Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 6
‘Ohr’ Impacts the Fashioning of the ‘Keli’
By Yaakov Brawer
Watch
This webcast begins:
Sunday, February 14, 2016 at 10:30am ET
About this webcast:
The Maamar now expands the concept, alluded to briefly previously, that each Koach Hanefesh (Ohr) plays a major role in fashioning the developing Eiver (Keli), such that it acquires the capacity to ultimately enclothe that specific Koach (Ohr).
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Laws of Modesty, Part 10
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"Jewish jokes top list; Claims Conference investment may bring Oscar win" The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 12 February 2016 - Madoff, The Tragic Hero?
Friday, February 12, 2016
Staking A Claim On 'Son Of Saul'
JTA
Why the focus on the king?
By Zalman Dubinsky
Airs Tuesday, February 16 at 8pm ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Jewish jokes top list; Claims Conference investment may bring Oscar win" The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 12 February 2016 - Madoff, The Tragic Hero?
Friday, February 12, 2016
Staking A Claim On 'Son Of Saul'
JTA
National
National
Staking A Claim On ‘Son Of Saul’
JTA
Scene from “Son of Saul,” which was partially funded by the Claims Conference.Set amid a 1944 prisoner uprising at Auschwitz, “Son of Saul” stood out as a long shot when its producers first applied for funding from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The film’s director, Laszlo Nemes, had no experience with feature films; its lead actor hadn’t been on a film set in 15 years; and its script included long, silent and out-of-focus shots.
But the Claims Conference, which negotiates restitution for Nazi victims, ultimately decided to help bankroll the film. It’s a gamble that now seems prescient, as “Son of Saul” is favored to win best foreign language film at the Oscars on Feb. 28.
Worldwide ticket sales for the Golden Globe-winning film are north of $2 million, already exceeding the film’s slim $1.6 million budget.
“People all over the world are realizing we’re facing the last generation of Holocaust survivors, so we’re in a race against time to cling to the experiences of the survivors still amongst us,” Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference’s vice president, told JTA.
Since the 1993 release of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” which won the Oscar for best picture, representations of the Holocaust have emerged as an important genre in cinema in and beyond the U.S. market.
The Claims Conference, which since 2008 has devoted a small portion of its budget to funding educational Holocaust films, provided about $50,000 of the “Son of Saul” budget. But even that relatively small contribution was subject to “serious internal debate,” Schneider said.
“It was a risk that paid off,” he said.
The Claims Conference receives funding requests for about 50 films a year. One factor that helped clinch the deal with Nemes was the quality of a short Holocaust film, “With a Little Patience,” that he had made back in 2007. Another factor was the director’s meticulous attention to historical accuracy, as demonstrated by the “Son of Saul” script.
While fictional, the plot uses an accurate backdrop in telling the story of Saul Auslander, a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of Jews whom the Germans forced to work in the gas chambers. In the film, an unemotional Auslander is seen herding transport after transport of his brethren to their deaths before becoming unhinged at the sight of a Nazi doctor suffocating a boy of 14 who had somehow survived the poison. Oblivious to the rebellion being planned around him, Auslander abuses the access that his gruesome job affords him in an attempt to bury the teenager.
“Auslander’s story is fictional, the rest is accurate,” Schneider told JTA last week in Berlin, where the Claims Conference organized the film’s premiere in Germany. (The Sonderkommando at Auschwitz did stage a rebellion in October 1944. Separately, two teenagers were murdered after surviving the gas chambers.)
Though the Claims Conference provided less than 4 percent of the total production cost of “Son of Saul,” its contribution “came in the final stages of production when we were really lacking money,” “Son of Saul” producer Gabor Sipos said.
Since 2008, the Claims Conference has spent a total of $2.25 million, or an average of $282,000 a year, to fund educational Holocaust films. The organization’s total annual budget has ranged from $700 million to $870 million, with the vast majority going toward improving the quality of life for Holocaust survivors.
Of the dozens of films funded by the Claims Conference, “Son of Saul” is “by far the most successful in terms of return on investment,” Schneider said. It is the first film funded by the organization that has won a Golden Globe or been nominated for an Oscar. Among others that have received funding from the Claims Conference are the award-winning “Numbered” (2012) and “The Decent One” (2014).---------------------
Letters As A Lifeline
Sandee Brawarsky
National
Staking A Claim On ‘Son Of Saul’
JTA
Scene from “Son of Saul,” which was partially funded by the Claims Conference.Set amid a 1944 prisoner uprising at Auschwitz, “Son of Saul” stood out as a long shot when its producers first applied for funding from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The film’s director, Laszlo Nemes, had no experience with feature films; its lead actor hadn’t been on a film set in 15 years; and its script included long, silent and out-of-focus shots.
But the Claims Conference, which negotiates restitution for Nazi victims, ultimately decided to help bankroll the film. It’s a gamble that now seems prescient, as “Son of Saul” is favored to win best foreign language film at the Oscars on Feb. 28.
Worldwide ticket sales for the Golden Globe-winning film are north of $2 million, already exceeding the film’s slim $1.6 million budget.
“People all over the world are realizing we’re facing the last generation of Holocaust survivors, so we’re in a race against time to cling to the experiences of the survivors still amongst us,” Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference’s vice president, told JTA.
Since the 1993 release of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” which won the Oscar for best picture, representations of the Holocaust have emerged as an important genre in cinema in and beyond the U.S. market.
The Claims Conference, which since 2008 has devoted a small portion of its budget to funding educational Holocaust films, provided about $50,000 of the “Son of Saul” budget. But even that relatively small contribution was subject to “serious internal debate,” Schneider said.
“It was a risk that paid off,” he said.
The Claims Conference receives funding requests for about 50 films a year. One factor that helped clinch the deal with Nemes was the quality of a short Holocaust film, “With a Little Patience,” that he had made back in 2007. Another factor was the director’s meticulous attention to historical accuracy, as demonstrated by the “Son of Saul” script.
While fictional, the plot uses an accurate backdrop in telling the story of Saul Auslander, a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of Jews whom the Germans forced to work in the gas chambers. In the film, an unemotional Auslander is seen herding transport after transport of his brethren to their deaths before becoming unhinged at the sight of a Nazi doctor suffocating a boy of 14 who had somehow survived the poison. Oblivious to the rebellion being planned around him, Auslander abuses the access that his gruesome job affords him in an attempt to bury the teenager.
“Auslander’s story is fictional, the rest is accurate,” Schneider told JTA last week in Berlin, where the Claims Conference organized the film’s premiere in Germany. (The Sonderkommando at Auschwitz did stage a rebellion in October 1944. Separately, two teenagers were murdered after surviving the gas chambers.)
Though the Claims Conference provided less than 4 percent of the total production cost of “Son of Saul,” its contribution “came in the final stages of production when we were really lacking money,” “Son of Saul” producer Gabor Sipos said.
Since 2008, the Claims Conference has spent a total of $2.25 million, or an average of $282,000 a year, to fund educational Holocaust films. The organization’s total annual budget has ranged from $700 million to $870 million, with the vast majority going toward improving the quality of life for Holocaust survivors.
Of the dozens of films funded by the Claims Conference, “Son of Saul” is “by far the most successful in terms of return on investment,” Schneider said. It is the first film funded by the organization that has won a Golden Globe or been nominated for an Oscar. Among others that have received funding from the Claims Conference are the award-winning “Numbered” (2012) and “The Decent One” (2014).---------------------
Letters As A Lifeline
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
A book and an exhibit tell stories of family and identity, all in longhand.
Books
Letters As A Lifeline
A book and an exhibit tell stories of family and identity, all in longhand.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
A book and an exhibit tell stories of family and identity, all in longhand.
Books
Letters As A Lifeline
A book and an exhibit tell stories of family and identity, all in longhand.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Ian Buruma, turned thousands of letters written by his grandparents into a study of assimilated Jewish life in Germany & EnglandLetters are delicate inheritances, especially the ones that are addressed to someone else.
To read them is to eavesdrop; to share them is, at best, an opportunity to provide historical testimony, but, potentially, a betrayal of privacy.
Two new projects turn grandparents’ letters into art. Scholar and author Ian Buruma went through thousands of letters to write “Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War” (Penguin Press). Ruth Schreiber’s grandparents’ letters are in the archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and she worked with a set of copies to translate them into English, publish them and also shaped them into sculpture and paintings in mixed media.
When reread generations later, both sets of letters — with many written at the same time, during World War II — tell untold stories, and raise questions about Jewish identity, the idea of home and family bonds. Perhaps all are love letters.
Buruma’s maternal grandparents, Bernard and Winifred (Win) Schlesinger, saved everything, including all the letters they sent to each other from the time they met as teens, through their long separations in the World Wars, and through the rest of their lives. There were times during World War II when he was stationed in India that they wrote to each other every day, carefully numbering the letters, knowing that they would not be received by the other for a month or more. They’d write with the anticipation of a reply, keeping many lines of conversation going. These are letters full of the news of daily life, underlined with tenderness and a powerful connection between the writer and (intended) reader.
“The letters were a lifeline,” Buruma, whose previous books include “Year Zero,” “The China Lover” and “Occidentalism,” says in an interview. “We don’t have correspondence like this anymore. There’s a whole life in these letters.”
When he first went through the family archive kept in a barn at his uncle’s country home, he used the letters in research for a non-fiction book, “Anglomania.” He realized there was a larger story, perhaps the basis for a novel, but felt the letters were too interesting and rich to simply mine for information. Here, he creates a compelling narrative, balancing his own voice with theirs.
Theirs is a Jewish milieu not often described. His grandparents were assimilated German Jews born and living in England, upper class, educated, non-religious, very British, sometimes more British than the British. Three of Buruma’s maternal great-grandparents were immigrants to England, and one great-grandfather made a fortune in the stock market. And they made British culture their own. As the title implies, England was “Their Promised Land.” The book opens with a very British Christmas — his grandfather dressed in tweed and smoking a pipe, their large estate lavishly decorated, a glittery and large Christmas tree, sharp wit around the table and grand hospitality to lots of guests.
Loyal and grateful to England, Buruma’s grandparents wanted to shed any outsider or minority status. But they spoke often of Jews, whom they referred to as “45s” (he says that no one knows the origin of the term, that anyone who might know is no longer alive). They considered changing the Schlesinger name but didn’t and Bernard, the son of orthodox parents, understood that he missed certain job opportunities in the medical field for being Jewish. With a powerful connection to each other, his grandparents chose to stand apart from more recent Jewish immigrants.
But, in 1938, even before Kristallnacht, Bernard and Win stepped up and took in twelve young people brought over from Germany on the Kindertransport. They set them up in a nearby house, and had a rabbi attending to their needs. Whenever Buruma visited any of those still alive while doing research, he’d find a framed photo of his grandparents prominently displayed in their home.
The author, who grew up in The Hague, the son of a Dutch gentile father and British mother (Win and Bernard’s daughter Wendy), writes with much affection for his grandparents. As for his connection to Jewish tradition, Buruma, the Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, says, “I grew up with none. I can’t say that I miss it. I regret my ignorance. I don’t regret not having deep religious faith. I don’t have any yearnings. The ignorance is a pity.” He did grow up exposed to much talk about anti-Semitism and about the Holocaust, which had a great impact on him.
While the book focuses on Bernard and Win, there are some interesting cameos: their son who became the internationally known film director John Schlesinger, and philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, a cousin of Win’s, who fell in love with her. When visiting relatives back in Kassel, Germany, Win inadvertently disrupted the courtship of Rosenzweig and the woman who would eventually become his wife six years later. Soon after publishing his best-known book, “The Star of Redemption,” Rosenzweig developed Lou Gehrig’s disease and died in 1929.
Buruma’s uncle John Schlesinger grew up less interested in covering up his Jewishness than his parents, and, perhaps in reaction to them, wanted to assert it. Buruma says there is much of his uncle in the character of the gay doctor in his 1971 film, “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Dr. Daniel Hirsch is secular, gay, funny and very close with his family. The film includes a long bar mitzvah scene that Hirsch participates in as a way to “be part of the tradition, even if he cannot believe in it.” That scene is probably the closet that the filmmaker or Buruma, who got to play an extra in the scene, came to having a bar mitzvah.
Bernard continued to write letters throughout his life, including letters to Buruma. Even in his last days, he always thanked Win for being his wife. Late in their lives, she would accompany him to services at a Liberal (comparable to Reform) synagogue. He died in 1984, and she survived for another two years, still mentally sharp. They are both buried in Willesden, in Northwest London, in the United Synagogue Cemetery, now divided by a brick wall, with Orthodox Jews, including Bernard’s parents, on one side, and Bernard and Win along with their son John amid the Liberal Jews on the other side.
Ruth Schreiber’s grandparents made the wrenching decision to send two of their five children to England on a Kindertransport from Germany in late 1938. Another daughter was able to get to London a year later as a nurse in training.
Mina and Samuel Merel were poor, chasidic Jews, who lived in several villages in southern Germany before settling in Sassanfahrt. The only Jews in town, they walked to the next village for a minyan. Samuel, who was denied permission to work in the fields, worked mostly as a peddler.
Schreiber, a Jerusalem-based artist, received a copy of letters and postcards written by her grandparents between January 1939 and August 1942 to their three children in England, from a cousin. The letters — in German, with a mix of Yiddish, Hebrew and French — were rediscovered in the home of an aunt (one of the recipients) after her death. They are written with directness, nurturing and educating from afar, full of admonitions to remain religious and to behave well and with gratitude to their hosts and, as times got worse, with details and requests for help. These letters had to pass through a censor; Uncle is a code for Hitler. While the parents did not survive, all five children, including Ruth’s father, were able to reunite in 1945.
From copies of the letters, Schreiber has created masks, with 25 now on display at the Anne Frank Center. White letters are printed on black, and appear on different parts of the masks, which she cast from the faces of her son and daughter.
As Schreiber explains in an interview, making the masks seemed like a possible way “to connect with the letters in a physical, three-dimensional format. I was trying to turn them into real people. I was thinking of them speaking the letters.”
Continuing the retelling of her grandparents’ story, she also made screen prints using the letters, with four of them on display. “Brussels” includes a striking wall of buildings in the background, with piles of potatoes and onions — all that her family had to eat while they were there — up front. Copies of letters, along with photos of her grandparents are the middle ground, calling out to viewers, in shadow.
Schreiber’s grandparent kept their faith through all that they went through. She says that most members of their large extended family have remained traditionally committed to Judaism, although in different ways.
“Letters from My Grandparents” is on view at The Anne Frank Center, 44 Park Place, through April 15. Copies of Ruth Schreiber’s book “Letter from My Grandparents” are available.---------------------
---------------------
From Groucho Marx To Seinfeld, Jewish Jokes Dominate Top 100 List
Ben Sales
To read them is to eavesdrop; to share them is, at best, an opportunity to provide historical testimony, but, potentially, a betrayal of privacy.
Two new projects turn grandparents’ letters into art. Scholar and author Ian Buruma went through thousands of letters to write “Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War” (Penguin Press). Ruth Schreiber’s grandparents’ letters are in the archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and she worked with a set of copies to translate them into English, publish them and also shaped them into sculpture and paintings in mixed media.
When reread generations later, both sets of letters — with many written at the same time, during World War II — tell untold stories, and raise questions about Jewish identity, the idea of home and family bonds. Perhaps all are love letters.
Buruma’s maternal grandparents, Bernard and Winifred (Win) Schlesinger, saved everything, including all the letters they sent to each other from the time they met as teens, through their long separations in the World Wars, and through the rest of their lives. There were times during World War II when he was stationed in India that they wrote to each other every day, carefully numbering the letters, knowing that they would not be received by the other for a month or more. They’d write with the anticipation of a reply, keeping many lines of conversation going. These are letters full of the news of daily life, underlined with tenderness and a powerful connection between the writer and (intended) reader.
“The letters were a lifeline,” Buruma, whose previous books include “Year Zero,” “The China Lover” and “Occidentalism,” says in an interview. “We don’t have correspondence like this anymore. There’s a whole life in these letters.”
When he first went through the family archive kept in a barn at his uncle’s country home, he used the letters in research for a non-fiction book, “Anglomania.” He realized there was a larger story, perhaps the basis for a novel, but felt the letters were too interesting and rich to simply mine for information. Here, he creates a compelling narrative, balancing his own voice with theirs.
Theirs is a Jewish milieu not often described. His grandparents were assimilated German Jews born and living in England, upper class, educated, non-religious, very British, sometimes more British than the British. Three of Buruma’s maternal great-grandparents were immigrants to England, and one great-grandfather made a fortune in the stock market. And they made British culture their own. As the title implies, England was “Their Promised Land.” The book opens with a very British Christmas — his grandfather dressed in tweed and smoking a pipe, their large estate lavishly decorated, a glittery and large Christmas tree, sharp wit around the table and grand hospitality to lots of guests.
Loyal and grateful to England, Buruma’s grandparents wanted to shed any outsider or minority status. But they spoke often of Jews, whom they referred to as “45s” (he says that no one knows the origin of the term, that anyone who might know is no longer alive). They considered changing the Schlesinger name but didn’t and Bernard, the son of orthodox parents, understood that he missed certain job opportunities in the medical field for being Jewish. With a powerful connection to each other, his grandparents chose to stand apart from more recent Jewish immigrants.
But, in 1938, even before Kristallnacht, Bernard and Win stepped up and took in twelve young people brought over from Germany on the Kindertransport. They set them up in a nearby house, and had a rabbi attending to their needs. Whenever Buruma visited any of those still alive while doing research, he’d find a framed photo of his grandparents prominently displayed in their home.
The author, who grew up in The Hague, the son of a Dutch gentile father and British mother (Win and Bernard’s daughter Wendy), writes with much affection for his grandparents. As for his connection to Jewish tradition, Buruma, the Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, says, “I grew up with none. I can’t say that I miss it. I regret my ignorance. I don’t regret not having deep religious faith. I don’t have any yearnings. The ignorance is a pity.” He did grow up exposed to much talk about anti-Semitism and about the Holocaust, which had a great impact on him.
While the book focuses on Bernard and Win, there are some interesting cameos: their son who became the internationally known film director John Schlesinger, and philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, a cousin of Win’s, who fell in love with her. When visiting relatives back in Kassel, Germany, Win inadvertently disrupted the courtship of Rosenzweig and the woman who would eventually become his wife six years later. Soon after publishing his best-known book, “The Star of Redemption,” Rosenzweig developed Lou Gehrig’s disease and died in 1929.
Buruma’s uncle John Schlesinger grew up less interested in covering up his Jewishness than his parents, and, perhaps in reaction to them, wanted to assert it. Buruma says there is much of his uncle in the character of the gay doctor in his 1971 film, “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Dr. Daniel Hirsch is secular, gay, funny and very close with his family. The film includes a long bar mitzvah scene that Hirsch participates in as a way to “be part of the tradition, even if he cannot believe in it.” That scene is probably the closet that the filmmaker or Buruma, who got to play an extra in the scene, came to having a bar mitzvah.
Bernard continued to write letters throughout his life, including letters to Buruma. Even in his last days, he always thanked Win for being his wife. Late in their lives, she would accompany him to services at a Liberal (comparable to Reform) synagogue. He died in 1984, and she survived for another two years, still mentally sharp. They are both buried in Willesden, in Northwest London, in the United Synagogue Cemetery, now divided by a brick wall, with Orthodox Jews, including Bernard’s parents, on one side, and Bernard and Win along with their son John amid the Liberal Jews on the other side.
Ruth Schreiber’s grandparents made the wrenching decision to send two of their five children to England on a Kindertransport from Germany in late 1938. Another daughter was able to get to London a year later as a nurse in training.
Mina and Samuel Merel were poor, chasidic Jews, who lived in several villages in southern Germany before settling in Sassanfahrt. The only Jews in town, they walked to the next village for a minyan. Samuel, who was denied permission to work in the fields, worked mostly as a peddler.
Schreiber, a Jerusalem-based artist, received a copy of letters and postcards written by her grandparents between January 1939 and August 1942 to their three children in England, from a cousin. The letters — in German, with a mix of Yiddish, Hebrew and French — were rediscovered in the home of an aunt (one of the recipients) after her death. They are written with directness, nurturing and educating from afar, full of admonitions to remain religious and to behave well and with gratitude to their hosts and, as times got worse, with details and requests for help. These letters had to pass through a censor; Uncle is a code for Hitler. While the parents did not survive, all five children, including Ruth’s father, were able to reunite in 1945.
From copies of the letters, Schreiber has created masks, with 25 now on display at the Anne Frank Center. White letters are printed on black, and appear on different parts of the masks, which she cast from the faces of her son and daughter.
As Schreiber explains in an interview, making the masks seemed like a possible way “to connect with the letters in a physical, three-dimensional format. I was trying to turn them into real people. I was thinking of them speaking the letters.”
Continuing the retelling of her grandparents’ story, she also made screen prints using the letters, with four of them on display. “Brussels” includes a striking wall of buildings in the background, with piles of potatoes and onions — all that her family had to eat while they were there — up front. Copies of letters, along with photos of her grandparents are the middle ground, calling out to viewers, in shadow.
Schreiber’s grandparent kept their faith through all that they went through. She says that most members of their large extended family have remained traditionally committed to Judaism, although in different ways.
