"Now on Jewish.TV: Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 7: Relationship of Kochos Hanefesh to the Concept of Ohr Pnimi and Introduction to Ohr Makkif - Yaakov Brawer" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Sunday, 21 February 2016

"Now on Jewish.TV: Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 7: Relationship of Kochos Hanefesh to the Concept of Ohr Pnimi and Introduction to Ohr Makkif - Yaakov Brawer" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Sunday, 21 February 2016

Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 7
Relationship of Kochos Hanefesh to the concept of Ohr Pnimi and introduction to Ohr Makkif
By Yaakov Brawer

Watch
This webcast begins:
Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 10:30am ET
About this webcast:
The text now relates the foregoing discussion of the Mashal to the original Nimshal (Ohr Pnimi/Mamale). It then begins an analysis of Ohr Makkif using the Mashal of human Ratzon.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:

Talmud Gitin 71 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 21 at 6am ET

Shulchan Aruch, Netilas Yodayim 4:3b (First Edition)
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 5
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 21 at 6am ET

The First Take to Weapons
The Book of Nechemiah, Part 4
By Mendel Dubov
Airs Monday, February 22 at 7pm ET

LIVE CTeen Concert at Times Square - 2016
Featuring "8th Day Band"
Airs Saturday, February 27 at 8:45pm ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.


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"West Bank Supermarket Attack; Muslim Farmer Donates to Kosher Soup Kitchen" The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 19 February 2016 - Students Demand "Zionist Off Campus'



Friday, February 19, 2016

Israeli Man Killed, Another Seriously Injured In West Bank Supermarket Attack
JTA

Israeli News
Israel News
Israeli Man Killed, Another Seriously Injured In West Bank Supermarket Attack
JTA

One of the knives used in a stabbing attack at a West Bank supermarket, Feb. 18, 2016. JTAJerusalem — An Israeli man was killed and a second seriously injured in a stabbing attack at a West Bank supermarket.
The victims, 21 and 35, were attacked Thursday afternoon at the Rami Levi supermarket in Shaar Binyamin, north of Jerusalem. The 21-year-old died of his wounds that evening at a Jerusalem hospital.
The suspected assailants are Palestinian boys aged 14 and 15 from the West Bank town of Beitunia, near Ramallah, Israel Police said. They were shot and injured by an armed civilian bystander, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Paramedics treated the alleged assailants at the scene before they were taken to the hospital, the IDF said.
The police said the teens had spent about 20 minutes in the store before carrying out the attack.
The Rami Levy chain is known for hiring Jewish and Palestinian workers in its West Bank stores, as well as catering to both Jewish and Arab shoppers.
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Students Interrupt Brooklyn College Faculty Meeting, Demand 'Zionists Off Campus'
JTA
New York
New York
Students Interrupt Brooklyn College Faculty Meeting, Demand ‘Zionists Off Campus’
JTA

The East Quad at Brooklyn College. Wikimedia Commons
Some 10 Brooklyn College students interrupted a faculty meeting and made anti-Israel demands and statements.
A faculty member who was at the Tuesday afternoon meeting told JTA the students demanded “Zionists off campus.” The educator wished to remain anonymous.
Other demands ranged from calls for better pay for adjunct teachers to ending “racist” class offerings.
Some of the faculty members at the meeting applauded during the students’ vocal protests, but it was not clear which demands the teachers were reacting to.
The faculty member also told JTA that when computer science professor and faculty council head Yedidyah Langsam told the students they were “out of order,” they called him a “Zionist pig.”
In a news release issued Tuesday, Brooklyn state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said he received complaints after the meeting from “dozens” of faculty members.
“It’s just an absolute disgrace that something like this would happen in our own community,” Hikind said.
Hikind also called on CUNY Chancellor James Milliken to “implement a plan of action to prevent this kind of intimidation and disruption from reoccurring anywhere within CUNY.”

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Muslim Farmer Donates Produce To NY Kosher Soup Kitchen
JTA
Food & Wine
Muslim Farmer Donates Produce To NY Kosher Soup Kitchen

Organic vegetables. Wikimedia CommonsJTA
A Muslim organic farmer from upstate New York made an emergency donation of vegetables to a kosher soup kitchen in Brooklyn.
Zaid Kurdieh, who with his wife, Haifa, owns and farms at Norwich Meadows Farm, on Friday delivered 800 pounds of high-end organic carrots to Masbia, a network of kosher soup kitchens that provides meals to hundreds of hungry New Yorkers each week in Brooklyn and Queens. He also pledged to give more in the future.
Kurdieh’s donation came after the soup kitchen’s shortage of donated food was featured in a local ABC news report.
Masbia Executive Director Alexander Rapaport told ABC7 that the soup kitchen needs some 30,000 pounds of food a week to satisfy demand, and that last week it had only 15,000 pounds to distribute.
The Kurdiehs are devout Muslims who practice faith-based farming.
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How Claudia Met Dan
Leah Hakimian
Matchmaker
Matchmaker
How Claudia Met Dan
Leah Hakimian
Jewish Week Online Columnist
Dan and Claudia. Roni Weiss“If Dan doesn’t text me by 5 PM, then I’ll text him,” decided Claudia. He didn’t; so she did. Dan explains: “In 2011 I was 21 and didn’t think I was ready to date.”
Dan Hopkins, a native of London, came to Israel a year earlier for a gap year before starting university at the suggestion of his rabbi. He went for three months but stayed for almost three years. He lived in the Old City of Jerusalem while studying at Aish Hatorah and working as a counselor at the Heritage House, which provides lodging and programming for young Jewish travelers and lone soldiers.
Claudia Namdar, from Great Neck, New York, is two years younger than Dan. Before starting college, she spent a year at Bar Ilan University and frequently stayed at the Heritage House when visiting Jerusalem.
Claudia returned to Israel during Chanukah of 2011 to attend her cousin’s wedding. Friends insisted that she stay with them for her first Shabbat, and they all went to the Heritage House, where the rabbi invited them and some lone soldiers for seuda shlishit (the third Shabbat meal).
“That’s where I saw Dan for the first time,” says Claudia. “He was the cutest guy I had ever seen. I couldn’t stop staring at him. I noticed how he treated everyone around him with kindness and respect. I wanted to meet him, but didn’t know what to do.” Her friends advised her: Just go up and start a conversation.
She followed their advice. When she told Dan that her family had lived in London for a few years, they realized that they both had attended the Sinai Jewish Primary School. They now had a connection.
The lone soldiers from the seuda shlishit also played a role in this match. That evening, they invited Dan and the girls to a Chanukah party. Claudia didn’t want to go because she had come straight from the airport to the Heritage House and hadn’t showered since leaving New York. “I looked terrible,” she admits.
Still, both Dan and Claudia came to the party. “When we started talking that night, we became like best friends and I was thrilled when he asked for my Blackberry pin number,” Claudia said. The next day at 5:01 p.m., Claudia texted Dan.
“I was happy I had the strength to text him,” notes Claudia. “It was easier because I wasn’t in my hometown. I thought, if he rejects me, I never have to see him again.” But he didn’t reject her. He was attracted to her.
They met on a Saturday evening, their first date was on Tuesday and they continued to date nonstop whenever they were in the same city at the same time. For the next four years, they had a long-distance relationship, skyping 24/6 and meeting up whenever possible - in London, New York, or Jerusalem. During those years, Claudia received her bachelors of science from Queens College in psychology and business and began working as an assistant teacher. Dan returned to London to work as a recruiter.
Claudia is a Mashadi Jew who traces her family’s roots back to Mashad, Iran. Though Mashadis tend to marry within their own community, Claudia’s parents were totally supportive of Dan. It turned out that Dan’s family was also Sephardic, of Spanish-Portuguese descent, and their original name was Mendoza. “At least I could keep eating kitniyot (legumes) during Pesach,” smiles Claudia.
Dan proposed to Claudia in the spring of 2015 on the rooftop of the Aish Hatorah building in the Old City of Jerusalem. “It’s one of our favorite places in the world,” says Dan.
Dan and Claudia are to be married on March 31, 2016. Mazal tov.
Dr. Leah Hakimian currently researches the question: How Jewish couples meet and marry. In the 90’s she founded two nonprofit Jewish matchmaking programs, and continues to champion the role of community in helping singles meet. She resides in Jerusalem and Great Neck, New York.
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MORE HEADLINES
Rabbi David Wolpe's Musings >
Musings
Jewish Renewal
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David WolpeIf you serve God in the same fashion as you did yesterday, it is regression, taught the chasidic master, the “Yehudi” (Jacob Isaac ben Asher.) “For a person is always in the aspect of becoming, and not standing.”
Much of life is about mastery of routine. We learn from the time we are young how to accomplish certain tasks without thought. The danger is that routine takes over our spiritual life as it takes over the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the route we take to work. Remaining alive inside is to be an ever-growing soul; in the life of the spirit, stagnation is death.
Spontaneity is one means of renewal, but so is effort. Not everything in religious life is easy, because ease is often the road to routine. Vary your reading, your ritual, your prayer. Learn more, reflect more, do more. All of us should remember the Yehudi’s words, that we are to become, not simply to stand.
As the poet wrote, “Up lad, when the journey’s over, there’ll be time enough to sleep.”
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). ---------------------
Into The Light Of The Dark Black Night >
BAYSHORE-BLVD.THUMBNAIL.JPG

