Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 8
Ratzon B’nefesh Ha’adam as a Mashal for Ohr Makif
By Yaakov Brawer
Watch
This webcast begins:
Sunday, February 28, 2016 at 10:30am ET
About this webcast:
Unlike Kochos Penimim (e.g. intellect, motion, hearing) there is no Keli specific for Ratzon. Rather, Ratzon can act everywhere and anywhere in the body, although it is neither grasped by, nor fully revealed in any limb.
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Talmud Gitin 78 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Netilas Yodayim 4:13(First Edition)
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 12
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 12
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
LIVE CTeen Gala
Gala Banquet of the Annual CTeen Shabbaton
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 11:30am ET
Gala Banquet of the Annual CTeen Shabbaton
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 11:30am ET
A Jewish Economy
The Book of Nechemiah, Part 5
By Mendel Dubov
Airs Monday, February 29 at 7pm ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Sauna Rabbi Quits; Kellner Vs The Jewish Daily Forward Moves Forward; Intersection of Fashion & Religion; and more." The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 26 February 2016"Sauna Rabbi Quits; Kellner Vs The Jewish Daily Forward Moves Forward; Intersection of Fashion & Religions; and more."
Friday, February 26, 2016
---------------------
Score For Kellner, Chasidic Sex Abuse Whistleblower, In Defamation Suit Against Jewish Daily Forward
Amy Sara Clark
The Book of Nechemiah, Part 5
By Mendel Dubov
Airs Monday, February 29 at 7pm ET
Click here to browse our full programming schedule.
---------------------
"Sauna Rabbi Quits; Kellner Vs The Jewish Daily Forward Moves Forward; Intersection of Fashion & Religion; and more." The Jewish Week Connecting the World to Jewish News, culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 26 February 2016"Sauna Rabbi Quits; Kellner Vs The Jewish Daily Forward Moves Forward; Intersection of Fashion & Religions; and more."
Friday, February 26, 2016
---------------------
Score For Kellner, Chasidic Sex Abuse Whistleblower, In Defamation Suit Against Jewish Daily Forward
Amy Sara Clark
New York
New York
Score For Chasidic Sex Abuse Whistleblower In Forward Suit
Judge allows Sam Kellner's defamation suit against Jewish newspaper to go forward.
Hella Winston And Amy Sara Clark
Sam Kellner with his attorneys, Michael Dowd and Niall MacGiollabhui
Sam Kellner's defamation suit against The Jewish Daily Forward lives to fight another day.
Earlier this week, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Debra A. James denied the newspaper's motion to dismiss the case, which was filed by Kellner in November 2014.
In 2008, Kellner brought allegations of his son’s sexual abuse by Baruch Lebovits to the police and worked closely with law enforcement to bring forward additional Lebovits victims. Lebovits was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 10 ½ to 32 years in prison. But that conviction was overturned on a prosecution error (Lebovits took a plea deal in 2014). In 2011, Kellner was indicted for perjury and extortion related to the Lebovits case but in 2014 those charges were dropped.
The defamation suit concerns a 2013 article written by Paul Berger, “Sam Kellner’s Tangled Hasidic Tale of Child Sex Abuse, Extortion and Faith,” and a tweet, mistakenly referring to Kellner as a convicted extortionist. Kellner’s complaint alleges that Berger defamed him by “falsely reporting that contents of certain ‘secret’ recordings revealed that” Kellner “was engaged in criminal conduct” and the tweet, which went uncorrected by the paper for six days after they were alerted to the error.
The Forward sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the article was purely opinion, and thus protected speech. It also argued that the mistaken language of the tweet was inadvertent and not intended to defame Kellner.
Justice James rejected the claim that the article was an opinion piece but, wrote that based on the evidence presented so far, the piece appears to be based on undisclosed and/or misrepresented facts. As for the tweet, James ruled that its “required intent cannot be determined on these motion papers.”
The judge also found that in its motion to dismiss, the Forward failed to prove that Kellner is a public figure rather than a private person, writing that he "was drawn into the the public forum against his will in order to obtain redress for his son, and then to defend himself.” This is a key distinction because as a private figure, Kellner would have to show only that The Forward acted negligently rather than with actual malice. However, the judge also noted that this determination could change after the discovery period, during which witnesses are deposed, and more facts come into evidence.
Andrew T. Miltenberg, a veteran trial lawyer who focuses on complex commercial litigation and civil rights told the Jewish Week that the fact that the court has not, so far, deemed Kellner a public figure "is critical."
"To have held otherwise would have had the effect of frightening the general public away from reporting crimes or otherwise comfortably being a being a witness to events of great import. I am encouraged by the fact the Court would not allow the father of an abuse victim to be silenced or discredited," he said.
Samuel Norich, The Forward’s publisher and CEO, said that James’ denial of his paper’s motion to dismiss does not mean the Forward’s defense has no merit, but only that more information is needed before a decision can be reached.
“The court concluded that a number of the issues we raised could not be decided on a motion to dismiss but have to await discovery,” he said. “We look forward to presenting our case to the judge on a fuller record.”
As for Kellner’s attorney, Niall MacGiollabhui, he is also looking forward — to the discovery process.
"We are pleased with Judge James's comprehensive and well-reasoned decision,” he said. “We now look forward to the discovery stage of this litigation, during which the perfidious nature of Paul Berger's reporting and his collusion with a serial pedophile will be laid bare."
A preliminary hearing is set to take place on April 5th.
Hella Winston is The Jewish Week special correspondent and Amy Sara Clark is deputy managing editor.
Correction, Feb. 25: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the judge ruled that Kellner is a private person. Rather she ruled that the Forward has so far failed to prove that he is not a private person and that a decision on that cannot be made until after the discovery period of the trial.---------------------
'Tomato Rabbis' Increase Heat On 'Activist' Investor
Helen Chernikoff
New York
Score For Chasidic Sex Abuse Whistleblower In Forward Suit
Judge allows Sam Kellner's defamation suit against Jewish newspaper to go forward.
Hella Winston And Amy Sara Clark
Sam Kellner with his attorneys, Michael Dowd and Niall MacGiollabhui
Sam Kellner's defamation suit against The Jewish Daily Forward lives to fight another day.
Earlier this week, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Debra A. James denied the newspaper's motion to dismiss the case, which was filed by Kellner in November 2014.
In 2008, Kellner brought allegations of his son’s sexual abuse by Baruch Lebovits to the police and worked closely with law enforcement to bring forward additional Lebovits victims. Lebovits was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 10 ½ to 32 years in prison. But that conviction was overturned on a prosecution error (Lebovits took a plea deal in 2014). In 2011, Kellner was indicted for perjury and extortion related to the Lebovits case but in 2014 those charges were dropped.
The defamation suit concerns a 2013 article written by Paul Berger, “Sam Kellner’s Tangled Hasidic Tale of Child Sex Abuse, Extortion and Faith,” and a tweet, mistakenly referring to Kellner as a convicted extortionist. Kellner’s complaint alleges that Berger defamed him by “falsely reporting that contents of certain ‘secret’ recordings revealed that” Kellner “was engaged in criminal conduct” and the tweet, which went uncorrected by the paper for six days after they were alerted to the error.
The Forward sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the article was purely opinion, and thus protected speech. It also argued that the mistaken language of the tweet was inadvertent and not intended to defame Kellner.
Justice James rejected the claim that the article was an opinion piece but, wrote that based on the evidence presented so far, the piece appears to be based on undisclosed and/or misrepresented facts. As for the tweet, James ruled that its “required intent cannot be determined on these motion papers.”
The judge also found that in its motion to dismiss, the Forward failed to prove that Kellner is a public figure rather than a private person, writing that he "was drawn into the the public forum against his will in order to obtain redress for his son, and then to defend himself.” This is a key distinction because as a private figure, Kellner would have to show only that The Forward acted negligently rather than with actual malice. However, the judge also noted that this determination could change after the discovery period, during which witnesses are deposed, and more facts come into evidence.
Andrew T. Miltenberg, a veteran trial lawyer who focuses on complex commercial litigation and civil rights told the Jewish Week that the fact that the court has not, so far, deemed Kellner a public figure "is critical."
"To have held otherwise would have had the effect of frightening the general public away from reporting crimes or otherwise comfortably being a being a witness to events of great import. I am encouraged by the fact the Court would not allow the father of an abuse victim to be silenced or discredited," he said.
Samuel Norich, The Forward’s publisher and CEO, said that James’ denial of his paper’s motion to dismiss does not mean the Forward’s defense has no merit, but only that more information is needed before a decision can be reached.
“The court concluded that a number of the issues we raised could not be decided on a motion to dismiss but have to await discovery,” he said. “We look forward to presenting our case to the judge on a fuller record.”
As for Kellner’s attorney, Niall MacGiollabhui, he is also looking forward — to the discovery process.
"We are pleased with Judge James's comprehensive and well-reasoned decision,” he said. “We now look forward to the discovery stage of this litigation, during which the perfidious nature of Paul Berger's reporting and his collusion with a serial pedophile will be laid bare."
A preliminary hearing is set to take place on April 5th.
Hella Winston is The Jewish Week special correspondent and Amy Sara Clark is deputy managing editor.
Correction, Feb. 25: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the judge ruled that Kellner is a private person. Rather she ruled that the Forward has so far failed to prove that he is not a private person and that a decision on that cannot be made until after the discovery period of the trial.---------------------
'Tomato Rabbis' Increase Heat On 'Activist' Investor
Helen Chernikoff
New York
Coalition of Immokalee Workers to march on major Wendy's shareholder's office, home.
New York
‘Tomato Rabbis’ Increase Heat On ‘Activist’ Investor
T’ruah, Coalition of Immokalee Workers to march on major Wendy’s shareholder’s office and home.
Helen Chernikoff
Special To The Jewish Week
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster at a march last spring on Peltz' Park Avenue offices. Courtesy of Coalition of Immokalee Workers
What happens when an activist rabbi meets an activist investor — who’s also Jewish?
Not much. Yet.
But Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, who works in the Immokalee tomato fields of southwest Florida with migrant farm workers, has investor Nelson Peltz in her sights now more than ever.
After about two years of asking Peltz to see that fast food company Wendy’s joins a program that helps tomato pickers, the rabbi and her colleagues at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have scheduled their biggest campaign yet, for March.
“He’s a shareholder with the kind of power, that if he said Wendy’s should support the Fair Food Program, the corporation would,” Rabbi Kahn-Troster said. “We thought, ‘Maybe it would influence him if he heard from rabbis.’”
Peltz is the co-founder of investment fund Trian Fund Management, called an “activist” firm because it makes change in the companies it invests in by obtaining seats on their boards. Trian is the largest shareholder of fast food company Wendy’s, and Peltz is the chairman of its board.
The tomato pickers want Wendy’s to sign onto the coalition’s Fair Food Program, which requires restaurant companies to pay a premium – a penny per pound – that goes directly to the farm workers. Also, participants in the program can buy the fruit only from growers who comply with its standards for workplace conditions, such as lunch breaks and a system for stopping work in the event of dangerous conditions from hazards like lightning, heat or chemicals.
In other industries, workers might have pushed for these reforms through a union, but farm workers in most states can’t organize in that way because they were excluded from the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which forbids employers from firing a worker for union activity.
Wendy’s rivals have joined the program; McDonald’s, the biggest fast food chain in the United States by sales in 2014, according to QSR magazine, a trade publication, did so in 2007. Subway, the third-biggest and Burger King, the fourth-biggest, have joined as well. (Coffee chain Starbucks, not a big buyer of tomatoes, is the second-biggest.) Wendy’s is fifth-biggest.