“Letters from My Grandparents” is on view at The Anne Frank Center, 44 Park Place, through April 15. Copies of Ruth Schreiber’s book “Letter from My Grandparents” are available.---------------------
---------------------
From Groucho Marx To Seinfeld, Jewish Jokes Dominate Top 100 List
Ben Sales
JTA
Television
From Groucho Marx To Seinfeld, Jewish Jokes Dominate Top 100 List
Ben Sales
JTA
Jerry Seinfeld speaking onstage at the 2015 Hulu Upfront Presentation at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, April 29. JTANew York Magazine’s culture section, Vulture, this week published a mega-listicle, “The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy.” With the help of comedians and historians of comedy, the magazine’s editors compiled the most important jokes ever uttered — from Charlie Chaplin making dinner rolls dance to Louis C.K. dissing his daughter.
And Jews dominate the list.
Just 2 percent of the U.S. population, the chosen people had a hand in no fewer than 50 of Vulture’s 100 jokes, by JTA’s count. Beyond the numbers, Jews have remained a consistent comedic force, showing up in every decade: Vaudeville in the teens and 20s, the Marx Brothers in the 30s, the Borscht Belt in the 40s and so on — all the way up to Jerry Seinfeld, John Stewart, Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer. (Though Adam Sandler, who ruled the ’90s, somehow didn’t make the list.)
Most of the jokes are Jewish by virtue of who wrote or performed them. But some explicitly reference Judaism and traits associated with it — from Yiddish accents to circumcision.
Here’s a sampling of the most-Jewish moments on Vulture’s list:
Cohen on the Telephone (1913)
From Groucho Marx To Seinfeld, Jewish Jokes Dominate Top 100 List
Ben Sales
JTA
Jerry Seinfeld speaking onstage at the 2015 Hulu Upfront Presentation at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, April 29. JTANew York Magazine’s culture section, Vulture, this week published a mega-listicle, “The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy.” With the help of comedians and historians of comedy, the magazine’s editors compiled the most important jokes ever uttered — from Charlie Chaplin making dinner rolls dance to Louis C.K. dissing his daughter.
And Jews dominate the list.
Just 2 percent of the U.S. population, the chosen people had a hand in no fewer than 50 of Vulture’s 100 jokes, by JTA’s count. Beyond the numbers, Jews have remained a consistent comedic force, showing up in every decade: Vaudeville in the teens and 20s, the Marx Brothers in the 30s, the Borscht Belt in the 40s and so on — all the way up to Jerry Seinfeld, John Stewart, Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer. (Though Adam Sandler, who ruled the ’90s, somehow didn’t make the list.)
Most of the jokes are Jewish by virtue of who wrote or performed them. But some explicitly reference Judaism and traits associated with it — from Yiddish accents to circumcision.
Here’s a sampling of the most-Jewish moments on Vulture’s list:
Cohen on the Telephone (1913)
Duck Soup (1933)
Johnny Carson discovers a mohel (1965)
Springtime for Hitler (1968)
Annie Hall (1977)
Seinfeld talks “Seinfeld” (1992)
In a meta moment, George pitches Jerry on a sitcom for NBC modeled on “Seinfeld”: A show about nothing that manages, somehow, to be about everything.
Sarah Silverman and the Jewish doctor (2005)
The risque comedienne pushes the boundaries when she recalls an experience that was “so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.”---------------------
Sarah Silverman and the Jewish doctor (2005)
The risque comedienne pushes the boundaries when she recalls an experience that was “so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.”---------------------
SPONSORED CONTENT
Dan Hotels offers special packages at Dan Tel Aviv and the Dan Panorama Tel Aviv for this coming Passover holiday.
Please contact your travel agent
or visit our website: www.danhotel.com
---------------------
Some Morsels Of Insight Into Jewish Life, Culture
Steve Lipman
Dan Hotels offers special packages at Dan Tel Aviv and the Dan Panorama Tel Aviv for this coming Passover holiday.
Please contact your travel agent
or visit our website: www.danhotel.com
---------------------
Some Morsels Of Insight Into Jewish Life, Culture
Steve Lipman
Food & Wine
A Q&A with 'Rhapsody in Schmaltz' author Michael Wex.
Some Morsels Of Insight Into Jewish Life, Culture
A Q&A with ‘Rhapsody in Schmaltz’ author Michael Wex.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Over the last decade, author-translator Michael Wex has become the public voice of Yiddish culture — especially for the non-Yiddish-speaking public.
A native of Canada’s Alberta province and a longtime native of Toronto, he has written a series of best-selling non-fiction books (in addition to a few novels; he also does song-writing and lecturing) that explain the Jewish language and Jewish way of life in a knowing, usually humorous tone. The non-fiction list includes three books: “Born to Kvetch,” “Just Say Nu” and “How to Be a Mentsh.”
Wex’s newest book is about food. “Rhapsody in Schmaltz” (St. Martin’s Press) looks at Jewish beliefs and behavior through a gastronomic lens, covering such subjects as the kosher laws and various halachic practices, Jewish history and the way Jews are represented on TV and in the movies.
Wex took some time away from his busy schedule of writing about — and thinking about — food the other day to speak with The Jewish Week.
If you look under “Jewish food” on amazon.com, 6,134 books come up. Why do we need 6,135?
A: What happens if you look under “Christian food” — do you get anything at all? [A search on amazon.com for “Christian food” turns up 6,859 results.] Jewish food is like Jewish everything else — whoever happens to be speaking is by their own definition the world’s greatest expert.
There seems to be a renaissance of interest in Jewish food going on, witness the popular “Deli Man” documentary, Ted Merwin’s Jewish Book Award-winning “Pastrami on Rye,” about Jewish delis, and David Sax’s “Save the Deli.” Why this hunger for learning about Jewish food?
The recent interest in Jewish food reflects 1) the fear that this kind of food is going to be lost; 2) the Jewish version of the artisanal comfort food trend that we see in gentile circles; 3) a way of asserting on the part of the people who are in the most part not religious. This is a way of saying, “Yes, I am a Jew and I am proud to be a Jew.”
We know what Jewish food is. What’s “Yiddish food?” You eat it from right to left?
I use “Yiddish food” as a stand-in [for] Ashkenazic food — not everyone knows what Ashkenazic food is. This is the food that people who speak Yiddish eat. Yiddish food is a division of Jewish food.
Culturally speaking, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Or in this case, the bagel or the schmear? In other words, did Jewish society influence Jewish cuisine, or was it the other way around?
It’s simultaneous. The chicken appears with an egg in its hand, or whatever a chicken has to hold an egg with. The first act the Jewish people did as a people was to make a meal [on the eve of the exodus from Egypt.]
About the book’s title … Jews have argued if the Magen David or the menorah more accurately symbolizes Jewish history, our struggles and triumphs and accommodations. You seem to assign primacy to schmaltz. You would replace the menorah outside the Knesset with a giant jar of rendered poultry fat?
The same dishes existed among the gentiles among whom the Jews lived [in Europe] and they didn’t taste the same. The difference is what you fry stuff in, especially things that are fleishig or pareve. One of the things that made Jewish dishes Jewish was the use of schmaltz rather than butter or lard. Schmaltz lends everything a distinctive taste. Schmaltz marks the real difference between Jewish and non-Jewish cooking. Lard is invisible; it’s not supposed to have a taste. Schmaltz is anything but neutral.
You allude to Jews who keep kosher at home, eat treif on the road. How do you explain this behavior, and is it a disappearing phenomenon?
I don’t know about now. When I was a kid, I knew lots of kids whose family kept kosher at home, then would go to a [non-kosher] restaurant and eat. There’s a residual attachment to the dietary laws. You’re still thinking in a particularistic Jewish way.
Lethbridge, your hometown, is 2,054 miles from Toronto and a decent corned beef sandwich. The folks in Lethbridge know more from Boychuks — Zach, a recent player on the Hurricanes junior hockey team — than from boychiks. In southern Alberta, where did you learn to be a maven on Jewish food?
I didn’t learn it in Lethbridge, where the kosher food was shipped down. My mother’s family lived in Toronto — we used to visit them once a year; there was all this [Jewish] stuff, bagels and the like. Subsequently, I moved to Calgary, where there was a large Jewish community, a kosher butcher. I came to Toronto when I was in high school.
In a biblical context, you write that the first action God gave to the on-the-move Children of Israel was instructions “to make dinner,” the first seder — He provided the menu, ingredients, side dishes, dining time, etc. So God is just a Divine maître d’?
Yes and no.
He’s giving them something to do, a task from which they will derive a tangible benefit. It’s not terribly complicated and it’s all greatly symbolic. One of the signs of freedom is that they’re not eating like Egyptians anymore.
Is it a coincidence that the most popular, most attended, most observed Jewish activity centers around a meal? So the secret to Jewish continuity is horseradish and dried crackers?
It’s no coincidence. That [the seder] is the meal that made us Jews. That’s the meal for which God was the maître d’. That’s why we are what we are.
Traditional — in the case of your book, Ashkenazic — food has its roots in Eastern Europe, from a time and place of oppression, “redolent of an elsewhere that nobody missed.” Why are we nostalgic, judging by our gastronomic choices, for an era that holds few fond memories?
The whole nostalgia thing is some sort of bizarre survivor’s guilt on the part of people who weren’t there. A lot of people came here before World War II, the great wave of Jewish immigration; those guys had no nostalgia. They didn’t have very much good to sat about the people among whom they lived. Then these places were wiped out … [the places you never wanted to hear about has been turned into a tombstone for everything you held dear. People felt guilty.
The food was the only thing that persisted. The language goes, the religion goes — surprisingly quickly. The food was a safe way of declaring your identity, of doing something Jewish.
Your book implies that the deli has played a crucial role as acculturation agent and equalizer, among Jews, and between Jews and the wider society — like the public school system in this country and the army in Israel. The Jewish waiter ranks with teachers and drill sergeants?
I don’t know if I’d give him that much power.
Delis as hangouts were an important thing. The deli replaced the synagogue [as a social center]. They served as a secular beit midrash.
What’s your favorite Jewish dish? Do you do your own cooking, or are you a deli man?
A bit of both.
My favorite: kugels. All kind of kugels.
---------------------
If Solomon Were A Candidate...
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
A Q&A with 'Rhapsody in Schmaltz' author Michael Wex.
Some Morsels Of Insight Into Jewish Life, Culture
A Q&A with ‘Rhapsody in Schmaltz’ author Michael Wex.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Over the last decade, author-translator Michael Wex has become the public voice of Yiddish culture — especially for the non-Yiddish-speaking public.
A native of Canada’s Alberta province and a longtime native of Toronto, he has written a series of best-selling non-fiction books (in addition to a few novels; he also does song-writing and lecturing) that explain the Jewish language and Jewish way of life in a knowing, usually humorous tone. The non-fiction list includes three books: “Born to Kvetch,” “Just Say Nu” and “How to Be a Mentsh.”
Wex’s newest book is about food. “Rhapsody in Schmaltz” (St. Martin’s Press) looks at Jewish beliefs and behavior through a gastronomic lens, covering such subjects as the kosher laws and various halachic practices, Jewish history and the way Jews are represented on TV and in the movies.
Wex took some time away from his busy schedule of writing about — and thinking about — food the other day to speak with The Jewish Week.
If you look under “Jewish food” on amazon.com, 6,134 books come up. Why do we need 6,135?
A: What happens if you look under “Christian food” — do you get anything at all? [A search on amazon.com for “Christian food” turns up 6,859 results.] Jewish food is like Jewish everything else — whoever happens to be speaking is by their own definition the world’s greatest expert.
There seems to be a renaissance of interest in Jewish food going on, witness the popular “Deli Man” documentary, Ted Merwin’s Jewish Book Award-winning “Pastrami on Rye,” about Jewish delis, and David Sax’s “Save the Deli.” Why this hunger for learning about Jewish food?
The recent interest in Jewish food reflects 1) the fear that this kind of food is going to be lost; 2) the Jewish version of the artisanal comfort food trend that we see in gentile circles; 3) a way of asserting on the part of the people who are in the most part not religious. This is a way of saying, “Yes, I am a Jew and I am proud to be a Jew.”
We know what Jewish food is. What’s “Yiddish food?” You eat it from right to left?
I use “Yiddish food” as a stand-in [for] Ashkenazic food — not everyone knows what Ashkenazic food is. This is the food that people who speak Yiddish eat. Yiddish food is a division of Jewish food.
Culturally speaking, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Or in this case, the bagel or the schmear? In other words, did Jewish society influence Jewish cuisine, or was it the other way around?
It’s simultaneous. The chicken appears with an egg in its hand, or whatever a chicken has to hold an egg with. The first act the Jewish people did as a people was to make a meal [on the eve of the exodus from Egypt.]
About the book’s title … Jews have argued if the Magen David or the menorah more accurately symbolizes Jewish history, our struggles and triumphs and accommodations. You seem to assign primacy to schmaltz. You would replace the menorah outside the Knesset with a giant jar of rendered poultry fat?
The same dishes existed among the gentiles among whom the Jews lived [in Europe] and they didn’t taste the same. The difference is what you fry stuff in, especially things that are fleishig or pareve. One of the things that made Jewish dishes Jewish was the use of schmaltz rather than butter or lard. Schmaltz lends everything a distinctive taste. Schmaltz marks the real difference between Jewish and non-Jewish cooking. Lard is invisible; it’s not supposed to have a taste. Schmaltz is anything but neutral.
You allude to Jews who keep kosher at home, eat treif on the road. How do you explain this behavior, and is it a disappearing phenomenon?
I don’t know about now. When I was a kid, I knew lots of kids whose family kept kosher at home, then would go to a [non-kosher] restaurant and eat. There’s a residual attachment to the dietary laws. You’re still thinking in a particularistic Jewish way.
Lethbridge, your hometown, is 2,054 miles from Toronto and a decent corned beef sandwich. The folks in Lethbridge know more from Boychuks — Zach, a recent player on the Hurricanes junior hockey team — than from boychiks. In southern Alberta, where did you learn to be a maven on Jewish food?
I didn’t learn it in Lethbridge, where the kosher food was shipped down. My mother’s family lived in Toronto — we used to visit them once a year; there was all this [Jewish] stuff, bagels and the like. Subsequently, I moved to Calgary, where there was a large Jewish community, a kosher butcher. I came to Toronto when I was in high school.
In a biblical context, you write that the first action God gave to the on-the-move Children of Israel was instructions “to make dinner,” the first seder — He provided the menu, ingredients, side dishes, dining time, etc. So God is just a Divine maître d’?
Yes and no.
He’s giving them something to do, a task from which they will derive a tangible benefit. It’s not terribly complicated and it’s all greatly symbolic. One of the signs of freedom is that they’re not eating like Egyptians anymore.
Is it a coincidence that the most popular, most attended, most observed Jewish activity centers around a meal? So the secret to Jewish continuity is horseradish and dried crackers?
It’s no coincidence. That [the seder] is the meal that made us Jews. That’s the meal for which God was the maître d’. That’s why we are what we are.
Traditional — in the case of your book, Ashkenazic — food has its roots in Eastern Europe, from a time and place of oppression, “redolent of an elsewhere that nobody missed.” Why are we nostalgic, judging by our gastronomic choices, for an era that holds few fond memories?
The whole nostalgia thing is some sort of bizarre survivor’s guilt on the part of people who weren’t there. A lot of people came here before World War II, the great wave of Jewish immigration; those guys had no nostalgia. They didn’t have very much good to sat about the people among whom they lived. Then these places were wiped out … [the places you never wanted to hear about has been turned into a tombstone for everything you held dear. People felt guilty.
The food was the only thing that persisted. The language goes, the religion goes — surprisingly quickly. The food was a safe way of declaring your identity, of doing something Jewish.
Your book implies that the deli has played a crucial role as acculturation agent and equalizer, among Jews, and between Jews and the wider society — like the public school system in this country and the army in Israel. The Jewish waiter ranks with teachers and drill sergeants?
I don’t know if I’d give him that much power.
Delis as hangouts were an important thing. The deli replaced the synagogue [as a social center]. They served as a secular beit midrash.
What’s your favorite Jewish dish? Do you do your own cooking, or are you a deli man?
A bit of both.
My favorite: kugels. All kind of kugels.
---------------------
If Solomon Were A Candidate...
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
A Rabbi's World
A Rabbi's World
If Solomon Were A Candidate…
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Donald Trump, Left, Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik, center, Bernie Sanders.Once upon a time, long before a career in the rabbinate was even a remote thought, I was a political science major in college. Politics and the political process fascinated me as far back as I can remember, and they still do. Although we all now know that the “Camelot” image of the Kennedy years was carefully constructed to hide its very real human flaws, I grew up quite entranced by its magic, believing that a life in politics was a noble calling… at least until Watergate. But the fascination remains…
For political junkies, even rabbinic ones, the current season of presidential primaries has been a godsend (no pun intended). Nothing so far has gone according to conventional wisdom, and the establishments of both major political parties are struggling to come to terms with unsettling insurgencies from unlikely quarters. The surprisingly robust candidacies of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have left party elders scrambling to figure out how to avoid what they view as an impending electoral disaster, and the more “conventional” candidates desperately trying to figure out what’s going on, and when the world as they know it changed.
All these years later, I am watching all this play out through a rabbinic lens, and it doesn’t look quite as confusing to me. What comes to mind, repeatedly, is a verse from the Book of Proverbs (29:14), attributed by tradition to a middle-aged King Solomon. B’ein chazon, yiparah am. “Without vision, a people come apart.” Or, as the late Governor Mario Cuomo translated that Solomonic wisdom into classic contemporary political insight in an interview in The New Republic in 1985, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
It’s pretty clear to me (and by now, I would think, to a whole lot of candidates) that trying to make any headway in the current political climate by “campaigning in prose,” without some kind of compelling vision for a way out of what is deeply frustrating the American electorate, is a largely futile exercise. And that’s exactly what we’re witnessing.
Think about it. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, albeit it in radically different ways, are successfully playing to the deep-seated resentments of the American electorate, disgusted with politics as usual, by saying that they have a way to transcend the current unhappy state of affairs and reach a better place. They’re providing, loosely defined, a vision.
Trump’s vision is “making America great again,” by building a wall on the Mexican border to stem illegal immigration, barring Muslim immigration, upgrading the American military, and bombing the daylights out of ISIS. He’s got it all figured out, and all you have to do to feel better is buy into his vision. He’s short on details– extraordinarily short– but long on visionary pronouncements, and he shows no patience whatsoever for inconvenient truths. And to the point– he won overwhelmingly in New Hampshire by providing an alternative (admittedly a bizarre one) to the status quo of American politics.
Bernie Sanders, preaching what he calls “Democratic socialism,” is promising a dispirited middle class that income inequality is at the root of all that is wrong with their lives, and that he will make their lives much better by waging war on Wall Street and its “one per centers.” And he won overwhelmingly in New Hampshire, against an estimable opponent, by winning over unprecedented numbers of voters, particularly millenials, to his vision.
I don’t mean to equate Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders by making these observations. Actually, I don’t agree with either of them, though it is far easier for me, after the debacle of 2008, to appreciate what Bernie Sanders is trying to say. There’s plenty to be unhappy with in the culture of big money that dominates American politics, and he is capable of campaigning in poetry when he puts his mind to it. I just don’t love his poems. I’m not a socialist, and America is not a socialist country. But Donald Trump strikes me as a megalomaniacal opportunist playing a role in his own reality show. He’d say anything to anyone, at any time, to gain the nomination and win the prize. He is campaigning in neither poetry nor prose. It is more like protracted, random rants. But he, too, is articulating a vision, albeit a bizarre one. And he just won an important primary.
B’ein chazon, yiparah am. “Without vision, a people come apart.” Solomon’s insight from thousands of years ago still resonates with meaning
today. What we are witnessing in the current political campaign, writ large, is the detritus of years of perceived paralysis in our political system, devoid of vision, with the resultant impatience of the electorate. The emphasis on competence and experience that has fueled past political campaigns seems almost irrelevant right now, replaced by those who would purport to have an idea of how to get to a better future.
I guess the good news is that people want very much to be hopeful that the future will be better. They long to be inspired. The bad news is that there are some very strange ideas floating around of how to get there.
We need some better poets…
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik is the spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens. ---------------------
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Rabbi David Wolpe's Musings >
Musings
God Is Not Your Business Partner
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David WolpeThe first chapter in the Bible in which God’s name does not appear is the 23rd chapter of Genesis. The chapter recounts the deal that Abraham strikes with Ephron to buy Me’arat ha-Machpela, the land on which Sarah and Abraham and their descendants will be buried.
This is the first parcel of land that a Jew purchases in Israel. Perhaps the Torah is offering a subtle lesson. Why is God’s name not mentioned? When it comes to commerce, land and politics, people invoke God, usually to justify whatever position they would have taken anyway, but the Torah is more honest. This is a secular transaction on sacred land. God is not your business partner.
There is both beauty and poignancy in a burial ground being the first holding of a Jew in Israel. It emphasizes care, planning for the future and also presages some of the tragic fate of the Jewish people in Israel. We should always be ethical but not everything we do is godly. There is a division bein kodesh l’chol, between sacred and everyday activities. When we mix them, it is to the detriment of both faith and the secular world.