A RABBI'S WORLD
How Are Communities Built?

THE JW Q&A
Kahane’s Widow Disavows Today’s Jewish Extremists

FIRST PERSON
Into The Light Of The Dark Black Night

TRAVEL
Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite

A RABBI'S WORLD
If Solomon Were A Candidate…

TRAVEL
Prairie Culture, Jewish And Otherwise

THE JW Q&A
50 Years On, Sanders Champions Kibbutz Values
First Person
Into The Light Of The Dark Black Night
Elicia Brown
Special To The Jewish Week

Elicia BrownLast year I journeyed to the precipice of death. It was a horrible trip, ending in the loss of my sister-in-law, Ali.
Then I returned for another visit.
The day after Ali’s funeral, following her death from a variant of ovarian cancer, a CT-scan confirmed my own diagnosis. As Ali died, I began my own battle with the same disease. Ali was 47; I, 46.
The anniversary of that terrible week is upon us, and I still can’t wrap my mind around any of it — that Ali is gone; that for much of this year I was a cancer patient; the bizarre concurrence of these events. As the Yiddish proverb tells us, “Man plans, God laughs.” Expect the unexpected.
And yet, even now, after an apparently successful treatment of my cancer, I am so focused on survival that I can’t dwell on the strangeness of this life chapter. Instead, I plant one foot in front of the other, seeking balance and calm.
In this preoccupied state, I haven’t been able to properly mourn my sister-in-law. The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has a name for the phase of bereavement where I find myself stranded: denial. “But really, what’s wrong with denial?” I ask a friend, who years ago dealt with the death of a family member shortly before her own diagnosis of breast cancer. We decide that what protects us from the deepest agony of loss can’t be all bad, except that the hurt can surface suddenly. When my nephews stay over one night in December, I immediately think to call Ali to reassure her how well her sons are faring.
And yet, even as I delude myself into believing that Ali’s absence is merely temporary, at times it seems as if Ali’s spirit has taken up residence in my brain. Whenever I’m confronted by a cancer conundrum (several times daily), I wonder: “What would Ali do?” The sickness stole so much: her hair, her ability to walk outside, her chance to watch her boys grow up. It never touched her grace.
I have many “guiding lights” in my confrontation with serious illness, including Rochelle Shoretz, who founded Sharsheret, the nonprofit devoted to aiding breast and ovarian cancer patients. Rochelle, who died this past spring, could run circles around most people with her vibrancy and intelligence, and literally ran marathons even after her diagnosis of advanced breast cancer.
But, for many years, it’s seemed to me that Ali has led a sort of parallel life to my own, a Park Slope version of my Upper West Side experience — “this is how we do it on the Slope” she would say with a shrug, her emphasis on the “p” in Slope. It is Ali’s voice that reaches me most deeply. We were born the same year, and seemed to move in tandem through the milestones of adulthood — career and commitment, marriage and motherhood. When we first met in the late ’90s, both of us were dating bearded sardonic Jewish men with receding hair lines and razor sharp minds; I, her brother Jeremy; Ali, the man who would become her husband, David.
As a foursome, and later with our children, we spent many hours together at my in-laws’ beach house, chortling over own cleverness as we snacked on malt-dusted ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup. There were arguments, too, usually petty, and sometimes explosive. After she was diagnosed, though, the conflicts diminished. Ali deeply appreciated the love around her, and carried herself with dignity to the bitter end.
I often think of a conversation last January at the Menorah Hospice in Manhattan Beach, where Ali spent her final weeks surrounded by singing friends, decadent food and enough flowers to populate a suburban garden. Ali’s face lit up with joy as she sampled the pungent cheese she had assigned me to bring that morning.
We spoke of the party that had taken place the previous weekend. “Nobody has friends like you do,” I told her.
“Am I lucky or am I unlucky?” she pondered. She smiled, then turned tearful, then cheerful again. “I have amazing friends, a loving family, a wonderful spouse, incredible children. And also this,” she said. She glanced toward the large windows behind us, her hand sweeping across the view of the deep blue Atlantic and sunny skies.
Elicia Brown, who wrote the “All She Wrote” column for the paper, lives in Manhattan. ---------------------
Mikvahs In Israel Must Allow Non-Orthodox Conversions >
New York
Mikvahs In Israel Must Allow Non-Orthodox Conversions
Supreme Court ruling is second victory for liberal streams in two weeks; URJ’s Jacobs: ‘This is a breakthrough.’
JTA

Israeli Minister of Religious Services David Azulay visits a luxury mikvah last summer in the Israeli settlement of Alon Shvut.In a landmark decision, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled last week that mikvahs in the country must open up to non-Orthodox conversion rites.
Until now, Israeli mikvahs have denied access for conversion immersions to Reform and Conservative converts. Israel’s mikvahs are run by Israel’s Religious Services Ministry, which operates in lock step with the Orthodox-dominated Israeli Rabbinate.
Last Thursday’s ruling, based on a case brought in Beersheba, forces all Israel’s public mikvah ritual baths to allow access to groups wishing to perform non-Orthodox conversions.
The vice president of Israel’s Supreme Court, Elyakim Rubinstein, said the justices sought to reach a deal that would have given non-Orthodox converts access to three public mikvahs in various regions in Israel. But the Religious Services Ministry refused to compromise.
As a consequence, the ruling applies to all public mikvahs.
The court struck down all of the ministry’s arguments in favor of denying access, including the contention that mikvahs are open to all Jews and that these converts are not Jewish. Neither are Orthodox converts until they immerse, Rubinstein noted, concluding that the denial of access to those undergoing non-Orthodox conversions was unlawful.
“I think this is one of the most important constitutional rulings by the Supreme Court,” Gilad Kariv, the president of Israel’s Reform movement, told JTA. “This ruling really goes beyond the issue of immersion in the mikvah. The justices are saying that even if we have an Orthodox establishment, this establishment cannot impose any policy that goes against the basic democratic values of the state.”
Kariv said he believes the ruling will help the non-Orthodox movements score victories in other areas related to religious discrimination in Israel, such as lack of public funding for non-Orthodox streams of Judaism and restricted access to other public religious facilities by non-Orthodox Jews, clergy and institutions.
Until now, non-Orthodox conversion immersions were conducted in natural mikvahs — that is, the sea. For that reason, Kariv said, his movement has refused to convert children in the wintertime.
Hundreds of Israelis convert to Judaism every year under the aegis of the Reform and Conservative movements, according to Kariv. Though the converts are not considered Jewish by Israel’s Rabbinate and therefore have problems when it comes to marrying Jews, they are recognized as Jewish by Israel’s Population Registry.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, hailed the Supreme Court ruling.
“This is a breakthrough. Government-supported religious institutions must now, in a sense, move to a more pluralistic practice,” he said. “This changes some of the really difficult realities for non-Orthodox Jews and Judaism in Israel.”
Rabbi Jacobs added that this fight exists in the United States, too. Most mikvahs in America are Orthodox-run and do not allow Reform or Conservative conversion immersions, according to Rabbi Jacobs.
This was the second time in less than two weeks that the non-Orthodox movements in Israel scored a major victory. On Jan. 31, Israel’s government approved a compromise to expand the non-Orthodox Jewish prayer section of the Western Wall. ---------------------

The Jewish Week
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"Now on Jewish.TV: Don't Like Every Jew, But Do Love Them: The Kabbalah of Behavior - Shifra Sharfstein" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Friday, 18 February 2016

Don't Like Every Jew, But Do Love Them
The Kabbalah of Behavior
By Shifra Sharfstein

Watch
This webcast begins:
Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 7pm ET
About this webcast:
"Don't do to another what you don't like done to yourself." Why is this considered the essence of the entire Torah?
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:

Talmud Gitin 68 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 18 at 6am ET

Shulchan Aruch, Netilas Yodayim 4:1b (First Edition)
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 2
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 18 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.