That makes Wendy’s a fat target for the 5,000-member Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which grew out of community organizing efforts that started in Immokalee more than two decades ago against wage abuses, sexual harassment and slavery.
“The conditions were horrendous,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “To stay that people’s living conditions were substandard is an understatement.”
Today, the Fair Food program covers 90 percent of Florida’s tomato industry, or 30,000 workers, said Patricia Cipollitti, a staffer at the Alliance for Fair Food, an organization of groups working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
Those groups include the Student/Farmworker Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Church, the United Methodist Church and T’ruah, the Jewish human rights group where Rabbi Kahn-Troster works as an organizer.
T’ruah works to educate the Jewish community about the religious values that compel Jews to support workers rights, but they also write opinion pieces and participate in marches.
“We want [T’ruah members] to take action in a public way,” Rabbi Kahn-Troster said. “We don’t want them to just teach and give sermons. They take students and congregants to stores and restaurants and ask managers to pass the message up the chain of command.”
Because T’ruah’s officers and members are all clergy — rabbis and cantors — they are used to leading, but when they sign up to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, they’re followers, Rabbi Kahn-Troster said.
Nely Rodriguez, a CIW member, said putting the workers front and central is essential to the mission. “Something we at the CIW have done and continue to do is take the worker out of the shadows. We have witnessed the abuses; we know the conditions and we know the solutions that are necessary to go forward.”
However, for the march, the workers want Rabbi Kahn-Troster, to take a leading role in the hope that she can influence Peltz, because he is Jewish.
Peltz is also a philanthropist with a range of interests, including Jewish causes. He co-chairs the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and is chairman of the center’s Museum of Tolerance. He’s also a supporter of Weill Cornell Medical College, the Prostate Center Foundation and the Intrepid Museum Foundation.
But so far, he hasn’t listened to T’ruah or the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
The campaign to persuade Peltz started in the spring of 2013, when the coalition rallied in New York outside Wendy’s annual shareholder meeting. Over the next two years, hundreds of “tomato rabbis” wrote letters to Peltz; rallied at local Wendy’s restaurants; presented themselves at his 280 Park Avenue offices and faxed and called him. Once, a group of activists caught a glimpse of Peltz himself in his offices, but were turned away because they didn’t have an appointment, and the next year, they didn’t get past lobby security.
“They wouldn’t even let us leave a letter,” Rabbi Kahn-Troster lamented.
Now the coalition and its rabbi allies are planning more than a week of Peltz-focused activism starting on March 2. Between 300 and 400 people are expected to march on his New York offices; a protest in Columbus, Ohio, where Wendy’s has its headquarters should draw about 1,000 people and about the same number will participate in a culminating rally in Palm Beach, Fla., where Peltz owns two mansions, Cipollitti said. Palm Beach is about two hours from Immokalee by car.
Trian Partners declined to comment for this article.
Wendy’s however, did.
Spokesman Bob Bertini responded by pointing to Wendy’s new code of conduct for suppliers, released in late 2015. According to the code, Wendy’s expects its suppliers to comply with all relevant local, state and federal laws regarding such issues as safety, wages and harassment.
Also, Bertini said, Wendy’s buys its tomatoes from participants in the Fair Food Program when it buys fruit grown in Florida.
The code states that it is “mandatory,” but “not punitive.” To Rabbi Kahn-Troster, that means it’s not an adequate substitute for the Fair Food Program.
“The CIW’s program is binding,” she said. “It has teeth. It’s not something that companies should aspire to. It creates a standard.”
That might be exactly why Wendy’s doesn’t want to join the movement, said Professor Karen Cates of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A third party — in this case the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — might complicate Wendy’s relationships with its growers.
“Any time an organization links itself with a third party working on behalf of those with whom they can deal directly, they lose flexibility,” Cates said. “The real business question is why would companies join a movement that puts their suppliers on the spot, puts pressure on prices, and diminishes their control over the supply chain?”
But the Fair Food Program’s proponents have different priorities. Cornell University’s Bronfenbrenner knows Peltz and his colleagues want to manage their business with as little interference as possible, but say that is less important than workers’ welfare.
“It’s amazing what adding a penny can do,” said Bronfenbrenner. “It has made such a huge difference in worker’s lives, and it’s such a small difference for stores and fast food companies.”
Some companies believe participation in the Fair Food Program will benefit their image. Whole Foods and Ahold, the supermarket chain, are talking to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers about designing a label for Fair Food Program tomatoes in order to enhance their social consciousness bona fides, said coalition member Lupe Gonazalo.
Those public relations issues might induce Peltz and Wendy’s other leaders to reverse their position on the Fair Food Program.
“Wendy’s may be waiting this issue out – and if costs to its public image outweigh the costs of joining they may change their mind,” Cates said.---------------------
An Intersection Of Style And Tradition
Sandee Brawarsky
Coalition of Immokalee Workers to march on major Wendy's shareholder's office, home.
New York
‘Tomato Rabbis’ Increase Heat On ‘Activist’ Investor
T’ruah, Coalition of Immokalee Workers to march on major Wendy’s shareholder’s office and home.
Helen Chernikoff
Special To The Jewish Week
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster at a march last spring on Peltz' Park Avenue offices. Courtesy of Coalition of Immokalee Workers
What happens when an activist rabbi meets an activist investor — who’s also Jewish?
Not much. Yet.
But Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, who works in the Immokalee tomato fields of southwest Florida with migrant farm workers, has investor Nelson Peltz in her sights now more than ever.
After about two years of asking Peltz to see that fast food company Wendy’s joins a program that helps tomato pickers, the rabbi and her colleagues at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have scheduled their biggest campaign yet, for March.
“He’s a shareholder with the kind of power, that if he said Wendy’s should support the Fair Food Program, the corporation would,” Rabbi Kahn-Troster said. “We thought, ‘Maybe it would influence him if he heard from rabbis.’”
Peltz is the co-founder of investment fund Trian Fund Management, called an “activist” firm because it makes change in the companies it invests in by obtaining seats on their boards. Trian is the largest shareholder of fast food company Wendy’s, and Peltz is the chairman of its board.
The tomato pickers want Wendy’s to sign onto the coalition’s Fair Food Program, which requires restaurant companies to pay a premium – a penny per pound – that goes directly to the farm workers. Also, participants in the program can buy the fruit only from growers who comply with its standards for workplace conditions, such as lunch breaks and a system for stopping work in the event of dangerous conditions from hazards like lightning, heat or chemicals.
In other industries, workers might have pushed for these reforms through a union, but farm workers in most states can’t organize in that way because they were excluded from the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which forbids employers from firing a worker for union activity.
Wendy’s rivals have joined the program; McDonald’s, the biggest fast food chain in the United States by sales in 2014, according to QSR magazine, a trade publication, did so in 2007. Subway, the third-biggest and Burger King, the fourth-biggest, have joined as well. (Coffee chain Starbucks, not a big buyer of tomatoes, is the second-biggest.) Wendy’s is fifth-biggest.
That makes Wendy’s a fat target for the 5,000-member Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which grew out of community organizing efforts that started in Immokalee more than two decades ago against wage abuses, sexual harassment and slavery.
“The conditions were horrendous,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “To stay that people’s living conditions were substandard is an understatement.”
Today, the Fair Food program covers 90 percent of Florida’s tomato industry, or 30,000 workers, said Patricia Cipollitti, a staffer at the Alliance for Fair Food, an organization of groups working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
Those groups include the Student/Farmworker Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Church, the United Methodist Church and T’ruah, the Jewish human rights group where Rabbi Kahn-Troster works as an organizer.
T’ruah works to educate the Jewish community about the religious values that compel Jews to support workers rights, but they also write opinion pieces and participate in marches.
“We want [T’ruah members] to take action in a public way,” Rabbi Kahn-Troster said. “We don’t want them to just teach and give sermons. They take students and congregants to stores and restaurants and ask managers to pass the message up the chain of command.”
Because T’ruah’s officers and members are all clergy — rabbis and cantors — they are used to leading, but when they sign up to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, they’re followers, Rabbi Kahn-Troster said.
Nely Rodriguez, a CIW member, said putting the workers front and central is essential to the mission. “Something we at the CIW have done and continue to do is take the worker out of the shadows. We have witnessed the abuses; we know the conditions and we know the solutions that are necessary to go forward.”
However, for the march, the workers want Rabbi Kahn-Troster, to take a leading role in the hope that she can influence Peltz, because he is Jewish.
Peltz is also a philanthropist with a range of interests, including Jewish causes. He co-chairs the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and is chairman of the center’s Museum of Tolerance. He’s also a supporter of Weill Cornell Medical College, the Prostate Center Foundation and the Intrepid Museum Foundation.
But so far, he hasn’t listened to T’ruah or the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
The campaign to persuade Peltz started in the spring of 2013, when the coalition rallied in New York outside Wendy’s annual shareholder meeting. Over the next two years, hundreds of “tomato rabbis” wrote letters to Peltz; rallied at local Wendy’s restaurants; presented themselves at his 280 Park Avenue offices and faxed and called him. Once, a group of activists caught a glimpse of Peltz himself in his offices, but were turned away because they didn’t have an appointment, and the next year, they didn’t get past lobby security.
“They wouldn’t even let us leave a letter,” Rabbi Kahn-Troster lamented.
Now the coalition and its rabbi allies are planning more than a week of Peltz-focused activism starting on March 2. Between 300 and 400 people are expected to march on his New York offices; a protest in Columbus, Ohio, where Wendy’s has its headquarters should draw about 1,000 people and about the same number will participate in a culminating rally in Palm Beach, Fla., where Peltz owns two mansions, Cipollitti said. Palm Beach is about two hours from Immokalee by car.
Trian Partners declined to comment for this article.
Wendy’s however, did.
Spokesman Bob Bertini responded by pointing to Wendy’s new code of conduct for suppliers, released in late 2015. According to the code, Wendy’s expects its suppliers to comply with all relevant local, state and federal laws regarding such issues as safety, wages and harassment.
Also, Bertini said, Wendy’s buys its tomatoes from participants in the Fair Food Program when it buys fruit grown in Florida.
The code states that it is “mandatory,” but “not punitive.” To Rabbi Kahn-Troster, that means it’s not an adequate substitute for the Fair Food Program.
“The CIW’s program is binding,” she said. “It has teeth. It’s not something that companies should aspire to. It creates a standard.”
That might be exactly why Wendy’s doesn’t want to join the movement, said Professor Karen Cates of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A third party — in this case the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — might complicate Wendy’s relationships with its growers.
“Any time an organization links itself with a third party working on behalf of those with whom they can deal directly, they lose flexibility,” Cates said. “The real business question is why would companies join a movement that puts their suppliers on the spot, puts pressure on prices, and diminishes their control over the supply chain?”
But the Fair Food Program’s proponents have different priorities. Cornell University’s Bronfenbrenner knows Peltz and his colleagues want to manage their business with as little interference as possible, but say that is less important than workers’ welfare.
“It’s amazing what adding a penny can do,” said Bronfenbrenner. “It has made such a huge difference in worker’s lives, and it’s such a small difference for stores and fast food companies.”
Some companies believe participation in the Fair Food Program will benefit their image. Whole Foods and Ahold, the supermarket chain, are talking to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers about designing a label for Fair Food Program tomatoes in order to enhance their social consciousness bona fides, said coalition member Lupe Gonazalo.
Those public relations issues might induce Peltz and Wendy’s other leaders to reverse their position on the Fair Food Program.