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). ---------------------
Talpiot: The IDF's Best And Brightest >
New York
Talpiot: The IDF’s Best And Brightest
New book examines ‘Israel’s Edge.’
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Jonathan MarkAt an Iowa town hall last month, Hillary Clinton advertised her Middle Eastern expertise by reminding voters how, as secretary of state, she was able to convince Israel not to attack Gaza in 2012. In Israel, however, others with longer memories were reminded of the time when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised Israel not to attack Egypt in 1973, and Israeli intelligence concurred, there was no need to attack.
Two days after Yom Kippur, 1973, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, surveying Israel’s collapsing armies on every front, uttered his famous Jeremiad: “The Third Temple is falling.”
Of course, the Third Temple (code for the modern State of Israel) still stands, but the near-death experience still reverberates in the Israeli imagination. A new book, “Israel’s Edge: Talpiot, The IDF’s Most Elite Unit” (Gefen Publishing House), by Jason Gewirtz, examines the 1974 post-war origins and development of Talpiot, the so-called Mensa of Israeli military intelligence and innovation.
In recent years, Talpiot graduates were said to have had input in the 2007 sabotage of Syria’s radar defense, allowing Israeli jets to destroy a Syrian nuclear reactor; in the Iron Dome system, so critical to Israel’s missile defense in the 2014 Gaza war; and in Stuxnet, the computer virus that infected and disrupted Iran’s nuclear program, temporarily giving outsiders control of Iran’s centrifuges.
Gewirtz, an executive producer at CNBC, the business cable network, tells us over the phone that none of these programs were the singular work of Talpiot, secrecy being the better part of valor, but all of these spectacular enterprises are discussed in his book that “I did voluntarily submit to the censorship unit at the IDF. And the Ministry of Defense read the book, to make sure that they were okay with everything.”
Gewirtz, 43, from Rockville, Md., now living in northern New Jersey, had once worked in Israel’s Civil Guard, a police auxiliary, and calls himself “a hard-core Zionist. Like everyplace else, Israel has problems, but I love Israel very much, it’s an amazing place. I go to bed thinking of Israel, and I wake up thinking of Israel.” He is donating any profits from the book to the Friends of the IDF fund for wounded veterans because “I didn’t want them to think I was profiting from their story.”
Gewirtz was in Israel for NBC and CNBC in 2006, when he first saw an article about a Talpiot veteran, “there’s now probably over 1,000,” Talpiot graduates, says Gewirtz. At first, they admitted 15 or 18 a year; now they admit around 40, and around a third drop out of the grueling nine-year military commitment that includes three years of intensive academic study at Hebrew University.
Two Israeli professors of the sciences, Shaul Yatziv and Felix Dothan, conceived of Talpiot in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. In the Song of Songs, Talpiot, literally meaning strongholds, or turrets, is a metaphor for leadership. Yatziv and Dothan wrote in their initial proposal that Israel must develop “totally innovative weapons that do not exist among the nations ... even in the armies of the superpowers.” Since they believed that “creativity reaches its peak” in one’s 20s, they were looking for young applicants in the “top 5 percent when it comes to intelligence, creative ability, the ability to focus ... [with] stable and pleasant personalities.” The Talpiot cadets would undergo basic training with the paratroopers or other elite units, and earn college degrees in advanced physics, aeronautics, and later computer science, “disciplines needed for engineers working on advanced weapons systems.” Also in the curriculum was Jewish thought and Arabic studies.
At first, many in the IDF brass were skeptical. Part of the IDF’s code and charm is that it is “the great democratizer,” says Gewirtz, “a people’s army where the rich would meet the poor, immigrants would meet multi-generational Israelis,” but Talpiot is “an elite unit,” so they are treated as soldiers first and foremost. At Hebrew University, the program is run by the military, with students wearing Air Force uniforms in class. (They become officers upon graduation).
Most intriguing is the interview for would-be entrants. Talpiot wants to know how someone thinks, says Gewirtz. “You go into a blank room somewhere, seated with military officers and professors, and they ask you a gamut of questions, questions that you’re not even supposed to know the answers to. They don’t want answers, so much as wanting to gauge your approach.” The young men and women are asked about anything from microwaves to Janis Joplin to calculating – on one foot – the number of gas stations in Israel.
After three years in university, the graduates, says Gewirtz, “are put into a draft, so to speak, where the navy, air force, Mossad, ground forces, defense contractors, among others, say ‘I need a guy who can do …’ They may go into the MAFAT,” Israel’s agency (now led by a Talpiot veteran) for the development of weapons and high-tech infrastructure, or into Unit 8200, the technological-intelligence unit that also engages in some undercover activities such as the Stuxnet temporary sabotage of Iranian nuclear facilities.
Others work on projects such as Trophy, a tank-defense system, and unmanned ground vehicles, which Gewirtz likens to drones. “The ground vehicle can go into a heavily populated area, take fire, determine through the use of cameras where the fire is coming from” so troops can then enter, firing at the exact targets, lessening the uncertainty of urban warfare.
Gewirtz wrote that Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, who once headed MAFAT, explained that Talpiot is trying to teach a different way of thinking. Before the Yom Kippur War, says the general, “the intelligence community looked primarily for evidence to support their conjecture that the Syrian and Egyptian armies were merely carrying out exercise maneuvers – which was precisely what the Arab military wanted them to think.” Nevertheless, “there were pieces of information that refuted this conjecture.” For example, a few days before the war, the families of Soviet advisors in Egypt and Syria flew back to Moscow. “You don’t do this if the army is merely carrying out an exercise. But the chief of Israeli intelligence said, ‘OK, I have so much information which supports and corroborates the exercise conjecture… therefore I think the most probable one is the exercise conjecture.’”
Ben-Israel says, “My method is not to look for supporting evidence. I look for refuting evidence.”
If intelligence explored the refuting evidence, says the general, “they would have followed up to see [if] ... the Arab armies had carried out the exercises they’d supposedly been assigned. They would have immediately found out that neither Egypt nor Syria ever actually completed the exercises. It was all part of a misinformation campaign. The Egyptians would send telegrams saying this unit should do that exercise, this unit should do that, knowing we’d intercept their communications. But we never checked to see that the armies were, in fact, ignoring the telegrams. That was a fatal mistake … Same facts, different ways of looking at them.”
So how would Talpiot have prevented the Yom Kippur War? They had intelligence then, too, but it was dismissed. Says Gewirtz, “What Talpiot would do is bring the smartest people together in room, collaborating. Prior to the Yom Kippur War, I’m not sure you had the smartest people in one dedicated place.”
Many of the “smartest” Talpiot graduates, however, have taken their genius and expertise into high-tech private sector, often in Silicon Valley, something Gewirtz thinks is terrific but not everyone agrees. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Three decades after Talpiot was founded to modernize the Israeli army, the program has created an unforeseen byproduct — a legion of entrepreneurs that has helped turn Israel into a technology juggernaut,” leading critics to wonder “whether government resources should go toward minting tech millionaires. In its goal of creating a new generation of military leaders ... the program has fallen short.”
In the past decade, high-tech Israel was, in fact, not quite ready for 10,000 low-tech Hamas rockets, or the miles of tunnels burrowing from Gaza into Israel. Low-tech Hamas was able to capture Gilad Shalit, who was surrounded at his kidnapping by high-tech Israeli tanks and equipment.
Nevertheless, right behind the front lines are the best and the brightest of Talpiot. “These are the guys,” says Gewirtz, “who will prevent Israel from falling. Israel will not fall in our lifetime.”
jonathan@jewishweek.org---------------------
Madoff, The Tragic Hero? >
Culture View
Madoff, The Tragic Hero?George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
George Robinson
Something strange happened to me. I went to sleep one evening and woke up in a parallel universe in which Bernard Madoff was considered a tragic hero.
At least that would seem to be the message conveyed by “Madoff,” the ABC miniseries that aired last week. Although I adore Blythe Danner and have always admired Richard Dreyfuss, who played the Madoffs, I skipped the four-hour broadcast. A new semester of teaching and various Jewish Week responsibilities made those four hours too valuable to be spent rehashing the exploits of someone who did a brutal disservice to the Jewish communal world.
But reading a wide range of the reviews, I get the impression that in their desire to humanize Madoff the filmmakers (screenwriter Ben Robbins and director Raymond De Felitta) made him into something he wasn’t. As a Smithsonian writer interviewing Dreyfuss puts it, Madoff became “Shakespearean.” Amber Dowling, reviewing the drama for The Wrap, a useful entertainment news website, describes the show as “a surprisingly humane narrative.”
The most devastating criticism comes from The New York Times, via TV critic Mike Hale. “Bernie didn’t fail us. We failed Bernie. That’s the message, perhaps unintentional, of the ... mini-series. Mr. Madoff was just a poor boy from Queens with a dream.”
Do not misunderstand me. Good drama should have moral complexity, and that means that even the worst characters should get an opportunity to make their case. Casting Dreyfuss almost guarantees that Madoff will get a fair shake. He’s an appealing actor with a whimsical streak that has usually transformed him from a boychik-in-the-hood into something more interesting.
What troubles me is that part of the project’s appeal seems to have been the image of Madoff as some kind of Robin Hood who only fleeced the rich. As any New York Mets fan can tell you, Madoff certainly had his share of platinum-card-bearing suckers. And Dreyfuss, in the Smithsonian interview seems to think that the roots of Madoff’s scam lay in the altruism that led to his once covering clients’ losses out of his own pocket after a market downturn.
I, however, prefer to think about the elderly mother of a friend and colleague, whose savings from her late husband’s pension were completely obliterated by Madoff. She was one of thousands of not-so-wealthy victims of his peculations.
And, as I said before, a disturbingly large number of his institutional targets were important Jewish nonprofits. In several off-the-record conversations, I’ve received confirmation that the after-effects of the Madoff swindle are being felt in those organizations even now, almost eight years after his crimes came to light. I’ve seen programs curtailed and jobs swept away. What I haven’t seen, for the most part, is a discussion of why he targeted these institutions and, in doing so, further damaged the lives of people who didn’t have the resources to fight back in the courts.
Contrary to conservative theories of “trickle-down economics,” it isn’t prosperity that spreads like a soothing balm. As the Madoff affair proves yet again, what trickles down most effectively is misery. Massive losses by Jewish nonprofits translate into similarly devastating losses in advertising revenue for Jewish media outlets, fewer sources of funding for Jewish museums, theater groups, film programs, writers, artists and so on. Combined with the 2008 global economic crash, Madoff stole from a lot more people than just his wealthiest marks.
In a perverse way, the whole thing reminds me of a different kind of Jewish outlaw, Samuel “Red” Levine, who was a valued employee of Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Luciano called him “the best driver and hit man I had.” As recounted in Robert A. Rockaway’s entertaining history of Jewish gangsters, “But He Was Good to His Mother,” Levine was an Orthodox Jew who “tried not to kill anyone on the Sabbath.” Of course, given his line of work, as Rockaway concludes, “If he had no choice and had to make a hit on that particular day, he would put a [tallit] over his shoulders and pray before doing anything.”
I somehow doubt that Bernie Madoff was as pious.
George Robinson’s column appears the second week of the month.---------------------
50 Years On, Sanders Champions Kibbutz Values >
The JW Q&A
50 Years On, Sanders Champions Kibbutz Values
JTA
Kibbutz Shaar Haamakim as it was in 1963, when Bernie Sanders volunteered there for several months. Ben Sales
Shaar Haamakim, Israel — Every morning, Bernie Sanders would wake up at 4:10 a.m. to pick apples and pears.
Leaving the cabin he shared with a few other American college-student volunteers, Sanders would have a quick snack of bread before heading out to the orchard. After 2 1/2 hours of work, he and the other 20 or so volunteers would sit down for a traditional 30-minute Israeli breakfast of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, butter and hard-boiled eggs.
Then it was back to work. Probably.
It’s hard to know his routine for sure, but that Spartan schedule was standard fare for American and French volunteers at Shaar Haamakim, the Israeli kibbutz where the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate appears to have spent several months in 1963. The name of his kibbutz had remained a mystery until last week, when Haaretz unearthed a 1990 interview with Sanders identifying the agricultural commune.
No one currently at Shaar Haamakim remembers Sanders, who has preached his doctrine of democratic socialism on the campaign trail. No records with his name survive.
But Albert Ely, 79, who managed the kibbutz volunteer program in the early 1960s, remembered someone named Bernard. During an interview at his home on the former kibbutz, Ely told JTA that he didn’t remember Sanders specifically, but if he was there, he was probably picking fruit before the sun rose.
Founded in 1935 by immigrants from Romania and Yugoslavia, Shaar Haamakim sits at the nexus of two valleys near the northern port city of Haifa. During Sanders’ time, its members grew apples, peaches and pears, and were opening a factory for solar water heaters. The kibbutz also boasted a flour mill.
(Shaar Haamakim, like many other kibbutzim, was privatized in the early 2000s, but its members still jointly own its factories and maintain a fund to support kibbutzniks in need.)
But as much as agriculture or industry, ideology drove Shaar Haamakim in the ’60s. The kibbutz belonged to the Israeli political party Mapam, which in the 1950s had been a communist, Soviet-affiliated faction. Kibbutz members had admired Joseph Stalin until his death, and they would celebrate May Day with red flags. They spoke of controlling the means of production, taking from each according to his abilities and giving to each according to his needs.
“All the members were equal in all ways,” said Yair Merom, the kibbutz’s current chairman. “They lived in identical houses. There wasn’t a salary; everyone received according to their needs. The kibbutz gave everything: food, shelter, education, health.”
Merom says Shaar Haamakim is proud to have hosted a U.S. presidential candidate who trumpets its principles.
“Our values of mutual responsibility are social democratic values, and we choose willingly to create that society,” Merom said. “Sanders is talking about the social democratic approach that gives freedom to the individual, but with responsibility for the whole. We do that in a practical way.”
Socialist ethos permeated kibbutz life in the ’60s. All of the kibbutz’s 360-some members wore the same uniform: khaki slacks with a matching button-down shirt. Until 1991, as at many other kibbutzim, kids lived apart from their parents at a children’s house.
Things considered “bourgeois,” such as skirts, neckties, card games and ballroom dancing were taboo. In their free time, kibbutzniks instead might attend an English class, join the kibbutz chorus or participate in Israeli folk dancing. Tuesday was culture night.
Kibbutz members tried to impart socialist values to volunteers, most of whom stayed for a month. After they finished picking fruit at noon, ate lunch and rested for a few hours, volunteers would attend lectures on Zionism, Israeli history and kibbutz life.
“In the ’60s, the members were very idealistic,” Ely said. “They believed in the path they were going on. They thought it was [also] the solution to other problems. They thought they had a mission to help the population outside to do as they did on the kibbutz.” ---------------------
The Jewish Week
A Rabbi's World
If Solomon Were A Candidate…
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Donald Trump, Left, Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik, center, Bernie Sanders.Once upon a time, long before a career in the rabbinate was even a remote thought, I was a political science major in college. Politics and the political process fascinated me as far back as I can remember, and they still do. Although we all now know that the “Camelot” image of the Kennedy years was carefully constructed to hide its very real human flaws, I grew up quite entranced by its magic, believing that a life in politics was a noble calling… at least until Watergate. But the fascination remains…
For political junkies, even rabbinic ones, the current season of presidential primaries has been a godsend (no pun intended). Nothing so far has gone according to conventional wisdom, and the establishments of both major political parties are struggling to come to terms with unsettling insurgencies from unlikely quarters. The surprisingly robust candidacies of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have left party elders scrambling to figure out how to avoid what they view as an impending electoral disaster, and the more “conventional” candidates desperately trying to figure out what’s going on, and when the world as they know it changed.
All these years later, I am watching all this play out through a rabbinic lens, and it doesn’t look quite as confusing to me. What comes to mind, repeatedly, is a verse from the Book of Proverbs (29:14), attributed by tradition to a middle-aged King Solomon. B’ein chazon, yiparah am. “Without vision, a people come apart.” Or, as the late Governor Mario Cuomo translated that Solomonic wisdom into classic contemporary political insight in an interview in The New Republic in 1985, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
It’s pretty clear to me (and by now, I would think, to a whole lot of candidates) that trying to make any headway in the current political climate by “campaigning in prose,” without some kind of compelling vision for a way out of what is deeply frustrating the American electorate, is a largely futile exercise. And that’s exactly what we’re witnessing.
Think about it. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, albeit it in radically different ways, are successfully playing to the deep-seated resentments of the American electorate, disgusted with politics as usual, by saying that they have a way to transcend the current unhappy state of affairs and reach a better place. They’re providing, loosely defined, a vision.
Trump’s vision is “making America great again,” by building a wall on the Mexican border to stem illegal immigration, barring Muslim immigration, upgrading the American military, and bombing the daylights out of ISIS. He’s got it all figured out, and all you have to do to feel better is buy into his vision. He’s short on details– extraordinarily short– but long on visionary pronouncements, and he shows no patience whatsoever for inconvenient truths. And to the point– he won overwhelmingly in New Hampshire by providing an alternative (admittedly a bizarre one) to the status quo of American politics.
Bernie Sanders, preaching what he calls “Democratic socialism,” is promising a dispirited middle class that income inequality is at the root of all that is wrong with their lives, and that he will make their lives much better by waging war on Wall Street and its “one per centers.” And he won overwhelmingly in New Hampshire, against an estimable opponent, by winning over unprecedented numbers of voters, particularly millenials, to his vision.
I don’t mean to equate Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders by making these observations. Actually, I don’t agree with either of them, though it is far easier for me, after the debacle of 2008, to appreciate what Bernie Sanders is trying to say. There’s plenty to be unhappy with in the culture of big money that dominates American politics, and he is capable of campaigning in poetry when he puts his mind to it. I just don’t love his poems. I’m not a socialist, and America is not a socialist country. But Donald Trump strikes me as a megalomaniacal opportunist playing a role in his own reality show. He’d say anything to anyone, at any time, to gain the nomination and win the prize. He is campaigning in neither poetry nor prose. It is more like protracted, random rants. But he, too, is articulating a vision, albeit a bizarre one. And he just won an important primary.
B’ein chazon, yiparah am. “Without vision, a people come apart.” Solomon’s insight from thousands of years ago still resonates with meaning
today. What we are witnessing in the current political campaign, writ large, is the detritus of years of perceived paralysis in our political system, devoid of vision, with the resultant impatience of the electorate. The emphasis on competence and experience that has fueled past political campaigns seems almost irrelevant right now, replaced by those who would purport to have an idea of how to get to a better future.
I guess the good news is that people want very much to be hopeful that the future will be better. They long to be inspired. The bad news is that there are some very strange ideas floating around of how to get there.
We need some better poets…
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik is the spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens. ---------------------
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Rabbi David Wolpe's Musings >
Musings
God Is Not Your Business Partner
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David WolpeThe first chapter in the Bible in which God’s name does not appear is the 23rd chapter of Genesis. The chapter recounts the deal that Abraham strikes with Ephron to buy Me’arat ha-Machpela, the land on which Sarah and Abraham and their descendants will be buried.
This is the first parcel of land that a Jew purchases in Israel. Perhaps the Torah is offering a subtle lesson. Why is God’s name not mentioned? When it comes to commerce, land and politics, people invoke God, usually to justify whatever position they would have taken anyway, but the Torah is more honest. This is a secular transaction on sacred land. God is not your business partner.
There is both beauty and poignancy in a burial ground being the first holding of a Jew in Israel. It emphasizes care, planning for the future and also presages some of the tragic fate of the Jewish people in Israel. We should always be ethical but not everything we do is godly. There is a division bein kodesh l’chol, between sacred and everyday activities. When we mix them, it is to the detriment of both faith and the secular world.
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). ---------------------
Talpiot: The IDF's Best And Brightest >
New York
Talpiot: The IDF’s Best And Brightest
New book examines ‘Israel’s Edge.’
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Jonathan MarkAt an Iowa town hall last month, Hillary Clinton advertised her Middle Eastern expertise by reminding voters how, as secretary of state, she was able to convince Israel not to attack Gaza in 2012. In Israel, however, others with longer memories were reminded of the time when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised Israel not to attack Egypt in 1973, and Israeli intelligence concurred, there was no need to attack.
Two days after Yom Kippur, 1973, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, surveying Israel’s collapsing armies on every front, uttered his famous Jeremiad: “The Third Temple is falling.”
Of course, the Third Temple (code for the modern State of Israel) still stands, but the near-death experience still reverberates in the Israeli imagination. A new book, “Israel’s Edge: Talpiot, The IDF’s Most Elite Unit” (Gefen Publishing House), by Jason Gewirtz, examines the 1974 post-war origins and development of Talpiot, the so-called Mensa of Israeli military intelligence and innovation.
In recent years, Talpiot graduates were said to have had input in the 2007 sabotage of Syria’s radar defense, allowing Israeli jets to destroy a Syrian nuclear reactor; in the Iron Dome system, so critical to Israel’s missile defense in the 2014 Gaza war; and in Stuxnet, the computer virus that infected and disrupted Iran’s nuclear program, temporarily giving outsiders control of Iran’s centrifuges.
Gewirtz, an executive producer at CNBC, the business cable network, tells us over the phone that none of these programs were the singular work of Talpiot, secrecy being the better part of valor, but all of these spectacular enterprises are discussed in his book that “I did voluntarily submit to the censorship unit at the IDF. And the Ministry of Defense read the book, to make sure that they were okay with everything.”