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"Now on Jewish.TV: Parshah Mnemonics: Tetzaveh: Decoding the Hidden Messages - Aaron L. Raskin" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Thursday, 17 February 2016

Parshah Mnemonics: Tetzaveh
Decoding the hidden messages
Aaron L. Raskin

Watch Now
About this webcast:
The parsha of Tetzaveh contains 101 verses and the mnemonic is the name Michael. Explore the coded message in the mnemonic and its connection to the general themes of the Parshah and the day of Adar 7 (Moses’s birthday and yahrtzeit).
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:

Talmud Gitin 68 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 18 at 6am ET

Shulchan Aruch, Netilas Yodayim 4:1b (First Edition)
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 2
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Thursday, February 18 at 6am ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.

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"Heightened Fear in Brooklyn; Remembering Scalia" The Jewish Week Connecting the World with Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 17 February 2016 - Spring Arts Preview



Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Fresh Fear In Brooklyn As Attacks Mount
Jonathan Mark
New York
Recent stabbing in Crown Heights is latest in string of anti-Jewish violence.
New York
Fresh Fear In Brooklyn As Attacks Mount
Recent stabbing in Crown Heights is latest in string of anti-Jewish violence.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor

Elected and communal officials with the mother of stabbing victim Yehuda Leib Brikman at recent news conference. Via YouTubeIn Crown Heights, with the coming of the new month of Adar (Feb. 10), most everyone knew and was exchanging the old Jewish saying, “Adar comes, simcha increases.”
But by 20 to noon that morning the biggest simcha was that Yehuda Leib Brikman, stabbed in the back by a stranger, wasn’t dead. The knife punctured his lung but was slowed by his layers of clothing.
Brikman, 25, was well acquainted with simcha, married just two weeks earlier followed by a week of Sheva Brachos celebrations, but if he wasn’t dressed for winter, his newlywed bride would be a widow.
In an attack that seemed like an eerie echo of the stabbings that have plagued Jerusalem in recent months, Brikman was taken to Kings County Hospital and was said to be in stable condition. But a relative told us that he needed surgery Friday night after internal bleeding was discovered, as well.
Community leaders were quick to say how proud they were of how the community reacted; numerous black and Jewish leaders, elected officials and community activists came together in joint press conferences to express unity and determination to solve the crime and, at the same time, to point out the simcha of how far Crown Heights has come since the riots 25 years ago.
Without an arrest, no one could venture a motive, but Bob Kaplan of the Jewish Community Relations Council, who has been working extensively on black-Jewish relations in Crown Heights, told us, “Well, everyone’s hoping that this is a mental health thing. We’re almost praying that he’s just crazy. We don’t want it to be anything else. No one is yet seeing this as a black-Jewish issue.”
(Police say a surveillance video showed an African-American man walking away from what was thought to be the scene of the crime, holding a bloody knife.)
New York Police Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said at a news conference, “No words were [exchanged] prior to the argument. He [Yehuda] is dressed in chasidic garb. Right now we are looking at this as a possible hate crime because he [was] dressed in that fashion.” The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force opened an investigation.
But there was anger on the Jewish street, the kettle was whistling. Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, former chair of Community Board 9, said, “I go to shul. That’s where you find out everything. People are furious. All you need is one more incident, not even a stabbing, and it isn’t going to be good. Some people are going to take care of business on their own.
“I’m just telling you,” the rabbi continued, “as someone who was there in the thick of the pogrom in ’91, the community is angry. All we get are press conferences and Kumbaya. There’s no tachlis [results]. This stabbing isn’t the first.”
After all, in 2013, there was a series of young men randomly punching Jews unconscious, by surprise, without saying a word, in what was known as the “knockout game.” In December 2014, a “disturbed” man, said police, stabbed a 22-year-old rabbinical student in the neck inside Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.
Last November, on Eastern Parkway, another Lubavitcher was also slashed in the shoulder, no arrest. The Anti-Defamation League offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator, and then the ADL quickly doubled it to $10,000.
ADL’s New York regional director, Evan Bernstein, and Andrew Frackman, regional chair, said in a joint statement, this stabbing “is just one in a series of traumatic attacks over the past several months in which Jews across the city, especially in Brooklyn, have been singled out for violence. … Enough is enough.” According to the FBI, despite the attention to Islamophobia, Jews are four times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than any other religious group.
The ADL has documented at least a dozen disturbing incidents in New York City since September. Two Jewish men were attacked with a BB gun in Kew Gardens (Sept. 21); the Stanton Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side was broken into and vandalized (Oct. 14); an Orthodox man was punched in the back of the head in Williamsburg (Oct. 16); the manager of West Side Judaica was assaulted while the perpetrator allegedly exclaimed “(Expletive) you Jews. I’ll kill you. I’m a Muslim” (Dec. 1); a Bukharian Jew was assaulted in Borough Park, while the attacker yelled “(Expletive) Jew, where you running? Slow down you (Expletive) Jew” (Dec. 2). “Visibly identifiable Jews were singled out for violence across the city,” said Bernstein.
Brikman, 25, wasn’t quite sure what or who hit him. He told police that he was walking on Empire Boulevard, across from the Ksav Sofer shul, when a black man that he didn’t know walked past him. And then, there were the sounds of the assailant’s pivoting boots followed by Brikman’s cry from excruciating pain in his back, below his shoulders. With a collapsed lung, he staggered a few hundred feet to the safety of a neighborhood check-cashing shop.
According to sources in the neighborhood, a fellow Chabadnik called for Hatzolah, the volunteer medics, when Brikman collapsed, his white shirt and the under-garment tallis turning red. A few blocks away, a surveillance camera at 11:38 a.m. taped a young black man running, then slowing to a steady walk, on Albany Avenue, in his hand a bloody knife.
Brikman is from a well-known Chabad family; his parents are shluchim (the rebbe’s emissaries) to Chabad by the Ocean, serving Coney Island and Sea Gate. Far beyond Brooklyn, Jews were saying Tehillim (Psalms) for Yehuda Leib ben Rivkah Alta.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, at a press conference, recalled how the Lubavitcher Rebbe, in 1991, said there were not two sides in the neighborhood but one side. “This is one Crown Heights, that came from the rebbe of this community,” said Adams. “All of us, let us continue to be together. As long as we are together, as a community, no one will ever be able to divide us.”
Rabbi Eli Cohen, executive director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, told us he’s been seeing a pattern in crime. “The first time something like this happens, I’ll say, OK, it’s random. At this point, I don’t say random anymore.” This attack “was very similar” to the November stabbing.
Unlike the angry Jews in the community, Cohen thought the situation was handled well. “The police response was quick,” he said. “The hate crime investigators are on the case. We’re getting more patrols so people feel safer and more secure. Everybody’s trying hard. There’s a much improved atmosphere in the community, a lot more cooperation between … all the different segments.”