“Wendy’s may be waiting this issue out – and if costs to its public image outweigh the costs of joining they may change their mind,” Cates said.---------------------
An Intersection Of Style And Tradition
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture
A beautiful exhibit of
12 hand-sewn wedding dresses made by Israeli
fashion students is now on view at Temple Emanu-El's Bernard Museum of Jewish Culture
International
At The Intersection Of Style And Tradition
Sandee Brawarsky
Shenkar College designer Mor Kfir stands next to her dress. Courtesy of Bernard Museum
Jewish history has rarely looked as elegant as in the 12 hand-sewn wedding dresses made by Israeli fashion students now on view at Temple Emanu-El’s Bernard Museum of Jewish Culture.
The exhibit traveled to New York from Beit Hatfutsot Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, where it was developed in partnership with Israel’s Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. In an unusual assignment, third-year fashion students were asked to cull stories from their own families and artifacts from the museum’s archives for information about generations born elsewhere — all for inspiration in the design of wedding dresses.
The opening of “Boi Kallah: Here Comes The Bride: Wedding Gowns Embroidering the Story of the Jewish People” was the second time that Shenkar’s fashion students were in the news last week: At the Grammy Awards, Beyoncé wore a white wedding gown from the collection of Israeli designer Inbal Dror, who studied at Shenkar.
The dresses are exhibited on headless mannequins, the white brocades and flowing chiffons silhouetted against blue-gray walls. How do you know you’re not at Kleinfeld’s? These are couture garments with deep backstories.
From a gown inspired by the decorative architecture of a 14th-century synagogue in Toledo, Spain, to another by the tradition of putting on tefillin, the finely crafted dresses include beading with tiny, sparkling crystals and pearls, and insets of lace, leather and fur.
Hadar Brin’s dress represents a story of her great-grandfather hiding the mezuzah case outside their home in Lodz, Poland, at the outbreak of World War II. She uses delicate lace in tribute to scribal arts, and the shape and drape of the dress with its delicate opening suggests something held inside.
Eyal Ron Meistal based his embroidered geometric silk dress on the design of house-shaped medieval wedding rings, worn in Germany, where his family is from. Its veil stands above the bride’s head, as though offering protection. In a playful take on modesty, Hila Tabib has created an outfit with ornamented pants — rows of shells and beads that would jingle with movement — beneath a breezy chiffon gown, with the embroidery covering the bride’s hands, suggesting the traditional henna ceremony, where the palms of the hands are painted.
These designers have since graduated from Shenkar and are working in the fashion field. Mor Kfir, who hopes to work in the New York fashion world, explained that the idea for her design came to her in her first visit to Beit Hatfutsot, when she saw a gallery of scale-models of synagogues. She felt as if an image of a bride were rising from the models, almost a holy feeling, and she recalled the story of S. Ansky’s “The Dybbuk.” Her silk chiffon gown, with its lace, high neck and braided threads, is inspired by the Victorian dress and long, braided hair worn by the young bride Leah in the 1920s production at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv. This dress suggests the dark love story. Kfir says that many have asked her if they can wear it.
At the opening, where wedding cake was served, Warren Klein, curator of the Bernard Museum of Judaica, said, “The exhibit is forward-thinking in creating something new inspired by the past, honoring the Jewish traditions, culture and history it draws upon.”---------------------
---------------------
For Jewish Mormons, Hybrid Identity Seen As No Contradiction
Uriel Heilman
A beautiful exhibit of
12 hand-sewn wedding dresses made by Israeli
fashion students is now on view at Temple Emanu-El's Bernard Museum of Jewish Culture
International
At The Intersection Of Style And Tradition
Sandee Brawarsky
Shenkar College designer Mor Kfir stands next to her dress. Courtesy of Bernard Museum
Jewish history has rarely looked as elegant as in the 12 hand-sewn wedding dresses made by Israeli fashion students now on view at Temple Emanu-El’s Bernard Museum of Jewish Culture.
The exhibit traveled to New York from Beit Hatfutsot Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, where it was developed in partnership with Israel’s Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. In an unusual assignment, third-year fashion students were asked to cull stories from their own families and artifacts from the museum’s archives for information about generations born elsewhere — all for inspiration in the design of wedding dresses.
The opening of “Boi Kallah: Here Comes The Bride: Wedding Gowns Embroidering the Story of the Jewish People” was the second time that Shenkar’s fashion students were in the news last week: At the Grammy Awards, Beyoncé wore a white wedding gown from the collection of Israeli designer Inbal Dror, who studied at Shenkar.
The dresses are exhibited on headless mannequins, the white brocades and flowing chiffons silhouetted against blue-gray walls. How do you know you’re not at Kleinfeld’s? These are couture garments with deep backstories.
From a gown inspired by the decorative architecture of a 14th-century synagogue in Toledo, Spain, to another by the tradition of putting on tefillin, the finely crafted dresses include beading with tiny, sparkling crystals and pearls, and insets of lace, leather and fur.
Hadar Brin’s dress represents a story of her great-grandfather hiding the mezuzah case outside their home in Lodz, Poland, at the outbreak of World War II. She uses delicate lace in tribute to scribal arts, and the shape and drape of the dress with its delicate opening suggests something held inside.
Eyal Ron Meistal based his embroidered geometric silk dress on the design of house-shaped medieval wedding rings, worn in Germany, where his family is from. Its veil stands above the bride’s head, as though offering protection. In a playful take on modesty, Hila Tabib has created an outfit with ornamented pants — rows of shells and beads that would jingle with movement — beneath a breezy chiffon gown, with the embroidery covering the bride’s hands, suggesting the traditional henna ceremony, where the palms of the hands are painted.
These designers have since graduated from Shenkar and are working in the fashion field. Mor Kfir, who hopes to work in the New York fashion world, explained that the idea for her design came to her in her first visit to Beit Hatfutsot, when she saw a gallery of scale-models of synagogues. She felt as if an image of a bride were rising from the models, almost a holy feeling, and she recalled the story of S. Ansky’s “The Dybbuk.” Her silk chiffon gown, with its lace, high neck and braided threads, is inspired by the Victorian dress and long, braided hair worn by the young bride Leah in the 1920s production at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv. This dress suggests the dark love story. Kfir says that many have asked her if they can wear it.
At the opening, where wedding cake was served, Warren Klein, curator of the Bernard Museum of Judaica, said, “The exhibit is forward-thinking in creating something new inspired by the past, honoring the Jewish traditions, culture and history it draws upon.”---------------------
---------------------
For Jewish Mormons, Hybrid Identity Seen As No Contradiction
Uriel Heilman
National
National
For Jewish Mormons, Hybrid Identity Seen As No Contradiction
Uriel Heilman
JTA
A statue of Brigham Young at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. JTA
Salt Lake City – Phyllis Miller’s experience growing up in Southern California wasn’t much different from that of many American Jews.
The product of an intermarriage — her mother wasn’t Jewish but later converted — Miller’s family attended synagogue occasionally, kept the kids home from school on the High Holidays and ate matzah on Passover.
But Miller’s religious life took an unusual turn in her high school years in San Diego, when she embraced the Mormon church.
After a year of resistance from her parents, she was baptized at age 16 in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She later moved to Utah, enrolled in Brigham Young University, married a Mormon and raised six kids as Latter-day Saints, or LDS.
For decades afterward, Miller felt part of her identity was missing. So about 20 years ago, she started celebrating Hanukkah again. Later she found her way to a synagogue seder. These days Miller, 55, often wears her Star of David necklace and every six months she attends the semiannual gathering of B’nai Shalom, a Jewish Mormon group that holds events in this city on the eve of the twice-yearly LDS general conferences.
Make no mistake, however: Miller is still Mormon. She just celebrates her Jewishness, too.
“I still consider myself Jewish,” said Miller, whose grandfather was Larry Fine, one of The Three Stooges. “I feel like I just added on to my faith.”
Miller is among at least hundreds of Jews across North America who have converted to Mormonism yet still practice some Jewish traditions and identify as Jewish. They see no contradiction between the two.
“Being Jewish is my heritage,” Miller said. “It’s not like you can just get rid of it.”
The numbers of Jewish Mormons are difficult to estimate. The B’nai Shalom LDS & Jewish Facebook group has about 450 members. Some 200-400 people usually show up to the group’s March and September gatherings, which typically include a potluck dinner with traditional Jewish foods, a lecture, Jewish music and dancing — and plenty of schmoozing.
Victor Ludlow, a longtime religion professor at BYU who helped launch the Mormon university’s Near Eastern and Jewish studies programs in the 1970s, and has served two five-year terms as an LDS bishop, says the Mormon church smiles upon hybrid Jewish-Mormon identities. Jewish rituals such as Hanukkah lightings and Passover seders are seen as positive cultural rather than religious traditions – as long as the practitioners still believe in Jesus and the Book of Mormon.
“If it doesn’t interfere with their practice as Latter-day Saints, as long as it’s something that’s positive, that enriches their lives, there’s no problem with them. In fact, they’re encouraged,” said Ludlow, who is retired. “And there are enough commonalities between the two cultures that sometimes it’s not as much as a cultural shock for Jews to become Mormons as it is for Christians.”
Among those commonalities, according to Ludlow, are that both peoples are bound by a covenant, are or have been led by living prophets, build temples and observe dietary laws. Both religions use the word gentile to describe people outside the faith. In Utah, which has a Mormon majority, it is the Jews who are the gentiles.
Mormons also feel a kinship with Jews as a people persecuted for their faith. Mormons cite the hostility of American Christians, especially in the decades following the religion’s founding in 1830 by Joseph Smith, as echoing the Jewish experience.
That’s all cold comfort for the parents of Jews drawn to the Mormon church. When Mitch Cowitz, a native of Toronto, told his Jewish parents he was interested in converting to Mormonism, they were aghast, insisting he meet with rabbis and someone from an anti-cult group.
“They did everything but try to disown me,” Cowitz recalled.
They failed. Cowitz was baptized at age 21. Though he’s now a Mormon bishop, he says he hasn’t left Judaism. Cowitz lives in Thornhill, a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Toronto, and still celebrates many Jewish holidays. He also closely follows news from Israel.
“It’s my people. I consider it my land as well. I still consider myself Jewish,” said Cowitz, 50. “But I believe that the Book of Mormon is God’s word that has been revealed in these modern days. That’s what originally spoke to me. And the whole concept of Jesus Christ as the messiah.”
In an interview with JTA, a few commonalities in the experiences of Jews who convert to Mormonism emerged: The individuals tend to be from relatively assimilated or mixed-faith families, grew up in locales without a strong Jewish community, discovered the Mormon church through friends and had their crucial first encounter with Mormonism in their formative late-teen years. All encountered parental resistance. Many cited the Mormon focus on family as one of the faith’s most attractive elements.
Jason Olson, a U.S. Navy chaplain serving in Japan, is the son of a Jewish mother and Lutheran father. Growing up in Phoenix, he went to Reform Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah and observed Jewish holidays, but his family also celebrated Christmas and Easter. That confused him, and prompted a religious quest that led him eventually to Mormonism, thanks to some LDS friends in high school.
Those were difficult years, Olson recalls.
“I had privately embraced Jesus as the messiah, but I was still outwardly living a Jewish life and struggling with my identity,” he said.
Though he kept studying with rabbis, they couldn’t shake his convictions, and at 18 he was baptized. But that was hardly the end of Olson’s Jewish road. When it came time to serve his requisite tour as a Mormon missionary, he was sent first to New Jersey and then to the Orthodox Jewish stronghold of Monsey, New York. His encounters there rekindled his interest in Judaism and prompted soul-searching that eventually led him to spend several months living in Israel.
