any of the five categories above that was developed and fully implemented in a classroom).
Holly Cohen, executive director of the Kohelet Foundation since its founding in 2009, explained that the goal of the prize is to recognize the achievements of individual teachers and groups of teachers around the country.
“We want to awaken the field and to show there are people out there doing innovative work.”
Cohen said a website for the prize is being developed to serve as “a clearing house of ideas” for educators everywhere and to inspire them.
The contest will be launched in early May, with the first round of winners scheduled to be announced at Chanukah time at a two-day Kohelet Foundation conference in Philadelphia.
The prize is the outgrowth of a years-long search by Magerman for models of progressive education that can be applied to Jewish day schools, whose system he describes as “broken.” He modeled his new Yeshiva Lab School on the work of AltSchool, a California-based group of small schools that feature mixed-age classrooms and a “rigorously personalized approach that “develops skills to encourage lifelong learning and success.”
Yeshiva Lab School opened in Philadelphia last fall with a kindergarten and will add a grade each year through eighth grade. (It will soon be competing for enrollment with a Modern Orthodox school that also extends through eighth grade.)
Raised as a Conservative Jew in Miami, Magerman essentially gave up observance while attending the University of Pennsylvania. But after a trip to Israel he was motivated in 2004 to enroll in a weekly, Torah-study-by-phone program run by Partners In Torah, a one-to-one Orthodox initiative developed by Torah Umesorah. He stuck with it for seven years and came to see Torah as the bedrock of Jewish survival.
He said he is seeking to convince more families that a Torah education is a prerequisite to a meaningful Jewish life.
With a background in artificial intelligence, Magerman describes himself as “a systems guy” who tries to figure out ways to make things work, fitting the missing pieces together. Along the way in his attempt to “fix” the day-school dilemma — where tuition costs often exceed academic success — he has, admittedly, butted heads with lay and professional leaders in the Jewish community, whom he has publicly criticized for insufficient support of day schools.
“I wanted to have a direct impact,” he said, on projects he supported, and he became frustrated “when I couldn’t push my ideas.”
Mentioning the name “Magerman” in the Philadelphia Jewish community can evoke eye-rolls. There is often an acknowledgment that he is investing more in Jewish life there than anyone. But that doesn’t necessarily prompt expressions of praise and gratitude.
Magerman shrugs off the criticism.
He says he is working on his interpersonal skills, noting that he has come to realize that dealing with people is more complicated than working with computers. “I’m learning,” he said, when asked about getting along with others. “I make an effort to bring in stakeholders.” He said he has “a chevrah [group] of friends and families who want the things I want” in terms of educational objectives. “I try to achieve my goals without disenfranchising others. It’s a balancing act. No one likes change, but it’s necessary. And people appreciate it when it’s over.”
Magerman said the most important lesson he has learned is that “you have to respect the mission of the organization you support, and my goal is to find ones that overlap with my mission.”
Magerman is well aware that only a small percentage of American Jews value day school enough to enroll their children. But he is committed to providing Jewish day-school education not only to his own four children but also to the next generation.
“It’s a Torah-values crisis,” he said. “The community has to see it as an imperative. I am using the money I’ve earned with God’s help to do these outsize things. If we can improve the quality, we can make a difference.”
Gary@jewishweek.org---------------------
Rabbi David Wolpe's Musings >
Musings
Children Of The Book
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David Wolpe
In Judaism, learning is part of piety. While the ideal of the simple, righteous person exists in Judaism, far more common is the person whose reverence flows from erudition. A Talmid chacham, a learned individual, is also assumed to be a good person.
Of course that is not always the case, but in Judaism the belief has long been that the more you know, the better you will be. Ancient historian Arnaldo Momilgiano observes: “In Athens and Rome thinking about religion usually made people less religious, among Jews the more you thought about religion the more religious you became.” Study was indispensible to growing spiritually. So it was then and so it is today.
The great question for Jewish survival is whether our children will learn. Jewish education may not quicken the philanthropic pulse like anti-Semitism or Israel, but as the Rabbis taught, the future of the world “depends upon the breath of schoolchildren.” If our children do not breathe the air of our tradition, learn its language and its lore, we will fade away. To all our children adrift in the secular sea, we throw an ancient lifeline — a book.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book is “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press). ---------------------
In Sanders, Ex-Chasids See A Kindred Spirit >
New York
In Sanders, Ex-Chasids See A Kindred Spirit
For those who left the religious fold, the Vermont senator epitomizes their newfound values.