Gewirtz, 43, from Rockville, Md., now living in northern New Jersey, had once worked in Israel’s Civil Guard, a police auxiliary, and calls himself “a hard-core Zionist. Like everyplace else, Israel has problems, but I love Israel very much, it’s an amazing place. I go to bed thinking of Israel, and I wake up thinking of Israel.” He is donating any profits from the book to the Friends of the IDF fund for wounded veterans because “I didn’t want them to think I was profiting from their story.”
Gewirtz was in Israel for NBC and CNBC in 2006, when he first saw an article about a Talpiot veteran, “there’s now probably over 1,000,” Talpiot graduates, says Gewirtz. At first, they admitted 15 or 18 a year; now they admit around 40, and around a third drop out of the grueling nine-year military commitment that includes three years of intensive academic study at Hebrew University.
Two Israeli professors of the sciences, Shaul Yatziv and Felix Dothan, conceived of Talpiot in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. In the Song of Songs, Talpiot, literally meaning strongholds, or turrets, is a metaphor for leadership. Yatziv and Dothan wrote in their initial proposal that Israel must develop “totally innovative weapons that do not exist among the nations ... even in the armies of the superpowers.” Since they believed that “creativity reaches its peak” in one’s 20s, they were looking for young applicants in the “top 5 percent when it comes to intelligence, creative ability, the ability to focus ... [with] stable and pleasant personalities.” The Talpiot cadets would undergo basic training with the paratroopers or other elite units, and earn college degrees in advanced physics, aeronautics, and later computer science, “disciplines needed for engineers working on advanced weapons systems.” Also in the curriculum was Jewish thought and Arabic studies.
At first, many in the IDF brass were skeptical. Part of the IDF’s code and charm is that it is “the great democratizer,” says Gewirtz, “a people’s army where the rich would meet the poor, immigrants would meet multi-generational Israelis,” but Talpiot is “an elite unit,” so they are treated as soldiers first and foremost. At Hebrew University, the program is run by the military, with students wearing Air Force uniforms in class. (They become officers upon graduation).
Most intriguing is the interview for would-be entrants. Talpiot wants to know how someone thinks, says Gewirtz. “You go into a blank room somewhere, seated with military officers and professors, and they ask you a gamut of questions, questions that you’re not even supposed to know the answers to. They don’t want answers, so much as wanting to gauge your approach.” The young men and women are asked about anything from microwaves to Janis Joplin to calculating – on one foot – the number of gas stations in Israel.
After three years in university, the graduates, says Gewirtz, “are put into a draft, so to speak, where the navy, air force, Mossad, ground forces, defense contractors, among others, say ‘I need a guy who can do …’ They may go into the MAFAT,” Israel’s agency (now led by a Talpiot veteran) for the development of weapons and high-tech infrastructure, or into Unit 8200, the technological-intelligence unit that also engages in some undercover activities such as the Stuxnet temporary sabotage of Iranian nuclear facilities.
Others work on projects such as Trophy, a tank-defense system, and unmanned ground vehicles, which Gewirtz likens to drones. “The ground vehicle can go into a heavily populated area, take fire, determine through the use of cameras where the fire is coming from” so troops can then enter, firing at the exact targets, lessening the uncertainty of urban warfare.
Gewirtz wrote that Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, who once headed MAFAT, explained that Talpiot is trying to teach a different way of thinking. Before the Yom Kippur War, says the general, “the intelligence community looked primarily for evidence to support their conjecture that the Syrian and Egyptian armies were merely carrying out exercise maneuvers – which was precisely what the Arab military wanted them to think.” Nevertheless, “there were pieces of information that refuted this conjecture.” For example, a few days before the war, the families of Soviet advisors in Egypt and Syria flew back to Moscow. “You don’t do this if the army is merely carrying out an exercise. But the chief of Israeli intelligence said, ‘OK, I have so much information which supports and corroborates the exercise conjecture… therefore I think the most probable one is the exercise conjecture.’”
Ben-Israel says, “My method is not to look for supporting evidence. I look for refuting evidence.”
If intelligence explored the refuting evidence, says the general, “they would have followed up to see [if] ... the Arab armies had carried out the exercises they’d supposedly been assigned. They would have immediately found out that neither Egypt nor Syria ever actually completed the exercises. It was all part of a misinformation campaign. The Egyptians would send telegrams saying this unit should do that exercise, this unit should do that, knowing we’d intercept their communications. But we never checked to see that the armies were, in fact, ignoring the telegrams. That was a fatal mistake … Same facts, different ways of looking at them.”
So how would Talpiot have prevented the Yom Kippur War? They had intelligence then, too, but it was dismissed. Says Gewirtz, “What Talpiot would do is bring the smartest people together in room, collaborating. Prior to the Yom Kippur War, I’m not sure you had the smartest people in one dedicated place.”
Many of the “smartest” Talpiot graduates, however, have taken their genius and expertise into high-tech private sector, often in Silicon Valley, something Gewirtz thinks is terrific but not everyone agrees. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Three decades after Talpiot was founded to modernize the Israeli army, the program has created an unforeseen byproduct — a legion of entrepreneurs that has helped turn Israel into a technology juggernaut,” leading critics to wonder “whether government resources should go toward minting tech millionaires. In its goal of creating a new generation of military leaders ... the program has fallen short.”
In the past decade, high-tech Israel was, in fact, not quite ready for 10,000 low-tech Hamas rockets, or the miles of tunnels burrowing from Gaza into Israel. Low-tech Hamas was able to capture Gilad Shalit, who was surrounded at his kidnapping by high-tech Israeli tanks and equipment.
Nevertheless, right behind the front lines are the best and the brightest of Talpiot. “These are the guys,” says Gewirtz, “who will prevent Israel from falling. Israel will not fall in our lifetime.”
jonathan@jewishweek.org---------------------
Madoff, The Tragic Hero? >
Culture View
Madoff, The Tragic Hero?George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
George Robinson
Something strange happened to me. I went to sleep one evening and woke up in a parallel universe in which Bernard Madoff was considered a tragic hero.
At least that would seem to be the message conveyed by “Madoff,” the ABC miniseries that aired last week. Although I adore Blythe Danner and have always admired Richard Dreyfuss, who played the Madoffs, I skipped the four-hour broadcast. A new semester of teaching and various Jewish Week responsibilities made those four hours too valuable to be spent rehashing the exploits of someone who did a brutal disservice to the Jewish communal world.
But reading a wide range of the reviews, I get the impression that in their desire to humanize Madoff the filmmakers (screenwriter Ben Robbins and director Raymond De Felitta) made him into something he wasn’t. As a Smithsonian writer interviewing Dreyfuss puts it, Madoff became “Shakespearean.” Amber Dowling, reviewing the drama for The Wrap, a useful entertainment news website, describes the show as “a surprisingly humane narrative.”
The most devastating criticism comes from The New York Times, via TV critic Mike Hale. “Bernie didn’t fail us. We failed Bernie. That’s the message, perhaps unintentional, of the ... mini-series. Mr. Madoff was just a poor boy from Queens with a dream.”
Do not misunderstand me. Good drama should have moral complexity, and that means that even the worst characters should get an opportunity to make their case. Casting Dreyfuss almost guarantees that Madoff will get a fair shake. He’s an appealing actor with a whimsical streak that has usually transformed him from a boychik-in-the-hood into something more interesting.
What troubles me is that part of the project’s appeal seems to have been the image of Madoff as some kind of Robin Hood who only fleeced the rich. As any New York Mets fan can tell you, Madoff certainly had his share of platinum-card-bearing suckers. And Dreyfuss, in the Smithsonian interview seems to think that the roots of Madoff’s scam lay in the altruism that led to his once covering clients’ losses out of his own pocket after a market downturn.
I, however, prefer to think about the elderly mother of a friend and colleague, whose savings from her late husband’s pension were completely obliterated by Madoff. She was one of thousands of not-so-wealthy victims of his peculations.
And, as I said before, a disturbingly large number of his institutional targets were important Jewish nonprofits. In several off-the-record conversations, I’ve received confirmation that the after-effects of the Madoff swindle are being felt in those organizations even now, almost eight years after his crimes came to light. I’ve seen programs curtailed and jobs swept away. What I haven’t seen, for the most part, is a discussion of why he targeted these institutions and, in doing so, further damaged the lives of people who didn’t have the resources to fight back in the courts.
Contrary to conservative theories of “trickle-down economics,” it isn’t prosperity that spreads like a soothing balm. As the Madoff affair proves yet again, what trickles down most effectively is misery. Massive losses by Jewish nonprofits translate into similarly devastating losses in advertising revenue for Jewish media outlets, fewer sources of funding for Jewish museums, theater groups, film programs, writers, artists and so on. Combined with the 2008 global economic crash, Madoff stole from a lot more people than just his wealthiest marks.
In a perverse way, the whole thing reminds me of a different kind of Jewish outlaw, Samuel “Red” Levine, who was a valued employee of Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Luciano called him “the best driver and hit man I had.” As recounted in Robert A. Rockaway’s entertaining history of Jewish gangsters, “But He Was Good to His Mother,” Levine was an Orthodox Jew who “tried not to kill anyone on the Sabbath.” Of course, given his line of work, as Rockaway concludes, “If he had no choice and had to make a hit on that particular day, he would put a [tallit] over his shoulders and pray before doing anything.”
I somehow doubt that Bernie Madoff was as pious.
George Robinson’s column appears the second week of the month.---------------------
50 Years On, Sanders Champions Kibbutz Values >
The JW Q&A
50 Years On, Sanders Champions Kibbutz Values
JTA
Kibbutz Shaar Haamakim as it was in 1963, when Bernie Sanders volunteered there for several months. Ben Sales
Shaar Haamakim, Israel — Every morning, Bernie Sanders would wake up at 4:10 a.m. to pick apples and pears.
Leaving the cabin he shared with a few other American college-student volunteers, Sanders would have a quick snack of bread before heading out to the orchard. After 2 1/2 hours of work, he and the other 20 or so volunteers would sit down for a traditional 30-minute Israeli breakfast of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, butter and hard-boiled eggs.
Then it was back to work. Probably.
It’s hard to know his routine for sure, but that Spartan schedule was standard fare for American and French volunteers at Shaar Haamakim, the Israeli kibbutz where the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate appears to have spent several months in 1963. The name of his kibbutz had remained a mystery until last week, when Haaretz unearthed a 1990 interview with Sanders identifying the agricultural commune.
No one currently at Shaar Haamakim remembers Sanders, who has preached his doctrine of democratic socialism on the campaign trail. No records with his name survive.
But Albert Ely, 79, who managed the kibbutz volunteer program in the early 1960s, remembered someone named Bernard. During an interview at his home on the former kibbutz, Ely told JTA that he didn’t remember Sanders specifically, but if he was there, he was probably picking fruit before the sun rose.
Founded in 1935 by immigrants from Romania and Yugoslavia, Shaar Haamakim sits at the nexus of two valleys near the northern port city of Haifa. During Sanders’ time, its members grew apples, peaches and pears, and were opening a factory for solar water heaters. The kibbutz also boasted a flour mill.
(Shaar Haamakim, like many other kibbutzim, was privatized in the early 2000s, but its members still jointly own its factories and maintain a fund to support kibbutzniks in need.)
But as much as agriculture or industry, ideology drove Shaar Haamakim in the ’60s. The kibbutz belonged to the Israeli political party Mapam, which in the 1950s had been a communist, Soviet-affiliated faction. Kibbutz members had admired Joseph Stalin until his death, and they would celebrate May Day with red flags. They spoke of controlling the means of production, taking from each according to his abilities and giving to each according to his needs.
“All the members were equal in all ways,” said Yair Merom, the kibbutz’s current chairman. “They lived in identical houses. There wasn’t a salary; everyone received according to their needs. The kibbutz gave everything: food, shelter, education, health.”
Merom says Shaar Haamakim is proud to have hosted a U.S. presidential candidate who trumpets its principles.
“Our values of mutual responsibility are social democratic values, and we choose willingly to create that society,” Merom said. “Sanders is talking about the social democratic approach that gives freedom to the individual, but with responsibility for the whole. We do that in a practical way.”
Socialist ethos permeated kibbutz life in the ’60s. All of the kibbutz’s 360-some members wore the same uniform: khaki slacks with a matching button-down shirt. Until 1991, as at many other kibbutzim, kids lived apart from their parents at a children’s house.
Things considered “bourgeois,” such as skirts, neckties, card games and ballroom dancing were taboo. In their free time, kibbutzniks instead might attend an English class, join the kibbutz chorus or participate in Israeli folk dancing. Tuesday was culture night.
Kibbutz members tried to impart socialist values to volunteers, most of whom stayed for a month. After they finished picking fruit at noon, ate lunch and rested for a few hours, volunteers would attend lectures on Zionism, Israeli history and kibbutz life.
“In the ’60s, the members were very idealistic,” Ely said. “They believed in the path they were going on. They thought it was [also] the solution to other problems. They thought they had a mission to help the population outside to do as they did on the kibbutz.” ---------------------
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Feeling 'Great' As Prospect Of 'First Jewish President' Nears
Hella Winston
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Feeling 'Great' As Prospect Of 'First Jewish President' Nears
Hella Winston
National
As crowd chants 'Bernie' at packed victory bash, Sanders spokesman praises win as step toward a political milestone.
National
Feeling ‘Great’ As Prospect Of ‘First Jewish President’ Nears
As crowd chants 'Bernie' at packed victory bash, Sanders spokesman praises win as step toward a political milestone.
Hella Winston
Special Correspondent
Bernie Sanders, with his wife, Jane O'Meara, at right, greets supporters after winning the New Hampshire primary. Getty Images
Concord, N.H. — As volunteers danced to 'Burn Baby Burn' and chanted ‘Bernie, Bernie’ to the theme from “Rocky,” a Sanders campaign spokesman praised the win as a milestone for American Jews.
“I think we can all feel great that we might have the first Jewish president,” Tad Devine told The Jewish Week at a raucous victory party after the Vermont senator became the first member of the tribe to win a presidential primary. (While Republican Barry Goldwater's father was Jewish, he was raised Episcopalian.)
It was therefore somehow fitting that Phish drummer and longtime Bernie Sanders supporter Jon Fishman was banging the drum this week at a Sanders rally and concert here.
Fishman was one of a crowd of musicians rocking out at a University of New Hampshire Students for Bernie Commit to Vote concert Monday night, just before voting started in the country’s first primary. Sanders would go on to handily defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, winning in virtually every age group and capturing 60 percent of the vote to Clinton's 38 percent.
The 1,500 students listened — and sometimes sang along, jumped and swayed — to sets by the California-based Young the Giant, Matt Nathanson, Fantastic Negrito, Brooklyn-born Big Data, Emily Ratajkowski (with Fishman on drums) and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
Fishman and Phish bassist Mike Gordon, both of whom are Jewish, are key members of the jam band, which formed in the mid-1980s at the University of Vermont and has a devoted and almost religiously fervent following in the Jewish community.
Fishman isn’t young anymore (he’ll turn 51 next week), making him a minority among supporters of the Brooklyn-reared and accented candidate, who are mostly young people. Whether they’ll turn out to vote is a key concern for the Sanders camp, since young voters traditionally don’t turn out to the polls in the same numbers as other age cohorts.
But they were out in force here Monday night at the Whittemore Center Arena.
The Vermont senator delivered a hoarse-voiced, truncated stump speech that got cheers from the crowd with its mentions of college debt, income inequality, pay equity, a woman’s right to “control her body” and the right of “our gay brothers and sisters” to marry. After the address, Sanders was treated to a heartfelt rendition by the crowd of “Feel the Bern,” a song written by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
“Sanders is for us a semblance of hope and truth, and that’s hard to find in our day and age,” the group’s lead singer, Alex Ebert, told the crowd, which was primarily composed of people holding “Students for Bernie” signs, with some older supporters sporting “Bernie” buttons sprinkled among them.
And in a nod to Sanders’ revolutionary message, Ebert quoted early-20th-century Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman (who tirelessly fought against society’s inequalities), saying “A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.”
Whether Sanders’ supporters will be dancing when the party leaves the friendly environs of New Hampshire and heads south to South Carolina, the next primary stop, is anyone’s guess. Pundits don’t believe Sanders can make the same impact in Charleston and Greenville as he has in Derry and Manchester, a stone’s throw from his home base in Vermont. (A Siena Research poll released Tuesday, in fact, found that in New York, at least, Democrats favor Clinton by more than 20 percentage points; among Jewish Democrats, Clinton garnered 41 percent to Sanders’ 33.)
But up here on primary day, Sanders racked up victories in the tiny towns of Dixville Notch, Millsfield and Hart’s Location, whose voters have the distinction of casting the first primary votes just after midnight. Sanders’ haul: 17 votes. Clinton got nine.
At a Dunkin Donuts in Bedford Tuesday, three elderly women interviewed were all over the map when it came to their favorites.
A white, middle-aged woman who described herself as an Independent, said, “Bernie is really well liked among the younger generation. My kids love him. He speaks a lot about college tuition.”
In fact, at the concert-rally at UNH, Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, asked for a show of hands of who in the crowd had student debt.
A woman who described herself as a Republican (and voted Republican in the primary) said nevertheless that she preferred Sanders over Clinton. “From the very first time [Hillary] was on TV, she looked sneaky. She’s done too many things.”
The third woman, a Democrat who was using an oxygen tank, favors Clinton. “I didn’t like it when Bernie was knocking on her.”
That led to a spirited exchange that reached back to the 1990s when the Clintons were in the White House. “When they were in the White House, life was good for us,” the Clinton supporter said.
Which prompted this from one of the other women in the Dunkin Donuts: “Life was good for him [Bill].”
Over in Concord, a middle-aged man tinkering in his garage gave voice to a sentiment heard quite a bit in New Hampshire: that Bernie Sanders is honest.
“I like Bernie Sanders,” said Robert, who would only give his first name. “I certainly don’t like Billary. I can’t stand [Sen. Marco] Rubio. One of two things will happen if [Donald] Trump gets elected. He will change this country radically or start World War III.
“I think people are tired of the same old bureaucracy. People get in and promise the world. Like George [H.W.] Bush, no new taxes. And then he raises taxes. Bernie is honest and I think he’s going to at least try to do what he says he’s gonna do. ‘Yeah, I’m gonna raise taxes. But this is what I’m gonna do with the money.’ At least he’s honest.”
At the home of Len and Ellie Green, a Jewish couple in Bedford who describe themselves as “moderate to liberal Democrats,” the theme of Sanders’ honesty reappeared.
Both said they liked the Vermont Independent “because he is sincere.”
“I agree with what he wants to do,” Ellie said. “Hillary comes with too much baggage.”
While Sanders has not made an issue of his Jewishness on the stump, Len said he worries his membership in the tribe could lead to anti-Semitic rhetoric if he remains competitive well into the primary season.
Noting the success of Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, Len said he wouldn’t be surprised if some candidate decides to levy anti-Semitic sentiments against Sanders. “If Bernie gets farther,” he said, “I worry.”
He’s also concerned about Sanders’ age. “I’m 73, he's 73. I know how tired I am. It's a killer,” he said.
“I think at this point," he mused, "Bernie’s [more like] your favorite grandfather.”
But at a nearby gas station, a 60-something Sanders supporter energetically disagreed.
“What's not to like about Sanders? He brings a lot of hope — We're taking on the establishment,” said the Concord resident, who has been volunteering for the Sanders campaign for the past six months.
“The Republicans talk about fear and war,” he continued. “He [Sanders] wants to get us out of wars. We have caused devastation in the Middle East. When our people come back we don't take care of them. It's mind-boggling.”
He spoke while shopping for snacks before heading to a local bar to watch the election returns. His outfit included an impressive collection of Bernie buttons on his jacket and hat.
For him, Sanders’ age is not a detriment but rather a marker of decades of experience.
“It's so remarkable that he was in the Civil Rights movement,” he said, adding that he doesn't "want to see a Hillary coronation."
He'd like to see Bernie come out on top, saying of the steadfast socialist,“He's been an underdog his whole life.”---------------------
New BDS Fight Brewing At Columbia
Hannah Dreyfus
As crowd chants 'Bernie' at packed victory bash, Sanders spokesman praises win as step toward a political milestone.
National
Feeling ‘Great’ As Prospect Of ‘First Jewish President’ Nears
As crowd chants 'Bernie' at packed victory bash, Sanders spokesman praises win as step toward a political milestone.
Hella Winston
Special Correspondent
Bernie Sanders, with his wife, Jane O'Meara, at right, greets supporters after winning the New Hampshire primary. Getty Images
Concord, N.H. — As volunteers danced to 'Burn Baby Burn' and chanted ‘Bernie, Bernie’ to the theme from “Rocky,” a Sanders campaign spokesman praised the win as a milestone for American Jews.
“I think we can all feel great that we might have the first Jewish president,” Tad Devine told The Jewish Week at a raucous victory party after the Vermont senator became the first member of the tribe to win a presidential primary. (While Republican Barry Goldwater's father was Jewish, he was raised Episcopalian.)
It was therefore somehow fitting that Phish drummer and longtime Bernie Sanders supporter Jon Fishman was banging the drum this week at a Sanders rally and concert here.