For college, Olson went to BYU and majored in Hebrew Bible. After graduation he enrolled in a doctoral program in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis, the Jewish-sponsored, nonsectarian university in suburban Boston. Eventually Olson became a Navy chaplain – as a Mormon. But Olson, 30, still considers himself Jewish.
“In religious practice, I’m a Latter-day Saint, but I still embrace Jewish traditions,” Olson said in a telephone interview from Japan. “I still will light Hanukkah candles and have a Passover seder. I feel it’s part of my religious and cultural heritage. I personally don’t see any contradiction between Jewish tradition and the Christian faith that I have embraced.”
Aside from converts like Olson, there are thousands more Jews who have embraced Mormonism and no longer identify as Jewish, according to Ludlow, who has been dubbed the “Passover Patriarch of Provo” for hosting several traditional seders every year — mostly to teach Mormons about the Exodus story and Jewish traditions.
“There’s hardly a Mormon congregation between Boston and Washington, D.C., that doesn’t have some Jewish individuals who have converted to the church,” said Ludlow, who was born and bred in the LDS church.
Harold Levy, 67, a retired teacher in California who converted to Mormonism at 36, says he has come to appreciate Judaism more in the decades since his baptism. Now he studies Judaism and even went to Chabad for services last Rosh Hashanah.
“I used to take Judaism for granted,” said Levy, who is deaf and communicated with JTA through instant message. “Now I understand Judaism much better and enjoy it more. I am a member of LDS, but inside I am still Jewish.”---------------------
SPONSORED CONTENT
Israel is being demonized and delegitimized. Its history is being distorted and twisted. Stand up for the truth.Read and share AJC's "Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Brief Guide for the Perplexed."
---------------------
Honoring Helene Aylon's Lifetime Of Achievement
Francesca Lunzer Kritz
National
For Jewish Mormons, Hybrid Identity Seen As No Contradiction
Uriel Heilman
JTA
A statue of Brigham Young at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. JTA
Salt Lake City – Phyllis Miller’s experience growing up in Southern California wasn’t much different from that of many American Jews.
The product of an intermarriage — her mother wasn’t Jewish but later converted — Miller’s family attended synagogue occasionally, kept the kids home from school on the High Holidays and ate matzah on Passover.
But Miller’s religious life took an unusual turn in her high school years in San Diego, when she embraced the Mormon church.
After a year of resistance from her parents, she was baptized at age 16 in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She later moved to Utah, enrolled in Brigham Young University, married a Mormon and raised six kids as Latter-day Saints, or LDS.
For decades afterward, Miller felt part of her identity was missing. So about 20 years ago, she started celebrating Hanukkah again. Later she found her way to a synagogue seder. These days Miller, 55, often wears her Star of David necklace and every six months she attends the semiannual gathering of B’nai Shalom, a Jewish Mormon group that holds events in this city on the eve of the twice-yearly LDS general conferences.
Make no mistake, however: Miller is still Mormon. She just celebrates her Jewishness, too.
“I still consider myself Jewish,” said Miller, whose grandfather was Larry Fine, one of The Three Stooges. “I feel like I just added on to my faith.”
Miller is among at least hundreds of Jews across North America who have converted to Mormonism yet still practice some Jewish traditions and identify as Jewish. They see no contradiction between the two.
“Being Jewish is my heritage,” Miller said. “It’s not like you can just get rid of it.”
The numbers of Jewish Mormons are difficult to estimate. The B’nai Shalom LDS & Jewish Facebook group has about 450 members. Some 200-400 people usually show up to the group’s March and September gatherings, which typically include a potluck dinner with traditional Jewish foods, a lecture, Jewish music and dancing — and plenty of schmoozing.
Victor Ludlow, a longtime religion professor at BYU who helped launch the Mormon university’s Near Eastern and Jewish studies programs in the 1970s, and has served two five-year terms as an LDS bishop, says the Mormon church smiles upon hybrid Jewish-Mormon identities. Jewish rituals such as Hanukkah lightings and Passover seders are seen as positive cultural rather than religious traditions – as long as the practitioners still believe in Jesus and the Book of Mormon.
“If it doesn’t interfere with their practice as Latter-day Saints, as long as it’s something that’s positive, that enriches their lives, there’s no problem with them. In fact, they’re encouraged,” said Ludlow, who is retired. “And there are enough commonalities between the two cultures that sometimes it’s not as much as a cultural shock for Jews to become Mormons as it is for Christians.”
Among those commonalities, according to Ludlow, are that both peoples are bound by a covenant, are or have been led by living prophets, build temples and observe dietary laws. Both religions use the word gentile to describe people outside the faith. In Utah, which has a Mormon majority, it is the Jews who are the gentiles.
Mormons also feel a kinship with Jews as a people persecuted for their faith. Mormons cite the hostility of American Christians, especially in the decades following the religion’s founding in 1830 by Joseph Smith, as echoing the Jewish experience.
That’s all cold comfort for the parents of Jews drawn to the Mormon church. When Mitch Cowitz, a native of Toronto, told his Jewish parents he was interested in converting to Mormonism, they were aghast, insisting he meet with rabbis and someone from an anti-cult group.
“They did everything but try to disown me,” Cowitz recalled.
They failed. Cowitz was baptized at age 21. Though he’s now a Mormon bishop, he says he hasn’t left Judaism. Cowitz lives in Thornhill, a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Toronto, and still celebrates many Jewish holidays. He also closely follows news from Israel.
“It’s my people. I consider it my land as well. I still consider myself Jewish,” said Cowitz, 50. “But I believe that the Book of Mormon is God’s word that has been revealed in these modern days. That’s what originally spoke to me. And the whole concept of Jesus Christ as the messiah.”
In an interview with JTA, a few commonalities in the experiences of Jews who convert to Mormonism emerged: The individuals tend to be from relatively assimilated or mixed-faith families, grew up in locales without a strong Jewish community, discovered the Mormon church through friends and had their crucial first encounter with Mormonism in their formative late-teen years. All encountered parental resistance. Many cited the Mormon focus on family as one of the faith’s most attractive elements.
Jason Olson, a U.S. Navy chaplain serving in Japan, is the son of a Jewish mother and Lutheran father. Growing up in Phoenix, he went to Reform Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah and observed Jewish holidays, but his family also celebrated Christmas and Easter. That confused him, and prompted a religious quest that led him eventually to Mormonism, thanks to some LDS friends in high school.
Those were difficult years, Olson recalls.
“I had privately embraced Jesus as the messiah, but I was still outwardly living a Jewish life and struggling with my identity,” he said.
Though he kept studying with rabbis, they couldn’t shake his convictions, and at 18 he was baptized. But that was hardly the end of Olson’s Jewish road. When it came time to serve his requisite tour as a Mormon missionary, he was sent first to New Jersey and then to the Orthodox Jewish stronghold of Monsey, New York. His encounters there rekindled his interest in Judaism and prompted soul-searching that eventually led him to spend several months living in Israel.
For college, Olson went to BYU and majored in Hebrew Bible. After graduation he enrolled in a doctoral program in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis, the Jewish-sponsored, nonsectarian university in suburban Boston. Eventually Olson became a Navy chaplain – as a Mormon. But Olson, 30, still considers himself Jewish.
“In religious practice, I’m a Latter-day Saint, but I still embrace Jewish traditions,” Olson said in a telephone interview from Japan. “I still will light Hanukkah candles and have a Passover seder. I feel it’s part of my religious and cultural heritage. I personally don’t see any contradiction between Jewish tradition and the Christian faith that I have embraced.”
Aside from converts like Olson, there are thousands more Jews who have embraced Mormonism and no longer identify as Jewish, according to Ludlow, who has been dubbed the “Passover Patriarch of Provo” for hosting several traditional seders every year — mostly to teach Mormons about the Exodus story and Jewish traditions.
“There’s hardly a Mormon congregation between Boston and Washington, D.C., that doesn’t have some Jewish individuals who have converted to the church,” said Ludlow, who was born and bred in the LDS church.
Harold Levy, 67, a retired teacher in California who converted to Mormonism at 36, says he has come to appreciate Judaism more in the decades since his baptism. Now he studies Judaism and even went to Chabad for services last Rosh Hashanah.
“I used to take Judaism for granted,” said Levy, who is deaf and communicated with JTA through instant message. “Now I understand Judaism much better and enjoy it more. I am a member of LDS, but inside I am still Jewish.”---------------------
SPONSORED CONTENT
Israel is being demonized and delegitimized. Its history is being distorted and twisted. Stand up for the truth.Read and share AJC's "Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Brief Guide for the Perplexed."
---------------------
Honoring Helene Aylon's Lifetime Of Achievement
Francesca Lunzer Kritz
Well Versed
Well Versed
Honoring Helene Aylon's Lifetime Of Achievement
Francesca Lunzer Kritz
Helene Aylon and Brenda Dixon Gottschild at the WCA Awards. Jennifer McZier
Deep family pride was on display earlier this month in Washington, DC when Jewish artist/activist Helene Aylon, 85, became one of four artists to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Women’s Caucus for Art.
On hand, right there in the front row, for applause, hugs and selfies, were a good dozen of Aylon’s far flung family including her son, a professor of plasma physics at Princeton University, a sister from Los Angeles, one from Jerusalem, a cousin from Sweden, a grandson in the JAG corps and based in Norfolk, Virginia, and a bevy of nieces and nephews, including some great ones, from the Maryland suburbs.
Aylon, a self-described “visual, conceptual, installation, performance artist and eco-feminist,” began her career soon after her rabbi husband died in 1961 of cancer at age 35. Her first installation was a mural for a youth employment center in Bedford Stuyvesant and her work has since been displayed throughout the world including the Jewish chapel library at Kennedy Airport, the Whitney Museum, MOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern art and the Jewish Museum in New York City. She is the author of “Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life As A Jewish Feminist.”
Aylon says her work is divided into five areas of exploration: Body, Earth, G-d, Foremothers and Civilization. Among her most famous works: in the 1980s, Aylon drove an “Earth Ambulance” across the country stopping at Strategic Air Command sites to pick up earth that was then brought to the United Nations. Another well-known series is called The Breakings—the medium used was oil poured onto canvas and allowed to form a membrane. When the paintings were lifted and tilted, the oil broke free and took on new forms.
Judaism explicitly figures in much of Aylon’s work. One installment in a series called The G-d Project, which took two decades to complete, is “My Notebooks” a collection of 54 blank notebooks that form a group of columns. The work is "Dedicated to Mrs. Rashi and Mrs. Maimonides, the wives of two of Judaism’s most revered commentators, “for surely they have something to say.” Writing in the program guide for the awards ceremony, Rachel Federman, an assistant curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art calls Aylon’s work “not a simple condemnation [of God] but an informed negotiation.”
“I think I always knew I wanted to be an artist,” Aylon told The Jewish Week. “I didn’t know what form it would take and even to this day I don’t know what form it will take, it’s the issue of the day, and any way I can express it.”
Aylon says she hopes “I would be remembered in a loving way because I’m not trying to defame Judaism but I wanted to tell the truth about it to see what we can do about it.”
Francesca Lunzer Kritz is a freelance writer in Silver Spring, Maryland.---------------------
MORE HEADLINES:
'Sauna Rabbi' Jonathan Rosenblatt Quits Post At Bronx Synagogue >
New York
‘Sauna Rabbi’ Jonathan Rosenblatt Quits Post At Bronx Synagogue
JTA
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt speaking at the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York on Feb. 26, 2014. JTA
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, the New York spiritual leader who has been under fire for having sauna chats with boys in his congregation, reportedly has resigned from his Bronx synagogue.