Hella Winston
Special Correspondent
Bernie Sanders’ humanist political values, not his Jewishness, per se, have earned the respect of a unique constituency. Getty
For Shulem Deen, it’s that Bernie Sanders is a “passionate and principled elected official — a species I once thought could not exist.”
For Esther Mohadeb, it’s that the Vermont senator comes across “as a mensch, a person of integrity,” and that “he was a champion of women’s rights and LGBT rights before it was the cool thing to do.”
Ari Mandel stresses Sanders’ views on foreign policy, which he sees as consistent with his own belief that America has overreached in trying to be the world’s policeman, “sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Besides their relative youth (ranging in age from 26 to 41), Deen, Mohadeb and Mandel are joined in another crucial way — they all grew up in the New York-area charedi world, and then, after a period of soul searching, left the fold.
Deen, 41, who grew up in Borough Park and also lived in the Skverer community of upstate New Square, is the author of the award-winning memoir “All Who Go Do Not Return,” which chronicles in bittersweet fashion his upbringing in and journey out of the chasidic community. Mandel, 33, was raised in the Nikolsburg chasidic community in Monsey, N.Y., and now administers a 1,600-member OTD (“off the derech,” or the religious path) Facebook group. Mohadeb, 26, left her Satmar community in Williamsburg two-plus years ago and now lives in Brooklyn’s Kensington section and works as a web developer.
That the three are backing Sanders — who was beaten last Saturday by Hillary Clinton by 52-47 percent in the Nevada Democratic caucuses — is both surprising, given their upbringing in religiously conservative communities, and not so surprising, perhaps, given where they ended up. And they are not alone among ex-chasidim, who seem, anecdotally at least, to be solidly in Sanders’ camp. Admittedly, they are a small subset of the Orthodox community, itself a small (but fast- growing) part of the overall Jewish community, which tends to vote overwhelmingly Democratic in national elections. But as more institutions and support groups emerge to serve the growing numbers of those who no longer identify as ultra-Orthodox, and as their media profile grows, their voices may become more significant in Orthodox community debates and in the wider Jewish community.
“There is a lot of support for Bernie in our group,” Mandel told The Jewish Week, referring to his Facebook group. He noted that former chasidim tend to be questioners who “got to where they are” by challenging the beliefs and practices of their communities, and thus may in Sanders see something of a kindred spirit. He also added that if Sanders were not in the race, most people in his group would “probably support Hillary [Clinton]” over any of the Republicans.
And in this way they are starkly at odds with their communities of origin, which tend to vote for conservative candidates, at least in national elections (in local and state elections the chasidic community typically backs Democrats).
“I haven’t cast a vote in nearly two decades, but I will vote in this year’s Democratic primaries,” began a recent Deen Facebook post. The post featured a video of Sanders from 1995 excoriating a fellow lawmaker on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for using an anti-gay slur during a debate about The Clean Water Act.
“Now my ears may have been playing a trick on me, but I thought I heard the gentleman a moment ago say something about quote unquote homos in the military. Was I right in hearing that expression,” a visibly angry Sanders asks.
After Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) replies that Sanders heard correctly, the Vermont senator, punching the air repeatedly with his left hand, said: “You used the word homos in the military. You have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line. I think that they are owed an apology.”
The video opened Deen’s eyes to what a politician could be. “For curing my jadedness alone, Bernie Sanders deserves my vote.”
But Sanders’ passion and principle are not the only things about him that have motivated Deen to participate in the political process. It’s also his message about a “rigged” system controlled by elites in which the concerns of ordinary citizens are ignored that resonates. To Deen, Sanders could easily be speaking about the chasidic world.
“For me, it really ties into the world I come from because that was where I experienced my first disillusionment about the political process,” Deen said.
In the chasidic community, people are generally expected to vote as they are instructed by their leaders, in a bloc — something Deen says the leadership correctly touts as the source of the community’s political power.
In fact, Deen recalls that the last time he cast a vote, in the upstate community of New Square, someone reached into the voting booth “his head coming through the curtain and…his arms…and before I know what he’s doing, he’s pulling the levers. And I looked at him so startled. And he said, ‘I was helping out.’”
Deen stresses that this happened to him only once and knows of no other instances in which something like this occurred. Nonetheless, to him it became a potent symbol of how little his own voice counted in his community, where support for politicians is negotiated through liaisons who typically represent the will and interests of the leaders rather than the rank and file.