Leaders may be more positive but does that matter to criminals on the street? “It definitely does,” said Cohen. “If you watch ‘Fire in the Mirror,’ the one-woman show by Anna Deavere Smith,” based on actual transcripts from black and Jewish leaders around the time of the riots, “there were a lot of negative things being said publicly by leaders, and I’m sure it trickled down. Now, most of what has been said by people of influence has been positive, so that trickles down too. Even on the street, there’s been a friendliness, an openness that I see as I walk around, a lot more positive energy on the street.”
Devorah Halberstam, a community activist whose son Ari was murdered in 1994 by a Lebanese immigrant, said, “Listen, you can find any excuse for hatred, if you’re looking for it.
Hatred filled [the stabber’s] heart; he saw a Lubavitcher chasid walking down the street… I know everybody is trying but, truth be told, I was walking home last night and I’m looking over my shoulder. So whatever reason [the stabber] did it – and who really cares – he has to be locked up. It’s more than outrageous. It sends shudders through you.”
She noted, with a tear in her voice, that Ari was shot in Adar, his yahrtzeit’s on Adar 23: “Every year, I get crazy in my head, I can’t say it anymore,” about Adar and simcha. “And in a leap year, the date comes twice. I remember it every day but there’s something about anniversaries. I know what it means at the end of the day, when you feel the pain. … Every time I hear that someone survived an attack I say thank God! Because I wasn’t lucky. My son wasn’t lucky.”
Kaplan noted, “We need a refuah shlayma [a healing] – for the world. We need people who don’t think it’s okay to stab somebody.”
At the end of the day, Kaplan saw Rebbetzin Brikman and Devorah Halberstam hugging, crying on each other’s shoulder.
jonathan@jewishweek.org
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Scalia And Lewin: From Harvard To The High Court
Stewart Ain
National
National
Scalia And Lewin: From Harvard To High Court
Longtime friend remembers the 'open, modest and funny human being' behind the robe.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Justice Scalia and Nathan Lewin. Courtesy of Nathan LewinThey were on either side of the legal divide — the feisty attorney pressing his case during oral arguments before the Supreme Court, and the sharp-witted justice, in his black robes, sitting in judgment.
But when the high court’s term ended, Nathan Lewin and Antonin Scalia, both Harvard Law School guys, Class of 1960, would meet for lunch at a kosher restaurant in the nation’s capital.
“I did not want to do it while I had cases pending before him,” Lewin told The Jewish Week as he remembered his longtime friend who died suddenly last Saturday at age 79. And more times than not, Lewin found a sympathetic ear in Scalia as he often argued cases defending the role of religion in the public square, a position strongly advocated by the justice.
“At the lunches,” which until last year always took place at Eli’s on N Street, “I would usually bring him a Jewish item, and on one occasion I had a baseball cap from Harvard Hillel that had the word Harvard in Hebrew,” Lewin said. “I said, ‘Nino, I bet you can’t read it. It says Harvard in Hebrew.’ He took the cap and within an hour my secretary said Justice Scalia is calling. I pick up the phone and he says, ‘That cap you gave me — I went down the hall to Elena [Kagan] and I said, if you can read it, it’s yours.’
“I said, ‘You gave it away — she had a bat mitzvah.’ He said she struggled with it and then said, ‘Harvard.’ I said, ‘I will give you another one.’ A couple of days later I got a nice letter from Elena. I wrote back and told her she had won it fair and square.”
Scalia, Lewin recalled, “had a great sense of humor.”
“I would take my Columbia Law School students to hear Supreme Court arguments and afterwards they would meet with him,” he said. “At the beginning of the class, students would recoil, believing he was a terrible guy. But after they met him, they loved him. He was a fantastic, open, modest and funny human being.”
Lewin and Scalia lost touch after Harvard, but renewed their friendship after Scalia became a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Lewin began arguing cases in front of him.
Over the years, Lewin recalled, he and Scalia agreed on all church-state issues except one. The “one blemish,” he said, was when Scalia wrote for the majority in the peyote case that an individual’s religious affiliation did not exclude him or her from complying with valid laws. Scalia argued that to permit exceptions to state laws for religious purposes would potentially allow people to sidestep taxes or mandatory vaccinations.
“It cut the heart out of the First Amendment,” Lewin said.
He noted that the decision caught him by surprise given Scalia’s earlier decision to allow the entire Court of Appeals to re-hear the case concerning the right of an Orthodox Jewish Air Force psychologist to wear a yarmulke while on duty.
“I was shocked that he, a very religious Roman Catholic, would write an opinion like that,” Lewin said of the peyote decision. “We had many debates about it in private and public. I asked Scalia how he could vote in favor of the yarmulke and still write an opinion that denied constitutional rights to other observers. He answered honestly that when the yarmulke case came up, he was on the Court of Appeals and had to follow Supreme Court precedent. When he had to decide the peyote case, he was on the U.S. Supreme Court and he was writing opinions that set the precedent.”
In an op-ed he wrote for JTA, Lewin recalled Scalia saying that during the seven years he was on the bench, when there were no Jewish justices on the Supreme Court, he considered himself the “guardian of Jewish heritage.”
Thus, Lewin said, Scalia told his colleagues how to pronounce “yeshiva” and “even told them what a yeshiva is.”
“Scalia’s admiration for Jews and Jewish learning,” he wrote, “explains the frequent references in his opinions to the Talmud and other Jewish sources, and the significant number of Orthodox Jewish law clerks he hired.
stewart@jewishweek.org
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Aging Queens Shul Tightens Safety Net
Steve Lipman
New York
Nurse experiment in Hollis Hills meeting 'exponentially' growing needs of older members.
New York
Aging Queens Shul Tightens Safety Net
Nurse experiment in Hollis Hills meeting ‘exponentially’ growing needs of older members.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Arthur Liederman, Rabbi David Wise and congregational nurse Linda Liederman at the Hollis Hills Jewish Center. Michael DatikashFor most Jews, a synagogue is a place to turn to for spiritual health.
Today, in a sign of the demographic times, some synagogues are broadening their mission to care for aging members’ physical health by sponsoring their own staff nurses who tend to members’ medical needs.
Linda Liederman, the congregational nurse at the Hollis Hills Jewish Center in Queens, experiences this every Shabbat. As predictable as the snacks at the Shabbat morning Kiddush are the questions about symptoms, health insurance and prescriptions.
“I do not get a piece of cake,” said Liederman, a veteran home health care nurse who was appointed six months ago to the volunteer position; she continues to work full-time in home health care.
Many physicians and nurses are annoyed when people broach medical questions during such social situations.
Liederman views the weekly discussions over cake and kugel as a vital part of her responsibilities as congregational nurse, “an opportunity to see people,” she said.
The Hollis Hills Jewish Center, which established its congregational nurse program during the High Holiday season last fall, is part of a small but emerging trend in the American Jewish community. At a time of reduced synagogue memberships and declining affiliation, some congregations are reaching out in innovative one-on-one ways, especially to older members.
The program at Liederman’s synagogue does not exclusively serve a senior population, but about two-thirds of the people with whom she deals are 50 to 70 years old, or older, roughly reflective of the Conservative synagogue’s demographics, she said.
“In Queens County, many of the synagogues are experiencing aging issues,” said her husband, Arthur Liederman, the congregation’s president.
“The children are moving out,” he said, leaving many often-isolated seniors without someone around to help out with medical questions.