Rosenblatt told the Riverdale Jewish Center on Wednesday that he will step down as senior rabbi, the Times of Israel reported Thursday. He has served in the post since 1985.
The decision was announced in an email letter sent to the synagogue membership on Wednesday evening signed by the synagogue’s president, Samson Fine, the Israel-based news website reported.
“Rabbi Rosenblatt has today informed RJC’s leadership that he intends to step aside from the Senior Rabbinate of the RJC,” the email read, according to the Times of Israel. “The Shul’s Board of Trustees was informed at this evening Board meeting and we anticipate discussing transition details the Board in the next two weeks.”
Rosenblatt playing racquetball and visiting the showers and sauna with boys and young men from the congregation garnered headlines after an expose in The New York Times last May. The article reported that some congregants and former congregants of the modern Orthodox synagogue discussed the trips to the sauna, during which the rabbi “engaged the boys in searching conversations about their lives, problems and faith.”
No one cited in the story accused Rosenblatt of sexual touching, but several expressed their discomfort with the practice and described the behavior as deeply inappropriate for a rabbi and mentor. At various times, Rosenblatt was told by rabbinic bodies or his congregation’s board to limit such activity.
The synagogue determined early last June that no misconduct took place during the sauna sessions, and that Rosenblatt adhered to established guidelines in engaging with the boys.
Rosenblatt apologized in a letter to the congregation for inappropriate behavior and denied any criminal wrongdoing.
Following the Times story, the RJC’s board of directors voted 34-8 to seek a financial settlement to get Rosenblatt to resign his pulpit. But Rosenblatt vowed to stay on, saying that removing him would be a “disproportionate” response. Hundreds of congregants signed a petition backing the rabbi, while far fewer signed a competing petition calling on Rosenblatt to resign.
Rosenblatt’s determination to stay was bolstered by the warm reception he received after rending a dramatic public apology in front of hundreds of congregants at a synagogue gathering in late June.
Rosenblatt, a Baltimore native, studied in Israel at Yeshivat Har Etzion and was ordained by the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University in 1982.---------------------
ADL's Abraham Foxman Receives Germany's Highest Civilian Honor >
International
ADL’s Abraham Foxman Receives Germany’s Highest Civilian Honor
JTA
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, speaking at the ADL Centennial Summit in Washington. JTA
Abraham Foxman received Germany’s highest civilian honor.
Foxman, the national director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League, was presented with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit earlier this week by German Ambassador to the United States Peter Wittig, at the German Ambassador’s residence in Washington DC.
“Your voice has been a voice of tolerance and against hate, a voice for responsibility and against discrimination,” Wittig said. He called Foxman a “tireless and committed fighter” against bigotry in all forms, and praised his work in promoting reconciliation between Germany and the Jewish community in the United States.
Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said in accepting the honor: “I never would have believed that I would one day accept and take great pride in accepting an honor like this from the government of Germany.”
He also said: “Germany has shown that it is willing to be a leader in standing up against intolerance. Wherever things go, that instinctive reaction is to be commended.
“The moral lesson of the Holocaust has been well-learned,” he concluded.---------------------
Woodstock Of Jewish Identity >
Woodstock Of Jewish Identity
Participants in the BBYO International Convention in Baltimore, Feb. 18, 2016. (Jason Dixson Photography)
Indie bands and intellectuals congregate at the BBYO International Convention
JTA
Well Versed
Honoring Helene Aylon's Lifetime Of Achievement
Francesca Lunzer Kritz
Helene Aylon and Brenda Dixon Gottschild at the WCA Awards. Jennifer McZier
Deep family pride was on display earlier this month in Washington, DC when Jewish artist/activist Helene Aylon, 85, became one of four artists to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Women’s Caucus for Art.
On hand, right there in the front row, for applause, hugs and selfies, were a good dozen of Aylon’s far flung family including her son, a professor of plasma physics at Princeton University, a sister from Los Angeles, one from Jerusalem, a cousin from Sweden, a grandson in the JAG corps and based in Norfolk, Virginia, and a bevy of nieces and nephews, including some great ones, from the Maryland suburbs.
Aylon, a self-described “visual, conceptual, installation, performance artist and eco-feminist,” began her career soon after her rabbi husband died in 1961 of cancer at age 35. Her first installation was a mural for a youth employment center in Bedford Stuyvesant and her work has since been displayed throughout the world including the Jewish chapel library at Kennedy Airport, the Whitney Museum, MOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern art and the Jewish Museum in New York City. She is the author of “Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life As A Jewish Feminist.”
Aylon says her work is divided into five areas of exploration: Body, Earth, G-d, Foremothers and Civilization. Among her most famous works: in the 1980s, Aylon drove an “Earth Ambulance” across the country stopping at Strategic Air Command sites to pick up earth that was then brought to the United Nations. Another well-known series is called The Breakings—the medium used was oil poured onto canvas and allowed to form a membrane. When the paintings were lifted and tilted, the oil broke free and took on new forms.
Judaism explicitly figures in much of Aylon’s work. One installment in a series called The G-d Project, which took two decades to complete, is “My Notebooks” a collection of 54 blank notebooks that form a group of columns. The work is "Dedicated to Mrs. Rashi and Mrs. Maimonides, the wives of two of Judaism’s most revered commentators, “for surely they have something to say.” Writing in the program guide for the awards ceremony, Rachel Federman, an assistant curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art calls Aylon’s work “not a simple condemnation [of God] but an informed negotiation.”
“I think I always knew I wanted to be an artist,” Aylon told The Jewish Week. “I didn’t know what form it would take and even to this day I don’t know what form it will take, it’s the issue of the day, and any way I can express it.”
Aylon says she hopes “I would be remembered in a loving way because I’m not trying to defame Judaism but I wanted to tell the truth about it to see what we can do about it.”
Francesca Lunzer Kritz is a freelance writer in Silver Spring, Maryland.---------------------
MORE HEADLINES:
'Sauna Rabbi' Jonathan Rosenblatt Quits Post At Bronx Synagogue >
New York
‘Sauna Rabbi’ Jonathan Rosenblatt Quits Post At Bronx Synagogue
JTA
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt speaking at the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York on Feb. 26, 2014. JTA
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, the New York spiritual leader who has been under fire for having sauna chats with boys in his congregation, reportedly has resigned from his Bronx synagogue.
Rosenblatt told the Riverdale Jewish Center on Wednesday that he will step down as senior rabbi, the Times of Israel reported Thursday. He has served in the post since 1985.
The decision was announced in an email letter sent to the synagogue membership on Wednesday evening signed by the synagogue’s president, Samson Fine, the Israel-based news website reported.
“Rabbi Rosenblatt has today informed RJC’s leadership that he intends to step aside from the Senior Rabbinate of the RJC,” the email read, according to the Times of Israel. “The Shul’s Board of Trustees was informed at this evening Board meeting and we anticipate discussing transition details the Board in the next two weeks.”
Rosenblatt playing racquetball and visiting the showers and sauna with boys and young men from the congregation garnered headlines after an expose in The New York Times last May. The article reported that some congregants and former congregants of the modern Orthodox synagogue discussed the trips to the sauna, during which the rabbi “engaged the boys in searching conversations about their lives, problems and faith.”
No one cited in the story accused Rosenblatt of sexual touching, but several expressed their discomfort with the practice and described the behavior as deeply inappropriate for a rabbi and mentor. At various times, Rosenblatt was told by rabbinic bodies or his congregation’s board to limit such activity.
The synagogue determined early last June that no misconduct took place during the sauna sessions, and that Rosenblatt adhered to established guidelines in engaging with the boys.
Rosenblatt apologized in a letter to the congregation for inappropriate behavior and denied any criminal wrongdoing.
Following the Times story, the RJC’s board of directors voted 34-8 to seek a financial settlement to get Rosenblatt to resign his pulpit. But Rosenblatt vowed to stay on, saying that removing him would be a “disproportionate” response. Hundreds of congregants signed a petition backing the rabbi, while far fewer signed a competing petition calling on Rosenblatt to resign.
Rosenblatt’s determination to stay was bolstered by the warm reception he received after rending a dramatic public apology in front of hundreds of congregants at a synagogue gathering in late June.
Rosenblatt, a Baltimore native, studied in Israel at Yeshivat Har Etzion and was ordained by the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University in 1982.---------------------
ADL's Abraham Foxman Receives Germany's Highest Civilian Honor >
International
ADL’s Abraham Foxman Receives Germany’s Highest Civilian Honor
JTA
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, speaking at the ADL Centennial Summit in Washington. JTA
Abraham Foxman received Germany’s highest civilian honor.
Foxman, the national director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League, was presented with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit earlier this week by German Ambassador to the United States Peter Wittig, at the German Ambassador’s residence in Washington DC.
“Your voice has been a voice of tolerance and against hate, a voice for responsibility and against discrimination,” Wittig said. He called Foxman a “tireless and committed fighter” against bigotry in all forms, and praised his work in promoting reconciliation between Germany and the Jewish community in the United States.
Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said in accepting the honor: “I never would have believed that I would one day accept and take great pride in accepting an honor like this from the government of Germany.”
He also said: “Germany has shown that it is willing to be a leader in standing up against intolerance. Wherever things go, that instinctive reaction is to be commended.
“The moral lesson of the Holocaust has been well-learned,” he concluded.---------------------
Woodstock Of Jewish Identity >
Woodstock Of Jewish Identity
Participants in the BBYO International Convention in Baltimore, Feb. 18, 2016. (Jason Dixson Photography)
Indie bands and intellectuals congregate at the BBYO International Convention
JTA
Music, This Week
My teenage years were pretty Jewy.
Back in high school, I happily attended Jewish day school, spent summers at a Jewish camp, went on a group Israel trip and took part in a few youth group events. So it was a strange feeling I experienced over President’s Day weekend when I found myself looking back and suddenly feeling Jewishly deprived.
Sounds corny. But that was my gut reaction standing among 2,500 spirited teens from around the world at the energized opening ceremonies of this year’s BBYO International Convention.
IC, as it is known in BBYO world, has been around for decades. But in the past few years it has evolved into a high-energy event rivaling any conference or convention on the Jewish calendar.
Teen attendance has nearly tripled since 2012 — this year’s total attendance was about 4,000, including adults. Depending on how you count, that’s bigger than the annual General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. Yes, AIPAC’s annual policy conference wins on the numbers, drawing more than 15,000 — including more than half of Congress — and it features a first-rate program packed with big-time plenary speakers and dozens of interesting panel discussions. But the AIPAC event’s focus is relatively narrow compared to the annual BBYO gathering (and slightly less fun).
This year’s IC boasted its own mega-program, with a diverse set of headline speakers, including welcome videos from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and in-person talks from the NAACP president, Cornell Brooks; Kind Snacks founder and CEO Daniel Lubetzky; transgender advocate and model Geena Rocero; Nordstrom executive (and BBYO alumnus) Jeffrey Kalinksy; refugee activist Erin Shrode, and Gideon Lichtman, a founding pilot in the Israeli Air Force.
READ: Op-Ed: The Force is strong with Conservative movement teens
Teens took part in 30 offsite “Leadership Labs” with a wide range of leaders in the realms of advocacy, philanthropy, marketing, social entrepreneurship, political engagement, civic leadership, Israel, Jewish communal affairs, education and environmental protection.