Mandel, who did a five-year stint in the army beginning when he was 24, was far from liberal before he left his Nikolsburg community. In fact, his decision to enlist was, he says, a direct result of listening to right-wing talk radio in his car, beginning when he was 18 and newly married.
“I spent six years soaking in that bathtub of ignorance and hatred,” Mandel said, referring to the years just prior to his army enlistment. “I truly believed in the cause, that it was my patriotic duty because Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh said so.”
After joining up and being deployed overseas, however, Mandel realized that “it’s not so simple,” and he is now “against military intervention” in most circumstances; it’s a view he sees echoed in Sanders’ public speeches and voting record. Also, like Sanders, Mandel believes that health care should be a universal right, “just like dialing 911 when you have an emergency. They don’t charge you for that.”
Like Mandel, Mohadeb was very conservative growing up, exposed only to “very right wing, conservative talk shows and newspapers.” She said she was “still registered as a Republican until I heard of Bernie Sanders and made sure to switch my party affiliation so that I can vote for him.”
Echoing what many in her age group seem to feel, Mohadeb also thinks Sanders “does not seem to be in politics for the money or the power. His campaign is funded by everyday Americans like me.”
An oddity, perhaps, is that Sanders’ Jewishness, or even his Brooklyn roots, do not seem to be a key to his appeal among these OTDers. For example, Mordy Karczag, a 30-year-old web developer who lives in Ditmas Park and left his Borough Park Lubavitch community seven years ago, cites Sanders’ universalism as a plus. He says that his support is directly related to Sanders’ humanist values — the same kind of values Karczag says he developed only “once I shed everything I had from the past. If I would have kept the past I would have been a Trump supporter,” he added.
“When I was religious that’s what I gravitated towards, xenophobia and all that stuff.”
On the Sanders-as-humanist front, one ex-chasid even went as far as to create a Wikipedia entry for Sanders in Yiddish, hoping to convince members of his former community — many of whom claim to be supporting Donald Trump — to give Sanders a look. Not because Sanders is Jewish, but because he has a worldview that is actually consistent with the chasidic emphasis on mutual aid and its reliance on the government safety net.
For Esther Mohadeb, when it comes time to cast a vote, it is Sanders’ view that the country needs to be taken back from the special interests and the wealthy that is most compelling.
“I’m planning to vote for him,” she said, “because I believe he’s our only chance to reclaim what’s rightfully ours. Before we work on any issues in the government, it needs to be representative of everyday Americans.”
Deen stresses that this happened to him only once and knows of no other instances in which something like this occurred. Nonetheless, to him it became a potent symbol of how little his own voice counted in his community, where support for politicians is negotiated through liaisons who typically represent the will and interests of the leaders rather than the rank and file.
Mandel, who did a five-year stint in the army beginning when he was 24, was far from liberal before he left his Nikolsburg community. In fact, his decision to enlist was, he says, a direct result of listening to right-wing talk radio in his car, beginning when he was 18 and newly married.
“I spent six years soaking in that bathtub of ignorance and hatred,” Mandel said, referring to the years just prior to his army enlistment. “I truly believed in the cause, that it was my patriotic duty because Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh said so.”
After joining up and being deployed overseas, however, Mandel realized that “it’s not so simple,” and he is now “against military intervention” in most circumstances; it’s a view he sees echoed in Sanders’ public speeches and voting record. Also, like Sanders, Mandel believes that health care should be a universal right, “just like dialing 911 when you have an emergency. They don’t charge you for that.”
Like Mandel, Mohadeb was very conservative growing up, exposed only to “very right wing, conservative talk shows and newspapers.” She said she was “still registered as a Republican until I heard of Bernie Sanders and made sure to switch my party affiliation so that I can vote for him.”
Echoing what many in her age group seem to feel, Mohadeb also thinks Sanders “does not seem to be in politics for the money or the power. His campaign is funded by everyday Americans like me.”
An oddity, perhaps, is that Sanders’ Jewishness, or even his Brooklyn roots, do not seem to be a key to his appeal among these OTDers. For example, Mordy Karczag, a 30-year-old web developer who lives in Ditmas Park and left his Borough Park Lubavitch community seven years ago, cites Sanders’ universalism as a plus. He says that his support is directly related to Sanders’ humanist values — the same kind of values Karczag says he developed only “once I shed everything I had from the past. If I would have kept the past I would have been a Trump supporter,” he added.