Such congregational nurse programs provide an invaluable service for the aging community, according to Kathryn Haslanger, CEO of the Jewish Association of Services for the Aging (JASA).
“For many older adults, religious institutions can be familiar places where they feel safe and comfortable, where they have trusted relationships. Connecting seniors to health and social service supports through synagogues helps seniors remain actively engaged in their communities,” Haslanger said via email. “It also creates a safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society.”
Rabbi Joseph Ozarowski, a chaplaincy expert, said, “any support we can give to the aging population is a good thing.”
This becomes increasingly true as more people choose to stay home as they age instead of moving to a more senior-focused environment, added Rabbi Ozarowski, a former spiritual leader of the Elmont Jewish Center on Long Island who now serves as rabbinic counselor and chaplain at Jewish Children and Family Services in Chicago.
“The needs of people aging in place are growing exponentially,” he said.
No local or national Jewish organization keeps track of the number of such congregational nurse programs, but an educated guess is no more than a dozen or two in the United States; the Hollis Hills Jewish Center’s is the second-known one in New York City. (Two months ago, Temple Gates of Prayer in Flushing inaugurated a program in which a nurse from the nearby Margaret Tietz Nursing Home visits the synagogue twice a month.)
There were only three congregational nurses in the U.S. 15 years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in an article about one such nurse who had started working in the area.
“I suspect it’s a very slow-growing trend,” said Rabbi Simkha Weintraub, rabbinic director of the National Center for Jewish Healing and the New York Jewish Healing Center.
The Jewish community’s congregational nurses are an offshoot of the parish nursing movement. The practice, also known as church nursing or faith community nursing, has roots in the Middle Ages and began in its contemporary form three decades ago. Today it includes some 15,000 registered nurses, and congregational nursing is recognized as a specialty in the nursing field.
A few activists started to encourage Jewish institutions in the U.S. to adopt the Christian model early in the 21st century.
“Why not make synagogues — already spiritual places of education, worship, and fellowship — places of community support, health education, healing support, and medical support?” Jaclyn Herzlinger, a veteran congregational nurse in Springfield, N.J., wrote in the journal Sh’ma in 2003. “Jewish congregational nurses can … empower our own communities to incorporate health practices and spiritual thinking into the daily lives of Jews.”
Rabbi Weintraub also has urged synagogues to establish their own programs. “Some 15-plus years ago, the Jewish Board’s National Center for Jewish Healing was part of an effort that UJA-Federation helped support called ‘Shleimut’ [Wholeness] … [that] furthered the idea of congregational nurses with some trainings and conferences and publications,” he said. “The funding dried up, alas.”
The scope and duties of congregational nurses in other cities varies. Some are sponsored by a single congregation; others are sponsored by a group. Some are paid members of the synagogue’s professional staff; others, like Liederman, donate their services. Some provide the full range of services of a home health care nurse; others, a more limited range.
Karen Frank, director of Project SHIN (Spiritual Healing Integrating Nursing), one of the Jewish community’s first congregational nurses, works for Congregation B’nai Abraham in Livingston, N.J.; she earlier worked for a consortium of five synagogues and the MetroWest Jewish Health and Healing Center, a joint program of her local Jewish Community Center and Jewish Family Service center. On house calls she brings a Book of Psalms along with her stethoscope and blood pressure monitor.
Linda Liederman, who has worked in hospital intensive care units and doctors offices, deals with a few congregants a week, mostly over the phone, but occasionally goes to members’ homes and hospitals and hospice settings.
“The word hasn’t really gotten out,” she said one recent morning, sitting in the pews of her synagogue, across from her husband and Rabbi Wise.
The Hollis Hills Jewish Center, which has 240 member families, established its own congregational nursing program as part of its wider chesed activities, following a strategic planning self-study three years ago, said Arthur Liederman, who initiated the project. It is, he said, part of what author Ron Wolfson calls “relational Judaism” — synagogues that are centered around the needs and concerns of individual members, rather than the institution’s collective requirements.
“I think it’s terrific. Anytime a synagogue can offer a personal connection that assists people in living a more purposeful life is the core of what our institutions should be doing,” said Wolfson, a professor of education at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. “It’s an example of caring for people in their hour of need.”
Arthur Liederman agrees. “These are values that make us who we are. This is not a marketing strategy,” he said. “This is what synagogues should be doing.” In the long run, he said, such a program may be part of the congregation’s overall “vision” that will attract or retain members, “a marker for families who are considering what kind of Jewish community they want to settle in.” But it is now too early to see those results.
Rabbi David Wise, the Jewish Center’s spiritual leader for a decade, said a short-term gain is apparent; congregants tell him, “I never knew the shul cared so much.”
Congregations’ rabbis are often the first people to hear when members — especially the older ones who lack a support system nearby or a family physician — are experiencing medical problems, or to notice when someone is not showing up at shul. Often, “people don’t feel comfortable going to a doctor” when a health issue arises, the rabbi said. “Often, it falls through the cracks.”
Rabbi Wise gives the congregational nursing program his enthusiastic blessing, but, because medicine is not his “skill set,” he refers congregants with health concerns to Linda Liederman. Her availability and contact information is included in the synagogue bulletin.
Funding, or the fear that a paid nurse’s salary, even part-time, will be beyond a shul’s budget, is one reason why few congregations have established their own nursing programs. Another is the sheer novelty of them. “People haven’t thought of it” — it’s not a traditional part of a synagogue’s responsibilities, although it’s reminiscent of the Old Country-type of communal responsibility, Arthur Liederman said.
As congregational nurse, Linda Liederman serves as a consultant; because of insurance liability restrictions, she does no hands-on activities like taking blood pressure or giving injections or recommending medications.
Rather, she listens to congregants’ worries. She gives advice, she said. She educates and “validates.” She interprets physicians’ instructions, explains medications, seeks advice from fellow health care professionals who belong to the Jewish Center, and she makes phone calls to insurance companies. She’ll get people’s Hebrew names for misheberach prayers to be recited at the synagogues.
“I do a lot of hand-holding,” she said. The men and women who seek her out “want to talk with me. They want to speak.
“I consider myself a professional on the chesed committee,” she said.
Under Rabbi Wise’s leadership, his synagogue has incorporated such value-added features as participation in a Community Supported Agriculture program, and use of a state-of-the-art app that helps congregations coordinate their chesed activities.
As usual, Linda Liederman expects to hear some medical questions over Kiddush at the Hollis Hills Jewish Center this Shabbat. As usual, she said, she will welcome the questions.
“These are my friends,” she said. “These are my neighbors.”
steve@jewishweek.org
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A Sense Of Place, A Sense Of Complexity
Sandee Brawarsky
Photography
Israel, in all its 'rifts and paradoxes,' comes into view in 'This Place.'
Photography
A Sense Of Place, A Sense Of Complexity
Israel, in all its ‘rifts and paradoxes,’ comes into view in ‘This Place.’
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor

Frédéric Brenner’s portrait of three generations of an Israeli family. ©Frederic BrennerIn Israel, the light is direct, hard, strong and dense, not ideal for photographers, but it has been a place of intense picture-taking interest since the dawn of photography.
“This Place,” an exhibition just opened at The Brooklyn Museum, continues the tradition, with the work of 12 distinguished photographers from around the world.
“What I felt was needed was not more images, but a new grammar and syntax,” said Frédéric Brenner, the show’s initiator (and one of the dozen photographers) who invited the others to spend time in Israel and the West Bank and present their visions. “I came to feel that only through the language of artists could we hope to create an encounter that truly reflected the complexity of the place, with all its rifts and paradoxes.”
Some of the photos are visual poetry, like Stephen Shore’s awe-inspiring desert landscapes; others strike me as ballads, like Nick Waplington’s portraits of settlers. And other photographs give rise to silence, like “Daybreak 2011,” the one photo Jeff Wall created for the project that hangs at the exhibition entrance.
While on an introductory trip, traveling through the Negev with Israel’s leading expert on the Bedouin, Clinton Bailey, Wall came across an olive grove at sunset, as the Bedouin olive pickers were settling down to sleep outside. Behind them, a large prison with its watchtowers loomed. Immediately, Wall knew that this was a view he wanted to pursue, and he came back a year later during the olive harvest to capture the scene on film. The photographer and his assistants set up a darkroom in the laundry of a nearby hotel and worked for three weeks, shooting the scene in the early morning, in a short window of light before the light. In the photo the workers are still asleep, wrapped in colorful blankets, with a teapot and cooking implements nearby.
“I witnessed it and I didn’t invent anything,” Wall said. Throughout, the images are honest, sometimes unexpected, always thoughtful. The show projects different perspectives and different truths. Even those who think they know Israel well will encounter images and moments they’ve never seen before, furthering understanding, perhaps raising questions.
Captions are minimal, and viewers can visit the show’s website to read and listen to the photographers speak about their work and share backstories. Each photographer published a book about his or her work in the project.
The French-born Brenner, who spent 25 years photographing Jews around the world before turning his attention to Israel, raised $6 million to make “This Place” a reality. In part, he was inspired by a French project that sent 25 photographers out to document the French landscape in the 1980s, a remake of a government initiative a half-century earlier that had inspired the Farm Security Administration project, depicting life in the US in the 1930s. FSA photographers, including Walker Evans and Ben Shahn, were sent out with lists of places to cover, with an emphasis on rural areas. While Brenner’s project is significantly different, there’s something about some of the subjects in “This Place,” with their steady gaze and dignified stance, presenting themselves simply as they are, that recalls the FSA project.
Several of the photographers expressed an initial reticence about the project, but they were convinced by Brenner’s persistence, passion and insistence that there were no rules, no obligations, no agenda, that in fact they could photograph wherever they wanted, work according to their own rhythms in any format, with assistance from photography students. Brenner provided guidance and introductions to those who sought connections, while the most senior member of the group, Rosalind Solomon, chose to travel by public bus, encountering people and experiences she would photograph. Her photographs, she said, came “from the gut.”
“I wanted to reveal the humanity of every person I photographed,” she said.
Particularly drawn to religious pilgrims, Solomon met a group from Ghana that travels to Jerusalem every year. She accompanied the participants to Bethlehem and photographed two men; one is partially sighted, wearing a suit and tie and holding a child, in front of a fresco.
Wendy Ewald’s project entailed giving digital cameras to groups to create pictures of their own worlds — “helping them to see photography as a language made up of details.” Ewald has been collaborating with children, families and teachers for more than 40 years. Only a fraction of the 50,000 to 100,00 photographs that they took are exhibited here; an entire room is devoted to them and they are arranged on rows of shelves by group, including Israeli girls in a pre-army mehina, or preparatory program, kids in a joint Arab-Jewish school, Druze students, grandmothers from East Jerusalem and Gypsies.
In these photos, there can be humor in the juxtapositions, but the images are also full of sadness, celebration, longing, tenderness — a wide range of emotions also felt throughout “This Place.” Ewald’s book, “This Is Where I Live,” also includes her portraits of some of her artists. In conversation, she repeated a comment from her book that these photos are “not as stylistically guarded” as others in the show.
With an eye for light and presence, Brenner’s own work includes a portrait of a Jewish family of shepherds amid their sheep in the Judean Hills, a powerful scene that’s both biblical and modern. He agrees with those who say his work is more mature here.
Josef Koudelka, who was born in Czechoslovakia, was drawn to the separation wall built by the Israelis in the West Bank. “I grew up behind the Wall. All my life I wanted to get onto the other side,” he said. “One Wall, two prisons” sums up his feelings. For him, the wall is a crime against the landscape.
Shooting in black and white, Koudelka worked on both sides of the wall. “I look for the place where the photograph is waiting for me,” he said. In the exhibition, his photographs are presented as an accordion book in a long glass case, along with a large print and projections of his images on a wall.
Other photographers show walls splashed with graffiti, decorated walls inside homes, ancient walls, fragile walls, places where walls of homes used to be; agonizing over walls, shadowed walls, a wall of windows at Tel Aviv’s City Hall near where Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was shot and blank walls where history is yet to be written.
“This Place” is on view through June 5 at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn.
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Don't Let The Bedbugs Bite
Hilary Danailova
Travel
Travel
Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
Style is no guarantee of a bedbug-free hotel room. Hilary Danailova/JWRecently in this column, we discussed kosher locusts. This week I will address a bug that is absolutely not kosher under any circumstances, not literally and not figuratively, either.
I am talking about bedbugs.
The itchy, bloodsucking critters are on the rise, despite years of heightened awareness — OK, total hysteria — about infestations in places swanky (haute hotels) and quotidian (the subway — yikes!). They can ruin a traveler’s life more effectively than any other non-disease-causing bug I know.
Before we go any further, a cautionary tale: I know someone who brought bedbugs home from vacation to her apartment in Fort Greene. Seven thousand dollars worth of extermination later, she was done with the ordeal. She also had to live, for various weeks at a time, without cookware, laptops, phones…and forget the Tempur-Pedic. That $7,000 figure was just to get rid of the bugs; the cost of replacing items and scrambling for lodging was considerable as well.
For me, $7,000 justifies a certain level of paranoia. So it’s time to share my own hotel protocol — which has kept me bug-free so far, despite several close shaves.
I no longer rely on the Internet for guidance. There are online bedbug registries, where travelers report sightings at specific lodgings, and plenty of online hotel reviews citing bugs. In reality, no website can ever truly be up to date with a microscopic pest that hops from coat to mattress in seconds and has Rasputin-like powers of survival; conversely, lodgings that have addressed problems can be the cleanest bets.
Don’t think you’re safe in private homes, either. My first bedbug run-in was an itchy awakening in the long-neglected guest room of friends who were out of town. This was Boston in early March, and the place was sealed up tight, so when I saw a line of itchy red bumps down my thigh, I knew it wasn’t a mosquito.
I marched downstairs in my bare feet, and then unceremoniously dumped every item of clothing into the washer on the hot cycle. From there, they went directly into a hot dryer. My favorite jeans shrank, but I kept thinking: $7,000. That’s a lot of denim.
I emptied out my backpack, threw the contents (papers, chargers, lotions, odds and ends) into Ziploc bags, and tossed the backpack into hot water, too. I wrapped my shoes in plastic, sealed the bag tight, and tiptoed to the car for another pair. Then I took a hot shower, dressed, tossed the laundered goods and Ziploc bags into the laundered backpack, and left.
What about the unwashable items? Back at home, I kept the Ziplocs sealed for six months, enough time for bugs to die; the shoes went into the freezer for a week.
After that, I started inspecting every unfamiliar bed. Here is where 15 minutes of paranoid Internet research pays off: See enough close-up photos of bedbugs, bedbug feces and bedbug blood in mattress crevices (and headboards, and night-table lamp bases), and you have a decent idea of what to look for. I told you this wasn’t a kosher column.
When I get to a hotel, I ask politely to inspect the room. Rarely have I encountered an argument; usually I’m handed a key. Upon entering, I put nothing down. I roll up my sleeves and approach the head of a bed, taking care not to let any part of me touch the bedspread except my hands, which I will wash. I gently remove the pillow, pull the blankets and sheets aside, and lift the corner of the mattress cover to inspect the seams.
Most of the time, it’s either reassuringly clean or dotted with tiny particles that, on closer inspection, are benign dirt. Occasionally I have found suspicious stains that could be bug blood. Once I found dirty enough seams that I marched back up front, handed in the key, and told the clerk in a calm, polite tone that I had seen evidence of bugs and wanted a refund. No clerk will argue with you — trust me.
It doesn’t hurt to ask them, either. I’ve found proprietors to be surprisingly honest about the challenges of keeping rooms clean, the measures they’ve taken, and the risk involved when so many people come and go.