Throughout, there was also live music, including electronic from the dance music group Cash Cash, the alternative rock band The Mowgli’s and hip hop/pop singer-songwriter Jason Derulo.
Shabbat included 23 pluralistic teen-led services, a Friday night meal billed by organizers as breaking the Guinness World Record for largest Shabbat dinner ever, and multiple learning sessions (including a talk moderated by this journalist between Matt Nosanchuk, the Obama administration’s Jewish liaison, and Noam Neusner, who served in the same capacity during the administration of President George W. Bush). There was even a New York Times columnist on hand to sum it all up.
“What you see here is like a Woodstock of Jewish identity,” David Brooks of the Times told a group of philanthropists who had gathered for their summit on the eve of IC to discuss the need for more funding for teen programs. “You see all these people coming together and their identity as Jews is inflamed by the presence of each other.”
Just as Woodstock was a cultural moment that reverberated for decades, it is not hard to imagine a few more epic ICs could create and inspire a cohort of thousands of Jewish activists-for-life capable of maintaining and reinvigorating Jewish communities and institutions for years to come. For some philanthropists, that alone might justify the $1.1 million funders are putting up to keep the cost to each teen under $1,000.
But for BBYO’s CEO, Matt Grossman, the supersized IC is about the here and now. The growing numbers at IC are partially the product of recent BBYO membership growth (17 percent over past five years), Grossman said during an interview. More importantly, he added, the convention is an important tool for inspiring teens to connect their friends to BBYO.
“Nothing is more powerful than an older teen putting their arm around a younger teen and inviting them into the movement,” Grossman said. “Teen leadership and, specifically, peer-to-peer recruitment is key to our growth.”
And they’re going to need a ton of it.
According to an analysis of the 2013 Pew survey of American Jews done by Rosov Consulting, there are about 446,000 Jewish teens with some claim to being Jewish. Filter out 19-year-olds, the Orthodox and those most disconnected from Jewish life, and you’re looking at a target audience of about 210,000. According to Grossman, BBYO is undergoing a capacity-building study to determine “the resources and strategies needed to capture even greater market share.”
Currently the organization has about 19,000 paid members, and about 32,000 take part in a BBYO event each year. The organization’s database of reachable teens is about 80,000.
Tripling the number of paid members would get about a quarter of the 210,000 target audience. If we’re simply talking participation in an event, BBYO would still need to more than double its current number of annual touches to reach all those teens.
BBYO’s annual budget is about $28 million — a 33 percent increase over the past five years. The organization boasts an impressive group of lead funders — including the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation, the David and Inez Myers Foundation, and the Marcus Foundation — though it says its fastest growing source of revenue is smaller gifts from parents and alumni ($2.35 million in 2015).
The organization employs 100 paid full-time and 30 part-time staff. About 30 staffers in total are based at the national headquarters in Washington, D.C., with the remaining employees working with teens in the field.
“BBYO is enabling tens of thousands of Jewish teens to create and participate in fun, joyous and meaningful experiences that allow them to develop as leaders, serve others and connect with Israel and to a larger purpose, all within a Jewish wrapping,” said Stacy Schusterman, co-chair of the Schusterman Foundation. “I have seen firsthand, both as a parent and a funder, the enduring power and importance of this work, as did all of those who participated in BBYO IC and the Teen Summit. I hope more people will invest in the currently underfunded Jewish teen space.”
The stakes are about more than BBYO — most of those 210,000 teens aren’t involved in any Jewish activities.
Grossman isn’t prepared yet to say how much it would cost to hit sky-high numbers. But he believes one thing BBYO already has is a successful formula for engaging the bulk of today’s Jewish teens.
It starts with a bedrock first principle of being a teen-led movement rather than advancing a particular ideology — a huge advantage at a time when Jews of all ages are steering clear of institutions and synagogue movements and formulating their own definitions of Jewish identity.
The IC program, say BBYO’s staffers and several members of the youth group, was the product of planning by the teens themselves and hence a reflection of their eclectic interests and passions. Judging from the speaker lineup and the crowd response, the average BBYOer is unapologetically excited about being Jewish, connecting with other Jews and supportive of Israel — and equally dedicated to working together to advance more universal causes, from minority and LGBQT rights to the plight of international refugees.
Which creates the seemingly incongruous sight (at least in today’s political climate) of a raucous convention hall crowd cheering a founding Israeli Air Force pilot’s talk of shooting down Arab fighter planes and less than an hour later applauding just as strongly for the NAACP leader’s calls for Jewish teens to take advantage of their privilege to join with African-American activists in today’s battles for racial justice.
While a willingness to let today’s teens point the way forward is critical to BBYO’s success, so is the organization’s simultaneous ability to foster enthusiasm for its 90-year history and leverage an alumni base of 400,000.
The result is a potent combination of historical gravitas and a wide-open future.
How high a future is the question.
---------------------
Decluttering Judaism >
Culture View
Decluttering Judaism
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Ted Merwin
It may be sacrilegious to admit it, but my favorite day of the week is not Saturday.
It’s Thursday, which is when the garbage truck rolls through my neighborhood in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Like a rabbi gradually getting ready day by day for the Holy Sabbath, I spend the week preparing for Thursday, schlepping seemingly endless bags and baskets of old toys, busted furniture, decaying lumber from last year’s sukkah, and other detritus to the curb.
Let me explain: Our family is decluttering our house in advance of relocating to Baltimore next year for my wife’s sabbatical. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how good it feels to throw things out. As novelist John Updike put it in his memoirs, “Mailing letters, flushing a toilet, reading the last set of proofs — all have this sweetness of riddance.”
The first use of the verb “unclutter” occurred in the London Times in 1930, in an article on the newly rebuilt Sadler’s Wells, in which a journalist noted that the theater, with its steeply raked seats, “appears to go farthest in uncluttering the conditions for witnessing the performance.” Two decades later, in Vogue, a design expert coined the word “declutter,” in the context of exhorting women to “de-clutter your living room.”
Now Americans are obsessed with decluttering. Japanese author Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and its sequel, “Spark Joy,” have sold millions of copies in this country alone. As the cover of the current issue of O: The Oprah Magazine proclaims, “Make room for a new you! Clear your closet, lighten your load.” Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump proposes to deport millions of undocumented immigrants whom he claims are turning the United States into the world’s “dumping ground.” And psychologists instruct us to “streamline” our lives, ridding ourselves of unnecessary tasks, meetings, and social obligations, learning to “say no” and “break away from the need to be needed.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Americans are also preoccupied with losing weight, an overstuffed house is often described as having an eating disorder. Ed Morrow, Sheree Bykofsky and Rita Rosenkranz advised last year in “Declutter Anything: A Room-by-Room Guide to Cleaning Your Home and Simplifying Your Life,” that you need to combat your home’s “obesity” and “put your house on a diet.”
Kondo has a simple formula for knowing what to keep and what to discard. If it causes joy, keep it; if it does not, throw it out. But I’m not so sure. Do I scrap the diaries from my angst-ridden adolescence? Photos of people with whom I used to be friends? The guitar that I never learned to play?
Throughout the ages, there have been many attempts to “declutter” Judaism. Maimonides’ 12-century Mishneh Torah (“Review of the Torah”) codifies the vast corpus of Jewish law in a handy 14-volume digest. Yosef Caro’s 16-century Shulchan Aruch (“Set Table”) condenses the Talmud by omitting the debates of the sages and presenting only their final rulings; it also leaves out the laws pertaining to animal sacrifice. And the Reform movement, in its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, rejected all the laws relating to diet, priestly purity and dress because “their observance in our day is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.” If she had been there, Kondo would undoubtedly have cheered them on.
Nowadays, with an ever-decreasing number of Jews engaged in American Jewish life, dispensing of aspects of Judaism doesn’t seem kosher to me. My fellow Hillel directors and I often struggle to engage Jewish students, knowing that the vast majority of them have essentially disposed of the few connections to Judaism that they had, in a headlong rush to assimilate into the campus culture.
We know how involved these students are in other extracurricular activities that are available on campus; many of them are, in fact, leaders of these other groups. But we can’t help wishing that they would make some space for Judaism in their schedules, so that we could expose them to the tremendous breadth and depth of our religious and cultural heritage. If they did, would they find that our Shabbat services and dinners, holiday celebrations, klezmer concerts and Israel festivals “spark joy” in their hearts? Would they, at the very least, want to come back?
Or would they again jettison their Judaism, tossing it into the trash — or, best-case scenario, into the recycle bin? n
Ted Merwin teaches religion and Judaic studies at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa.), where he also serves as Hillel director. His most recent book is the National Jewish Book Award-winning “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli.” ---------------------
How Are Communities Built? >
A Rabbi's World
How Are Communities Built?
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Skyline of Tampa, Florida from Bayshore Blvd. Wikimedia Commons
My wife and I traveled to Florida over the Presidents Day week to visit with family and some friends. Given the weather that New York experienced in December, we imagined that New York might wind up being the warmer of the two places, but as it turned out, we couldn't have been more wrong! The weather in Florida was spectacularly sunny and warm, and the weather in New York has been equally spectacular, but in the other direction, with record cold temperatures. Through nothing but luck, we definitely won the vacation lottery.
This time away has been a gift for us, a chance to recharge our batteries, spend time with children and grandchildren, and also visit with a number of members of our synagogue, friends of long standing, who spend their winters in Florida. I must admit that, at times, it felt as if we were living in an alternate universe, a completely different reality that made me want to check the calendar and make sure that it was still February. A person could get used to this, I thought to myself more than once. The sun was out, the weather was warm, people were lovely and gracious, shopping in Publix supermarkets makes going back to NYC food stores downright embarrassing, and in general, the anxiety level of people is so much lower than what I'm used to. All good... And all very pleasant to experience.
But one thing that we noticed left us wondering why, and what's the message behind it. Virtually everywhere we visited, in a variety of cities, there were very few neighborhoods that had houses fronting the main streets where the traffic flowed. Almost all of the housing was made up of a seemingly unending series of developments, obviously planned, that had arbitrarily selected names, and were set off from the public by gates or fences. I'm not taking about what we would call here "gated communities," where you have to be admitted by a guard. There were indeed some of those, but most were not guarded in that manner. Rather, the communities were built, very premeditatedly, to be set off from the road, quite private in a not-so-subtle way. There were very few people walking the sidewalks– hardly any, actually– and you could drive long distances on the main streets of the residential sections of the cities and still not see anyone besides the very occasional person, or, for that matter, actual houses.
My teenage years were pretty Jewy.
Back in high school, I happily attended Jewish day school, spent summers at a Jewish camp, went on a group Israel trip and took part in a few youth group events. So it was a strange feeling I experienced over President’s Day weekend when I found myself looking back and suddenly feeling Jewishly deprived.
Sounds corny. But that was my gut reaction standing among 2,500 spirited teens from around the world at the energized opening ceremonies of this year’s BBYO International Convention.
IC, as it is known in BBYO world, has been around for decades. But in the past few years it has evolved into a high-energy event rivaling any conference or convention on the Jewish calendar.
Teen attendance has nearly tripled since 2012 — this year’s total attendance was about 4,000, including adults. Depending on how you count, that’s bigger than the annual General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. Yes, AIPAC’s annual policy conference wins on the numbers, drawing more than 15,000 — including more than half of Congress — and it features a first-rate program packed with big-time plenary speakers and dozens of interesting panel discussions. But the AIPAC event’s focus is relatively narrow compared to the annual BBYO gathering (and slightly less fun).