“When I was religious that’s what I gravitated towards, xenophobia and all that stuff.”
On the Sanders-as-humanist front, one ex-chasid even went as far as to create a Wikipedia entry for Sanders in Yiddish, hoping to convince members of his former community — many of whom claim to be supporting Donald Trump — to give Sanders a look. Not because Sanders is Jewish, but because he has a worldview that is actually consistent with the chasidic emphasis on mutual aid and its reliance on the government safety net.
For Esther Mohadeb, when it comes time to cast a vote, it is Sanders’ view that the country needs to be taken back from the special interests and the wealthy that is most compelling.
“I’m planning to vote for him,” she said, “because I believe he’s our only chance to reclaim what’s rightfully ours. Before we work on any issues in the government, it needs to be representative of everyday Americans.”
---------------------
Telling The Truth About Mental Illness >
Opinion
Telling The Truth About Mental Illness
Ruth Roth
Special To The Jewish Week
The author with her son Jonathan. Courtesy of Ruth Roth
Our son’s illness, when we finally became aware of it, was a magnitude-8 earthquake in our lives that came without any warning. It was a calm and beautiful day in July when I found Jonathan the first time he tried to end his life. The mechanics of saving him, calling 911, unlocking and opening the door for the rescue team, calling my husband, and following the ambulance to the hospital all happened on autopilot, step 1, step 2, step 3, and so on. The moments in between and following his arrival at the hospital crawled as I waited to hear whether my son would live and with what possible damage, and wondered in complete ignorance and fear what the next steps would be. How could this possibly be happening, how was it possible that I, who had spent countless hours talking with Jonathan, didn’t realize the trouble he was in?
He made it through that episode alive and with minimal impairment to his body. Once out of the hospital he appeared to be the same Jonathan he always was: kind, loving, caring, bright, engaging, witty. He begged us not to tell anyone what happened — not that he needed to. Of course we would keep this a secret, for so many reasons. We didn’t want to have our son labeled “crazy”; we didn’t want him to endure any comments or knowing glances from well-meaning people. We were private people who never revealed our innermost issues to anyone outside our family. And we certainly didn’t want our son to feel exposed.
Without realizing it, by keeping this secret, we validated Jonathan’s feeling of shame. Not only would he have to battle his illness, he would bear the burden of shame about it as well. From this point on, our family would have to present an outside face to the world that did not represent our inner reality. We didn’t comprehend the gargantuan weight we would assume with this decision.
Would we have acted the same way had Jonathan been diagnosed with cancer, gastrointestinal illness, severe cardiac illness, or diabetes? Absolutely not — we would never have hidden any of those illnesses. Ask me now and I will tell you that I wish I had shouted it from the rooftop, done anything, taken out an ad in The New York Times: “My son has a devastating mental illness. Can someone, anyone, offer me some advice to save his life?”
Yes, I would have gone that far.
Five months later I found Jonathan again — this time too late. I knew the moment I saw him, my eyes frozen on him, that his body was lifeless. Nonetheless I went through with the rescue attempt, hoping in vain that we could deny reality. Again, time raced and crawled, but this time, that space was filled with planning our son’s funeral. In the midst of our turmoil and grief, my husband and I conferred. Should we tell the truth about Jonathan’s death? Having lived with the pain of isolation for the previous five months, we decided to be open about Jonathan’s having taken his own life. This way, our friends could comfort us appropriately. More important, we would no longer have to bear the burden of living with a lie. It was the right decision for us.
Since then, I have been contacted by people from all over. Either their children are struggling with mental illness, or they are new in their grief for a child who has taken his or her own life. Sometimes they are seeking advice and guidance. More often, they want to share their thoughts with someone whom they know can understand. Many had been secretive about the cause of their own loved one’s death. They told only those closest to them, but not others. They related to me that living with the truth hidden away had exacted a terrible toll on them, and they wished that they could turn the clock back. They have since slowly shared the truth with people as time has passed, but they regret not having unburdened themselves from the start.
I have been contacted by parents whose children had taken their own lives; sometimes the call has come mere hours after the horrible event. I was sought out by complete strangers who had heard of me and received my contact information from someone who knew me. They reached out to me because they felt that having “been there,” I might be able to help them navigate their terrifying new reality. While I can’t give advice — we humans are all so different in our coping mechanisms and our needs — I have shared our experience: we were open about our son taking his own life. That openness has helped us to heal and face life more honestly, and as whole people without a corrosive secret. I explain that being open allowed our friends to console us with the knowledge and proper tools to respond, and that we were, as a direct result, spared the ordeal of wearing a mask for the world.