Fishman was one of a crowd of musicians rocking out at a University of New Hampshire Students for Bernie Commit to Vote concert Monday night, just before voting started in the country’s first primary. Sanders would go on to handily defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, winning in virtually every age group and capturing 60 percent of the vote to Clinton's 38 percent.
The 1,500 students listened — and sometimes sang along, jumped and swayed — to sets by the California-based Young the Giant, Matt Nathanson, Fantastic Negrito, Brooklyn-born Big Data, Emily Ratajkowski (with Fishman on drums) and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
Fishman and Phish bassist Mike Gordon, both of whom are Jewish, are key members of the jam band, which formed in the mid-1980s at the University of Vermont and has a devoted and almost religiously fervent following in the Jewish community.
Fishman isn’t young anymore (he’ll turn 51 next week), making him a minority among supporters of the Brooklyn-reared and accented candidate, who are mostly young people. Whether they’ll turn out to vote is a key concern for the Sanders camp, since young voters traditionally don’t turn out to the polls in the same numbers as other age cohorts.
But they were out in force here Monday night at the Whittemore Center Arena.
The Vermont senator delivered a hoarse-voiced, truncated stump speech that got cheers from the crowd with its mentions of college debt, income inequality, pay equity, a woman’s right to “control her body” and the right of “our gay brothers and sisters” to marry. After the address, Sanders was treated to a heartfelt rendition by the crowd of “Feel the Bern,” a song written by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
“Sanders is for us a semblance of hope and truth, and that’s hard to find in our day and age,” the group’s lead singer, Alex Ebert, told the crowd, which was primarily composed of people holding “Students for Bernie” signs, with some older supporters sporting “Bernie” buttons sprinkled among them.
And in a nod to Sanders’ revolutionary message, Ebert quoted early-20th-century Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman (who tirelessly fought against society’s inequalities), saying “A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.”
Whether Sanders’ supporters will be dancing when the party leaves the friendly environs of New Hampshire and heads south to South Carolina, the next primary stop, is anyone’s guess. Pundits don’t believe Sanders can make the same impact in Charleston and Greenville as he has in Derry and Manchester, a stone’s throw from his home base in Vermont. (A Siena Research poll released Tuesday, in fact, found that in New York, at least, Democrats favor Clinton by more than 20 percentage points; among Jewish Democrats, Clinton garnered 41 percent to Sanders’ 33.)
But up here on primary day, Sanders racked up victories in the tiny towns of Dixville Notch, Millsfield and Hart’s Location, whose voters have the distinction of casting the first primary votes just after midnight. Sanders’ haul: 17 votes. Clinton got nine.
At a Dunkin Donuts in Bedford Tuesday, three elderly women interviewed were all over the map when it came to their favorites.
A white, middle-aged woman who described herself as an Independent, said, “Bernie is really well liked among the younger generation. My kids love him. He speaks a lot about college tuition.”
In fact, at the concert-rally at UNH, Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, asked for a show of hands of who in the crowd had student debt.
A woman who described herself as a Republican (and voted Republican in the primary) said nevertheless that she preferred Sanders over Clinton. “From the very first time [Hillary] was on TV, she looked sneaky. She’s done too many things.”
The third woman, a Democrat who was using an oxygen tank, favors Clinton. “I didn’t like it when Bernie was knocking on her.”
That led to a spirited exchange that reached back to the 1990s when the Clintons were in the White House. “When they were in the White House, life was good for us,” the Clinton supporter said.
Which prompted this from one of the other women in the Dunkin Donuts: “Life was good for him [Bill].”
Over in Concord, a middle-aged man tinkering in his garage gave voice to a sentiment heard quite a bit in New Hampshire: that Bernie Sanders is honest.
“I like Bernie Sanders,” said Robert, who would only give his first name. “I certainly don’t like Billary. I can’t stand [Sen. Marco] Rubio. One of two things will happen if [Donald] Trump gets elected. He will change this country radically or start World War III.
“I think people are tired of the same old bureaucracy. People get in and promise the world. Like George [H.W.] Bush, no new taxes. And then he raises taxes. Bernie is honest and I think he’s going to at least try to do what he says he’s gonna do. ‘Yeah, I’m gonna raise taxes. But this is what I’m gonna do with the money.’ At least he’s honest.”
At the home of Len and Ellie Green, a Jewish couple in Bedford who describe themselves as “moderate to liberal Democrats,” the theme of Sanders’ honesty reappeared.
Both said they liked the Vermont Independent “because he is sincere.”
“I agree with what he wants to do,” Ellie said. “Hillary comes with too much baggage.”
While Sanders has not made an issue of his Jewishness on the stump, Len said he worries his membership in the tribe could lead to anti-Semitic rhetoric if he remains competitive well into the primary season.
Noting the success of Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, Len said he wouldn’t be surprised if some candidate decides to levy anti-Semitic sentiments against Sanders. “If Bernie gets farther,” he said, “I worry.”
He’s also concerned about Sanders’ age. “I’m 73, he's 73. I know how tired I am. It's a killer,” he said.
“I think at this point," he mused, "Bernie’s [more like] your favorite grandfather.”
But at a nearby gas station, a 60-something Sanders supporter energetically disagreed.
“What's not to like about Sanders? He brings a lot of hope — We're taking on the establishment,” said the Concord resident, who has been volunteering for the Sanders campaign for the past six months.
“The Republicans talk about fear and war,” he continued. “He [Sanders] wants to get us out of wars. We have caused devastation in the Middle East. When our people come back we don't take care of them. It's mind-boggling.”
He spoke while shopping for snacks before heading to a local bar to watch the election returns. His outfit included an impressive collection of Bernie buttons on his jacket and hat.
For him, Sanders’ age is not a detriment but rather a marker of decades of experience.
“It's so remarkable that he was in the Civil Rights movement,” he said, adding that he doesn't "want to see a Hillary coronation."
He'd like to see Bernie come out on top, saying of the steadfast socialist,“He's been an underdog his whole life.”---------------------
New BDS Fight Brewing At Columbia
Hannah Dreyfus
National
First student-led divestment effort meets with pushback.
National
New BDS Fight Brewing At Columbia
First student-led divestment effort meets with pushback.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
A makeshift wall meant to mock Israel’s security barrier was part of last year’s Apartheid Week at Columbia. Hannah Dreyfus/JWEmboldened by recent campaigns to get Columbia University to divest from the private prison industry and from fossil fuels, a coalition of university students is spearheading a new campaign to divest from Israel.
And pro-Israel forces on campus appear ready for the fight to come.
The BDS campaign — titled Columbia University Apartheid Divest — is the first student-led boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to embroil this university. Previous BDS campaigns were led by Columbia faculty and resulted in no policy changes.
But, according to Jewish students leading the initiative, this time promises to be different.
“We absolutely feel inspired by the recent success of the private prison industry divest campaign,” said Eva Kalikoff, president of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), one of the two student groups sponsoring new BDS efforts. “We are thrilled they were successful so quickly — it’s unprecedented to have that happen within one school year. We hope our campaign shows the same forward motion.”
JVP and Students for Justice in Palestine, the campaign’s co-sponsor, are tapping into a tight network of student groups to garner support. No Red Tape, which fights sexual violence and rape culture at Columbia, Student-Worker Solidarity, which promotes economic justice, and the Columbia Queer Alliance, an umbrella group for LGBT students, have all endorsed the campaign.
“Intersectional support is key,” said Kalikoff, who said events about BDS in conjunction with other causes, including climate justice, sexual assault, mass incarceration and racism, are in the works.
Last week, JVP and SJP ran their first event publicizing the campaign, entitled “BDS 101”; according to Kalikoff, 65 students attended, and they had to turn away almost 100 students due to lack of space. A petition is also circulating among students and faculty — Kalikoff said numbers will be released shortly. Another introductory seminar, open only to Columbia students, is scheduled for this Thursday night.
One Columbia senior and pro-Israel campus leader, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, described the overall mood at the first meeting as “triumphant and ecstatic.” Many students were wearing keffiyahs, checkered scarves worn as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. “The few people who asked questions were shot down,” she said, citing examples of someone who asked about Hamas’ open support of terrorism and another attendee who asked about the death penalty for homosexuality in Gaza. “People mostly laughed and sneered at questions.”
In response to the divestment campaign, pro-Israel student activists launched a counter-campaign called “Invest in Peace.” The purpose of the campaign is to educate students about how divestment generates distrust, and will only make it harder to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians, said Daniella Greenbaum, president of Aryeh, the Columbia student association for Israel.
“The Hillel community is by no means monolithic, and there is a wide range of views on Israel,” she said. “But on BDS we agree — it is a stumbling block to peace. Our agenda is to demonstrate to the campus community that BDS actively damages the peace process by generating distrust and in calling for a one-state solution. From an economic standpoint, BDS is bad for both the Israeli and Palestinian economies. Our mission to therefore to demonstrate to the Columbia community that divestment hurts all involved parties.”
Still, as students from both ends of the spectrum hone their arguments, experts remain doubtful that the campaign will end differently than the other BDS efforts, most of which have fizzled on American campuses. Over the past 10 years, only 18 schools, or .009 percent of all American universities, have approved a BDS resolution, according to research conducted through The Jewish Week’s Investigative Journalism Fund. Of the 70 total votes that have been taken on BDS measures at American universities, 64 percent of resolutions were defeated.
“No divestment motion to date has led to changes in investment procedures,” said Kenneth Waltzer, co-founder of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a recently formed national faculty coalition that aims to unite academics to facilitate constructive dialogue about Israel. “If you go back over recent confrontations on campus, faculty voices have been consistent in opposing divestment. It’s an unproductive activity — it doesn’t change anything with respect to actual relations between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East,” he said.
Still, mounting a campaign itself promises to fuel the national BDS movement’s end goal, he said: to “delegitimize and demonize Israel.” On a campus as prominent as Columbia, the effects of a student-led BDS effort may be magnified. The Palestinian BDS National Committee is a broad coalition of Palestinian organizations, trade unions, networks and NGOs; the group refers to the Jewish state in quotations marks on its website.
“These students made no bones about it — they openly and unabashedly allied themselves with the national BDS movement,” Waltzer said, adding that this is something he hasn’t seen from students in the past. “It’s going to come back and bite them. They don’t realize it, but now they’re saddled with all the commitments and goals of the movement. They can’t claim they only stand for peace.”
JVP student activists stressed the “symbolic” nature of the campaign. Rather than advocating Columbia divest from all Israeli businesses, they selected eight companies for their “educational value.” For example, they selected Caterpillar Inc., an American corporation that sells machinery, because Israel buys bulldozers for the Israeli Defense Forces from the company. Of the eight companies selected, students behind the campaign admitted to not knowing whether Columbia held any shares in these companies.
“For me, JVP represents a growing number of Jews who see a disconnect between the values of tikkun olam that we grew up on and how Palestinians are being treated under the occupation,” said Julia Peck, 22, an active member of JVP who stands behind the divestment campaign. Though Peck, who grew up in a strong Conservative home, at first held “reservations” about supporting BDS, she concluded it is the most efficient, non-violent way to end what she sees as serious human rights violations.
“We recognize the need for Jewish safety in a world that hasn’t been kind to us, but we refuse to make another people pay for that with their homes, freedom and their lives,” Peck said. She added that the BDS movement does not aim to demonize Israel; rather, it recognizes Israel as a country that can make changes so a “just peace” can take place. (Most Jewish leaders do believe that the BDS movement seeks to demonize Israel and that the movement may even be a cover for those who oppose the idea of a Jewish state.)
Noam Gilboord, director of Israel and international affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said that Columbia’s divestment campaign “does not ring any new alarm bells,” though it is cause for concern. Still, focusing only on BDS on the college campus largely misses the point, he said.
“Very carefully, very quietly the BDS movement has been gaining steam in academic and professional associations, mainline church movements, the cultural sector, pension funds. While campuses are what we in the Jewish community are primarily focusing on, the BDS movement’s end goal is not to make campus leaders anti-Israel. It is to gradually erode American support for Israel, so that in a generation from now we will have a completely different relationship with Israel.”
Marissa Young, a member of the executive board of Aryeh, said that the divestment campaign’s push for “intersectionality” leaves many Jewish students feeling marginalized.
“It is an extremely divisive campaign,” she said. As a senior graduating in the spring, she said it is “scary” to leave campus knowing that people “really do see this as a liberal cause.”
“They think what they’re fighting for is really about equality and rights — when someone can’t even be gay in Gaza without being killed, and Palestinian leaders refuse to condemn terrorism.” ---------------------
Conservative Prayer Book Charting Fresh Course
Stewart Ain
First student-led divestment effort meets with pushback.
National
New BDS Fight Brewing At Columbia
First student-led divestment effort meets with pushback.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
A makeshift wall meant to mock Israel’s security barrier was part of last year’s Apartheid Week at Columbia. Hannah Dreyfus/JWEmboldened by recent campaigns to get Columbia University to divest from the private prison industry and from fossil fuels, a coalition of university students is spearheading a new campaign to divest from Israel.
And pro-Israel forces on campus appear ready for the fight to come.
The BDS campaign — titled Columbia University Apartheid Divest — is the first student-led boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to embroil this university. Previous BDS campaigns were led by Columbia faculty and resulted in no policy changes.
But, according to Jewish students leading the initiative, this time promises to be different.
“We absolutely feel inspired by the recent success of the private prison industry divest campaign,” said Eva Kalikoff, president of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), one of the two student groups sponsoring new BDS efforts. “We are thrilled they were successful so quickly — it’s unprecedented to have that happen within one school year. We hope our campaign shows the same forward motion.”
JVP and Students for Justice in Palestine, the campaign’s co-sponsor, are tapping into a tight network of student groups to garner support. No Red Tape, which fights sexual violence and rape culture at Columbia, Student-Worker Solidarity, which promotes economic justice, and the Columbia Queer Alliance, an umbrella group for LGBT students, have all endorsed the campaign.
“Intersectional support is key,” said Kalikoff, who said events about BDS in conjunction with other causes, including climate justice, sexual assault, mass incarceration and racism, are in the works.
Last week, JVP and SJP ran their first event publicizing the campaign, entitled “BDS 101”; according to Kalikoff, 65 students attended, and they had to turn away almost 100 students due to lack of space. A petition is also circulating among students and faculty — Kalikoff said numbers will be released shortly. Another introductory seminar, open only to Columbia students, is scheduled for this Thursday night.
One Columbia senior and pro-Israel campus leader, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, described the overall mood at the first meeting as “triumphant and ecstatic.” Many students were wearing keffiyahs, checkered scarves worn as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. “The few people who asked questions were shot down,” she said, citing examples of someone who asked about Hamas’ open support of terrorism and another attendee who asked about the death penalty for homosexuality in Gaza. “People mostly laughed and sneered at questions.”
In response to the divestment campaign, pro-Israel student activists launched a counter-campaign called “Invest in Peace.” The purpose of the campaign is to educate students about how divestment generates distrust, and will only make it harder to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians, said Daniella Greenbaum, president of Aryeh, the Columbia student association for Israel.
“The Hillel community is by no means monolithic, and there is a wide range of views on Israel,” she said. “But on BDS we agree — it is a stumbling block to peace. Our agenda is to demonstrate to the campus community that BDS actively damages the peace process by generating distrust and in calling for a one-state solution. From an economic standpoint, BDS is bad for both the Israeli and Palestinian economies. Our mission to therefore to demonstrate to the Columbia community that divestment hurts all involved parties.”
Still, as students from both ends of the spectrum hone their arguments, experts remain doubtful that the campaign will end differently than the other BDS efforts, most of which have fizzled on American campuses. Over the past 10 years, only 18 schools, or .009 percent of all American universities, have approved a BDS resolution, according to research conducted through The Jewish Week’s Investigative Journalism Fund. Of the 70 total votes that have been taken on BDS measures at American universities, 64 percent of resolutions were defeated.
“No divestment motion to date has led to changes in investment procedures,” said Kenneth Waltzer, co-founder of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a recently formed national faculty coalition that aims to unite academics to facilitate constructive dialogue about Israel. “If you go back over recent confrontations on campus, faculty voices have been consistent in opposing divestment. It’s an unproductive activity — it doesn’t change anything with respect to actual relations between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East,” he said.
Still, mounting a campaign itself promises to fuel the national BDS movement’s end goal, he said: to “delegitimize and demonize Israel.” On a campus as prominent as Columbia, the effects of a student-led BDS effort may be magnified. The Palestinian BDS National Committee is a broad coalition of Palestinian organizations, trade unions, networks and NGOs; the group refers to the Jewish state in quotations marks on its website.
“These students made no bones about it — they openly and unabashedly allied themselves with the national BDS movement,” Waltzer said, adding that this is something he hasn’t seen from students in the past. “It’s going to come back and bite them. They don’t realize it, but now they’re saddled with all the commitments and goals of the movement. They can’t claim they only stand for peace.”
JVP student activists stressed the “symbolic” nature of the campaign. Rather than advocating Columbia divest from all Israeli businesses, they selected eight companies for their “educational value.” For example, they selected Caterpillar Inc., an American corporation that sells machinery, because Israel buys bulldozers for the Israeli Defense Forces from the company. Of the eight companies selected, students behind the campaign admitted to not knowing whether Columbia held any shares in these companies.
“For me, JVP represents a growing number of Jews who see a disconnect between the values of tikkun olam that we grew up on and how Palestinians are being treated under the occupation,” said Julia Peck, 22, an active member of JVP who stands behind the divestment campaign. Though Peck, who grew up in a strong Conservative home, at first held “reservations” about supporting BDS, she concluded it is the most efficient, non-violent way to end what she sees as serious human rights violations.
“We recognize the need for Jewish safety in a world that hasn’t been kind to us, but we refuse to make another people pay for that with their homes, freedom and their lives,” Peck said. She added that the BDS movement does not aim to demonize Israel; rather, it recognizes Israel as a country that can make changes so a “just peace” can take place. (Most Jewish leaders do believe that the BDS movement seeks to demonize Israel and that the movement may even be a cover for those who oppose the idea of a Jewish state.)
Noam Gilboord, director of Israel and international affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said that Columbia’s divestment campaign “does not ring any new alarm bells,” though it is cause for concern. Still, focusing only on BDS on the college campus largely misses the point, he said.
“Very carefully, very quietly the BDS movement has been gaining steam in academic and professional associations, mainline church movements, the cultural sector, pension funds. While campuses are what we in the Jewish community are primarily focusing on, the BDS movement’s end goal is not to make campus leaders anti-Israel. It is to gradually erode American support for Israel, so that in a generation from now we will have a completely different relationship with Israel.”
Marissa Young, a member of the executive board of Aryeh, said that the divestment campaign’s push for “intersectionality” leaves many Jewish students feeling marginalized.
“It is an extremely divisive campaign,” she said. As a senior graduating in the spring, she said it is “scary” to leave campus knowing that people “really do see this as a liberal cause.”
“They think what they’re fighting for is really about equality and rights — when someone can’t even be gay in Gaza without being killed, and Palestinian leaders refuse to condemn terrorism.” ---------------------
Conservative Prayer Book Charting Fresh Course
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
For middle movement hoping to move the needle, new siddur and rebranding effort aim to reflect change.
New York
Conservative Prayer Book Charting Fresh Course
For middle movement hoping to move the needle, new siddur and rebranding effort aim to reflect change.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Rabbi Jan Uhrbach: “Multiple entry points” for “full range of users.”At a time when many Jews are seeking new ways to express their spirituality, the Conservative movement has published a new siddur for Shabbat and festivals that offers fresh insights into the traditional text, revised Hebrew transliterations and revisions to make it both egalitarian and LGBT friendly.
“What we tried to do is provide multiple entry points to the service for a full range of users,” said Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, associate editor of the siddur, called “Siddur Lev Shalem.”
“Regular shul goers could pray using the traditional liturgy and/or look for new insights and ways of understanding the text through explanatory commentary and authorship,” she said, adding the siddur also offers “inspirational commentary — poetry in dialogue.”
In the words of its siddur’s senior editor, Rabbi Edward Feld: “It puts power back into the hands of the congregant — he or she is able to relate to the service in the way they want to.”
“If you want to know what the tradition is and want to make your own decisions about what it is you want to say and keep, this is the book and movement for you,” he added. “It is a movement that doesn’t pre-censor the tradition but rather tells you what it is and gives you the tools to be able to make decisions about your life.”
For middle movement hoping to move the needle, new siddur and rebranding effort aim to reflect change.
New York
Conservative Prayer Book Charting Fresh Course
For middle movement hoping to move the needle, new siddur and rebranding effort aim to reflect change.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Rabbi Jan Uhrbach: “Multiple entry points” for “full range of users.”At a time when many Jews are seeking new ways to express their spirituality, the Conservative movement has published a new siddur for Shabbat and festivals that offers fresh insights into the traditional text, revised Hebrew transliterations and revisions to make it both egalitarian and LGBT friendly.
“What we tried to do is provide multiple entry points to the service for a full range of users,” said Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, associate editor of the siddur, called “Siddur Lev Shalem.”
“Regular shul goers could pray using the traditional liturgy and/or look for new insights and ways of understanding the text through explanatory commentary and authorship,” she said, adding the siddur also offers “inspirational commentary — poetry in dialogue.”
In the words of its siddur’s senior editor, Rabbi Edward Feld: “It puts power back into the hands of the congregant — he or she is able to relate to the service in the way they want to.”
“If you want to know what the tradition is and want to make your own decisions about what it is you want to say and keep, this is the book and movement for you,” he added. “It is a movement that doesn’t pre-censor the tradition but rather tells you what it is and gives you the tools to be able to make decisions about your life.”
The siddur’s publication comes at a key juncture for the Conservative movement, which has struggled to hold onto members and to articulate a relevant message amid sweeping demographic changes in the last generation. It has embarked on a $350,000 effort hiring the rebranding company Good Omen. Margo Gold, international president of the movement’s congregational arm, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, has said that “tradition and change,” the movement’s longtime tagline, no longer reflects its core message.
As part of the rebranding effort, Good Omen is completing an audit of nearly 1,000 Conservative Jews who have been asked their thoughts about the movement and to help develop a new slogan.
In another sign of change, the movement’s rabbinical school, the Jewish Theological Seminary, announced last month that it had completed the sale of a parcel of land on the eastern edge of its Morningside Heights campus, as well as an off-site residence hall. Seminary officials said part of the proceeds from that $96 million transaction will fund the redevelopment of its complex at 3080 Broadway in a way that makes the campus more open to allow for “deeper collaboration with our neighbors, our city, and with individuals and communities around the world.”
The new siddur is modeled after the movement’s successful Mahzor Lev Shalem, the prayer book for the High Holy Days and for which Rabbi Feld also served as senior editor. It was published in 2010 and has sold more than 340,000 copies, according to Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, which published both books.
“That mahzor was a game changer for the Conservative movement and for the Jewish community in the way it brought the High Holy Days to life,” she said. “We saw that people need multiple kinds of tools to relate to the page.”
Like the mahzor, the new siddur has a four-column format that brings in the history and scope of Jewish poetry, as well as new commentaries that reflect the current day. The right column is designed to help illuminate the prayer with information about its history and development over the ages. The column on the left offers 21st century insights into the prayer that Rabbi Schonfeld said “helps you feel something, provide spiritual uplift and bring the prayer into the contemporary idiom through poetry and contemporary writing.”
The second column on the right is the traditional liturgy, and Rabbi Schonfeld said that because the movement has “such a vast collection of material and because of its focus on scholarship, we have brought back different versions of prayers.”
“Since the Conservative movement values learning, we wanted to give everybody an opportunity to study and learn new approaches to our ancient wisdom,” she said.
The fourth column is for the transliteration of Hebrew prayers that are recited aloud in most synagogues.
“It is meant to be a 21st-century prayer book that empowers individuals so that the diverse community we have become can find themselves in the prayer book,” Rabbi Schonfeld said.
It took five years to write the new Sabbath and festival siddur and Rabbi Schonfeld said she believes a siddur for daily worship will be compiled in the future using the same format.
Rabbi Feld said he views the new siddur — which has an advance sale of 40,000 copies — as a Jewish anthology because “you can see how medieval Jews related to the liturgy and how Israeli Jews relate; it’s a totally Jewish experience.”
In seeking to reposition the movement, Conservative leaders are mindful of an analysis of a Pew Research Center survey by sociologist Steven M. Cohen that found that between 1990 and 2013 the number of American Jewish adults who self-identify as Conservative and belong to a synagogue dropped from about 1.5 million to 962,000. And the number of those who identify as Conservative but do not belong to a congregation fell from 739,000 to 392,000. At the same time, the number of synagogues affiliated with United Synagogue reportedly dropped from 675 in 2009 to 580.
To reflect its diverse membership, the movement’s new siddur includes traditions from the vast array of Jewish cultures, including North African, Italian, Sephardic, Middle Eastern, as well as Ashkenazi. For instance, the prayer for rain recited on Shemini Atzeret includes a poem Ashkenazim usually recite as well as a Sephardic version.
In the section dealing with the prayers recited when one receives an aliyah, the new siddur includes in the left column the additional words recited by Sephardim, as well as the response of the congregation.
“We did this so that in a mixed community all of the congregants would know what is going on when Sephardi congregants are called to the Torah,” Rabbi Uhrbach explained. “Synagogues such as Temple Israel in Great Neck and Temple Sinai in Los Angeles have large numbers of Sephardic members. Everyone should know the richness of our tradition and know that the service is not written in stone. There have been differences over time and in different communities.”
Rabbi Feld said he hopes Jews “will find material in the siddur that allows them to enter into the tradition without having to give up who they are.”
“If you want to know what Conservative Judaism is, look at this siddur,” he said. “It is respectful and understanding of the traditions and it lives within the 21st century.”
stewart@jewishweek.org---------------------
Prairie Culture, Jewish And Otherwise
Hilary Danilova
As part of the rebranding effort, Good Omen is completing an audit of nearly 1,000 Conservative Jews who have been asked their thoughts about the movement and to help develop a new slogan.
In another sign of change, the movement’s rabbinical school, the Jewish Theological Seminary, announced last month that it had completed the sale of a parcel of land on the eastern edge of its Morningside Heights campus, as well as an off-site residence hall. Seminary officials said part of the proceeds from that $96 million transaction will fund the redevelopment of its complex at 3080 Broadway in a way that makes the campus more open to allow for “deeper collaboration with our neighbors, our city, and with individuals and communities around the world.”
The new siddur is modeled after the movement’s successful Mahzor Lev Shalem, the prayer book for the High Holy Days and for which Rabbi Feld also served as senior editor. It was published in 2010 and has sold more than 340,000 copies, according to Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, which published both books.
“That mahzor was a game changer for the Conservative movement and for the Jewish community in the way it brought the High Holy Days to life,” she said. “We saw that people need multiple kinds of tools to relate to the page.”
Like the mahzor, the new siddur has a four-column format that brings in the history and scope of Jewish poetry, as well as new commentaries that reflect the current day. The right column is designed to help illuminate the prayer with information about its history and development over the ages. The column on the left offers 21st century insights into the prayer that Rabbi Schonfeld said “helps you feel something, provide spiritual uplift and bring the prayer into the contemporary idiom through poetry and contemporary writing.”
The second column on the right is the traditional liturgy, and Rabbi Schonfeld said that because the movement has “such a vast collection of material and because of its focus on scholarship, we have brought back different versions of prayers.”
“Since the Conservative movement values learning, we wanted to give everybody an opportunity to study and learn new approaches to our ancient wisdom,” she said.
The fourth column is for the transliteration of Hebrew prayers that are recited aloud in most synagogues.
“It is meant to be a 21st-century prayer book that empowers individuals so that the diverse community we have become can find themselves in the prayer book,” Rabbi Schonfeld said.
It took five years to write the new Sabbath and festival siddur and Rabbi Schonfeld said she believes a siddur for daily worship will be compiled in the future using the same format.
Rabbi Feld said he views the new siddur — which has an advance sale of 40,000 copies — as a Jewish anthology because “you can see how medieval Jews related to the liturgy and how Israeli Jews relate; it’s a totally Jewish experience.”
In seeking to reposition the movement, Conservative leaders are mindful of an analysis of a Pew Research Center survey by sociologist Steven M. Cohen that found that between 1990 and 2013 the number of American Jewish adults who self-identify as Conservative and belong to a synagogue dropped from about 1.5 million to 962,000. And the number of those who identify as Conservative but do not belong to a congregation fell from 739,000 to 392,000. At the same time, the number of synagogues affiliated with United Synagogue reportedly dropped from 675 in 2009 to 580.
To reflect its diverse membership, the movement’s new siddur includes traditions from the vast array of Jewish cultures, including North African, Italian, Sephardic, Middle Eastern, as well as Ashkenazi. For instance, the prayer for rain recited on Shemini Atzeret includes a poem Ashkenazim usually recite as well as a Sephardic version.
In the section dealing with the prayers recited when one receives an aliyah, the new siddur includes in the left column the additional words recited by Sephardim, as well as the response of the congregation.
“We did this so that in a mixed community all of the congregants would know what is going on when Sephardi congregants are called to the Torah,” Rabbi Uhrbach explained. “Synagogues such as Temple Israel in Great Neck and Temple Sinai in Los Angeles have large numbers of Sephardic members. Everyone should know the richness of our tradition and know that the service is not written in stone. There have been differences over time and in different communities.”
Rabbi Feld said he hopes Jews “will find material in the siddur that allows them to enter into the tradition without having to give up who they are.”
“If you want to know what Conservative Judaism is, look at this siddur,” he said. “It is respectful and understanding of the traditions and it lives within the 21st century.”
stewart@jewishweek.org---------------------
Prairie Culture, Jewish And Otherwise
Hilary Danilova
Travel
Travel
Prairie Culture, Jewish And Otherwise
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
The resurgent downtown of Des Moines, framed by the Iowa State Capitol. Wikimedia CommonsThe caucuses are over. The candidates have moved on to New Hampshire and South Carolina. Iowa’s cornfields lie still under a layer of snow — flat, vast expanses of white punctuated by the bare limbs of a tree, a farmhouse, a silo.
It’s mid-February, and Iowa’s 15 minutes of quadrennial fame are over. The international news media has packed up. Donald Trump’s room at the Hilton is once again vacant.
Which makes this as good a time as any to consider the quiet charms of Iowa City and Des Moines, key pit stops for the cross-country road-tripper. Both lie right on Interstate 80, the Teaneck-to-San Francisco highway that cuts through America’s heartland and bisects the Iowa prairie.
From time to time, I like to revisit the kinds of places most New Yorkers wouldn’t get on a plane to visit (unless they’re running for president), but that merit a look when passing through. Iowa’s dual metropolises, rich in historic architecture and fine art, fit squarely in this category.
And while election season brings a reliable chorus of fretting over Iowa’s much-diminished Jewish numbers, it’s worth remembering that Iowa City was home to the first Jewish mayor in the United States: Moses Bloom, a French-born immigrant entrepreneur who was elected in 1873. The cosmopolitan Bloom would doubtless be pleased to see his city recognized by UNESCO as a City of Literature, the only such designation in the United States.
Indeed, Iowa City’s outsize reputation — as well as its significant Jewish presence — owes largely to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the signature MFA program of the University of Iowa. Numerous Jewish writers are among the literary luminaries associated with this program, from Philip Roth and Nathan Englander to, most recently, Lena Dunham — whose fictional character on the hit TV show “Girls” headed here to pursue the writing life.
All this novelistic ferment means the campus is abuzz with cultural events: readings, lectures, concerts. The university is also worth a stop for its art collection, with holdings unparalleled in the region; particular strengths are 20th-century European and American paintings, including major works by Kandinsky and Picasso and a Jackson Pollock mural donated by the legendary Peggy Guggenheim, along with an impressive array of African and pre-Columbian Native American art.
A 2008 flood forced the University of Iowa Art Museum to vacate its longtime building, and a new permanent facility is in the works. Meanwhile, exhibitions are on view in a gallery at the Iowa Memorial Union building and at spaces around campus; most of the collection is temporarily housed at the Figge Art Museum in nearby Davenport.
Another top attraction on campus is the Old Capitol Building, a national historic landmark from the era when Iowa City was home to state government. Free admission includes entrance to a small museum and a tour of this graceful, classical edifice full of rotundas and filigree.
The current State Capitol is arguably even more impressive. Atop a hill in Des Moines, with sweeping views over a resurgent downtown, Iowa’s most ornate building looks like a mash-up of the Kremlin and the Florentine Duomo. It boasts no fewer than five shimmering gold and green domes, lots more gilt, myriad columns and porticoes, and enough façade ornamentation for an epic game of Where’s Waldo.
In the very center of the city, another vintage landmark is the Moorish-influenced Temple B’nai Jeshurun. Founded in 1873 as an Orthodox congregation, B’nai Jeshurun was the city’s first synagogue; later on, it became the first Iowa temple to affiliate with the Reform movement.
Today, despite a declining Jewish presence in the Midwest, the congregation is a thriving hub of young families and older residents active in Jewish life. For visitors, the highlight is a sanctuary whose brilliant stained-glass windows, blue-and-white color scheme and soaring central dome evoke the glory days of synagogue architecture.
Nearby, three of the 20th-century’s biggest starchitects were involved with Des Moines’ surprisingly ambitious Art Center — Eliel Saarinen, I.M. Pei and Richard Meier; each contributed a wing to this landmark complex. Fans of post-Impressionist and Modern Art will savor a collection that includes major works by Hopper, O’Keefe, Rothko, Sargent, Matisse and Warhol.
With a new public sculpture park and major construction projects, downtown Des Moines is undergoing a renaissance that’s palpable even after the caucus hubbub. Independent shops and cafés line the streets of the East Village neighborhood, a walkable, chain-free oasis stretching east from the Des Moines River. On winter days, people head here to ice-skate at Brenton Skating Plaza, a block from the riverbank, or for a sunlit lunch amid the palms at the Botanical Garden’s geodesic dome café.
They may even chat about politics — but between the art, the architecture and those glorious prairie sunsets, Iowa offers plenty of other distractions.---------------------
Crafted Kosher
Ronnie Fein
Travel
Prairie Culture, Jewish And Otherwise
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
The resurgent downtown of Des Moines, framed by the Iowa State Capitol. Wikimedia CommonsThe caucuses are over. The candidates have moved on to New Hampshire and South Carolina. Iowa’s cornfields lie still under a layer of snow — flat, vast expanses of white punctuated by the bare limbs of a tree, a farmhouse, a silo.
It’s mid-February, and Iowa’s 15 minutes of quadrennial fame are over. The international news media has packed up. Donald Trump’s room at the Hilton is once again vacant.
Which makes this as good a time as any to consider the quiet charms of Iowa City and Des Moines, key pit stops for the cross-country road-tripper. Both lie right on Interstate 80, the Teaneck-to-San Francisco highway that cuts through America’s heartland and bisects the Iowa prairie.
From time to time, I like to revisit the kinds of places most New Yorkers wouldn’t get on a plane to visit (unless they’re running for president), but that merit a look when passing through. Iowa’s dual metropolises, rich in historic architecture and fine art, fit squarely in this category.
And while election season brings a reliable chorus of fretting over Iowa’s much-diminished Jewish numbers, it’s worth remembering that Iowa City was home to the first Jewish mayor in the United States: Moses Bloom, a French-born immigrant entrepreneur who was elected in 1873. The cosmopolitan Bloom would doubtless be pleased to see his city recognized by UNESCO as a City of Literature, the only such designation in the United States.
Indeed, Iowa City’s outsize reputation — as well as its significant Jewish presence — owes largely to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the signature MFA program of the University of Iowa. Numerous Jewish writers are among the literary luminaries associated with this program, from Philip Roth and Nathan Englander to, most recently, Lena Dunham — whose fictional character on the hit TV show “Girls” headed here to pursue the writing life.
All this novelistic ferment means the campus is abuzz with cultural events: readings, lectures, concerts. The university is also worth a stop for its art collection, with holdings unparalleled in the region; particular strengths are 20th-century European and American paintings, including major works by Kandinsky and Picasso and a Jackson Pollock mural donated by the legendary Peggy Guggenheim, along with an impressive array of African and pre-Columbian Native American art.
A 2008 flood forced the University of Iowa Art Museum to vacate its longtime building, and a new permanent facility is in the works. Meanwhile, exhibitions are on view in a gallery at the Iowa Memorial Union building and at spaces around campus; most of the collection is temporarily housed at the Figge Art Museum in nearby Davenport.
Another top attraction on campus is the Old Capitol Building, a national historic landmark from the era when Iowa City was home to state government. Free admission includes entrance to a small museum and a tour of this graceful, classical edifice full of rotundas and filigree.
The current State Capitol is arguably even more impressive. Atop a hill in Des Moines, with sweeping views over a resurgent downtown, Iowa’s most ornate building looks like a mash-up of the Kremlin and the Florentine Duomo. It boasts no fewer than five shimmering gold and green domes, lots more gilt, myriad columns and porticoes, and enough façade ornamentation for an epic game of Where’s Waldo.
In the very center of the city, another vintage landmark is the Moorish-influenced Temple B’nai Jeshurun. Founded in 1873 as an Orthodox congregation, B’nai Jeshurun was the city’s first synagogue; later on, it became the first Iowa temple to affiliate with the Reform movement.
Today, despite a declining Jewish presence in the Midwest, the congregation is a thriving hub of young families and older residents active in Jewish life. For visitors, the highlight is a sanctuary whose brilliant stained-glass windows, blue-and-white color scheme and soaring central dome evoke the glory days of synagogue architecture.
Nearby, three of the 20th-century’s biggest starchitects were involved with Des Moines’ surprisingly ambitious Art Center — Eliel Saarinen, I.M. Pei and Richard Meier; each contributed a wing to this landmark complex. Fans of post-Impressionist and Modern Art will savor a collection that includes major works by Hopper, O’Keefe, Rothko, Sargent, Matisse and Warhol.
With a new public sculpture park and major construction projects, downtown Des Moines is undergoing a renaissance that’s palpable even after the caucus hubbub. Independent shops and cafés line the streets of the East Village neighborhood, a walkable, chain-free oasis stretching east from the Des Moines River. On winter days, people head here to ice-skate at Brenton Skating Plaza, a block from the riverbank, or for a sunlit lunch amid the palms at the Botanical Garden’s geodesic dome café.
They may even chat about politics — but between the art, the architecture and those glorious prairie sunsets, Iowa offers plenty of other distractions.---------------------
Crafted Kosher
Ronnie Fein
Food & Wine
Crafted Kosher
I live in the sticks so for me, shopping for groceries is a big deal, especially when it comes to kosher products. Anything beyond the standard stuff is hard to find. I travel to get what I need, or I order online.
Although there are several familiar online sites to those of us in the kosher-know, it’s always good to discover a new one that makes it more convenient to shop or that offers products you can’t find elsewhere.
Hello Crafted Kosher! This website, launched in December of 2015 by David Paige, is an inspiration.
Paige began his culinary career when he was a teenager, cooking cholent for his friends, (he charged $1.25 per bowl to cover his costs). He’d change the herbs and spices and some of the ingredients to see what worked – the sign of someone who understands food and wants to go beyond the ordinary.
Years later, he started Crafted Kosher to demonstrate the breadth and scope of what kosher cooking can be in the 21st century. It is designed as a source for home cooks who are somewhat adventurous, whose culinary dreams take them beyond bubbe’s brisket and even his beloved cholent. To that end, he’s curated over a thousand kosher products that include items such as truffle salt and salmon jerky, chipotle jam, monk fruit sweetener (sugar substitute) and Tahitian vanilla extract.
But Crafted Kosher is not all about esoteric products for cuisinomanes. You’ll also find the more usual cake, cookie and waffle mixes, teas, preserves and pastas. The packaged soup mixes are not so different in concept from old, reliable brands such as Streit’s or Manischewitz, but there’s a variety of different flavors such as potato-carrot and French lentil; and packaged, gluten-free chili, chowder and stew mixes. I made the Fisherman Stew Chowder mix twice – added cod to one batch, the other veg-only, plus some grated cheese. It’s powerfully flavorful either way. I also love the French lentil soup, with those whole green lentils that don’t turn to mush. One thing I did find jarring: the instructions suggest options that include items such as shrimp and ham. Naturally, kosher folks know not to add those, but it seemed odd to see the label Crafted “kosher” on one side and suggestions for treif items on the back.
There’s much here that you can find elsewhere: candies and chocolates; gift items (such as dried fruit-and-nut baskets); well-known brands of condiments, salsas, chutneys, extracts and barbecue sauces; gluten-free flours, mixes, snacks and so on.
On the other hand the assortments of certain products are extensive: Eden Foods spelt and buckwheat gemelli, kukicha tea, yellow mustard and sauerkraut in addition to the supermarket-oriented pastas and beans; Nielsen-Massey Rosewater and Orange Flower Water, and other flavors beyond the usual vanilla bean pastes and extracts.
The benefit I see at Crafted Kosher is that it makes it easy to find a lot of what you might want all in one place, from old fashioned dried mushrooms to classic spice blends (such as curry powder) and some very exciting unclassic ones (India Tree Panch Phoron, a Bengali 5-spice mix), as well as hard-to-find Middle Eastern Ras el Hanout to specialty items such as hemp seed oil and even Red Boat Fish Sauce, to my knowledge, the only authentic, kosher, anchovy-based fish sauce on the market.
Although I love traditional Jewish cuisine, I usually save that kind of food for holidays. During the busy workweek I prefer something quicker and easier – but not boring. I am the kind of home cook who likes to invent and re-invent recipes, so for me, Crafted Kosher is a goldmine. With the Tourangelle Pistachio Nut Oil and Bakto Blood Orange Vinegar I changed a run of the mill roasted beet salad into something special – mellower, subtler, richer and slightly nutty-flavored with a hint of tang. It was so easy, just a simple switch to more intriguing ingredients. With the leftovers I can experiment using the pistachio oil on some pasta (with Parmesan cheese or feta?). The vinegar? I’ll use it in a marinade for beef or in a basting sauce for chicken.
I also used the Carrington Farms Sriracha flavored coconut oil to make some cheese-chili popcorn – a snack I will re-do many times. And I added the oil to my standard fried rice, to give the dish an undertone of heat. The fish sauce! Ah! So far used only for noodle salad, but there are some Thai-style recipes in my future.