This year’s IC boasted its own mega-program, with a diverse set of headline speakers, including welcome videos from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and in-person talks from the NAACP president, Cornell Brooks; Kind Snacks founder and CEO Daniel Lubetzky; transgender advocate and model Geena Rocero; Nordstrom executive (and BBYO alumnus) Jeffrey Kalinksy; refugee activist Erin Shrode, and Gideon Lichtman, a founding pilot in the Israeli Air Force.
READ: Op-Ed: The Force is strong with Conservative movement teens
Teens took part in 30 offsite “Leadership Labs” with a wide range of leaders in the realms of advocacy, philanthropy, marketing, social entrepreneurship, political engagement, civic leadership, Israel, Jewish communal affairs, education and environmental protection.
Throughout, there was also live music, including electronic from the dance music group Cash Cash, the alternative rock band The Mowgli’s and hip hop/pop singer-songwriter Jason Derulo.
Shabbat included 23 pluralistic teen-led services, a Friday night meal billed by organizers as breaking the Guinness World Record for largest Shabbat dinner ever, and multiple learning sessions (including a talk moderated by this journalist between Matt Nosanchuk, the Obama administration’s Jewish liaison, and Noam Neusner, who served in the same capacity during the administration of President George W. Bush). There was even a New York Times columnist on hand to sum it all up.
“What you see here is like a Woodstock of Jewish identity,” David Brooks of the Times told a group of philanthropists who had gathered for their summit on the eve of IC to discuss the need for more funding for teen programs. “You see all these people coming together and their identity as Jews is inflamed by the presence of each other.”
Just as Woodstock was a cultural moment that reverberated for decades, it is not hard to imagine a few more epic ICs could create and inspire a cohort of thousands of Jewish activists-for-life capable of maintaining and reinvigorating Jewish communities and institutions for years to come. For some philanthropists, that alone might justify the $1.1 million funders are putting up to keep the cost to each teen under $1,000.
But for BBYO’s CEO, Matt Grossman, the supersized IC is about the here and now. The growing numbers at IC are partially the product of recent BBYO membership growth (17 percent over past five years), Grossman said during an interview. More importantly, he added, the convention is an important tool for inspiring teens to connect their friends to BBYO.
“Nothing is more powerful than an older teen putting their arm around a younger teen and inviting them into the movement,” Grossman said. “Teen leadership and, specifically, peer-to-peer recruitment is key to our growth.”
And they’re going to need a ton of it.
According to an analysis of the 2013 Pew survey of American Jews done by Rosov Consulting, there are about 446,000 Jewish teens with some claim to being Jewish. Filter out 19-year-olds, the Orthodox and those most disconnected from Jewish life, and you’re looking at a target audience of about 210,000. According to Grossman, BBYO is undergoing a capacity-building study to determine “the resources and strategies needed to capture even greater market share.”
Currently the organization has about 19,000 paid members, and about 32,000 take part in a BBYO event each year. The organization’s database of reachable teens is about 80,000.
Tripling the number of paid members would get about a quarter of the 210,000 target audience. If we’re simply talking participation in an event, BBYO would still need to more than double its current number of annual touches to reach all those teens.
BBYO’s annual budget is about $28 million — a 33 percent increase over the past five years. The organization boasts an impressive group of lead funders — including the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation, the David and Inez Myers Foundation, and the Marcus Foundation — though it says its fastest growing source of revenue is smaller gifts from parents and alumni ($2.35 million in 2015).
The organization employs 100 paid full-time and 30 part-time staff. About 30 staffers in total are based at the national headquarters in Washington, D.C., with the remaining employees working with teens in the field.
“BBYO is enabling tens of thousands of Jewish teens to create and participate in fun, joyous and meaningful experiences that allow them to develop as leaders, serve others and connect with Israel and to a larger purpose, all within a Jewish wrapping,” said Stacy Schusterman, co-chair of the Schusterman Foundation. “I have seen firsthand, both as a parent and a funder, the enduring power and importance of this work, as did all of those who participated in BBYO IC and the Teen Summit. I hope more people will invest in the currently underfunded Jewish teen space.”
The stakes are about more than BBYO — most of those 210,000 teens aren’t involved in any Jewish activities.
Grossman isn’t prepared yet to say how much it would cost to hit sky-high numbers. But he believes one thing BBYO already has is a successful formula for engaging the bulk of today’s Jewish teens.
It starts with a bedrock first principle of being a teen-led movement rather than advancing a particular ideology — a huge advantage at a time when Jews of all ages are steering clear of institutions and synagogue movements and formulating their own definitions of Jewish identity.
The IC program, say BBYO’s staffers and several members of the youth group, was the product of planning by the teens themselves and hence a reflection of their eclectic interests and passions. Judging from the speaker lineup and the crowd response, the average BBYOer is unapologetically excited about being Jewish, connecting with other Jews and supportive of Israel — and equally dedicated to working together to advance more universal causes, from minority and LGBQT rights to the plight of international refugees.
Which creates the seemingly incongruous sight (at least in today’s political climate) of a raucous convention hall crowd cheering a founding Israeli Air Force pilot’s talk of shooting down Arab fighter planes and less than an hour later applauding just as strongly for the NAACP leader’s calls for Jewish teens to take advantage of their privilege to join with African-American activists in today’s battles for racial justice.
While a willingness to let today’s teens point the way forward is critical to BBYO’s success, so is the organization’s simultaneous ability to foster enthusiasm for its 90-year history and leverage an alumni base of 400,000.
The result is a potent combination of historical gravitas and a wide-open future.
How high a future is the question.
---------------------
Decluttering Judaism >
Culture View
Decluttering Judaism
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Ted Merwin
It may be sacrilegious to admit it, but my favorite day of the week is not Saturday.
It’s Thursday, which is when the garbage truck rolls through my neighborhood in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Like a rabbi gradually getting ready day by day for the Holy Sabbath, I spend the week preparing for Thursday, schlepping seemingly endless bags and baskets of old toys, busted furniture, decaying lumber from last year’s sukkah, and other detritus to the curb.
Let me explain: Our family is decluttering our house in advance of relocating to Baltimore next year for my wife’s sabbatical. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how good it feels to throw things out. As novelist John Updike put it in his memoirs, “Mailing letters, flushing a toilet, reading the last set of proofs — all have this sweetness of riddance.”
The first use of the verb “unclutter” occurred in the London Times in 1930, in an article on the newly rebuilt Sadler’s Wells, in which a journalist noted that the theater, with its steeply raked seats, “appears to go farthest in uncluttering the conditions for witnessing the performance.” Two decades later, in Vogue, a design expert coined the word “declutter,” in the context of exhorting women to “de-clutter your living room.”
Now Americans are obsessed with decluttering. Japanese author Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and its sequel, “Spark Joy,” have sold millions of copies in this country alone. As the cover of the current issue of O: The Oprah Magazine proclaims, “Make room for a new you! Clear your closet, lighten your load.” Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump proposes to deport millions of undocumented immigrants whom he claims are turning the United States into the world’s “dumping ground.” And psychologists instruct us to “streamline” our lives, ridding ourselves of unnecessary tasks, meetings, and social obligations, learning to “say no” and “break away from the need to be needed.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Americans are also preoccupied with losing weight, an overstuffed house is often described as having an eating disorder. Ed Morrow, Sheree Bykofsky and Rita Rosenkranz advised last year in “Declutter Anything: A Room-by-Room Guide to Cleaning Your Home and Simplifying Your Life,” that you need to combat your home’s “obesity” and “put your house on a diet.”
Kondo has a simple formula for knowing what to keep and what to discard. If it causes joy, keep it; if it does not, throw it out. But I’m not so sure. Do I scrap the diaries from my angst-ridden adolescence? Photos of people with whom I used to be friends? The guitar that I never learned to play?
Throughout the ages, there have been many attempts to “declutter” Judaism. Maimonides’ 12-century Mishneh Torah (“Review of the Torah”) codifies the vast corpus of Jewish law in a handy 14-volume digest. Yosef Caro’s 16-century Shulchan Aruch (“Set Table”) condenses the Talmud by omitting the debates of the sages and presenting only their final rulings; it also leaves out the laws pertaining to animal sacrifice. And the Reform movement, in its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, rejected all the laws relating to diet, priestly purity and dress because “their observance in our day is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.” If she had been there, Kondo would undoubtedly have cheered them on.
Nowadays, with an ever-decreasing number of Jews engaged in American Jewish life, dispensing of aspects of Judaism doesn’t seem kosher to me. My fellow Hillel directors and I often struggle to engage Jewish students, knowing that the vast majority of them have essentially disposed of the few connections to Judaism that they had, in a headlong rush to assimilate into the campus culture.
We know how involved these students are in other extracurricular activities that are available on campus; many of them are, in fact, leaders of these other groups. But we can’t help wishing that they would make some space for Judaism in their schedules, so that we could expose them to the tremendous breadth and depth of our religious and cultural heritage. If they did, would they find that our Shabbat services and dinners, holiday celebrations, klezmer concerts and Israel festivals “spark joy” in their hearts? Would they, at the very least, want to come back?
Or would they again jettison their Judaism, tossing it into the trash — or, best-case scenario, into the recycle bin? n
Ted Merwin teaches religion and Judaic studies at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa.), where he also serves as Hillel director. His most recent book is the National Jewish Book Award-winning “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli.” ---------------------
How Are Communities Built? >
A Rabbi's World
How Are Communities Built?
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Skyline of Tampa, Florida from Bayshore Blvd. Wikimedia Commons
My wife and I traveled to Florida over the Presidents Day week to visit with family and some friends. Given the weather that New York experienced in December, we imagined that New York might wind up being the warmer of the two places, but as it turned out, we couldn't have been more wrong! The weather in Florida was spectacularly sunny and warm, and the weather in New York has been equally spectacular, but in the other direction, with record cold temperatures. Through nothing but luck, we definitely won the vacation lottery.
This time away has been a gift for us, a chance to recharge our batteries, spend time with children and grandchildren, and also visit with a number of members of our synagogue, friends of long standing, who spend their winters in Florida. I must admit that, at times, it felt as if we were living in an alternate universe, a completely different reality that made me want to check the calendar and make sure that it was still February. A person could get used to this, I thought to myself more than once. The sun was out, the weather was warm, people were lovely and gracious, shopping in Publix supermarkets makes going back to NYC food stores downright embarrassing, and in general, the anxiety level of people is so much lower than what I'm used to. All good... And all very pleasant to experience.
But one thing that we noticed left us wondering why, and what's the message behind it. Virtually everywhere we visited, in a variety of cities, there were very few neighborhoods that had houses fronting the main streets where the traffic flowed. Almost all of the housing was made up of a seemingly unending series of developments, obviously planned, that had arbitrarily selected names, and were set off from the public by gates or fences. I'm not taking about what we would call here "gated communities," where you have to be admitted by a guard. There were indeed some of those, but most were not guarded in that manner. Rather, the communities were built, very premeditatedly, to be set off from the road, quite private in a not-so-subtle way. There were very few people walking the sidewalks– hardly any, actually– and you could drive long distances on the main streets of the residential sections of the cities and still not see anyone besides the very occasional person, or, for that matter, actual houses.
As a resident of New York City (yes, Manhattan people, Queens is New York City!), I found this fascinating. We here are so packed in like sardines, on buses, trains, and even streets, that finding some semblance of personal space takes on larger than life significance. If someone stands too close to us in an elevator, or actually tries to talk to us, we tend to think of that as aggressive behavior. Apartments are small, houses, except in particularly wealthy areas, are on fairly small lots of land, and for better or for worse, we're in each other's faces far too much.