It now occurs to me that there can be another equally vital benefit to sharing the truth about this kind of loss, a development I pray will come to pass. Perhaps this openness after our loved ones have lost their lives would eventually be able to work its way back to the source, to conquer the entire stigma of mental illness in the first place.
My son suffered the equivalent of advanced cancer — just as some cancers are incurable, so too was his illness. My son suffered from a chronic disease that would never leave him — just like diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, or multiple sclerosis. Had he lived, it would have had to be monitored and managed forever. There were no MRIs, CT scans, echocardiograms, X-rays, blood tests or PET scans to diagnose, to localize the tumor or lesion. There were no objective treatment regimens or research protocols to test on him. He fought valiantly and he suffered tremendously. Medicine failed him because mental illness doesn’t get the same respect as other physical illnesses, even as mental illness is just as legitimate a disease. Finally, because his illness was not obvious and kept a secret, our family received no extra kindness — even though we all could have benefited from it.
My husband and I are not unsophisticated people, but at the time when it was critical for us to be our son’s advocates we were shell-shocked and ignorant. While I try not to play the “should have” game, I think it is instructive to play out the scenario that might have taken place had we been open about Jonathan’s illness and suicide attempt. When friends asked what had happened, we could have said something like: “We were completely unaware, but Jonathan is suffering from a terrible mental illness and he tried to take his own life, and we are unsure of what to do to help him.”
I’m sure that this news would have spread. Perhaps a knowledgeable person, someone with experience in this area, would have contacted us to give us advice and guidance. Just maybe, as a result, we would have obtained a more accurate diagnosis or more effective treatment. There is no guarantee that the outcome would have been any different; still, I believe that with additional knowledge the chance for a better outcome increases.
Jonathan may have been upset with this approach, but he might also have felt unburdened and able to speak openly with his friends about his illness. Perhaps a peer with a similar illness might have contacted him to let him know that he was not alone in his struggle. This would have helped Jonathan avoid the pain of isolation. He would have felt supported and I am certain that this alone would have helped him.
It is unfortunate that even now, as I continue to be contacted by parents whose children are struggling with mental illness, they ask me to keep their secret. Of course, I understand their concerns and honor their requests. I wish things were different because it is surely time for us all to be open about mental illness, a disease like any other, in the same way we are open about all other illnesses with which we struggle.
Notwithstanding the opportunity to reach for a better outcome, there was no need for Jonathan, or for us, his parents, to live in shame, and certainly no benefit in living with the weight of such a lie. Those months we spent pretending things were fine were exhausting and excruciating because of the huge expenditure of energy required to keep up our façade and the isolation that became our existence. We learned that lesson only after Jonathan died, and that has made an enormous difference in our ability to continue living meaningful lives. It is my hope that by sharing these innermost thoughts about this very painful event in my life I will help others to be open about mental illness. It requires courage, but it is ultimately healing.
It is time for our communities and schools to acknowledge and address the prevalence of mental illness among our young people. This will only come through educational programs that alert clergy, teachers, and students to the early signs of these disorders. Unlike other diseases with their specific screening tests, the detection of mental illness begins with the recognition of its early signs by those around its sufferers. It is only when mental illness achieves its place alongside other “physical” illnesses that we can begin to address its devastating impact.
Ruth Roth is director of admissions and public relations at Ben Porat Yosef Yeshiva Day School in Paramus, N.J. She resides in Teaneck, N.J., with her husband, Philip Roth.---------------------
The Jewish Week
Opinion
Telling The Truth About Mental Illness
Ruth Roth
Special To The Jewish Week
The author with her son Jonathan. Courtesy of Ruth Roth
Our son’s illness, when we finally became aware of it, was a magnitude-8 earthquake in our lives that came without any warning. It was a calm and beautiful day in July when I found Jonathan the first time he tried to end his life. The mechanics of saving him, calling 911, unlocking and opening the door for the rescue team, calling my husband, and following the ambulance to the hospital all happened on autopilot, step 1, step 2, step 3, and so on. The moments in between and following his arrival at the hospital crawled as I waited to hear whether my son would live and with what possible damage, and wondered in complete ignorance and fear what the next steps would be. How could this possibly be happening, how was it possible that I, who had spent countless hours talking with Jonathan, didn’t realize the trouble he was in?