You can minimize that risk by storing your luggage in the bathroom, as many experts advise, though I personally feel that a good mattress inspection is your best weapon; if bugs aren’t there, they probably aren’t hiding on top of the dresser, either.
If, like me, you travel with an oblivious spouse who plunks down on one bed while you inspect the other and find suspicious stains, you do have options. Many hotels have on-site laundry: Strip, change, toss your stuff in the hot cycle or dryer then and there before getting back in the car. I drove to the gas station and vacuumed the seats thoroughly, for good measure. Then I wiped down our shoes and the steering wheel with alcohol.
Paranoid? Maybe. But for $7,000, I’ll risk the ridicule.
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Gary Rosenblatt
A Big Philanthropic Hole To Fill
Engaging young Jews energized Charles Bronfman; with his foundation ‘sunsetting,’ who’ll pick up the slack?
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattQuietly, with the forethought and grace that has distinguished the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies as a trendsetter in Jewish life since its launch three decades ago, the foundation effectively shut down at the end of 2015. With much of the operation closed and staff diminished, this year will be one of “spend down,” completing commitments to prior obligations but no longer entertaining new grant proposals.
“No regrets,” Charles Bronfman told me during a recent interview. “It has been a hugely important part of my life, but it’s time.”
At 84, the Canadian-born billionaire philanthropist, whose father founded the Seagram liquor empire, continues to display candor and a wry sense of humor in discussing the successes and failures of the foundation, its legacy, his plans and hopes for the future, and his reasons for deciding to close the charity rather than continue it in perpetuity.
The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (ACBP) will best be remembered for its role in the creation of Birthright Israel, the most successful Jewish organizational project in memory, initiated and driven by Bronfman and fellow philanthropist and businessman Michael Steinhardt. But ACBP was a leader in many other ways as well in engaging the next generation and increasing opportunities for people to heighten their Jewish identity. As the foundation moves into its last stage it merits reflection not only for the hundreds of projects it supported in the U.S., Canada and Israel, and the two dozen major programs it helped launch and sustain, but for the way it has gone about winding down, which it has done with an unusual degree of openness, reflective of its benefactor.
“We made plenty of mistakes along the way,” Bronfman said in a phone interview from his home in Palm Beach, Fla., starting with “putting too much money in” the foundation at the outset “without much knowledge” of how best to spend it.
From the beginning, though, ACBP held to its mission statement “to strengthen the unity of the Jewish people, to improve the quality of life in Israel, and to promote Canadian heritage.” (Now a U.S. citizen as well, Bronfman still identifies as Canadian. A major project of his, Historica Canada, is a national leader in engaging young Canadians in the history of their country.)
Bronfman is a former chair of Seagrams, and later the investment holding company Koor Industries that focuses on high-growth Israeli companies, and he was majority owner of the Montreal Expos baseball team. He said he “always wanted to have a foundation,” in part because it allowed for experimentation and failure. “If you mess up, it’s your own money,” he said, unlike charities such as Jewish federations, which depend on communal funds.
“Our first flop,” Bronfman recalled, was a short-lived program in the early 1990s known as The Israel Experience, committed to bringing Jewish teens in North America to Israel in the summer. “I wanted every kid to be able to go to Israel” as a means of enhancing Jewish identity and understanding and love of the Jewish state, he said. “We wanted to see a big increase in the number of teens going, but the numbers didn’t really change. Our program was too expensive, at $5,500 per teen. It was too much.”
He refers to program now as a “noble failure,” with the lessons learned from the project leading a few years later to the creation of Birthright Israel, offering free 10-day trips to Israel for diaspora Jews between the ages of 18 and 26.
“Early on Charles said to me that Birthright was his greatest accomplishment,” said Michael Steinhart. “As with all of us who innovate there have been failures as well as successes, but Charles can be justifiably proud of his philanthropic efforts.”
ACBP’s tag line has been “investing in next generations,” and Joel Fleishman, director of the Center on Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society at Duke University, credits the foundation for “inspiring young people by combining their normal and Jewish desires” to improve the world, “blending them in new ways.” He said ACBP created organizations that focused on making Jewish values meaningful to the lives of young people. He cited, among others, Reboot, which encourages culturally creative young men and women with little or no connection to Jewish life to discuss and create ways in which tradition can be meaningful to their lives; Slingshot, a Zagat-like annual guidebook to 50 Jewish innovative organizations and projects; and 21/64, which helps next generation philanthropists navigate between their parents’ charitable priorities and their own.
ACBP has made “a major contribution to Jewish life by being flexible, transparent and creative,” said Fleishman. “They have built a cadre of very good organizations and projects, and they have a very solid reputation, especially for being open to talented young people who want to work with them.”
I had a window into the workings and philosophy of the foundation soon after it began in 1986, when its founding president, Stephen P. Cohen, invited me to co-chair, along with Leon Wieseltier, a Fund for Journalism in Jewish Life. The project was intended to enable North American Jewish newspapers to provide in-depth enterprise articles to their readers, and it did so for almost a decade, with a free hand.
A visitor to the ACBP website, www.acbp.net, will find a list of hundreds of projects and programs funded over the years with a remarkably wide range of grantees from healthcare to the arts, from Orthodox yeshivas to Reform synagogues, and from AIPAC to Peace Now. The site also has a detailed account of how the “spend down” is being carried out and the impact it has had on staff and grantees.
Bronfman attributes much of the impetus and energy of the foundation to his late wife, Andrea, who was killed in a car accident in 2006. She was passionately committed to Israel and to the arts and cultural projects. A year before she died her husband created The Andy Prize in her honor — now in her memory — which is awarded each year to an Israeli decorative artist for excellence in ceramics, textiles, jewelry or glass.
John Ruskay, the former CEO and executive vice president of UJA-Federation of New York who was senior consultant to ACBP, said that “Charles and Andy were both clear in their belief that Jewish life can be joyous, powerful and meaningful, with Israel at its center.” He noted that they were “ahead of the curve and decisive” in their philanthropic decisions, leading the way for many other foundations in seeking creative ways to reach the next generation.
Overall, Bronfman said, the foundation’s “thrust was informal education,” with an emphasis on social and economic equality in Israel. He said he is particularly proud of the Karev Program for Educational Involvement, an after-school cultural and cognitive enrichment program for Israeli children from low-income families. Founded in 1990, it now partners with the Ministry of Education and other foundations in reaching more than 250,000 students in more than 2,000 schools.
“I could not have done this work without Andy or Jeff,” Bronfman said, referring to Jeffrey Solomon, president of ACBP since 1997. “It’s been a wonderful collaboration, and we have become a helluva team.”
He and Solomon co-wrote two books, “The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan” (2009), on how to be a successful donor, regardless of income level, and “The Art of Doing Good: Where Passion Meets Action” (2013), on how to launch a non-profit.
Solomon praised Bronfman for his wisdom, values and willingness to experiment. “We both feel good about boxing well above our weight class” in the world of Jewish philanthropy, he said, pointing out that while ACBP is perceived as being one of the three or four largest foundations active in Jewish life, it distributed between $11 million and $16 million a year. By contrast, The Jim Joseph Foundation, The Avi Chai Foundation and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation each distribute an estimated $50 million to $70 million a year, he said, and The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation is believed to spend about $100 million annually.
Solomon noted that ACBP reflected Bronfman’s “Canadian sense of fairness” in fostering programs that worked toward social equality in Israel, helping minority populations there and “seeing what it means to be The Other in the Jewish state.” He cited a project in the Negev that brings 18-year-old Israeli Jews and Bedouins together as volunteer tutors in the schools of their respective communities.
“One lesson we learned in our work was to be bold,” said Solomon, who has been a critic of private foundations, which he described as society’s risk capital, for being overly risk averse. He took pride in the fact that the great majority of projects ACBP started have “found a home” and are able to continue even after the foundation closes down by year’s end.
Bronfman explained the two reasons why he decided to “sunset” the foundation. First, was that his son and daughter were not interested in taking over the helm, preferring to do support their own pet projects through their own foundations. Daughter Ellen in Los Angeles is deeply involved in a local version of Teach for America, and son Steven is active in Montreal, where he heads the Federation campaign.
The second, and more painful, reason was what Bronfman describes as “the Vivendi disaster,” when, in 2001, the French mass media company acquired a significant portion of Seagrams, then headed by Bronfman’s nephew, Edgar Bronfman Jr., which led to Seagram’s demise. With that serious financial blow, Bronfman had to decide between “cutting back severely” in philanthropic grants or continue full funding and set a termination date for the foundation. He decided to “sunset” 15 years later. “At the time it seemed like a long way off,” he said.
But it is here now, and Joel Fleishman of Duke said he “worries every time a Jewish philanthropy of significant scale goes out of business.” Given how much ACBP accomplished, especially for young people, he said there is “clearly a hole that few others are filling in finding new ways for young Jews” to be engaged “and build careers that exemplify Jewish principles.”
But Bronfman, who is committed to continue his personal philanthropy going forward, said he is not concerned “about who will fill the gaps.”
“As long as enough of us give a damn, things will be in good shape,” he said.
A moment after we concluded our interview, he called back. “I hope this doesn’t sound maudlin,” he said, “but I just want to say how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity” to do the philanthropic work that was done.
Our community, in turn, is fortunate to be the beneficiary of his generosity and vision.
Gary@jewishweek.org
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Scalia's Tightrope On Religion And The Law >
National
Scalia’s Tightrope On Religion And The Law
He was no simple shill for organized religion, a legal expert argues.
Marc Stern
Special To The Jewish Week
Justice Antonin Scalia seemed to hold competing views about the role of religion in the public square. Getty ImagesSeveral years ago, I participated in a program in Israel keynoted by Justice Scalia. His lunchtime talk focused on America’s post-9/11 security measures and Israel’s security situation. The justice was everything you’ve read about him — blunt, witty, brilliant, outspoken, very human and unpretentious, heedless of the standard judicial reticence about community or public affairs. (He assured my son, then a yeshiva student in Jerusalem, that his Talmud study was good preparation for a legal career.)
A highlight of the program was a debate between Scalia and Aharon Barak, then chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, about Barak’s theory that any government action, including those conducted by its military, is subject to judicial review. It was a brilliant exposition of competing judicial philosophies. Scalia carefully explained why he thought Justice Barak’s theory a misguided approach for a democracy. Guest though he was, Justice Scalia pulled no punches (and neither did Barak).
I saw Scalia being equally forceful somewhat later in Washington, speaking to members of the Knesset’s constitution committee, which was then struggling with drafting a constitution (it never completed the job). He held forth eloquently on the subject of how much judicial review should be allowed.
What most sticks out in my mind about Scalia, though, was what happened at a reception in the home of the American ambassador to Israel. What, a foreign diplomat asked, did Scalia consider his most important opinion? There were only three people present: the diplomat, the justice and me — so he had no reason to be disingenuous. Without hesitation, he responded, Employment Division v. Smith, the case in which a majority of the Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution did not require the government to accommodate religious practice so long as a law or regulation did not target or single out religious practice for regulation. It was a surprising choice because even then there were many other decisions most constitutional scholars would likely have pointed to.
At the time it was decided in 1990, Smith was highly unpopular among Jews and Jewish organizations, which backed legislation (Religious Freedom Restoration Act — RFRA) that largely overturned it. Justice Scalia termed it a silly law when in Israel, but he subsequently voted to apply it rigorously in several cases — most notably the Hobby Lobby contraceptives case — to the consternation of many, but of course not all, Jews. It is indeed likely that the next Congress will have to grapple with efforts to cut back on the scope of RFRA, unfortunately, with the support of many Jewish groups.
The opinion in Employment Division v. Smith does not fit with the oft-expressed, simplistic view — however well-grounded in Justice Scalia’s votes to tolerate various official prayers at graduations or public meetings, and religious symbols on public lands — that as a religious person, he used his seat on the Supreme Court to further the interests of (Christian) religion. In the long run, these prayer and religious symbol cases will be far less significant for the place of religion in American life than Smith. In short, Justice Scalia can’t simply be dismissed as a shill for organized religion (Christianity).
There are two common threads between the two sets of decisions. The first is a certain insensitivity to the place of minority faiths in America. It’s not that Justice Scalia was a bigot — he wasn’t. It’s that his narrow view of the judicial role in interpreting the Constitution, and his insistence on applying the constitutional text as he thinks its draftsmen would have, left those minority believers (or non-believers) likely to be shut out of the political process, with no recourse. Indeed, in Smith itself, Justice Scalia baldly acknowledged that majority faiths would manage to accommodate their needs through the political process, an option not available to smaller faiths. He dismissed the problem as an inevitable consequence of democracy.
The second common thread is an allegiance to interpreting the constitutional text in light of a perceived authoritative tradition, and leaving the rest to the democratic process. In the religion cases, that tradition was inclined to favor a generic Protestant Christianity.
That tradition was, of course, not unflawed, and sometimes could be seriously flawed. Moreover, the text of the Constitution was written for a very different world that was economically, technologically, morally and demographically far different. Justice Scalia’s textualism (sometimes called originalism) leaves us with a Constitution that is, frankly, outdated. Oddly, though, Justice Scalia, particularly in search-and-seizure cases, could make the Constitution speak to modern conditions when he chose.
But critics of his textualism leave us with no coherent theory of how the Court might short-circuit the painful business of piecing together a ruling majority. A textually unanchored process of constitutional adjudication is no more attractive in a democracy than one rigidly cabined to the 18th (or 19th) centuries.
Perhaps there is no way to adjust these competing views — but surely the nation is better off because Justice Scalia insisted on asking.
Marc Stern is general counsel for the American Jewish Committee (AJC).---------------------
Editorial | From Awareness To Inclusion >
Editorial
From Awareness To Inclusion
For the first time ever, the White House is hosting an event to mark February as Jewish Disabilities Awareness and Inclusion Month. The speakers include a rabbinical student with autism, and this week’s program draws advocates for American Jews with disabilities — an estimated 20 percent of our community — and leaders and representatives from a variety of Jewish organizations and foundations.
This high-profile event is indicative of the real progress made in the last few years in drawing attention to the need for greater inclusion in our synagogues, JCCs, camps and other Jewish settings. But advocates assert that we still have a long way to go. Awareness of the issue is increasing, they say, but inclusion too often translates into lip service rather than real change.
In practice, Jewish institutions have become more sensitive to the need for accommodating those with disabilities. But that often means holding separate programs for them. Full inclusion means offering such programs as an option, but also adapting a holistic approach, welcoming people with disabilities to any and all services and events offered in our community.
RespectAbility, a new national nonprofit working to empower people with disabilities, is working on a program with UJA-Federation of New York to improve synagogue life for those with disabilities. In so doing, it no doubt will increase sensitivity within the congregations. Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, CEO of RespectAbility (and founder and former president of The Israel Project), notes that where synagogues once interpreted inclusion to mean separate services on the High Holy Days for those with disabilities, some rabbis and lay leaders now appreciate that inclusion means opening all services and programs to everyone. “It’s an education process to understand that inclusive means inclusive,” Laszlo Mizrahi said.
Six New York synagogues are well into the program sponsored by UJA-Federation and the Haas Foundation that allows congregants to identify and utilize best practices, which can be shared widely. They are Union Temple, Temple Beth Emeth and Park Slope Jewish Center in Brooklyn, Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan, CSAIR (Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale) and Westchester Reform Temple. Each of congregations deserves credit for leading the community to a more enlightened future.
Jewish Foundation for Camp is given high marks for inclusion, helping parents identify the right overnight camp to meet their child’s needs. Day schools are seen as making slow progress in accommodating students with disabilities.
Much of the credit for heightening awareness and addressing the needs of Jews with disabilities goes to the Ruderman Family Foundation, based in Israel and Boston, which has made advocacy for people with disabilities a priority in recent years. The Jewish Week is proud to note that its “The New Normal” section, dedicated to issues impacting the disability community and edited by Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer, is the most-read blog on our website.
It’s clear that there is an ongoing need for education, discussion and debate on how best to engage organically Jews with disabilities within our community. Progress often is incremental, but it can lead to a new generation that will more readily embrace and welcome all Jews, underscoring Judaism’s central tenet that each of us is created in the image of God.
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"Now on Jewish.TV: Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 7: Relationship of Kochos Hanefesh to the Concept of Ohr Pnimi and Introduction to Ohr Makkif - Yaakov Brawer" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Sunday, 21 February 2016


Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 7
Relationship of Kochos Hanefesh to the concept of Ohr Pnimi and introduction to Ohr Makkif
By Yaakov Brawer

Watch
This webcast begins:
Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 10:30am ET
About this webcast:
The text now relates the foregoing discussion of the Mashal to the original Nimshal (Ohr Pnimi/Mamale). It then begins an analysis of Ohr Makkif using the Mashal of human Ratzon.
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