HideServings & Times
Yield:
Makes 6 servingsActive Time:
30 minTotal Time:
1 hr
Crafted Kosher
I live in the sticks so for me, shopping for groceries is a big deal, especially when it comes to kosher products. Anything beyond the standard stuff is hard to find. I travel to get what I need, or I order online.
Although there are several familiar online sites to those of us in the kosher-know, it’s always good to discover a new one that makes it more convenient to shop or that offers products you can’t find elsewhere.
Hello Crafted Kosher! This website, launched in December of 2015 by David Paige, is an inspiration.
Paige began his culinary career when he was a teenager, cooking cholent for his friends, (he charged $1.25 per bowl to cover his costs). He’d change the herbs and spices and some of the ingredients to see what worked – the sign of someone who understands food and wants to go beyond the ordinary.
Years later, he started Crafted Kosher to demonstrate the breadth and scope of what kosher cooking can be in the 21st century. It is designed as a source for home cooks who are somewhat adventurous, whose culinary dreams take them beyond bubbe’s brisket and even his beloved cholent. To that end, he’s curated over a thousand kosher products that include items such as truffle salt and salmon jerky, chipotle jam, monk fruit sweetener (sugar substitute) and Tahitian vanilla extract.
But Crafted Kosher is not all about esoteric products for cuisinomanes. You’ll also find the more usual cake, cookie and waffle mixes, teas, preserves and pastas. The packaged soup mixes are not so different in concept from old, reliable brands such as Streit’s or Manischewitz, but there’s a variety of different flavors such as potato-carrot and French lentil; and packaged, gluten-free chili, chowder and stew mixes. I made the Fisherman Stew Chowder mix twice – added cod to one batch, the other veg-only, plus some grated cheese. It’s powerfully flavorful either way. I also love the French lentil soup, with those whole green lentils that don’t turn to mush. One thing I did find jarring: the instructions suggest options that include items such as shrimp and ham. Naturally, kosher folks know not to add those, but it seemed odd to see the label Crafted “kosher” on one side and suggestions for treif items on the back.
There’s much here that you can find elsewhere: candies and chocolates; gift items (such as dried fruit-and-nut baskets); well-known brands of condiments, salsas, chutneys, extracts and barbecue sauces; gluten-free flours, mixes, snacks and so on.
On the other hand the assortments of certain products are extensive: Eden Foods spelt and buckwheat gemelli, kukicha tea, yellow mustard and sauerkraut in addition to the supermarket-oriented pastas and beans; Nielsen-Massey Rosewater and Orange Flower Water, and other flavors beyond the usual vanilla bean pastes and extracts.
The benefit I see at Crafted Kosher is that it makes it easy to find a lot of what you might want all in one place, from old fashioned dried mushrooms to classic spice blends (such as curry powder) and some very exciting unclassic ones (India Tree Panch Phoron, a Bengali 5-spice mix), as well as hard-to-find Middle Eastern Ras el Hanout to specialty items such as hemp seed oil and even Red Boat Fish Sauce, to my knowledge, the only authentic, kosher, anchovy-based fish sauce on the market.
Although I love traditional Jewish cuisine, I usually save that kind of food for holidays. During the busy workweek I prefer something quicker and easier – but not boring. I am the kind of home cook who likes to invent and re-invent recipes, so for me, Crafted Kosher is a goldmine. With the Tourangelle Pistachio Nut Oil and Bakto Blood Orange Vinegar I changed a run of the mill roasted beet salad into something special – mellower, subtler, richer and slightly nutty-flavored with a hint of tang. It was so easy, just a simple switch to more intriguing ingredients. With the leftovers I can experiment using the pistachio oil on some pasta (with Parmesan cheese or feta?). The vinegar? I’ll use it in a marinade for beef or in a basting sauce for chicken.
I also used the Carrington Farms Sriracha flavored coconut oil to make some cheese-chili popcorn – a snack I will re-do many times. And I added the oil to my standard fried rice, to give the dish an undertone of heat. The fish sauce! Ah! So far used only for noodle salad, but there are some Thai-style recipes in my future.
HideServings & Times
Yield:
Makes 6 servingsActive Time:
30 minTotal Time:
1 hr
HideIngredients
Roasted Beet Salad with Pistachio Oil and Blood Orange Vinaigrette
4 medium or 3 large beets
1-1/2 tablespoons pistachio oil
2 tablespoons blood orange vinegar
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons crushed pistachios
HideSteps
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Trim the beets, cutting away the greens, if any, and discarding any hard, fibrous parts of the stem. Wash and drain the greens and use them for other purposes. Scrub the beets, wrap them in aluminum foil and roast for 50-60 minutes or until they are tender. Peel the beets when they are cool enough to handle. Cut the beets into bite size pieces and place in a bowl. Pour in the pistachio oil and toss the beets to coat them with the oil. Add the blood orange vinegar and thyme and toss the ingredients. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Scatter the salad with the crushed pistachios. Let rest for 10-15 minutes before serving.
Roasted Beet Salad with Pistachio Oil and Blood Orange Vinaigrette
4 medium or 3 large beets
1-1/2 tablespoons pistachio oil
2 tablespoons blood orange vinegar
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons crushed pistachios
HideSteps
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Trim the beets, cutting away the greens, if any, and discarding any hard, fibrous parts of the stem. Wash and drain the greens and use them for other purposes. Scrub the beets, wrap them in aluminum foil and roast for 50-60 minutes or until they are tender. Peel the beets when they are cool enough to handle. Cut the beets into bite size pieces and place in a bowl. Pour in the pistachio oil and toss the beets to coat them with the oil. Add the blood orange vinegar and thyme and toss the ingredients. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Scatter the salad with the crushed pistachios. Let rest for 10-15 minutes before serving.
---------------------
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Gary Rosenblatt
Israel’s UN Ambassador: A Contradiction In Terms
Danny Danon would seem to be the unlikeliest of choices to be Israel’s ambassador to the UN.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattDanny Danon would seem to be the unlikeliest of choices to be Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, especially at such a sensitive time for Jerusalem in terms of its image in the international community.
Danon, 44, who served most recently as minister of science, technology and space in the Israeli government, has a reputation as a firebrand. He is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution regarding Palestinian sovereignty. He has a reputation for making highly undiplomatic statements, particularly in calling for the annexation of much of the West Bank, and he is a political rival within the Likud Party of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who also serves as foreign minister and decides on diplomatic appointments.
So why would Netanyahu, who fired Danon from the post of deputy defense minister in 2014 for criticizing his handling of the Gaza War, turn around and appoint him last summer to such a prime diplomatic posting? Especially when critical and delicate discussions are on the horizon at the U.N. Security Council regarding Palestinian statehood.
To answer that, one must understand Israel’s political climate, where most decisions — no matter how global in impact — are based on narrow, shtetl calculations. Consider: Danon ran against Netanyahu for the leadership of Likud in 2014 — he received 19 percent of the vote — and was reportedly planning to oppose him again. So Netanyahu banished him to Israel’s version of Siberia: the U.N.
It’s the place where even the most passionate and eloquent speeches from Jerusalem’s representatives fall on deaf ears, and where the world’s most ruthless nations head up committees on human rights.
Some say the appointment was a punishment for Danon, condemning him to endure the ongoing barrage of anti-Israel rhetoric. Others suggest it was Netanyahu’s way of telling the community of nations what he really thinks of their deliberations.
David Horovitz, the thoughtful and usually restrained editor of The Times of Israel, wrote on learning of Danon’s posting in August: “It is hard to conceive of a more short-sighted, shameful, self-defeating and damaging appointment. Not just for Netanyahu and his government, but for all of Israel.”
Horovitz explained: “It appears to confirm everything Netanyahu’s critics at home and abroad have asserted about his true intentions with respect to the Palestinians. … Undeniably, now, by the prime minister’s own decree, Danny Danon is the true face of Netanyahu’s Israel.”
How does Danon deal with all the conjecture and criticism?
During an interview in his office a few blocks from the U.N., he was as polite to his guest as he was dismissive of media condemnations.
“I would invite David Horovitz to come to the U.N. and see my work here,” he said in a soft voice. “Menachem Begin received similar responses [from detractors]. I say to my critics, judge the result.”
He acknowledged that his job is “challenging,” but pointed out that as a veteran of the Knesset and Israeli politics, he can roll with the punches.
“I’m a fighter,” he said. “I have a passion to defend Israel and I do that day and night. My goal is to be on offense, not defense.
“My message to my staff,” he said, “is zero tolerance. If I see a lie, we will call it.”
Despite the fact that a number of diplomats at the U.N., where Israel’s legitimacy is still questioned, refuse to shake Danon’s hand or speak with him in public, he says he is making inroads under the radar.
“I am not waiting for the next anti-Israel resolution,” he said. “We are setting an agenda.
“There is a public U.N. and a private U.N.,” he observed, “and they are two different planets. Privately I am building relationships, and I see there is interest in and admiration for Israel and our achievements” in science, medicine, technology, water irrigation and other areas. “People are shocked at our accomplishments and want to know more about how we do it.”
Taking advantage of that curiosity, Danon has chosen to make 2016 “the year of showing the other side of Israel” in terms of science and technology — the ministry he headed. His office is sponsoring events each month at the UN that highlight Israeli innovation.
Some countries that don’t recognize Israel send staff members to these programs. They sit in the back of the room and take notes, Danon said. And several ambassadors from Arab countries have approached him privately to discuss issues like water.
“A few ambassadors from African countries have told me they are afraid of reaction from the Arab League” if they are seen in public with the Israeli diplomat, but he engages with them privately. In return, Danon said, “we are asking our bilateral friends to show their support, even at the U.N.”
While he emphasizes his “cultural” advances, he noted that he was successful in a campaign in December to have Yom Kippur declared as the 11th U.N. holiday, joining several Christian and Muslim holy days. That means Jewish workers will not be docked for taking the day off as a vacation day and no votes or official discussions will take place at the world body on Judaism’s holiest day.
Danon also noted that Israel managed to have a resolution dealing with agricultural development passed at the U.N. despite Arab objections.
Those are the kinds of modest achievements the ambassador can cite, given the fact that Israel is increasingly marginalized internationally for its policies dealing with Palestinians and settlements. Most notably of late, Brazil has refused to accept Israel’s appointment in August of Dani Dayan, a former leader of the settlement community, as ambassador to the embassy in Brasilia. Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil’s left-wing government, has said consent would signal “support for the settlement enterprise.” But Israel, citing prejudice, has insisted it has the right to appoint whom it chooses, noting that Brazil has not objected to ambassadors appointed by countries like Iran, Syria and Sudan, which murder their own citizens and commit other barbaric violations of human rights.
“We will choose the ambassador,” Danon commented, calling Brazil’s resistance “unacceptable.”
On reflection, Danon can be seen as the perfect choice for his post despite being personally opposed to a two-state solution, the very objective his government publicly espouses, and being an advocate of the West Bank settlements that the U.S. and virtually all other countries dispute. After all, the U.N. is a Hall of Mirrors, an embodiment of hypocrisy, with the world’s moral inmates running the asylum. So when Danon declares that despite his own views, “I represent the policy of my country — period,” or when he asserts that he has a “very good” relationship with Netanyahu — “he fired me [as deputy defense minister] but it wasn’t personal” — one realizes he may have the ideal temperament for the U.N. and understand its culture of double standards better than most.
He can play the game, calling for a return to “the peace table,” where Israel will be “flexible,” while not backing off of previous statements that no one espousing a two-state solution should be allowed to be a member of Likud.
“I came here with a lot of passion,” Danon told me at the end of our interview, noting that he gave up a major ministry to take the U.N. post. “I really care, and the prime minister appreciates my willingness to fight for the cause.”
I’m just not sure exactly what cause they are fighting for.
Gary@jewishweek.org
MORE HEADLINES:
Gary Rosenblatt's Between the Lines >
Gary Rosenblatt
Israel’s UN Ambassador: A Contradiction In Terms
Danny Danon would seem to be the unlikeliest of choices to be Israel’s ambassador to the UN.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattDanny Danon would seem to be the unlikeliest of choices to be Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, especially at such a sensitive time for Jerusalem in terms of its image in the international community.
Danon, 44, who served most recently as minister of science, technology and space in the Israeli government, has a reputation as a firebrand. He is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution regarding Palestinian sovereignty. He has a reputation for making highly undiplomatic statements, particularly in calling for the annexation of much of the West Bank, and he is a political rival within the Likud Party of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who also serves as foreign minister and decides on diplomatic appointments.
So why would Netanyahu, who fired Danon from the post of deputy defense minister in 2014 for criticizing his handling of the Gaza War, turn around and appoint him last summer to such a prime diplomatic posting? Especially when critical and delicate discussions are on the horizon at the U.N. Security Council regarding Palestinian statehood.
To answer that, one must understand Israel’s political climate, where most decisions — no matter how global in impact — are based on narrow, shtetl calculations. Consider: Danon ran against Netanyahu for the leadership of Likud in 2014 — he received 19 percent of the vote — and was reportedly planning to oppose him again. So Netanyahu banished him to Israel’s version of Siberia: the U.N.
It’s the place where even the most passionate and eloquent speeches from Jerusalem’s representatives fall on deaf ears, and where the world’s most ruthless nations head up committees on human rights.
Some say the appointment was a punishment for Danon, condemning him to endure the ongoing barrage of anti-Israel rhetoric. Others suggest it was Netanyahu’s way of telling the community of nations what he really thinks of their deliberations.
David Horovitz, the thoughtful and usually restrained editor of The Times of Israel, wrote on learning of Danon’s posting in August: “It is hard to conceive of a more short-sighted, shameful, self-defeating and damaging appointment. Not just for Netanyahu and his government, but for all of Israel.”
Horovitz explained: “It appears to confirm everything Netanyahu’s critics at home and abroad have asserted about his true intentions with respect to the Palestinians. … Undeniably, now, by the prime minister’s own decree, Danny Danon is the true face of Netanyahu’s Israel.”
How does Danon deal with all the conjecture and criticism?
During an interview in his office a few blocks from the U.N., he was as polite to his guest as he was dismissive of media condemnations.
“I would invite David Horovitz to come to the U.N. and see my work here,” he said in a soft voice. “Menachem Begin received similar responses [from detractors]. I say to my critics, judge the result.”
He acknowledged that his job is “challenging,” but pointed out that as a veteran of the Knesset and Israeli politics, he can roll with the punches.
“I’m a fighter,” he said. “I have a passion to defend Israel and I do that day and night. My goal is to be on offense, not defense.
“My message to my staff,” he said, “is zero tolerance. If I see a lie, we will call it.”
Despite the fact that a number of diplomats at the U.N., where Israel’s legitimacy is still questioned, refuse to shake Danon’s hand or speak with him in public, he says he is making inroads under the radar.
“I am not waiting for the next anti-Israel resolution,” he said. “We are setting an agenda.
“There is a public U.N. and a private U.N.,” he observed, “and they are two different planets. Privately I am building relationships, and I see there is interest in and admiration for Israel and our achievements” in science, medicine, technology, water irrigation and other areas. “People are shocked at our accomplishments and want to know more about how we do it.”
Taking advantage of that curiosity, Danon has chosen to make 2016 “the year of showing the other side of Israel” in terms of science and technology — the ministry he headed. His office is sponsoring events each month at the UN that highlight Israeli innovation.
Some countries that don’t recognize Israel send staff members to these programs. They sit in the back of the room and take notes, Danon said. And several ambassadors from Arab countries have approached him privately to discuss issues like water.
“A few ambassadors from African countries have told me they are afraid of reaction from the Arab League” if they are seen in public with the Israeli diplomat, but he engages with them privately. In return, Danon said, “we are asking our bilateral friends to show their support, even at the U.N.”
While he emphasizes his “cultural” advances, he noted that he was successful in a campaign in December to have Yom Kippur declared as the 11th U.N. holiday, joining several Christian and Muslim holy days. That means Jewish workers will not be docked for taking the day off as a vacation day and no votes or official discussions will take place at the world body on Judaism’s holiest day.
Danon also noted that Israel managed to have a resolution dealing with agricultural development passed at the U.N. despite Arab objections.
Those are the kinds of modest achievements the ambassador can cite, given the fact that Israel is increasingly marginalized internationally for its policies dealing with Palestinians and settlements. Most notably of late, Brazil has refused to accept Israel’s appointment in August of Dani Dayan, a former leader of the settlement community, as ambassador to the embassy in Brasilia. Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil’s left-wing government, has said consent would signal “support for the settlement enterprise.” But Israel, citing prejudice, has insisted it has the right to appoint whom it chooses, noting that Brazil has not objected to ambassadors appointed by countries like Iran, Syria and Sudan, which murder their own citizens and commit other barbaric violations of human rights.
“We will choose the ambassador,” Danon commented, calling Brazil’s resistance “unacceptable.”
On reflection, Danon can be seen as the perfect choice for his post despite being personally opposed to a two-state solution, the very objective his government publicly espouses, and being an advocate of the West Bank settlements that the U.S. and virtually all other countries dispute. After all, the U.N. is a Hall of Mirrors, an embodiment of hypocrisy, with the world’s moral inmates running the asylum. So when Danon declares that despite his own views, “I represent the policy of my country — period,” or when he asserts that he has a “very good” relationship with Netanyahu — “he fired me [as deputy defense minister] but it wasn’t personal” — one realizes he may have the ideal temperament for the U.N. and understand its culture of double standards better than most.
He can play the game, calling for a return to “the peace table,” where Israel will be “flexible,” while not backing off of previous statements that no one espousing a two-state solution should be allowed to be a member of Likud.
“I came here with a lot of passion,” Danon told me at the end of our interview, noting that he gave up a major ministry to take the U.N. post. “I really care, and the prime minister appreciates my willingness to fight for the cause.”
I’m just not sure exactly what cause they are fighting for.
Gary@jewishweek.org
---------------------
Seeing Israel Through The Camera's Eye >
New York
Seeing Israel Through The Camera’s Eye
Sandee Brawarsky
Nick Waplington’s evocative photo, is part of the “This Place” exhibit. Courtesy of Brooklyn MuseumIt’s extremely rare for 12 photographers to show their work together. Photographer Frederic Brenner not only convinced 11 of his renowned colleagues from around the world to share in an exhibition, but to first spend six months in Israel — where most had never been — and present their own photographic vision. The result of his remarkably ambitious project, “This Place,” with more than 600 photographs on view, opens this Friday at the Brooklyn Museum and runs through June 5th.
Brenner, along with Jeff Rosenheim, curator-in-charge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Photography, treated Jewish Week readers and others to a sneak preview of the exhibition, at a Jewish Week Forum at Temple Emanuel’s Skirball Center last Thursday evening.
“Israel is a place of metaphor… of radical optimists,” Brenner observed. “It engages viewers in a conversation.”
“Seeing is a creative act,” Rosenheim said. Each photographer was “looking for that thing they had never seen before, never felt before.”
Several of the participating photographers were present as Brenner and Rosenheim showed and commented on the work. Their longtime association was evident in the natural back-and-forth between the two. They also showed a video about the making of the $6 million project, which took several years to complete.
The evening was a primer on photography. Rosenheim showed historical photographs not in the show that were taken in Jerusalem at the dawn of photography more than 170 years ago, including early daguerreotypes by French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey.
Some of the historical photographs were shot at the very same angles as the contemporary ones, with all photographers facing similar questions about “how to record this unbelievable place.”
Brenner narrated his own story beginning in the late 1970s — with photographs from his distinguished oeuvre — of his shift from photographing Jews in the diaspora to seeking out the complications of Israeli society. The French-born photographer, who speaks — and photographs — in poetic metaphor, explained: “For me, diaspora begins in Jerusalem.”
When he first visited, he was captivated by Meah Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem where, he said, “people live in the diaspora in the heart of Jerusalem in the heart of the Middle East.” He then began “piecing together the puzzle of many fragments, of the Jewish people” — “my own puzzle,” he called it — traveling to 40 countries in 25 years. He then felt a need to return to Jerusalem, to try to understand “the promise attached to this land from time immemorial.”
“What have we done with this promise?” he asked. “What has it done to us, [and] what will we do with it?”
Seeing Israel Through The Camera's Eye >
New York
Seeing Israel Through The Camera’s Eye
Sandee Brawarsky
Nick Waplington’s evocative photo, is part of the “This Place” exhibit. Courtesy of Brooklyn MuseumIt’s extremely rare for 12 photographers to show their work together. Photographer Frederic Brenner not only convinced 11 of his renowned colleagues from around the world to share in an exhibition, but to first spend six months in Israel — where most had never been — and present their own photographic vision. The result of his remarkably ambitious project, “This Place,” with more than 600 photographs on view, opens this Friday at the Brooklyn Museum and runs through June 5th.
Brenner, along with Jeff Rosenheim, curator-in-charge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Photography, treated Jewish Week readers and others to a sneak preview of the exhibition, at a Jewish Week Forum at Temple Emanuel’s Skirball Center last Thursday evening.
“Israel is a place of metaphor… of radical optimists,” Brenner observed. “It engages viewers in a conversation.”
“Seeing is a creative act,” Rosenheim said. Each photographer was “looking for that thing they had never seen before, never felt before.”
Several of the participating photographers were present as Brenner and Rosenheim showed and commented on the work. Their longtime association was evident in the natural back-and-forth between the two. They also showed a video about the making of the $6 million project, which took several years to complete.
The evening was a primer on photography. Rosenheim showed historical photographs not in the show that were taken in Jerusalem at the dawn of photography more than 170 years ago, including early daguerreotypes by French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey.
Some of the historical photographs were shot at the very same angles as the contemporary ones, with all photographers facing similar questions about “how to record this unbelievable place.”
Brenner narrated his own story beginning in the late 1970s — with photographs from his distinguished oeuvre — of his shift from photographing Jews in the diaspora to seeking out the complications of Israeli society. The French-born photographer, who speaks — and photographs — in poetic metaphor, explained: “For me, diaspora begins in Jerusalem.”
When he first visited, he was captivated by Meah Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem where, he said, “people live in the diaspora in the heart of Jerusalem in the heart of the Middle East.” He then began “piecing together the puzzle of many fragments, of the Jewish people” — “my own puzzle,” he called it — traveling to 40 countries in 25 years. He then felt a need to return to Jerusalem, to try to understand “the promise attached to this land from time immemorial.”
“What have we done with this promise?” he asked. “What has it done to us, [and] what will we do with it?”
---------------------
'A One-Two Punch' >
New York
‘A One-Two Punch’
Congregation ‘heartbroken’ after two ‘exceptional young people’ die in freak accidents.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
David Wichs, a victim of last week’s crane collapse in Lower Manhattan. JTALast week, for the second time in a month, sudden death struck a young member of one of New York City’s most prominent Modern Orthodox congregations.
Three weeks after an overflowing crowd mourned the death of 21-year-old Daniella Moffson, who was killed in a bus accident in Honduras while volunteering on a medical mission, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun was the site on Sunday of the funeral of David Wichs, who was killed in last week’s crane collapse in Lower Manhattan.
Mr. Wichs, 38, a native of Czechoslovakia who lived on the Upper West Side, was on his way to his job at a Wall Street-area trading firm on Friday, Feb. 5, when a crane crashed down onto Worth Street, killing him and injuring three others. An investigation into the cause of the accident is underway.
“It seems completely unreal … a one-two punch to the gut … two people who aren’t supposed to die this way,” said Rabbi Elie Weinstock, spiritual leader at the Upper East Side shul. Members of the congregation, he said, “are starting to process it.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, who became senior spiritual leader at the Orthodox synagogue a month ago, said in an email: “Our kehilla [community] is heartbroken for the families, and grieve the tragic loss of Daniella and David. These tragedies have affected so many, because these were two exceptional young people who had already made a profound impact on their friends, their community and the world.”
But, he added, “At the same time, the response from our community has been exemplary,” with people working on “multiple memorial projects” and offering help and comfort.
“People have done so much in support of the families ... . Even at this time, which is the worst of times, we saw the best of our community,” he said.
Ms. Moffson was in Honduras with the Global Brigades, a health and international development organization. She and two others were killed on the last day of the mission on the way to the airport when their bus veered off a road and fell into a ravine. Twelve other Americans were injured in the accident.
Shortly after her death, Rabbi Weinstock
remembered the Columbia University senior as “a very special person, sweet — she wanted to help.”
“She had a very spiritual refinement that stood out,” he added.
Mr. Wichs was remembered by friends and clergy for his uninhibited enthusiasm about the friendships he cultivated and the observant Jewish lifestyle he embraced while at Yeshivah of Flatbush, where he studied after his family moved to New York City when he was a teenager, knowing little English.
The opportunity, after growing up in a communist society, to be able to openly live and identify as a Jew “was a miracle” for Mr. Wichs and his family, said Dr. Ari Vanderwalde, who met Mr. Wichs in Israel some 20 years ago, where both were spending a year before college studying at yeshivas.
Dr. Ari Vanderwalde, now an oncologist in Memphis, was visiting a friend in Efrat in the West Bank one day when he noticed an unusual sight: Approaching him, riding slowly on a bike, was a large student, a stranger, who was attending an Efrat yeshiva.
The stranger was Mr. Wichs. “In a heavy Czech accent,” said Dr. Vanderwalde, Mr. Wichs declared, “We are going to Harvard.”
Mr. Wichs had heard that Vanderwalde and he would be classmates the following year at the Ivy League school, and he wanted to introduce himself. “He was just so exuberant — he was excited about everything in his life.
“Back then he was a bear of a man — his personality spilled out,” said Dr. Vanderwalde, who flew to New York on short notice to attend his old friend’s funeral. “I remember the wobbly bike and huge smile.”
David Wolkenfeld, spiritual leader of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago, posted a similar story on Facebook this week.
Mr. Wichs, Rabbi Wolkenfeld wrote, “was one of the first people I met as a pre-frosh at Harvard. He heard that I was intending to study the following year at Yeshivat Hamivtar [in Israel] and he grabbed my hands and exclaimed to all assembled how happy he was that I was going to study at the ‘greatest yeshiva’ and that there would be two of us as alumni on campus when I returned.
“That sort of unrestrained enthusiasm,” the rabbi wrote, “was, to put it mildly, somewhat uncommon at Harvard and that brief encounter helped me feel good about my decision to study in yeshiva between high school and college and reassured me about Harvard too.”
“He was a great guy,” said Rabbi Weinstock, who knew Mr. Wichs for three years and read a chapter of Psalms at the funeral.
At Mr. Wichs’ funeral, a loudspeaker broadcast the ceremony to people gathered outside on the sidewalk.
Speakers at the funeral included Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, emeritus spiritual leader at the synagogue; Rebecca Guttman, Mr. Wichs’ widow; and Daniel Wichs, his brother. Mr. Wichs is also survived by his parents, Adela and Tomas Wichs.
After Mr. Wichs graduated Harvard with a degree in mathematics, he joined Tower Research Capital, where he worked for the last 15 years.
Dr. Vanderwalde called Mr. Wichs “an exceptional observer of people. He liked being around people. He made you feel so important.”
As an example of his friend’s sense of humor and insight, Dr. Vanderwalde recalled a conversation he had with Mr. Wichs about 15 years ago. They were debating what was the most important invention or scientific development of the past decade.
Dr. Vanderwalde suggested the Internet.
“E-Z Pass,” said Mr. Wichs.
Dr. Vanderwalde weighed the pros and cons of the Internet.
Mr. Wichs remained steadfast. “Yes,” he said, “but what’s the downside to E-Z Pass?”
steve@jewishweek.org---------------------
Larry David Feels The Bern On 'SNL' >
Larry David Feels The Bern On ‘SNL’
Bernie Sanders and Larry David on SNL/Screenshot via youtube.comBernie Sanders and Larry David were a Jewish power duo on Saturday night
Maya Klausner
New York
‘A One-Two Punch’
Congregation ‘heartbroken’ after two ‘exceptional young people’ die in freak accidents.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
David Wichs, a victim of last week’s crane collapse in Lower Manhattan. JTALast week, for the second time in a month, sudden death struck a young member of one of New York City’s most prominent Modern Orthodox congregations.
Three weeks after an overflowing crowd mourned the death of 21-year-old Daniella Moffson, who was killed in a bus accident in Honduras while volunteering on a medical mission, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun was the site on Sunday of the funeral of David Wichs, who was killed in last week’s crane collapse in Lower Manhattan.
Mr. Wichs, 38, a native of Czechoslovakia who lived on the Upper West Side, was on his way to his job at a Wall Street-area trading firm on Friday, Feb. 5, when a crane crashed down onto Worth Street, killing him and injuring three others. An investigation into the cause of the accident is underway.
“It seems completely unreal … a one-two punch to the gut … two people who aren’t supposed to die this way,” said Rabbi Elie Weinstock, spiritual leader at the Upper East Side shul. Members of the congregation, he said, “are starting to process it.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, who became senior spiritual leader at the Orthodox synagogue a month ago, said in an email: “Our kehilla [community] is heartbroken for the families, and grieve the tragic loss of Daniella and David. These tragedies have affected so many, because these were two exceptional young people who had already made a profound impact on their friends, their community and the world.”
But, he added, “At the same time, the response from our community has been exemplary,” with people working on “multiple memorial projects” and offering help and comfort.
“People have done so much in support of the families ... . Even at this time, which is the worst of times, we saw the best of our community,” he said.
Ms. Moffson was in Honduras with the Global Brigades, a health and international development organization. She and two others were killed on the last day of the mission on the way to the airport when their bus veered off a road and fell into a ravine. Twelve other Americans were injured in the accident.
Shortly after her death, Rabbi Weinstock
remembered the Columbia University senior as “a very special person, sweet — she wanted to help.”
“She had a very spiritual refinement that stood out,” he added.
Mr. Wichs was remembered by friends and clergy for his uninhibited enthusiasm about the friendships he cultivated and the observant Jewish lifestyle he embraced while at Yeshivah of Flatbush, where he studied after his family moved to New York City when he was a teenager, knowing little English.
The opportunity, after growing up in a communist society, to be able to openly live and identify as a Jew “was a miracle” for Mr. Wichs and his family, said Dr. Ari Vanderwalde, who met Mr. Wichs in Israel some 20 years ago, where both were spending a year before college studying at yeshivas.
Dr. Ari Vanderwalde, now an oncologist in Memphis, was visiting a friend in Efrat in the West Bank one day when he noticed an unusual sight: Approaching him, riding slowly on a bike, was a large student, a stranger, who was attending an Efrat yeshiva.
The stranger was Mr. Wichs. “In a heavy Czech accent,” said Dr. Vanderwalde, Mr. Wichs declared, “We are going to Harvard.”
Mr. Wichs had heard that Vanderwalde and he would be classmates the following year at the Ivy League school, and he wanted to introduce himself. “He was just so exuberant — he was excited about everything in his life.
“Back then he was a bear of a man — his personality spilled out,” said Dr. Vanderwalde, who flew to New York on short notice to attend his old friend’s funeral. “I remember the wobbly bike and huge smile.”
David Wolkenfeld, spiritual leader of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago, posted a similar story on Facebook this week.
Mr. Wichs, Rabbi Wolkenfeld wrote, “was one of the first people I met as a pre-frosh at Harvard. He heard that I was intending to study the following year at Yeshivat Hamivtar [in Israel] and he grabbed my hands and exclaimed to all assembled how happy he was that I was going to study at the ‘greatest yeshiva’ and that there would be two of us as alumni on campus when I returned.
“That sort of unrestrained enthusiasm,” the rabbi wrote, “was, to put it mildly, somewhat uncommon at Harvard and that brief encounter helped me feel good about my decision to study in yeshiva between high school and college and reassured me about Harvard too.”
“He was a great guy,” said Rabbi Weinstock, who knew Mr. Wichs for three years and read a chapter of Psalms at the funeral.
At Mr. Wichs’ funeral, a loudspeaker broadcast the ceremony to people gathered outside on the sidewalk.
Speakers at the funeral included Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, emeritus spiritual leader at the synagogue; Rebecca Guttman, Mr. Wichs’ widow; and Daniel Wichs, his brother. Mr. Wichs is also survived by his parents, Adela and Tomas Wichs.
After Mr. Wichs graduated Harvard with a degree in mathematics, he joined Tower Research Capital, where he worked for the last 15 years.
Dr. Vanderwalde called Mr. Wichs “an exceptional observer of people. He liked being around people. He made you feel so important.”
As an example of his friend’s sense of humor and insight, Dr. Vanderwalde recalled a conversation he had with Mr. Wichs about 15 years ago. They were debating what was the most important invention or scientific development of the past decade.
Dr. Vanderwalde suggested the Internet.
“E-Z Pass,” said Mr. Wichs.
Dr. Vanderwalde weighed the pros and cons of the Internet.
Mr. Wichs remained steadfast. “Yes,” he said, “but what’s the downside to E-Z Pass?”
steve@jewishweek.org---------------------
Larry David Feels The Bern On 'SNL' >
Larry David Feels The Bern On ‘SNL’
Bernie Sanders and Larry David on SNL/Screenshot via youtube.comBernie Sanders and Larry David were a Jewish power duo on Saturday night
Maya Klausner
Editor
Comedy, Television
Larry David and Bernie Sanders have made their fondness for one another known on a number of occasions over the past year from afar, but on Saturday night, the two finally came face-to-face on the stages of “Saturday Night Live.”
David has journeyed a long way in his beige Campers: he was the young, Jew-froed comic in his early 30s who was once rejected by “SNL”; then he went on to co-create the seminal ’90s sitcom, “Seinfeld”; then came his starring role in the hit HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” While David’s relationship with “SNL” has been slightly cracked over the years, Sanders seems to be the glue that brings them together.
Last fall, David made a surprise appearance on “SNL,” riffing on one of the earlier Democratic debates as the income-equality-focused Vermont senator in the cold open. Soon after David’s riff, Sanders delivered a reciprocal impression on a late-night talk show, and from that moment the bond between the two Jewish personas was sealed.
So when the two got together at studio 8H for David’s first time hosting the show, even though Sanders only had two cameos, they stole the spotlight. In a sketch where David plays a characteristically less-than-valiant, self-absorbed, distressed passenger on a sinking steam ship carrying immigrants to America, presumably headed to Ellis Island, the debate being who gets saved, Sanders appears toward the end dressed as David’s twin.
In typical Sanders’ fashion, the senator comes out saying, “I am so sick of the 1 percent getting this preferential treatment,” referring to the select few (women and children) who were being carted to safety on lifeboats. David’s disgust at not being saved was less values-oriented, saying “Really? Shouldn’t it just be whoever’s closest?” and then demanding a “happy trail” check on a young boy to prove he in fact qualifies as a child.
Larry David and Bernie Sanders have made their fondness for one another known on a number of occasions over the past year from afar, but on Saturday night, the two finally came face-to-face on the stages of “Saturday Night Live.”
David has journeyed a long way in his beige Campers: he was the young, Jew-froed comic in his early 30s who was once rejected by “SNL”; then he went on to co-create the seminal ’90s sitcom, “Seinfeld”; then came his starring role in the hit HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” While David’s relationship with “SNL” has been slightly cracked over the years, Sanders seems to be the glue that brings them together.
Last fall, David made a surprise appearance on “SNL,” riffing on one of the earlier Democratic debates as the income-equality-focused Vermont senator in the cold open. Soon after David’s riff, Sanders delivered a reciprocal impression on a late-night talk show, and from that moment the bond between the two Jewish personas was sealed.
So when the two got together at studio 8H for David’s first time hosting the show, even though Sanders only had two cameos, they stole the spotlight. In a sketch where David plays a characteristically less-than-valiant, self-absorbed, distressed passenger on a sinking steam ship carrying immigrants to America, presumably headed to Ellis Island, the debate being who gets saved, Sanders appears toward the end dressed as David’s twin.
In typical Sanders’ fashion, the senator comes out saying, “I am so sick of the 1 percent getting this preferential treatment,” referring to the select few (women and children) who were being carted to safety on lifeboats. David’s disgust at not being saved was less values-oriented, saying “Really? Shouldn’t it just be whoever’s closest?” and then demanding a “happy trail” check on a young boy to prove he in fact qualifies as a child.
When Sanders insists that the passengers must “unite and work together,” referencing an ongoing campaign message, David responds by saying, “Sounds like socialism to me,” to which Sanders corrects, “Democratic socialism,” followed by riffing on an inside “Curb” reference drawing a huge laugh.
David asks who he is and Sanders responds, “I am Bernie Sanderswitzy … but we’re gonna change it when we get to America … so it doesn’t sound quite so Jewish.” With a wry smirk David says, “Yeah, that’ll trick them.” That bit comically touches on Sanders’ hesitancy to bring his Judaism to the forefront of his campaign.
Sanders makes his second and final appearance of the night, save for the end when the entire cast comes out onstage, during the first cut to the musical guest, the 1975’s. At the end of his monologue, in classic L.D. perfunctory, lack-of-enthusiasm fashion, David says, “Anyway, the band is the 1975’s,” as if he is reporting a train schedule — a moment marking the coda of the opening monologue that is typically charged with electric hype.
Before the band’s first song, Sanders and David stand together and David asks Sanders how his campaign is going. Sanders replies, “It’s prettttayyy pretttayyyy pretttayyy good.”
Sanders may have made a limited personal appearance on Saturday night, but his presence pulsed throughout the show. In a “Curb Your Enthusiasm”-inspired sketch called “Bern Your Enthusiasm,” David plays Sanders in the closing hours of the Iowa caucuses, with various members of the cast playing core characters from the HBO show.
Complete with a screaming Susie (Cecily Strong), a forklempt Funkhauser (Taran Killam), a jabbering Jeff (Bobby Moynihan) and a lurking Leon (Jay Pharaoh), the sketch explains why Sanders lost by such a infinitetisemal margin — in this parody, it was owed to classic alienating Larry behavior. Sanders, who has captivated so many with his down-to-earth, grandpa-like sweetness and plays down his Jewishness, and David, who has cast a spell with his cringe-inducing brand of humor and parades his Jewish identity around like a Thanksgiving float, may have found their beshert in one another.
David asks who he is and Sanders responds, “I am Bernie Sanderswitzy … but we’re gonna change it when we get to America … so it doesn’t sound quite so Jewish.” With a wry smirk David says, “Yeah, that’ll trick them.” That bit comically touches on Sanders’ hesitancy to bring his Judaism to the forefront of his campaign.
Sanders makes his second and final appearance of the night, save for the end when the entire cast comes out onstage, during the first cut to the musical guest, the 1975’s. At the end of his monologue, in classic L.D. perfunctory, lack-of-enthusiasm fashion, David says, “Anyway, the band is the 1975’s,” as if he is reporting a train schedule — a moment marking the coda of the opening monologue that is typically charged with electric hype.
Before the band’s first song, Sanders and David stand together and David asks Sanders how his campaign is going. Sanders replies, “It’s prettttayyy pretttayyyy pretttayyy good.”
Sanders may have made a limited personal appearance on Saturday night, but his presence pulsed throughout the show. In a “Curb Your Enthusiasm”-inspired sketch called “Bern Your Enthusiasm,” David plays Sanders in the closing hours of the Iowa caucuses, with various members of the cast playing core characters from the HBO show.
Complete with a screaming Susie (Cecily Strong), a forklempt Funkhauser (Taran Killam), a jabbering Jeff (Bobby Moynihan) and a lurking Leon (Jay Pharaoh), the sketch explains why Sanders lost by such a infinitetisemal margin — in this parody, it was owed to classic alienating Larry behavior. Sanders, who has captivated so many with his down-to-earth, grandpa-like sweetness and plays down his Jewishness, and David, who has cast a spell with his cringe-inducing brand of humor and parades his Jewish identity around like a Thanksgiving float, may have found their beshert in one another.
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The Jewish Week
The Jewish Week
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New York, New York 10036, United States
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"Now on Jewish.TV: Divine Double Talk - Moishe New" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 10 February 2016
Divine Double Talk
By Moishe New
Watch
This webcast begins:
Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 8pm ET
About this webcast:
Our Sages explain that the Ten Commandments were stated in the second person singular, rather than second person plural, in order to provide Moses with an argument in defense of the Jewish People after they had worshipped the Golden Calf: Moses would be able to, and in fact did, argue that the commandment forbidding idolatry was addressed to him alone and not the people! This class will address this apparently bizarre defense and will shed light on the deeper nature of idolatry and its antidote.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
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"Now on Jewish.TV: Divine Double Talk - Moishe New" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 10 February 2016
Divine Double Talk
By Moishe New
Watch
This webcast begins:
Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 8pm ET
About this webcast:
Our Sages explain that the Ten Commandments were stated in the second person singular, rather than second person plural, in order to provide Moses with an argument in defense of the Jewish People after they had worshipped the Golden Calf: Moses would be able to, and in fact did, argue that the commandment forbidding idolatry was addressed to him alone and not the people! This class will address this apparently bizarre defense and will shed light on the deeper nature of idolatry and its antidote.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Talmud Gitin 61 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Hanhogas Beis Hakisei 3:15 (First Edition)
Laws of Modesty, Part 7
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
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"Now on Jewish.TV: Parshah Mnemonics: Terumah: Decoding the Hidden Messages - Aaron L. Raskin" - Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 10 February 2016
Parshah Mnemonics: Terumah
Decoding the hidden messages
Aaron L. Raskin
Watch Now
About this webcast:
The parsha of Terumah contains 96 verses and the mnemonic are the words Ya’av (shovel) and Solu. Explore the coded message in the mnemonic and its connection to the general themes of the Parshah.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Laws of Modesty, Part 7
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Now on Jewish.TV: Parshah Mnemonics: Terumah: Decoding the Hidden Messages - Aaron L. Raskin" - Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Wednesday, 10 February 2016
Parshah Mnemonics: Terumah
Decoding the hidden messages
Aaron L. Raskin
Watch Now
About this webcast:
The parsha of Terumah contains 96 verses and the mnemonic are the words Ya’av (shovel) and Solu. Explore the coded message in the mnemonic and its connection to the general themes of the Parshah.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Divine Double Talk
By Moishe New
Airs Wednesday, February 10 at 8pm ET
By Moishe New
Airs Wednesday, February 10 at 8pm ET
Talmud Gitin 61 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Hanhogas Beis Hakisei 3:15 (First Edition)
Laws of Modesty, Part 7
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
Laws of Modesty, Part 7
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 11 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
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