He made it through that episode alive and with minimal impairment to his body. Once out of the hospital he appeared to be the same Jonathan he always was: kind, loving, caring, bright, engaging, witty. He begged us not to tell anyone what happened — not that he needed to. Of course we would keep this a secret, for so many reasons. We didn’t want to have our son labeled “crazy”; we didn’t want him to endure any comments or knowing glances from well-meaning people. We were private people who never revealed our innermost issues to anyone outside our family. And we certainly didn’t want our son to feel exposed.
Without realizing it, by keeping this secret, we validated Jonathan’s feeling of shame. Not only would he have to battle his illness, he would bear the burden of shame about it as well. From this point on, our family would have to present an outside face to the world that did not represent our inner reality. We didn’t comprehend the gargantuan weight we would assume with this decision.
Would we have acted the same way had Jonathan been diagnosed with cancer, gastrointestinal illness, severe cardiac illness, or diabetes? Absolutely not — we would never have hidden any of those illnesses. Ask me now and I will tell you that I wish I had shouted it from the rooftop, done anything, taken out an ad in The New York Times: “My son has a devastating mental illness. Can someone, anyone, offer me some advice to save his life?”
Yes, I would have gone that far.
Five months later I found Jonathan again — this time too late. I knew the moment I saw him, my eyes frozen on him, that his body was lifeless. Nonetheless I went through with the rescue attempt, hoping in vain that we could deny reality. Again, time raced and crawled, but this time, that space was filled with planning our son’s funeral. In the midst of our turmoil and grief, my husband and I conferred. Should we tell the truth about Jonathan’s death? Having lived with the pain of isolation for the previous five months, we decided to be open about Jonathan’s having taken his own life. This way, our friends could comfort us appropriately. More important, we would no longer have to bear the burden of living with a lie. It was the right decision for us.
Since then, I have been contacted by people from all over. Either their children are struggling with mental illness, or they are new in their grief for a child who has taken his or her own life. Sometimes they are seeking advice and guidance. More often, they want to share their thoughts with someone whom they know can understand. Many had been secretive about the cause of their own loved one’s death. They told only those closest to them, but not others. They related to me that living with the truth hidden away had exacted a terrible toll on them, and they wished that they could turn the clock back. They have since slowly shared the truth with people as time has passed, but they regret not having unburdened themselves from the start.
I have been contacted by parents whose children had taken their own lives; sometimes the call has come mere hours after the horrible event. I was sought out by complete strangers who had heard of me and received my contact information from someone who knew me. They reached out to me because they felt that having “been there,” I might be able to help them navigate their terrifying new reality. While I can’t give advice — we humans are all so different in our coping mechanisms and our needs — I have shared our experience: we were open about our son taking his own life. That openness has helped us to heal and face life more honestly, and as whole people without a corrosive secret. I explain that being open allowed our friends to console us with the knowledge and proper tools to respond, and that we were, as a direct result, spared the ordeal of wearing a mask for the world.
It now occurs to me that there can be another equally vital benefit to sharing the truth about this kind of loss, a development I pray will come to pass. Perhaps this openness after our loved ones have lost their lives would eventually be able to work its way back to the source, to conquer the entire stigma of mental illness in the first place.
My son suffered the equivalent of advanced cancer — just as some cancers are incurable, so too was his illness. My son suffered from a chronic disease that would never leave him — just like diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, or multiple sclerosis. Had he lived, it would have had to be monitored and managed forever. There were no MRIs, CT scans, echocardiograms, X-rays, blood tests or PET scans to diagnose, to localize the tumor or lesion. There were no objective treatment regimens or research protocols to test on him. He fought valiantly and he suffered tremendously. Medicine failed him because mental illness doesn’t get the same respect as other physical illnesses, even as mental illness is just as legitimate a disease. Finally, because his illness was not obvious and kept a secret, our family received no extra kindness — even though we all could have benefited from it.
My husband and I are not unsophisticated people, but at the time when it was critical for us to be our son’s advocates we were shell-shocked and ignorant. While I try not to play the “should have” game, I think it is instructive to play out the scenario that might have taken place had we been open about Jonathan’s illness and suicide attempt. When friends asked what had happened, we could have said something like: “We were completely unaware, but Jonathan is suffering from a terrible mental illness and he tried to take his own life, and we are unsure of what to do to help him.”
I’m sure that this news would have spread. Perhaps a knowledgeable person, someone with experience in this area, would have contacted us to give us advice and guidance. Just maybe, as a result, we would have obtained a more accurate diagnosis or more effective treatment. There is no guarantee that the outcome would have been any different; still, I believe that with additional knowledge the chance for a better outcome increases.
Jonathan may have been upset with this approach, but he might also have felt unburdened and able to speak openly with his friends about his illness. Perhaps a peer with a similar illness might have contacted him to let him know that he was not alone in his struggle. This would have helped Jonathan avoid the pain of isolation. He would have felt supported and I am certain that this alone would have helped him.
It is unfortunate that even now, as I continue to be contacted by parents whose children are struggling with mental illness, they ask me to keep their secret. Of course, I understand their concerns and honor their requests. I wish things were different because it is surely time for us all to be open about mental illness, a disease like any other, in the same way we are open about all other illnesses with which we struggle.
Notwithstanding the opportunity to reach for a better outcome, there was no need for Jonathan, or for us, his parents, to live in shame, and certainly no benefit in living with the weight of such a lie. Those months we spent pretending things were fine were exhausting and excruciating because of the huge expenditure of energy required to keep up our façade and the isolation that became our existence. We learned that lesson only after Jonathan died, and that has made an enormous difference in our ability to continue living meaningful lives. It is my hope that by sharing these innermost thoughts about this very painful event in my life I will help others to be open about mental illness. It requires courage, but it is ultimately healing.
It is time for our communities and schools to acknowledge and address the prevalence of mental illness among our young people. This will only come through educational programs that alert clergy, teachers, and students to the early signs of these disorders. Unlike other diseases with their specific screening tests, the detection of mental illness begins with the recognition of its early signs by those around its sufferers. It is only when mental illness achieves its place alongside other “physical” illnesses that we can begin to address its devastating impact.
Ruth Roth is director of admissions and public relations at Ben Porat Yosef Yeshiva Day School in Paramus, N.J. She resides in Teaneck, N.J., with her husband, Philip Roth.---------------------
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"Now on Jewish.TV: Not to Mix Two Simchahs: Contemporary Halachah and Kitzur Shulchan Aruch - Elimelech Silberberg" Jewish.TV - Chabad. for Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Not to Mix Two Simchahs
Contemporary Halachah and Kitzur Shulchan Aruch
By Elimelech Silberberg
Watch Now
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"Now on Jewish.TV: Not to Mix Two Simchahs: Contemporary Halachah and Kitzur Shulchan Aruch - Elimelech Silberberg" Jewish.TV - Chabad. for Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Not to Mix Two Simchahs
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Watch Now
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
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LIVE CTeen Concert at Times Square - 2016
Featuring "8th Day Band"
Airs Saturday, February 27 at 8:45pm ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
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"Why the Way You Dress Matters" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, Adar I 9, 5776 · February 18, 2016 - This Week's Features
Why the Way You Dress Matters
Do Clothes Make the Man?
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Thought for the Day
Watch (6:29) 
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Featuring "8th Day Band"
Airs Saturday, February 27 at 8:45pm ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------"Why the Way You Dress Matters" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, Adar I 9, 5776 · February 18, 2016 - This Week's Features
Why the Way You Dress Matters
Do Clothes Make the Man?
By Yacov Barber
Thought for the Day
Watch (6:29) The Two Worst Characteristics to Avoid at All CostsThe Kabbalah of Behavior
By Shifra Sharfstein
Watch (55:38) The TzitzThe Gold Band Worn by the High Priest
Aaron L. Raskin
Watch (18:41) Losing Yourself to Find YourselfA Taste of Text—Tetzaveh
By Chana Weisberg
Watch (20:14) Reflections on "Hayom Yom": Adar I 9
With Moshe Steiner
Watch (3:27) Scribal Impact on Textual TransmissionManuscript variations of works by Abraham Bar Ḥayya and Isaac Israeli
By Israel Sandman
Watch (49:18) Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Don't Like Every Jew, But Do Love Them
The Kabbalah of Behavior
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Airs Thursday, February 18 at 7pm ET
The Kabbalah of Behavior
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Talmud Gitin 69 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Friday, February 19 at 6am ET
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Airs Saturday, February 27 at 8:45pm ET
Featuring "8th Day Band"
Airs Saturday, February 27 at 8:45pm ET
---------------------
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