In Florida it felt almost exactly the opposite. Rather than wanting to be left alone, even ignored, it felt to me as if the streets were hungry for people. Where is everyone, I kept thinking. The answer was clear. They were in their insulated communities. The seemingly endless strip malls and shopping centers was where one went to find people, or to restaurants. There are lots and lots of those places. But when it comes to where you live, that's another story entirely.
I am not a sociologist, but I suspect that, if I were, I would have some all-encompassing understanding of what this kind of living represents. It made me think of Robert Putnam's classic work Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Something significant is happening there, something that pulls against the way people most often bond with each other.
And then, of course, being who I am, it made me wonder that the implications of this kind of human settlement are for synagogues.
The original Greek word that gave us today's "synagogue" meant assembly, meaning clearly that the earliest synagogues were places where people would come to be together, either for Jewish prayer in its earliest form, or for other purposes. In the ultimate, it's not all that much different today, at least here in America. In Israel, people go to synagogue to pray...and that's about it. Here, because Jewish identity is not a given in this most pluralistic and open of societies, Jews go to synagogue to be with other Jews, because most of the people they meet during the day, and work with and study with, do not necessarily share their faith. Even when people can't recite the prayers in Hebrew, or aren't particularly familiar with the contours of the service being recited, they come to be with people that they intuitively feel connected to. They share their dreams and fears there, in only on a subliminal level.
When Putnam wrote his book, he was describing the breakdown in America of those ways that people traditionally cohered and created community, symbolized by the decline of bowling leagues and similar activities. I couldn't help but have the feeling that what I was seeing in these kinds of communities in Florida was the next step in this process of withdrawing within one's self, and retreating from involuntary forms of human interaction. It seemed to be saying that we interact when we need to, but not necessarily in serendipitous or casual ways.
I am still asking myself the question of what this means. My instincts tell me that in terms of society as a whole, it's not a positive thing. Something important seems to be to be lost when casual interaction with people is consciously limited. But as a rabbi, it also feels to me as if the role of a synagogue as a place of assembly is even more critical.
All of us who make the synagogue world our primary focus are keenly aware that it's all about community, because without that, neither prayer nor any other activities are likely to flourish there. We work hard to make people, even strangers, feel as if they are welcomed, and to make the synagogue a place "where everybody knows your name." How much more important is that when life outside the synagogue is so isolated from casual interaction?
Two closing thoughts...
First, I in no way intend for these observations to be a global indictment of Florida or its citizens. To a one, the people that we met were gracious and welcoming, and no one has been transformed into a soul-less automaton because of the way Floridians live. Second, I recognize that the phenomenon of set-apart communities has more to do with the way the massive tracts of land have been developed than any conscious effort to change societal modes of interaction. Of course that is true.
But still... After seeing development after development recessed from the main roads of town with nary a house nor a person visible, Putnam's work kept coming to mind. Somehow, in some way that I couldn't quite put my finger on, something important is lost along the way...
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik is the spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens.---------------------
Canadian Parliament Officially Condemns BDS >
International
Canadian Parliament Officially Condemns BDS
JTA
The Canadian Parliament Building. Wikimedia Commons
Canada’s Parliament passed a motion formally condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
The motion passed Monday in a 229-51 vote, CIJ News reported. Introduced last week by members of the opposition Conservative Party, the motion won support from the ruling Liberal Party as well.
It calls on the Canadian government to “condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”
In addition, the motion notes Canada and Israel’s “long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations.” The motion says the BDS movement “promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel.”
Speaking in favor of the motion last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said “the world will win nothing for boycotting Israel but depriving itself of the talents of its inventiveness.”
Canadian Jewish groups have praised the motion. In a statement last week, Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said, according to the http://ejpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55241&ca...):%20http://" target="_blank">European Jewish Press, “The boycott movement does not contribute to peace and is not pro-Palestinian. It is discrimination based on nationality, and it harms both Israelis and Palestinians alike by driving the two sides further apart. The BDS movement is a fringe movement and is outside genuine peace efforts.”
Responding to the vote in a news release, the National Council on Canada Arab Relations said the anti-BDS motion goes “against the spirit of the Freedom of Speech, a right enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
The group described BDS as a “nonviolent campaign that supports proven methods of conscientious objection to encourage Israel to respect international law.”----------------------
The Jewish Week
In Florida it felt almost exactly the opposite. Rather than wanting to be left alone, even ignored, it felt to me as if the streets were hungry for people. Where is everyone, I kept thinking. The answer was clear. They were in their insulated communities. The seemingly endless strip malls and shopping centers was where one went to find people, or to restaurants. There are lots and lots of those places. But when it comes to where you live, that's another story entirely.
I am not a sociologist, but I suspect that, if I were, I would have some all-encompassing understanding of what this kind of living represents. It made me think of Robert Putnam's classic work Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Something significant is happening there, something that pulls against the way people most often bond with each other.
And then, of course, being who I am, it made me wonder that the implications of this kind of human settlement are for synagogues.
The original Greek word that gave us today's "synagogue" meant assembly, meaning clearly that the earliest synagogues were places where people would come to be together, either for Jewish prayer in its earliest form, or for other purposes. In the ultimate, it's not all that much different today, at least here in America. In Israel, people go to synagogue to pray...and that's about it. Here, because Jewish identity is not a given in this most pluralistic and open of societies, Jews go to synagogue to be with other Jews, because most of the people they meet during the day, and work with and study with, do not necessarily share their faith. Even when people can't recite the prayers in Hebrew, or aren't particularly familiar with the contours of the service being recited, they come to be with people that they intuitively feel connected to. They share their dreams and fears there, in only on a subliminal level.
When Putnam wrote his book, he was describing the breakdown in America of those ways that people traditionally cohered and created community, symbolized by the decline of bowling leagues and similar activities. I couldn't help but have the feeling that what I was seeing in these kinds of communities in Florida was the next step in this process of withdrawing within one's self, and retreating from involuntary forms of human interaction. It seemed to be saying that we interact when we need to, but not necessarily in serendipitous or casual ways.
I am still asking myself the question of what this means. My instincts tell me that in terms of society as a whole, it's not a positive thing. Something important seems to be to be lost when casual interaction with people is consciously limited. But as a rabbi, it also feels to me as if the role of a synagogue as a place of assembly is even more critical.
All of us who make the synagogue world our primary focus are keenly aware that it's all about community, because without that, neither prayer nor any other activities are likely to flourish there. We work hard to make people, even strangers, feel as if they are welcomed, and to make the synagogue a place "where everybody knows your name." How much more important is that when life outside the synagogue is so isolated from casual interaction?
Two closing thoughts...
First, I in no way intend for these observations to be a global indictment of Florida or its citizens. To a one, the people that we met were gracious and welcoming, and no one has been transformed into a soul-less automaton because of the way Floridians live. Second, I recognize that the phenomenon of set-apart communities has more to do with the way the massive tracts of land have been developed than any conscious effort to change societal modes of interaction. Of course that is true.
But still... After seeing development after development recessed from the main roads of town with nary a house nor a person visible, Putnam's work kept coming to mind. Somehow, in some way that I couldn't quite put my finger on, something important is lost along the way...
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik is the spiritual leader of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens.---------------------
Canadian Parliament Officially Condemns BDS >
International
Canadian Parliament Officially Condemns BDS
JTA
The Canadian Parliament Building. Wikimedia Commons
Canada’s Parliament passed a motion formally condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
The motion passed Monday in a 229-51 vote, CIJ News reported. Introduced last week by members of the opposition Conservative Party, the motion won support from the ruling Liberal Party as well.
It calls on the Canadian government to “condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”
In addition, the motion notes Canada and Israel’s “long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations.” The motion says the BDS movement “promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel.”
Speaking in favor of the motion last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said “the world will win nothing for boycotting Israel but depriving itself of the talents of its inventiveness.”
Canadian Jewish groups have praised the motion. In a statement last week, Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said, according to the http://ejpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55241&ca...):%20http://" target="_blank">European Jewish Press, “The boycott movement does not contribute to peace and is not pro-Palestinian. It is discrimination based on nationality, and it harms both Israelis and Palestinians alike by driving the two sides further apart. The BDS movement is a fringe movement and is outside genuine peace efforts.”
Responding to the vote in a news release, the National Council on Canada Arab Relations said the anti-BDS motion goes “against the spirit of the Freedom of Speech, a right enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
The group described BDS as a “nonviolent campaign that supports proven methods of conscientious objection to encourage Israel to respect international law.”----------------------
The Jewish Week
1501 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, New York 10036, United States---------------------
"Tune in LIVE to the Jewish Teens Finalists" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Sunday, Adar I 19, 5776 · February 28, 2016
This Week's Features:
LIVE CTeen Gala
Gala Banquet of the Annual CTeen Shabbaton
Study Parsha with Rabbi Gordon: Sunday Portion of Vayahkel
By Yehoshua B. Gordon
Watch (26:18) 
As a Jew (the musical)Vayakhel-Pekudei Parshah Report
Dovid Taub & Jonathan Goorvich
Watch (3:54) 
Are We Obsessed with Work?A Taste of Text—Vayakhel
By Chana Weisberg
Watch (25:52)
Hakhel: The Call of the Hour
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch (27:03)
Conscientious Objection and JudaismDoes one have a right to conscientiously object according to Judaism?
By David Katz
Watch (25:33)
Happiness and the Consumer Culture
By Dov Greenberg
Watch (2:05)
Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
"Tune in LIVE to the Jewish Teens Finalists" Jewish.TV - Chabad Video for Sunday, Adar I 19, 5776 · February 28, 2016
This Week's Features:
LIVE CTeen Gala
Gala Banquet of the Annual CTeen Shabbaton
Study Parsha with Rabbi Gordon: Sunday Portion of Vayahkel
By Yehoshua B. Gordon
Watch (26:18) As a Jew (the musical)Vayakhel-Pekudei Parshah Report
Dovid Taub & Jonathan Goorvich
Watch (3:54) Are We Obsessed with Work?A Taste of Text—Vayakhel
By Chana Weisberg
Watch (25:52) Hakhel: The Call of the Hour
By Mendel Kaplan
Watch (27:03) Conscientious Objection and JudaismDoes one have a right to conscientiously object according to Judaism?
By David Katz
Watch (25:33) Happiness and the Consumer Culture
By Dov Greenberg
Watch (2:05) Recent and Upcoming Jewish.tv Webcasts:
Talmud Gitin 78 (Advanced)
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
Shulchan Aruch, Netilas Yodayim 4:13(First Edition)
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 12
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
Laws of Hand Washing, Part 12
By Avraham Meyer Zajac
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 6am ET
Samach Vov: Vayikach Korach, Part 8(Advanced)
Ratzon B’nefesh Ha’adam as a Mashal for Ohr Makif
By Yaakov Brawer
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 10:30am ET
Ratzon B’nefesh Ha’adam as a Mashal for Ohr Makif
By Yaakov Brawer
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 10:30am ET
LIVE CTeen Gala
Gala Banquet of the Annual CTeen Shabbaton
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 11:30am ET
Gala Banquet of the Annual CTeen Shabbaton
Airs Sunday, February 28 at 11:30am ET
A Jewish Economy
The Book of Nechemiah, Part 5
By Mendel Dubov
Airs Monday, February 29 at 7pm ET
The Book of Nechemiah, Part 5
By Mendel Dubov
Airs Monday, February 29 at 7pm ET
---------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment