Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Dear Readers,
While celebrating the historic compromise that allows egalitarian prayer at The Western Wall (Kotel), leaders of the Conservative and Reform movements acknowledge that further advances for religious equality in Israel are not likely anytime soon. Staff Writer Hannah Dreyfus has the story.
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Israel News
After Historic Deal At Kotel, Next Steps Seen As Elusive
Liberal streams hail egalitarian prayer at holy site, but push for greater religious pluralism faces strong headwind.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Mixed-gender prayer gets boost at Western Wall. Getty ImagesThe Israeli government’s decision Sunday to approve a compromise expanding the egalitarian prayer section of the Western Wall is being hailed as a historic moment by leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements.
The compromise emerged after a decades-long stalemate between Israel’s charedi Orthodox religious establishment and their liberal counterparts, including Women of the Wall, a multi-denominational feminist organization in Israel.
“For the first time, people have a real alternative and choice when they come to pray at the Kotel,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who called the decision “historic.”
“It’s also significant because now, for the first time in the State of Israel, there is an oversight body compromised of non-Orthodox leaders,” he said, referring to the joint committee that will oversee the policies and day-to-day operations of the expanded section.
Plans for the non-Orthodox section’s expansion, spearheaded by Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Natan Sharansky, began in December 2012. Previous scuffles — especially between police and Women of the Wall chair Anat Hoffman, who was arrested in October of that year for leading a prayer group in which women recited the Shema out loud and wore shawls in violation of Israeli law — heightened the need for a solution. Though the deal still contains a few unknowns, including how long construction will take and how visitors will be directed to the non-Orthodox section, it is being heralded as a victory for religious pluralism.
But questions remain this week about whether the Western Wall deal is a one-off decision, or might lead to further advances for those advocating for religious pluralism in Israel. Leaders of the liberal denominations have been pushing for years for greater government funding for their streams, and for state-sanctioned civil marriage. But they admit that, given the makeup of the current ruling coalition in Israel, these efforts will face strong headwinds.
“This was a big step forward, but there are many more steps to take,” said Rabbi Steven Wernick, chief executive officer of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. He stressed that “parity” in terms of funding Conservative rabbis, communities and synagogues, does not exist. “The state is either going to have to break the Orthodox monopoly, or fund the different streams,” he said, referring to the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel. The challenge of the moment is remaining “hopeful and pragmatic,” even in the face of new gains.
Though Rabbi Jacobs praised the “support” he and other non-Orthodox leaders received from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett with regard to the Western Wall compromise, he said other changes are bound to be stymied by the heavily right-wing government.
“I’ll be candid — it’s unlikely that a new bill about civil marriage will make its way through the Knesset under this government,” he said, referring to the many charedi ministers committed to opposing such a bill. Currently, Jewish marriages in Israel must be performed under the auspices of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and the rabbinical courts, both strictly Orthodox bodies. “This is not an acceptable reality for a democratic country,” said Rabbi Jacobs. Still, he added, while the “bridge” of civil marriage may be a pipe dream in the current climate, the “symbolism” of the Western Wall compromise is heartening.
“The majority of Jews around the world are not Orthodox, and there was no way to justify the status quo before Sunday’s decision,” said a Reform leader, who asserted that his movement in the U.S. “continues to stand whole-heartedly behind Israel.” (According to the 2013 Pew Portrait of American Jewry, the biggest stream of Judaism in the U.S. is, at 35 percent, the Reform movement.) “It’s nice when the state of Israel acknowledges that we exist and that we have a place in the religious life of Israel.”
To be sure, ultra-Orthodox groups here and in Israel have been quick to criticize, and even mourn, the new compromise.
“Designating an area at the Kotel Maaravi [Western Wall] for feminist and mixed-gender prayer not only profanes the holy site, it creates yet a further lamentable rift between Jews,” wrote the Agudath Israel of America in a statement. The group represents one of the largest charedi Jewish communal organizations in the United States. In Israel, Shmuel Rabinowitz, the ultra-Orthodox head rabbi of the Western Wall, greeted the news with a “heavy heart.”
Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international membership association of Conservative rabbis, said that equal access to “administration, governance and funding” is the most promising accomplishment of the compromise.
“Separation between synagogue and state is simply not happening today in Israel, but it is feasible to expect equal access and funding for all streams of Judaism,” she said. “This is a first step.” She noted that the new liberal section would still receive far less funding than the northern Kotel, the part of the Western Wall that will remain under Orthodox control. “But,” the rabbi said, “this is finally a chink in the armor of the ultra-Orthodox monopoly.”
“We’re moving from episodes of outrage and a painful lack of religious freedom to actually having a strategy and a voice,” she added, referring to the body of Reform and Conservative rabbis who will oversee the upcoming changes. “It’s a step in the right direction for equal funding of the streams.”
Steven Bayme, director of contemporary Jewish life at the American Jewish Committee, said that the compromise is the “right step in the larger trajectory towards religious pluralism.” While next steps for non-Orthodox movements in Israel remain hazy, the gains thus far are “quite significant” when weighed against the challenges the Reform and Conservative movements faced in years past, he said.
“One generation ago, the Reform and Conservative movements weren’t allowed any inroads in Israel,” he noted, speaking of his experiences in Israel in 1989 while part of an AJC delegation. “These movements were seen as American phenomena.” He recalled a charedi intellectual leader at the time telling him that Reform and Conservative Judaism might be alright as a solution in America, but they were “not right” for Israel.
Though Reform and Conservative Jews are celebrating for the moment, Jonathan D. Sarna, professor of Jewish History at Brandeis University, said the “big losers” of the agreement are Modern Orthodox women — those who want to preserve a mechitza, the traditional separation between male and female worshippers, but who also want to play a larger and more active role in services.
Still, in theory, the deal represents an “important step” in the official recognition of non-Orthodox movements, he said. The proof promises to be in the details. “Will it really be two equal options? That remains to be seen,” he said. Charedi efforts to “subvert the deal” before it goes into effect are also likely. “Nevertheless, the very fact that there was a deal matters,” he said.
Whether or not the compromise will pave the road for more significant wins — mainly with regard to civil marriage and non-Orthodox conversions and religious courts — is tenuous. But the compromise does promise to “embolden folks” to take on bigger issues, according to Sarna.
“The agreement was made notwithstanding the significant and vociferous objections of the charedi element,” he said. “That will impact what happens next.”---------------------
Also, our Israel Correspondent Michele Chabin writes of the split among members of Women of the Wall over the deal. And our Editorial notes that, despite ongoing complaints, the agreement is a model for further efforts.
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Israel News
Prayer Deal Opens Rift Among Jewish Feminists
Idealists vs. pragmatists on accepting Kotel compromise.
Michele Chabin
Contributing Editor
Israeli police arresting Anat Hoffman in 2012 after she said the Shema prayer at the Kotel. Women of the Wall
Jerusalem — The Israeli government’s decision Sunday to create an official, government-funded Western Wall prayer section for mixed-gender prayer and women who want to read from the Torah has gratified non-Orthodox Jews seeking government recognition. But the move has left some supporters of Women of the Wall feeling disappointed, even betrayed.
The government’s announcement capped more than two years of negotiations between the Israeli government, representatives of the Jewish Federations of North America, the Reform and Conservative movements in the U.S. and Israel and Women of the Wall (WOW), the pluralistic group that has been at the center of the effort to gain prayer equality at the holy site for more than two decades. During that time, WOW members faced harassment from charedi protesters, police detention and even arrests at monthly Rosh Chodesh services. According to Women of the Wall’s board, the group will move to Robinson’s Arch, an existing egalitarian section of the southern Western Wall that is key to the newly approved plan. It calls for the size of the area to be doubled, to 10,000 square feet, and for raising the status of the egalitarian prayer space by creating a joint entry point that will allow visitors to access either prayer space.
But some longtime members object to moving their prayer services back to Robinson's Arch. To such critics, the WOW board decision makes a mockery of the group’s mission statement, which reads in part: “to achieve social and legal recognition of the right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray out loud and read from the Torah collectively at the women’s section of the Western Wall.”
Critics accuse the board, led by Anat Hoffman, of selling out the women who wish to continue to pray in the women’s section of the Kotel either because they feel it is a religious and ideological imperative, or because, as Modern Orthodox women, they believe it goes against Jewish law to pray alongside men without a mechitza.
“We have no objection, of course, to prayer at Robinson’s Arch for those who wish it,” former WOW board member Shulamit Magnus wrote in a scathing op-ed in the Jerusalem Post. “We reject any deal that would infringe upon, let alone deny, the hard-earned and historic rights of Jewish women at the Kotel.
“No can concede someone else’s rights. Anyone who says she speaks for us in doing so, does not. We say clearly: any deal that delegitimizes, let alone bars, tefillah in our minhag [custom] at the Kotel has no bearing on us. We stay at the Kotel,” continued Magnus, one of the leaders of the Original Women of the Wall (OWOW), a group that vehemently opposes WOW’s decision. She is one of four Israeli women petitioning the High Court to permit women to read from the Kotel’s government-funded Torah scrolls.
In a Jewish Week interview, Magnus insisted that those who oppose the agreement “are the [real] Women of the Wall.”
“We have hundreds of supporters,” she added, referring to the supporters of the deal as “the Women of Robinson’s Arch.”
While not singling out WOW, Karen Miller Jackson, a Modern Orthodox board member of Kolech, the Religious Women’s Forum in Israel, said the agreement is “a big win for non-Orthodox Jews" but “does not improve the situation for the modern religious Zionist/Orthodox population” and for Orthodox feminists in particular.
“We still want to daven with a mechitza [divider] at the traditional Kotel site,” she said.
Cheryl Birkner Mack, a longtime WOW member and one of the four court petitioners, agrees.
Even if the committee that will oversee the new prayer space ultimately allocates a section of it for women’s-only prayer, Mack said, praying at Robinson’s Arch lacks the religious and historical significance of praying at the Kotel.
“It’s the same stone but when the Pope or the President of the United States comes to Israel they don’t go to Robinson’s Arch. They go to the Kotel.” She said the Robinson’s Arch area doesn’t have the same feeling of holiness: “It’s what Anat used to call the back of the bus.”
While taking pains not to take sides in the WOW debate, Elana Sztokman, author of the book “The War on Women in Israel,” noted that any agreement that allows women’s prayer groups in the egalitarian section and not at the Kotel further empowers the already powerful rabbi of the Western Wall, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch.
“He is turning the Kotel, a national landmark, into his version of an ultra-Orthodox synagogue — which is just wrong. The Kotel should still belong to the entire nation. And it doesn’t,” Sztokman said.
Like many of WOW’s supporters, Pam Greenwood, who serves on the board of the U.S.-based Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, said she feels “conflicted” by the “compromise.”
“The Orthodox feminist in me is not satisfied, as I feel that women should be allowed to pray within the current bounds of the Kotel with a Torah. The pragmatist in me, however, is thrilled that a solution has been found to a decades-old stalemate — one that will allow women to gather together on a regular basis without obstacle, free from the insults and abuse that they have faced to this point.”
In a frank interview, Anat Hoffman told The Jewish Week she “feels for” those who are disappointed by the agreement, but emphasized that WOW’s decision was based first and foremost on pragmatism.
“I think every group for social change needs die-hard ideologists. But the job of our board is to look at what is achievable within our lifetime. Every group needs to have someone hitting the brakes and understand at what speed society can actually tolerate change. There must be someone at the driver’s seat showing the way.”
Hoffman said she and WOW’s leaders spent countless hours deliberating the issue and ultimately agreed that, given the country’s right-wing leadership and the power charedi parties wield in the Knesset, “This is the best result we can give our group, Jewish women and the Jewish world at this time.”
Hoffman said the board was also motivated by the desire to have some control over the place where they pray. Under the agreement, the egalitarian prayer space will be jointly governed by a new body that will include representatives from Women of the Wall and the Conservative and Reform movements, and will be led by Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Natan Sharansky.
Asked why she considers Robinson’s Arch an acceptable place to pray now, after she rejected it before, Hoffman said the promised renovations, coupled with the government’s recognition of it as a Western Wall prayer section, will put it on equal footing with the Kotel.
“Then, that was the back of the bus. This is a whole new bus and the tank is filled with gasoline,” she said.
As much as she and other Jewish feminists want “complete and full rights” at the Kotel, Hoffman said, the State of Israel isn’t willing, at this time, to give it.
“But it is willing to give us something else that is respectable and dignified and opens great opportunities for Jewish people and Israelis. We took the opportunity.”
Until the egalitarian space is completed, Hoffman said, the group will continue to pray in the women’s section of the main plaza of the Kotel, where they have been meeting each month.
“We will be there,” she said.[Staff writer Hannah Dreyfus contributed to this report.]
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Editorial
‘One Kotel, One People’All Jews should take pride in the historic compromise reached by the Israeli government this week in providing dignified access for prayer at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest place.
To be clear, it does not allow equal access for all. And, like all good compromises, there are those on both the traditional and liberal sides of the dispute unhappy with the resolution. But in finding what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called “a fair and creative solution,” the government has gone a long way in acknowledging — if not formally recognizing — the desires of Conservative and Reform men and women, and other liberal Jews, to pray together.
Among the champions of this step toward religious accommodation are Women of the Wall, the prayer group that initiated the effort more than 25 years ago; Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, who first proposed the plan three years ago and used his clout to see it through; and the prime minister, who managed to orchestrate government approval despite opposition from the charedi members of his coalition.
As Sharansky noted in explaining the long-overdue agreement, “they all came to the conclusion that they must make serious compromises because they want it to remain one Kotel for one people. It’s the place that must unite us more than anything else, and it turned into the most ugly war.”
When the project is completed, in about two years, co-ed prayer will be permitted at any time of the day or night in an area of the Kotel about 30 feet long, south of the “traditional,” or main, area. The size of the section, known as Robinson’s Arch, will almost double to nearly 10,000 square feet, estimated to accommodate 1,200 people. That is half the size of the “traditional” section of the wall, which will remain under the full authority of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, a charedi group. Men and women will continue to pray separately there, separated by a mechitzah.
According to the deal announced this week, the Women of the Wall will have to move their Rosh Chodesh services from the main prayer section to the Robinson’s Arch area but will be free of the harassment and arrests that plagued their prayer meetings over the years.
Even while heralding this important example of tolerance and inclusion, we note that diaspora Jews who are not Orthodox need to feel accepted not only at the Western Wall, but throughout Israel. That means recognition of the liberal branches of Judaism, which account for the vast majority of American Jews. That is not likely to happen soon in a government coalition where leaders of the religious parties resist even naming the Conservative and Reform movements. And the Chief Rabbinate continues to make conversion more difficult rather than inviting for the hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking relatives of Jews in Israel. Indeed, it is a tragedy that the policies and behavior of the Chief Rabbis cause most Israelis to reject many of Judaism’s richest practices and ideals. So there is still a long way to go before diaspora Jews are fully accepted in the Jewish state.
For the moment, though, let us celebrate a milestone in resolving a bitter, complex, religious and political dispute. May it set an example for the future.---------------------
My column profiles Jonathan Greenblatt, tasked with filling Abe Foxman's big shoes as national director of ADL, and making his own way, after six months on the job: same mission, new style.
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New York
‘Not Abe,’ ADL Head Pursues Same Goals, But With New Style
Jonathan Greenblatt focusing on social media to reach younger Jews.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattIn late December, Jonathan Greenblatt, who assumed the professional helm of the Anti-Defamation League last summer, wrote a blog post highly critical of Iran. He described the country as “one of the world’s leading human rights violators” and pointed out that “if anything, Iran has stepped up its abuses in recent months.” (The ADL opposed the Iran deal.)
Robert Sugarman, former national chair of ADL, says that when he congratulated the new exec on the essay, Greenblatt said he suspected that some of his former White House colleagues might not be pleased with what he wrote. Indeed, that might apply to Greenblatt’s most recent boss, President Obama, whom he served as special assistant for three years before coming to the ADL.
But as Greenblatt told me during a series of recent interviews, “there,” referring to the White House, “I was working for the president. Here, I am working for the Jewish people.”
Time will tell which is the tougher taskmaster.
Greenblatt, who was director of the office of social innovation and civic participation at the White House, observed that “it was a 24/7 environment, and grueling at times.” But leading a legendary Jewish defense agency now in its second century, and succeeding the iconic Abraham Foxman, who in his five-decade tenure (28 as national director) embodied the institution and became one of the most recognizable Jews in the world, is surely a daunting task.
Greenblatt, though, at 45, and just six months into national Jewish organizational life, seems self-assured. While observers look for signs that might reflect a dramatic shift in the ADL’s focus, given the three-decade age gap between Greenblatt and Foxman, and their very different backgrounds, those who have worked closely with both men suggest otherwise.
“Jonathan is perfectly comfortable saying he is not Abe, and that he won’t be the same as Abe in the job,” Sugarman said. “He reflects a different generation and his social media skills are a real plus going forward. But I believe the direction of the ADL will not change. He is totally committed to our mission.”
Ken Jacobson, deputy national director who has been with ADL 45 years, the last 35 of them working closely with Foxman, noted that with Greenblatt, “the fundamentals are the same, the style is different. Abe went with his instincts and he was usually right. Jonathan makes decisions based on a process of strategic thinking. He is very capable, creative, and a natural in working with and attracting younger people. ”
Jacobson’s advice to Greenblatt is to “build on our legacy” in bringing the ADL’s work into “a new and more complex world.”
Some believe there will be less focus at ADL on Israel, given Foxman’s strong emphasis on the subject. But insiders point out that while a high percentage of ADL public comments and press releases in recent years have dealt with Israel advocacy issues, only a small percentage of the budget goes for Israel programming. It’s but one example of the kind of scrutiny being applied to ADL as it goes through its first transition at the top in three decades.
“There is nothing to indicate” any less emphasis on Israel today, Foxman told me. “Jonathan comes with his own wealth of experiences, and his background and sensitivities will serve him well,” he said. “He is smart, he is committed and he is attuned to the business world,” he added, noting that Greenblatt has an MBA degree.
His title, in addition to national director, is CEO — a first for the ADL.
For his part, Greenblatt acknowledged that he is honored and humbled to follow Foxman. “Abe is truly remarkable,” he said. “The community was well served by his leadership, and I am the better for his counsel.”
Implicit in the ADL lay leadership’s unanimous choice of Greenblatt was a recognition that they could not duplicate an Abe Foxman — a child of the Holocaust driven by his personal experience — to head the organization at a time of global interconnectedness, instant technology and ever-present social media. So they chose a successor who combined a commitment to Jewish community and peoplehood with an expertise in new ways to communicate with his generation.
‘Personal Roots’ In ADL
Sitting in his spacious Midtown office, Greenblatt spoke with passion and precision of how he hopes to advance the ADL’s core mission — combat anti-Semitism, protect Israel and promote fair treatment for all — in part by utilizing a range of 21st-century skills, with an emphasis on social innovation and entrepreneurship.
“Even as we look ahead,” he said, “I am better for having a reverence for the past and learning from it.”
He began by pointing out that his “long, personal roots to the ADL” go back almost 25 years to “the formative experience” he had in 1991 that launched his adult path to help repair the world.
That year, while studying abroad as a 20-year-old college student, Greenblatt visited Germany, which his paternal grandfather fled, and Hungary, the homeland of maternal family members. Many relatives on both sides of his family perished in the Holocaust.
“Traveling alone, I went to Dachau,” he recalled. “I visited the old Jewish ghetto in Prague. I saw the reality of what happened and it inspired me to do something about anti-Semitism, which had never seemed as real to me as when I was there.”
Moved by his European experience, Greenblatt returned to Tufts University for his senior year “determined to make a difference,” he said, “to fight anti-Semitism and to serve my people.” He called the ADL regional office in Boston, seeking an internship. He was told there was no internship program, but Lenny Zakim, the legendary executive director, created one for him — and inspired him to set his sights on transformational change.
Greenblatt said Zakim, a civil rights and interfaith activist who died of cancer at 46 in 1999, taught him to combat anti-Semitism and racism and “to seek coalitions and foster intergroup relations.”
Those lessons have been with Greenblatt ever since, during an impressive and eclectic career that has included politics and public service at the highest level, teaching at a top university, launching and running successful businesses and incorporating charitable giving into the process.
Briefly, he worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in Little Rock, Ark., and then served in the White House and the Commerce Department, working on international economic policy.
In 2002, Greenblatt co-founded Ethos Water, a bottled-water company that donated part of its profits to provide free water for children in developing nations. Starbucks bought the company, and Greenblatt became vice president of global consumer products, working to provide clean water to poor countries around the world.
He went on to found All For Good, an open-source platform that offered volunteer opportunities, and he served as CEO of Good Worldwide, which included a publishing company that Greenblatt broadened into a diversified media organization.
In 2011, after teaching social entrepreneurship at UCLA’s School of Management, he took the Obama White House post, thinking that afterwards he would go back to California and the private sector, perhaps to a career combining investments and teaching.
But when approached about the prospect of heading ADL, he was intrigued, in part because of his own — and his wife’s — experience with and admiration for ADL. (Greenblatt met his wife, the former Marjan Keypour, when she was working for the ADL office in Los Angeles. A Harvard graduate, she is a native of Iran who escaped after the Islamic Revolution, first to Paris, and then, with the help of HIAS, to the U.S.)
So fighting anti-Semitism and advocating for human rights is “not just an intellectual pursuit,” Greenblatt told ADL’s national leadership on first being introduced as Foxman’s successor. “It’s personal for me, a deeply held value, one that has been seared into my soul.”
Flair And Substance
As an example of Greenblatt’s business-oriented style and skill set, one of his first initiatives at ADL last summer emphasized social media and collaboration. In his first weeks on the job, he announced #50States Against Hate, an effort launched online in August, in the wake of the Charleston church killings. Its focus is on the remaining five states — Wyoming, Indiana, Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina — that do not have hate-crime laws. In a collaborative effort, ADL partnered with 30 nonprofit organizations, including the NAACP and a variety of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Latino and Asian groups.
In a recent blog post Greenblatt noted that as part of an effort to “re-energize” the “frayed” black-Jewish alliance, he chose to hold his first ADL “leadership retreat” of top professional staff and lay leaders last month in the American South “rather than hunker down near our headquarters in Manhattan.” The group gathered in Atlanta, visiting Rev. Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, then went on to Montgomery and Selma, where they walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the same one MLK marched across 50 years ago.
Participants said the retreat displayed both Greenblatt’s flair and substance, giving a renewed emphasis to the core cause of human rights and racial justice.
“I believe in institutions and in finding ways to do our work better,” ways that resonate with the current generation, Greenblatt said. He noted ADL’s longstanding approach of combining the universal and the particular, fighting anti-Semitism and advocating for all forms of civil rights. “We do best for ourselves when we’re there for others, and vice versa,” he said. “That dual approach speaks to a bold, brave mission.”
Making Israel’s case today is more complicated than in the past, he acknowledged, and requires more sophistication. “Anti-Semitism is very real now,” he said, particularly in parts of Europe and South America. And Israel, he said, is the proxy for much of the hatred of Jews. “Make no mistake — anti-Zionism is anti-Israel. Period.”
He acknowledged that “we have work to do to better connect with the next generation.” His description of what is needed reveals Greenblatt’s blend of ideology and business acumen: “It’s about adopting and harnessing the technologies available to us, adapting to the times, and delivering our fact-based, reasoned approach in a cost-effective way that drives for the highest rate of return.”
Greenblatt bemoaned the lack of civility within our community when it comes to disagreeing about Israel, seen most notably during the debate over the Iran nuclear deal. “When Jews attack other Jews,” he said, “the anti-Semites win.” He characterized ADL as “at the forefront of an approach that is reasoned but relentless, temperate but tenacious, fact-based but ferocious, tempered but not timid.” (I couldn’t tell if his string of powerful alliterations was spontaneous or memorized; either way it was impressive.)
In discussion, one senses Greenblatt’s frustration with an Israeli government that has become increasingly isolated internationally for its policies regarding the Palestinians. Publicly he stresses the importance for ADL to be “an effective advocate for Israel” while “holding it to a high standard” of democracy.
Several times he mentioned how fortunate he feels to be doing the work he now does. He spoke of his commitment to see the ADL continue and thrive, recognizing the need to inspire as well as inform. “We are well served by facts,” he said, “but facts aren’t enough. Our work requires the force of personality.”
Just what will that personality be like going forward?
Remarkably, for the last three decades the ADL, with its hundreds of professional and lay leaders and large network of regional and international offices, was synonymous with one man, Abe Foxman. Greenblatt doesn’t appear to aspire to that model. He emits a low-key confidence, and a deeply thoughtful, collaborative manner. How his approach plays out in the future could have a major impact not only on the ADL but on the next generation of American Jews in how they relate to anti-Semitism, Israel and social justice for all.
gary@jewishweek.org
Editorial
‘One Kotel, One People’All Jews should take pride in the historic compromise reached by the Israeli government this week in providing dignified access for prayer at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest place.
To be clear, it does not allow equal access for all. And, like all good compromises, there are those on both the traditional and liberal sides of the dispute unhappy with the resolution. But in finding what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called “a fair and creative solution,” the government has gone a long way in acknowledging — if not formally recognizing — the desires of Conservative and Reform men and women, and other liberal Jews, to pray together.
Among the champions of this step toward religious accommodation are Women of the Wall, the prayer group that initiated the effort more than 25 years ago; Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, who first proposed the plan three years ago and used his clout to see it through; and the prime minister, who managed to orchestrate government approval despite opposition from the charedi members of his coalition.
As Sharansky noted in explaining the long-overdue agreement, “they all came to the conclusion that they must make serious compromises because they want it to remain one Kotel for one people. It’s the place that must unite us more than anything else, and it turned into the most ugly war.”
When the project is completed, in about two years, co-ed prayer will be permitted at any time of the day or night in an area of the Kotel about 30 feet long, south of the “traditional,” or main, area. The size of the section, known as Robinson’s Arch, will almost double to nearly 10,000 square feet, estimated to accommodate 1,200 people. That is half the size of the “traditional” section of the wall, which will remain under the full authority of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, a charedi group. Men and women will continue to pray separately there, separated by a mechitzah.
According to the deal announced this week, the Women of the Wall will have to move their Rosh Chodesh services from the main prayer section to the Robinson’s Arch area but will be free of the harassment and arrests that plagued their prayer meetings over the years.
Even while heralding this important example of tolerance and inclusion, we note that diaspora Jews who are not Orthodox need to feel accepted not only at the Western Wall, but throughout Israel. That means recognition of the liberal branches of Judaism, which account for the vast majority of American Jews. That is not likely to happen soon in a government coalition where leaders of the religious parties resist even naming the Conservative and Reform movements. And the Chief Rabbinate continues to make conversion more difficult rather than inviting for the hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking relatives of Jews in Israel. Indeed, it is a tragedy that the policies and behavior of the Chief Rabbis cause most Israelis to reject many of Judaism’s richest practices and ideals. So there is still a long way to go before diaspora Jews are fully accepted in the Jewish state.
For the moment, though, let us celebrate a milestone in resolving a bitter, complex, religious and political dispute. May it set an example for the future.---------------------
My column profiles Jonathan Greenblatt, tasked with filling Abe Foxman's big shoes as national director of ADL, and making his own way, after six months on the job: same mission, new style.
---------------------
New York
‘Not Abe,’ ADL Head Pursues Same Goals, But With New Style
Jonathan Greenblatt focusing on social media to reach younger Jews.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattIn late December, Jonathan Greenblatt, who assumed the professional helm of the Anti-Defamation League last summer, wrote a blog post highly critical of Iran. He described the country as “one of the world’s leading human rights violators” and pointed out that “if anything, Iran has stepped up its abuses in recent months.” (The ADL opposed the Iran deal.)
Robert Sugarman, former national chair of ADL, says that when he congratulated the new exec on the essay, Greenblatt said he suspected that some of his former White House colleagues might not be pleased with what he wrote. Indeed, that might apply to Greenblatt’s most recent boss, President Obama, whom he served as special assistant for three years before coming to the ADL.
But as Greenblatt told me during a series of recent interviews, “there,” referring to the White House, “I was working for the president. Here, I am working for the Jewish people.”
Time will tell which is the tougher taskmaster.
Greenblatt, who was director of the office of social innovation and civic participation at the White House, observed that “it was a 24/7 environment, and grueling at times.” But leading a legendary Jewish defense agency now in its second century, and succeeding the iconic Abraham Foxman, who in his five-decade tenure (28 as national director) embodied the institution and became one of the most recognizable Jews in the world, is surely a daunting task.
Greenblatt, though, at 45, and just six months into national Jewish organizational life, seems self-assured. While observers look for signs that might reflect a dramatic shift in the ADL’s focus, given the three-decade age gap between Greenblatt and Foxman, and their very different backgrounds, those who have worked closely with both men suggest otherwise.
“Jonathan is perfectly comfortable saying he is not Abe, and that he won’t be the same as Abe in the job,” Sugarman said. “He reflects a different generation and his social media skills are a real plus going forward. But I believe the direction of the ADL will not change. He is totally committed to our mission.”
Ken Jacobson, deputy national director who has been with ADL 45 years, the last 35 of them working closely with Foxman, noted that with Greenblatt, “the fundamentals are the same, the style is different. Abe went with his instincts and he was usually right. Jonathan makes decisions based on a process of strategic thinking. He is very capable, creative, and a natural in working with and attracting younger people. ”
Jacobson’s advice to Greenblatt is to “build on our legacy” in bringing the ADL’s work into “a new and more complex world.”
Some believe there will be less focus at ADL on Israel, given Foxman’s strong emphasis on the subject. But insiders point out that while a high percentage of ADL public comments and press releases in recent years have dealt with Israel advocacy issues, only a small percentage of the budget goes for Israel programming. It’s but one example of the kind of scrutiny being applied to ADL as it goes through its first transition at the top in three decades.
“There is nothing to indicate” any less emphasis on Israel today, Foxman told me. “Jonathan comes with his own wealth of experiences, and his background and sensitivities will serve him well,” he said. “He is smart, he is committed and he is attuned to the business world,” he added, noting that Greenblatt has an MBA degree.
His title, in addition to national director, is CEO — a first for the ADL.
For his part, Greenblatt acknowledged that he is honored and humbled to follow Foxman. “Abe is truly remarkable,” he said. “The community was well served by his leadership, and I am the better for his counsel.”
Implicit in the ADL lay leadership’s unanimous choice of Greenblatt was a recognition that they could not duplicate an Abe Foxman — a child of the Holocaust driven by his personal experience — to head the organization at a time of global interconnectedness, instant technology and ever-present social media. So they chose a successor who combined a commitment to Jewish community and peoplehood with an expertise in new ways to communicate with his generation.
‘Personal Roots’ In ADL
Sitting in his spacious Midtown office, Greenblatt spoke with passion and precision of how he hopes to advance the ADL’s core mission — combat anti-Semitism, protect Israel and promote fair treatment for all — in part by utilizing a range of 21st-century skills, with an emphasis on social innovation and entrepreneurship.
“Even as we look ahead,” he said, “I am better for having a reverence for the past and learning from it.”
He began by pointing out that his “long, personal roots to the ADL” go back almost 25 years to “the formative experience” he had in 1991 that launched his adult path to help repair the world.
That year, while studying abroad as a 20-year-old college student, Greenblatt visited Germany, which his paternal grandfather fled, and Hungary, the homeland of maternal family members. Many relatives on both sides of his family perished in the Holocaust.
“Traveling alone, I went to Dachau,” he recalled. “I visited the old Jewish ghetto in Prague. I saw the reality of what happened and it inspired me to do something about anti-Semitism, which had never seemed as real to me as when I was there.”
Moved by his European experience, Greenblatt returned to Tufts University for his senior year “determined to make a difference,” he said, “to fight anti-Semitism and to serve my people.” He called the ADL regional office in Boston, seeking an internship. He was told there was no internship program, but Lenny Zakim, the legendary executive director, created one for him — and inspired him to set his sights on transformational change.
Greenblatt said Zakim, a civil rights and interfaith activist who died of cancer at 46 in 1999, taught him to combat anti-Semitism and racism and “to seek coalitions and foster intergroup relations.”
Those lessons have been with Greenblatt ever since, during an impressive and eclectic career that has included politics and public service at the highest level, teaching at a top university, launching and running successful businesses and incorporating charitable giving into the process.
Briefly, he worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in Little Rock, Ark., and then served in the White House and the Commerce Department, working on international economic policy.
In 2002, Greenblatt co-founded Ethos Water, a bottled-water company that donated part of its profits to provide free water for children in developing nations. Starbucks bought the company, and Greenblatt became vice president of global consumer products, working to provide clean water to poor countries around the world.
He went on to found All For Good, an open-source platform that offered volunteer opportunities, and he served as CEO of Good Worldwide, which included a publishing company that Greenblatt broadened into a diversified media organization.
In 2011, after teaching social entrepreneurship at UCLA’s School of Management, he took the Obama White House post, thinking that afterwards he would go back to California and the private sector, perhaps to a career combining investments and teaching.
But when approached about the prospect of heading ADL, he was intrigued, in part because of his own — and his wife’s — experience with and admiration for ADL. (Greenblatt met his wife, the former Marjan Keypour, when she was working for the ADL office in Los Angeles. A Harvard graduate, she is a native of Iran who escaped after the Islamic Revolution, first to Paris, and then, with the help of HIAS, to the U.S.)
So fighting anti-Semitism and advocating for human rights is “not just an intellectual pursuit,” Greenblatt told ADL’s national leadership on first being introduced as Foxman’s successor. “It’s personal for me, a deeply held value, one that has been seared into my soul.”
Flair And Substance
As an example of Greenblatt’s business-oriented style and skill set, one of his first initiatives at ADL last summer emphasized social media and collaboration. In his first weeks on the job, he announced #50States Against Hate, an effort launched online in August, in the wake of the Charleston church killings. Its focus is on the remaining five states — Wyoming, Indiana, Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina — that do not have hate-crime laws. In a collaborative effort, ADL partnered with 30 nonprofit organizations, including the NAACP and a variety of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Latino and Asian groups.
In a recent blog post Greenblatt noted that as part of an effort to “re-energize” the “frayed” black-Jewish alliance, he chose to hold his first ADL “leadership retreat” of top professional staff and lay leaders last month in the American South “rather than hunker down near our headquarters in Manhattan.” The group gathered in Atlanta, visiting Rev. Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, then went on to Montgomery and Selma, where they walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the same one MLK marched across 50 years ago.
Participants said the retreat displayed both Greenblatt’s flair and substance, giving a renewed emphasis to the core cause of human rights and racial justice.
“I believe in institutions and in finding ways to do our work better,” ways that resonate with the current generation, Greenblatt said. He noted ADL’s longstanding approach of combining the universal and the particular, fighting anti-Semitism and advocating for all forms of civil rights. “We do best for ourselves when we’re there for others, and vice versa,” he said. “That dual approach speaks to a bold, brave mission.”
Making Israel’s case today is more complicated than in the past, he acknowledged, and requires more sophistication. “Anti-Semitism is very real now,” he said, particularly in parts of Europe and South America. And Israel, he said, is the proxy for much of the hatred of Jews. “Make no mistake — anti-Zionism is anti-Israel. Period.”
He acknowledged that “we have work to do to better connect with the next generation.” His description of what is needed reveals Greenblatt’s blend of ideology and business acumen: “It’s about adopting and harnessing the technologies available to us, adapting to the times, and delivering our fact-based, reasoned approach in a cost-effective way that drives for the highest rate of return.”
Greenblatt bemoaned the lack of civility within our community when it comes to disagreeing about Israel, seen most notably during the debate over the Iran nuclear deal. “When Jews attack other Jews,” he said, “the anti-Semites win.” He characterized ADL as “at the forefront of an approach that is reasoned but relentless, temperate but tenacious, fact-based but ferocious, tempered but not timid.” (I couldn’t tell if his string of powerful alliterations was spontaneous or memorized; either way it was impressive.)
In discussion, one senses Greenblatt’s frustration with an Israeli government that has become increasingly isolated internationally for its policies regarding the Palestinians. Publicly he stresses the importance for ADL to be “an effective advocate for Israel” while “holding it to a high standard” of democracy.
Several times he mentioned how fortunate he feels to be doing the work he now does. He spoke of his commitment to see the ADL continue and thrive, recognizing the need to inspire as well as inform. “We are well served by facts,” he said, “but facts aren’t enough. Our work requires the force of personality.”
Just what will that personality be like going forward?
Remarkably, for the last three decades the ADL, with its hundreds of professional and lay leaders and large network of regional and international offices, was synonymous with one man, Abe Foxman. Greenblatt doesn’t appear to aspire to that model. He emits a low-key confidence, and a deeply thoughtful, collaborative manner. How his approach plays out in the future could have a major impact not only on the ADL but on the next generation of American Jews in how they relate to anti-Semitism, Israel and social justice for all.
gary@jewishweek.org
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Associate Editor Jonathan Mark previews the planned auction of many of Reb Shlomo Carlbach's possessions, from guitars to well-worn tefillin.
---------------------
New York
Relics Of Reb ShlomoShlomo Carlebach’s guitar, other belongings on the auction block.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Reb Shlomo Carlebach and daughter Neshama, who is auctioning some of his most personal belongings.A chasidic elder sat at his Shabbos table, holding a piece of silverware at the height of his eyes, until the table grew silent. The elder’s voice slowly rumbled, in the cadence of a Talmudic chant: “This is the spoon of the Great Maggid!” A shiver rippled through the room, chasidim awed at the idea that the iconic Maggid of Mezeritch — 18th century rebbe and heir to the Baal Shem Tov, founder of chasidism — once held that very same spoon in a European forest on a long forgotten Shabbos afternoon, an afternoon suddenly alive.
Sometime this spring, the spoons, candlesticks, an appointment book inked with names and telephone numbers from 1991-92, almost all the earthly belongings of Reb Shlomo Carlebach — as much of an heir to the Baal Shem Tov as anyone — will be auctioned off by his family. Also for sale are his guitar (another of his guitars sold for $10,000 last year) and the stand-up piano upon which he often composed (no bidding price has yet been established). The bidding starts at $12,000 for his tefillin, “worn from usage,” says the auction catalogue, “that he had in his hand luggage on the day that he went to the Other Side.” The greatest composer and maggid (mystical storyteller) of modern times died of a heart attack in LaGuardia Airport in 1994.
Also up for auction are a silver kiddush cup engraved to Shlomo (as he preferred to be known) from Me’or Modi’im, Shlomo’s Moshav in Israel (bidding starts at $3,000); a silver spice tower for Havdalah given to him as a wedding gift (also $3,000); his father Rabbi Naftali’s tallis bag, from pre-war Vienna, given to Shlomo as a gift ($1,200); and silver flatware, 14 forks, nine soup spoons ($4,000).
J. Greenstein & Co., the Cedarhurst-based auction house handling the sale, estimates that the more than 30 items could bring in $100,000 or more. Neshama Carlebach, Reb Shlomo’s daughter, tells us the money will primarily go to the family-controlled Shlomo Carlebach Foundation, which has operated only in fits and starts in the 21 years since Reb Shlomo’s death. The latest “fits and starts” have to do with this very auction, originally scheduled for February, now postponed until the Carlebach family and the auction house resolve unspecified differences, though both sides say that they’re committed to the auction taking place.
Their mercantile dispute is of no concern in the realm of the spirit, where relics, even ones as obscure or tertiary as the Maggid’s spoon, often attain mystical status, tangible souvenirs of a time when Heaven and earth seemed to kiss, even if that kiss was followed by a break-up. When Moses smashed the Tablets at Sinai, the shards were gathered and for centuries shared the Ark with the second Tablets. The Holy Wall in Jerusalem is but a relic of the Temple on the hill above it. Can relics be priced? No matter how poor or desperate Shlomo’s mother was, fleeing from the Nazis, she never sold her Shabbos candlesticks that she carried across borders. Now, those silver candlesticks from Europe, later given to Neshama’s mother by Shlomo’s mother as an engagement gift, is yours for the bidding.
Neshama says, “I happen to feel very whole [at peace] about the decision to sell. The Foundation is more important” than candlesticks, than a challah knife. The candlesticks, like the knife is “probably German,” says the catalogue. “Shabbat Kodesh” (the Holy Sabbath) is engraved on the knife’s handle. “Reb Shlomo used this knife in both the home he shared with Neila (his wife) as well as in his parents home. Wear and damage from use.” Bidding starts at $1,800.
Did it hurt Neshama to sell the knife that was used to cut challah every Shabbos in the twilight of pre-war Europe, and later used by her father? Wouldn’t she want her sons to someday cut challah with that same knife, with its “wear and damage from use”?
“Anything about my father is always very emotional for me,” says Neshama. “When people pass away there is so much sentiment attached to their things because they are not actually here anymore. But my father is everywhere. He’s alive, more than any object, almost more alive than were he actually alive.”
Up for auction is the scrapbook kept by Shlomo’s mother, all the newspaper clippings and concert posters when he was just starting out in 1959 and into the ’60s. It will go to the highest bidder.
You can bid on Shlomo’s famous vest, says the catalogue, the one with the “black and shiny material.”
How many pennies for a memory? On Simchas Torah, when there would never be enough Sifrei Torah (scrolls) for everyone to dance with, Reb Shlomo would hand out the holy books from his library, “Dance with the books!” He would give each particular book to the specific person whom Shlomo felt most needed the blessing contained within those covers. You might find yourself “dancing” with Moshe Chaim Luzzato, the 18th century kabbalist and philosopher.
Soon, at the auction, you could buy Luzatto’s “Yalkut Yediot He’emet” — bidding starts at $1,200. Inside the binding is a stamp from the House of Love and Prayer, Reb Shlomo’s legendary shul, located, says the stamp, at 1456 Ninth Avenue, San Francisco,” in the heart of Haight-Ashbury’s hippie kingdom in the Summer of Love. Surely there’s a story behind Theodore Bikel’s signature and phone number in Luzatto’s book, a story for a Shabbos afternoon in another world.
What are the bids for Reb Shlomo old scratched stand-up piano, the one he played by ear, or rather, the one he played by soul? Rabbi Sam Intrator, Reb Shlomo’s globetrotting manager, told us, “Shlomo couldn’t read music, but he’d close his eyes like he was davening, leaning into the piano as if to hear the music better, and on the spot compose and create — it was hishtapchus hanefesh, an outpouring of the soul.” And yet, he never played piano in public, says Intrator: “He didn’t feel proficient at it.”
You can bid on his silver esrog box, “hand spun filigree in citron shape,” says the catalogue. Greenstein estimates the bidding could reach $6,500. The esrog always meant more to Shlomo than the box. Intrator remembers, “He always held the esrog next to his heart, and brought it back to his heart, when he would do nanu’im,” the shaking of the lulav and esrog in the six directions, “sweeping the world.” His nanu’im could take 45 minutes, what could be five minutes for anyone else. Intrator remembers, “He was so engaged, so intense in what he was doing, nothing else existed; he was in another world.” Of the “four species” used on Sukkos – the willow, palm, myrtle and citron (esrog) – the esrog is symbolically associated with the heart. On his last Hoshana Rabbah, before his fatal heart attack, Shlomo lost his esrog, and was almost crying, “The esrog is your heart, I need my esrog.”
Intrator recalls visiting Majdanek with Reb Shlomo and the chevra, when Reb Shlomo said, “Chevra, sometimes a second can be an eternity.” It was his key for saying Yizkor, as well: no schlepping, no kitsch. “When there’s an opening between worlds,” he’d say, you can’t waste time, “it’s one-two-three.” The more you believe in the Other World, he’d say, the less time is needed for Yizkor, a second can be eternity.
Intrator says, “We had a long trip ahead of us.” So, after touring the death camp, “We were back on the bus, all except Shlomo. I found him in the room with the thousands of shoes. He was wearing his long black raincoat,” bidding starts at $800. “He was shaking, davening — he was ‘somewhere else.’ He had his microcassette recorder and was recording all these new niggunim that were coming to him. The next day, says Intrator, the microcassette recorder got lost; “Those songs weren’t meant to be heard.”
On a long ago Friday night, Reb Shlomo joined several of his chevra for a Shabbos meal in a dimly lit Upper West Side apartment. No one, including Shlomo, had any money but “all we need is wine and challah,” he said. We splurged on seltzer, turkey slices, paper plates, and plastic forks and spoons.
Reb Shlomo was overheard saying to one of the chevra, “… Your three rebbes are Reb Nachman, the Sefas Emes and the Ishbitzer.”
“And you, Shlomo.”
Reb Shlomo, who never put on airs, said quietly, “No, I’m your best friend.”
After the meal we threw the plastic forks and spoons into a garbage bag. Who knew?
Then Reb Shlomo spoke of Torah, and lesser things, until the wee small hours.
Priceless.
jonathan@jewishweek.org
Associate Editor Jonathan Mark previews the planned auction of many of Reb Shlomo Carlbach's possessions, from guitars to well-worn tefillin.
---------------------
New York
Relics Of Reb ShlomoShlomo Carlebach’s guitar, other belongings on the auction block.
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
Reb Shlomo Carlebach and daughter Neshama, who is auctioning some of his most personal belongings.A chasidic elder sat at his Shabbos table, holding a piece of silverware at the height of his eyes, until the table grew silent. The elder’s voice slowly rumbled, in the cadence of a Talmudic chant: “This is the spoon of the Great Maggid!” A shiver rippled through the room, chasidim awed at the idea that the iconic Maggid of Mezeritch — 18th century rebbe and heir to the Baal Shem Tov, founder of chasidism — once held that very same spoon in a European forest on a long forgotten Shabbos afternoon, an afternoon suddenly alive.
Sometime this spring, the spoons, candlesticks, an appointment book inked with names and telephone numbers from 1991-92, almost all the earthly belongings of Reb Shlomo Carlebach — as much of an heir to the Baal Shem Tov as anyone — will be auctioned off by his family. Also for sale are his guitar (another of his guitars sold for $10,000 last year) and the stand-up piano upon which he often composed (no bidding price has yet been established). The bidding starts at $12,000 for his tefillin, “worn from usage,” says the auction catalogue, “that he had in his hand luggage on the day that he went to the Other Side.” The greatest composer and maggid (mystical storyteller) of modern times died of a heart attack in LaGuardia Airport in 1994.
Also up for auction are a silver kiddush cup engraved to Shlomo (as he preferred to be known) from Me’or Modi’im, Shlomo’s Moshav in Israel (bidding starts at $3,000); a silver spice tower for Havdalah given to him as a wedding gift (also $3,000); his father Rabbi Naftali’s tallis bag, from pre-war Vienna, given to Shlomo as a gift ($1,200); and silver flatware, 14 forks, nine soup spoons ($4,000).
J. Greenstein & Co., the Cedarhurst-based auction house handling the sale, estimates that the more than 30 items could bring in $100,000 or more. Neshama Carlebach, Reb Shlomo’s daughter, tells us the money will primarily go to the family-controlled Shlomo Carlebach Foundation, which has operated only in fits and starts in the 21 years since Reb Shlomo’s death. The latest “fits and starts” have to do with this very auction, originally scheduled for February, now postponed until the Carlebach family and the auction house resolve unspecified differences, though both sides say that they’re committed to the auction taking place.
Their mercantile dispute is of no concern in the realm of the spirit, where relics, even ones as obscure or tertiary as the Maggid’s spoon, often attain mystical status, tangible souvenirs of a time when Heaven and earth seemed to kiss, even if that kiss was followed by a break-up. When Moses smashed the Tablets at Sinai, the shards were gathered and for centuries shared the Ark with the second Tablets. The Holy Wall in Jerusalem is but a relic of the Temple on the hill above it. Can relics be priced? No matter how poor or desperate Shlomo’s mother was, fleeing from the Nazis, she never sold her Shabbos candlesticks that she carried across borders. Now, those silver candlesticks from Europe, later given to Neshama’s mother by Shlomo’s mother as an engagement gift, is yours for the bidding.
Neshama says, “I happen to feel very whole [at peace] about the decision to sell. The Foundation is more important” than candlesticks, than a challah knife. The candlesticks, like the knife is “probably German,” says the catalogue. “Shabbat Kodesh” (the Holy Sabbath) is engraved on the knife’s handle. “Reb Shlomo used this knife in both the home he shared with Neila (his wife) as well as in his parents home. Wear and damage from use.” Bidding starts at $1,800.
Did it hurt Neshama to sell the knife that was used to cut challah every Shabbos in the twilight of pre-war Europe, and later used by her father? Wouldn’t she want her sons to someday cut challah with that same knife, with its “wear and damage from use”?
“Anything about my father is always very emotional for me,” says Neshama. “When people pass away there is so much sentiment attached to their things because they are not actually here anymore. But my father is everywhere. He’s alive, more than any object, almost more alive than were he actually alive.”
Up for auction is the scrapbook kept by Shlomo’s mother, all the newspaper clippings and concert posters when he was just starting out in 1959 and into the ’60s. It will go to the highest bidder.
You can bid on Shlomo’s famous vest, says the catalogue, the one with the “black and shiny material.”
How many pennies for a memory? On Simchas Torah, when there would never be enough Sifrei Torah (scrolls) for everyone to dance with, Reb Shlomo would hand out the holy books from his library, “Dance with the books!” He would give each particular book to the specific person whom Shlomo felt most needed the blessing contained within those covers. You might find yourself “dancing” with Moshe Chaim Luzzato, the 18th century kabbalist and philosopher.
Soon, at the auction, you could buy Luzatto’s “Yalkut Yediot He’emet” — bidding starts at $1,200. Inside the binding is a stamp from the House of Love and Prayer, Reb Shlomo’s legendary shul, located, says the stamp, at 1456 Ninth Avenue, San Francisco,” in the heart of Haight-Ashbury’s hippie kingdom in the Summer of Love. Surely there’s a story behind Theodore Bikel’s signature and phone number in Luzatto’s book, a story for a Shabbos afternoon in another world.
What are the bids for Reb Shlomo old scratched stand-up piano, the one he played by ear, or rather, the one he played by soul? Rabbi Sam Intrator, Reb Shlomo’s globetrotting manager, told us, “Shlomo couldn’t read music, but he’d close his eyes like he was davening, leaning into the piano as if to hear the music better, and on the spot compose and create — it was hishtapchus hanefesh, an outpouring of the soul.” And yet, he never played piano in public, says Intrator: “He didn’t feel proficient at it.”
You can bid on his silver esrog box, “hand spun filigree in citron shape,” says the catalogue. Greenstein estimates the bidding could reach $6,500. The esrog always meant more to Shlomo than the box. Intrator remembers, “He always held the esrog next to his heart, and brought it back to his heart, when he would do nanu’im,” the shaking of the lulav and esrog in the six directions, “sweeping the world.” His nanu’im could take 45 minutes, what could be five minutes for anyone else. Intrator remembers, “He was so engaged, so intense in what he was doing, nothing else existed; he was in another world.” Of the “four species” used on Sukkos – the willow, palm, myrtle and citron (esrog) – the esrog is symbolically associated with the heart. On his last Hoshana Rabbah, before his fatal heart attack, Shlomo lost his esrog, and was almost crying, “The esrog is your heart, I need my esrog.”
Intrator recalls visiting Majdanek with Reb Shlomo and the chevra, when Reb Shlomo said, “Chevra, sometimes a second can be an eternity.” It was his key for saying Yizkor, as well: no schlepping, no kitsch. “When there’s an opening between worlds,” he’d say, you can’t waste time, “it’s one-two-three.” The more you believe in the Other World, he’d say, the less time is needed for Yizkor, a second can be eternity.
Intrator says, “We had a long trip ahead of us.” So, after touring the death camp, “We were back on the bus, all except Shlomo. I found him in the room with the thousands of shoes. He was wearing his long black raincoat,” bidding starts at $800. “He was shaking, davening — he was ‘somewhere else.’ He had his microcassette recorder and was recording all these new niggunim that were coming to him. The next day, says Intrator, the microcassette recorder got lost; “Those songs weren’t meant to be heard.”
On a long ago Friday night, Reb Shlomo joined several of his chevra for a Shabbos meal in a dimly lit Upper West Side apartment. No one, including Shlomo, had any money but “all we need is wine and challah,” he said. We splurged on seltzer, turkey slices, paper plates, and plastic forks and spoons.
Reb Shlomo was overheard saying to one of the chevra, “… Your three rebbes are Reb Nachman, the Sefas Emes and the Ishbitzer.”
“And you, Shlomo.”
Reb Shlomo, who never put on airs, said quietly, “No, I’m your best friend.”
After the meal we threw the plastic forks and spoons into a garbage bag. Who knew?
Then Reb Shlomo spoke of Torah, and lesser things, until the wee small hours.
Priceless.
jonathan@jewishweek.org
----------------------
Also this week, Super Bowl site is a `Jewish' stadium; Thane Rosenbaum on lessonsfrom `Fiddler'; JTS to redesign campus; fake New York Times `supplement' trashesIsrael.
---------------------
National
A Tribal Super Bowl
Steve Lipman
Levi’s Stadium, above, will host Super Bowl 50 on Sunday. Rabbi Asher Knight to head a congregation later this year. Getty ImagOK, so there’s no Marv Levy (Bills coach), Alan (now “Shlomo”) Vinegrad (Cowboys offensive lineman), or Robert Kraft (Patriots owner).
But the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers will play Super Bowl 50 on Sunday at a “Jewish” stadium.
Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., near San Francisco, is the only arena with a Jewish name that hosts teams of the four major sports — football, baseball, hockey and basketball.
The 68,500-seat home of the San Francisco 49ers, it is named for Levi Strauss, the founder of the company that makes the ubiquitous blue jeans bearing his name. A native of Germany, Strauss came to the States at 18, settled in New York, then Louisville, then became West Coast representative of his family’s dry goods business. He moved to San Francisco at the height of the California Gold Rush.
That’s where he found his fame and made his fortune, partnering in 1853 with a customer who had designed riveted denim pants.
A lifelong bachelor, Strauss died in 1902, leaving his fortune of about $6 million (more than $150 million in today’s dollars) to several charities, including the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum.
The fact that an NFL arena with a Jewish name merits no comment in wider society is not surprising, according to Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University; in northern California, Levi’s is a familiar name, and nationally it’s a well-known brand.
“Jews were pioneering citizens of San Francisco and have long been respected there,” Sarna told The Jewish Week in an email interview. “Many of the distinguished merchants and bankers of the great 19th-century city had Jewish names. Levi’s, pronounced LEE-vi rather than the more traditional LAY-vee, does not strike locals as particularly Jewish.”
“Nationally, of course, this disinterest is just more evidence that Jews are more and more at home in America,” he said.
And speaking of being at home in America, a native of Denver and lifelong Broncos fan, Rabbi Asher Knight of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, thought he was on safe ground, sports-wise, when he was negotiating recently to become senior rabbi of Temple Beth El in Charlotte. While the Panthers seemed Super Bowl-bound, his Broncos, suffering through a midseason slump, did not (QB Peyton Manning was injured, then benched).
Rabbi Knight’s loyalty to the Broncos would remain untested, he thought. “I can be perfectly comfortable in my Broncos fandom.”
Then both teams made it to the big game.
So who’s the rabbi rooting for? He’s heard that question in the last fortnight from old friends in Denver, from congregants in Dallas, from “future congregants” in Charlotte. Even from pro-Panther board members when he was interviewing for the job at Temple Beth El.
His answer, in all cases: Denver.
“I have remained a Broncos fan, I still watch the team,” Rabbi Knight, 37, said in a telephone interview this week. “I didn’t feel a sense of conflict. I’m a Broncos fan through and through.”
The game also has led to a friendly wager between Denver’s Temple Emanu-El, the congregation where he grew up, and Charlotte’s Temple Beth El, which he will join this summer.
They’re both raising money for a pair of local charities, two-thirds of the combined totals to go to the one in the city whose team wins on Sunday, the rest to the losing side. The “United in Orange” (Denver’s color) campaign had reached $2,400 this week, with a goal of $3,600, said Rabbi Knight, who made a contribution to the collective cause but does not bet on games.
Rabbi Knight said his loyalty will remain unwavering once he moves to Charlotte. “But,” he said, “if my children grow up as Panthers fans, I’ll be perfectly happy.”
steve@jewishweek.org---------------------
Theater
No Direction Home: ‘Fiddler’s’ Lessons
Thane Rosenbaum
Special To The Jewish Week
Leaving Anatevka: A scene from the new production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Joan Marcus
“Hamilton” may be the hottest ticket in town, with its fusion of hip-hop patriotism and a colorful cast of homeboys for Founding Fathers, but not far behind in ticket sales and sentimental attachments to equally revolutionary times is the revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Yes, that “Fiddler on the Roof,” the one from your grandmother’s youth. In 1964, when it began its long Broadway run that received nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical, “Fiddler” was a nostalgic recalling of shtetl life in the Pale of Settlement and in Eastern Europe — diaspora Judaism at its most insular and desperate. It was where the grandmothers of today’s Jewish grandmothers first began their journeys to America.
The musical has since spawned four Broadway revivals before this one (and hundreds of regional productions around the world). For over 50 years the Great White Way has hosted a “Fiddler on the Roof” in one of its palatial theaters, where the fiddlers stay in orchestra pits and where the house is filled with very rich men (and women) — the kind that Tevye, the musical’s put-upon protagonist, could never have become in Russia, or nearly anywhere else.
This superb new production, playing at the Broadway Theatre and starring Danny Burstein as Tevye, is a refreshing return to the hardscrabble villages that once represented the primary home for Jews. And it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. With tiny Israel generating both global enmity and envy, and Jews widely regarded as members in good standing of the American mainstream — far from the steerage stench of the Lower East Side — “Fiddler” is probably a shock to many for whom Jews are Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman — not Sholem Aleichem.
Before “Fiddler,” the pre-American lives of Jews, not to mention their traditions, was very much a mystery. And that’s why in addition to being a musical, it was also a tutorial on why the Chosen People were forced to immigrate to the Goldene Medina in the first place.
Auschwitz had only been liberated less than two decades before “Fiddler’s” opening night. The moral rupture of the Holocaust was not yet a cultural touchstone. Aside from a sugarcoated Anne Frank, the genocide of the Jews was scarcely uttered in polite conversation. Jews seeking safe havens both before and after the Holocaust received far less global attention than the Syrian refugee crisis of today.
Depictions of Jews in popular culture were rare sightings, too. The iconic film, “Casablanca,” amazingly never uttered the word “Jew.” “Bridget Loves Bernie,” a highly rated TV sitcom from the early 1970s about an interfaith marriage, was taken off the air after only one season. Ironically, this programming decision was consistent with the penultimate storyline of “Fiddler.” Throughout the play Tevye bends to the marital wishes of his daughters. He accepts change in the guise of progress, and his own paralysis. Ultimately, everything, including his land, is taken away. Having a daughter marry a gentile is one tradition, however, where Tevye insisted on holding his ground.
Today intermarriage is as much a fixture of modern life as is divorce, and dancing the hora on a Broadway stage is hardly as exotic as it must have seemed in 1964. (The choreography in this production of “Fiddler” is especially enchanting.) But many people in the audience who have attended Passover seders, or spun a dreidel on Chanukah, might not realize, or have by now forgotten, that Jewish-Americans were once immigrants themselves.
“Fiddler on the Roof” once introduced theatergoers to the old customs and faraway haunts of an upwardly mobile religious minority. The fictional Anatevka was where Jewish immigrants originally came from, and the end of the play, with its mass caravan of pushcarts, explained why they had to leave. The original production allowed the shtetl of the mind to steady the sentimental heart. Before “Fiddler,” Jewish origins, and their “Traditions,” were neither well known nor ever displayed.
Today, however, those who see “Fiddler,” including Jews, will regard the shtetl — sentimentalized and sanitized though it may be — as positively prehistoric. Why are Jews dressed that way? Why is dancing with Cossacks such a risqué endeavor? Jews are supposed to be investment bankers, not impoverished milkmen.
Jewish-Americans, nowadays, are a people undeserving of a hyphen. In the murky multicultural world of identity politics, Jews are regarded as privileged wealthy white people. “Jewish Lives Matter” will not appear on any T-shirt. The solidly upper middle class — and the billionaires who founded Google and Facebook — surely have no claims on victimhood. Besides, Jews are associated with Israel, which many people believe is a colonialist country makes refugees rather than absorbs them.
With aliyah on the rise all throughout Europe, the wearing of Jewish symbols more forbidden than shellfish, and Jewry fearing for its lives as if the Czar were back in town, “Fiddler” recalls an era, before the existence of Israel, when Jews had no homeland, were unwelcome elsewhere, and yet were determined to maintain their traditions despite the challenges of modernity and the melting pot.
At a time when assimilation dominates the Pew study, and Jewish college students are being asked to prove that they are not sinister agents of a colonial power, it’s nice to be reminded of a time when Jews were very much an immigrant group, with a unique immigration story — and not just some nouveau strain of America’s WASP aristocracy.[Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and cultural critic, is the author, most recently, of “How Sweet It Is!”]---------------------
New York
JTS Plans Major Redesign Of Its Campus
Nearly $100 million land deal to pave way for new library, dorms.
Staff Report
“Bold investment” in future: The entrance to JTS’ Morningside Heights campus. Flickr via JTAMaking good on expansion plans announced last year, the Jewish Theological Seminary has completed a $96 million deal to sell a portion of its Morningside Heights campus and build a state-of-the-art library, performance center, residence hall and conference facilities.
“This signifies that JTS, as a training ground for Jewish leadership, can reimagine our campus as we boldly invest in our future,” Chancellor Arnold Eisen told The Jewish Week. He said the reinvestment in the campus would better serve the needs of the students at the Conservative seminary as well as allow for “deeper collaboration with our neighbors, our city, and with individuals and communities around the world.”
The sale of a plot of land on the eastern edge of the campus, which includes the current library and an off-campus residence hall, to Savanna, a local real estate investment and development firm, will allow JTS to fund the ambitious plan.
The centerpiece of the project is the library, which will house a world-class Judaica collection including rare books and sacred scrolls that will not only be available to scholars but will also be on public display.
In addition, through international conferences, advanced technology and a focus on the arts, the 30-year-old institution intends to broaden the reach of the seminary.
“We want to bring people to JTS and bring JTS to the world,” Eisen said. “In embarking on this mission we can better prepare leaders for the American Jewish community.”
JTS has engaged architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, who have designed projects at Lincoln Center, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
Eisen and Marc Gary, executive vice chancellor, emphasized that for more than a year, students, faculty and lay leaders have been involved in plans for the new project. The new dormitory will house about 150 students in single and double rooms.
JTS has about 500 full-time students, 1,700 adult learners, hundreds of alumni participating in continuing education programs, and tens of thousands of people taking part in their online learning programs, according to a school official.
During construction, which calls for the demolition of the current library, built in the 1970s, up to 12,000 books will be housed on the seventh floor of the school’s main building. The rare book collection will be kept off-site but retrievable within a day.
Demolition will occur over the summer and early fall, with construction following. The project is scheduled for completion in time for the 2019 fall semester.
Savanna plans to build a 250,000-square-foot residential building at 122nd Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
Also this week, Super Bowl site is a `Jewish' stadium; Thane Rosenbaum on lessonsfrom `Fiddler'; JTS to redesign campus; fake New York Times `supplement' trashesIsrael.
---------------------
National
A Tribal Super Bowl
Steve Lipman
Levi’s Stadium, above, will host Super Bowl 50 on Sunday. Rabbi Asher Knight to head a congregation later this year. Getty ImagOK, so there’s no Marv Levy (Bills coach), Alan (now “Shlomo”) Vinegrad (Cowboys offensive lineman), or Robert Kraft (Patriots owner).
But the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers will play Super Bowl 50 on Sunday at a “Jewish” stadium.
Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., near San Francisco, is the only arena with a Jewish name that hosts teams of the four major sports — football, baseball, hockey and basketball.
The 68,500-seat home of the San Francisco 49ers, it is named for Levi Strauss, the founder of the company that makes the ubiquitous blue jeans bearing his name. A native of Germany, Strauss came to the States at 18, settled in New York, then Louisville, then became West Coast representative of his family’s dry goods business. He moved to San Francisco at the height of the California Gold Rush.
That’s where he found his fame and made his fortune, partnering in 1853 with a customer who had designed riveted denim pants.
A lifelong bachelor, Strauss died in 1902, leaving his fortune of about $6 million (more than $150 million in today’s dollars) to several charities, including the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum.
The fact that an NFL arena with a Jewish name merits no comment in wider society is not surprising, according to Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University; in northern California, Levi’s is a familiar name, and nationally it’s a well-known brand.
“Jews were pioneering citizens of San Francisco and have long been respected there,” Sarna told The Jewish Week in an email interview. “Many of the distinguished merchants and bankers of the great 19th-century city had Jewish names. Levi’s, pronounced LEE-vi rather than the more traditional LAY-vee, does not strike locals as particularly Jewish.”
“Nationally, of course, this disinterest is just more evidence that Jews are more and more at home in America,” he said.
And speaking of being at home in America, a native of Denver and lifelong Broncos fan, Rabbi Asher Knight of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, thought he was on safe ground, sports-wise, when he was negotiating recently to become senior rabbi of Temple Beth El in Charlotte. While the Panthers seemed Super Bowl-bound, his Broncos, suffering through a midseason slump, did not (QB Peyton Manning was injured, then benched).
Rabbi Knight’s loyalty to the Broncos would remain untested, he thought. “I can be perfectly comfortable in my Broncos fandom.”
Then both teams made it to the big game.
So who’s the rabbi rooting for? He’s heard that question in the last fortnight from old friends in Denver, from congregants in Dallas, from “future congregants” in Charlotte. Even from pro-Panther board members when he was interviewing for the job at Temple Beth El.
His answer, in all cases: Denver.
“I have remained a Broncos fan, I still watch the team,” Rabbi Knight, 37, said in a telephone interview this week. “I didn’t feel a sense of conflict. I’m a Broncos fan through and through.”
The game also has led to a friendly wager between Denver’s Temple Emanu-El, the congregation where he grew up, and Charlotte’s Temple Beth El, which he will join this summer.
They’re both raising money for a pair of local charities, two-thirds of the combined totals to go to the one in the city whose team wins on Sunday, the rest to the losing side. The “United in Orange” (Denver’s color) campaign had reached $2,400 this week, with a goal of $3,600, said Rabbi Knight, who made a contribution to the collective cause but does not bet on games.
Rabbi Knight said his loyalty will remain unwavering once he moves to Charlotte. “But,” he said, “if my children grow up as Panthers fans, I’ll be perfectly happy.”
steve@jewishweek.org---------------------
Theater
No Direction Home: ‘Fiddler’s’ Lessons
Thane Rosenbaum
Special To The Jewish Week
Leaving Anatevka: A scene from the new production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Joan Marcus
“Hamilton” may be the hottest ticket in town, with its fusion of hip-hop patriotism and a colorful cast of homeboys for Founding Fathers, but not far behind in ticket sales and sentimental attachments to equally revolutionary times is the revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Yes, that “Fiddler on the Roof,” the one from your grandmother’s youth. In 1964, when it began its long Broadway run that received nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical, “Fiddler” was a nostalgic recalling of shtetl life in the Pale of Settlement and in Eastern Europe — diaspora Judaism at its most insular and desperate. It was where the grandmothers of today’s Jewish grandmothers first began their journeys to America.
The musical has since spawned four Broadway revivals before this one (and hundreds of regional productions around the world). For over 50 years the Great White Way has hosted a “Fiddler on the Roof” in one of its palatial theaters, where the fiddlers stay in orchestra pits and where the house is filled with very rich men (and women) — the kind that Tevye, the musical’s put-upon protagonist, could never have become in Russia, or nearly anywhere else.
This superb new production, playing at the Broadway Theatre and starring Danny Burstein as Tevye, is a refreshing return to the hardscrabble villages that once represented the primary home for Jews. And it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. With tiny Israel generating both global enmity and envy, and Jews widely regarded as members in good standing of the American mainstream — far from the steerage stench of the Lower East Side — “Fiddler” is probably a shock to many for whom Jews are Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman — not Sholem Aleichem.
Before “Fiddler,” the pre-American lives of Jews, not to mention their traditions, was very much a mystery. And that’s why in addition to being a musical, it was also a tutorial on why the Chosen People were forced to immigrate to the Goldene Medina in the first place.
Auschwitz had only been liberated less than two decades before “Fiddler’s” opening night. The moral rupture of the Holocaust was not yet a cultural touchstone. Aside from a sugarcoated Anne Frank, the genocide of the Jews was scarcely uttered in polite conversation. Jews seeking safe havens both before and after the Holocaust received far less global attention than the Syrian refugee crisis of today.
Depictions of Jews in popular culture were rare sightings, too. The iconic film, “Casablanca,” amazingly never uttered the word “Jew.” “Bridget Loves Bernie,” a highly rated TV sitcom from the early 1970s about an interfaith marriage, was taken off the air after only one season. Ironically, this programming decision was consistent with the penultimate storyline of “Fiddler.” Throughout the play Tevye bends to the marital wishes of his daughters. He accepts change in the guise of progress, and his own paralysis. Ultimately, everything, including his land, is taken away. Having a daughter marry a gentile is one tradition, however, where Tevye insisted on holding his ground.
Today intermarriage is as much a fixture of modern life as is divorce, and dancing the hora on a Broadway stage is hardly as exotic as it must have seemed in 1964. (The choreography in this production of “Fiddler” is especially enchanting.) But many people in the audience who have attended Passover seders, or spun a dreidel on Chanukah, might not realize, or have by now forgotten, that Jewish-Americans were once immigrants themselves.
“Fiddler on the Roof” once introduced theatergoers to the old customs and faraway haunts of an upwardly mobile religious minority. The fictional Anatevka was where Jewish immigrants originally came from, and the end of the play, with its mass caravan of pushcarts, explained why they had to leave. The original production allowed the shtetl of the mind to steady the sentimental heart. Before “Fiddler,” Jewish origins, and their “Traditions,” were neither well known nor ever displayed.
Today, however, those who see “Fiddler,” including Jews, will regard the shtetl — sentimentalized and sanitized though it may be — as positively prehistoric. Why are Jews dressed that way? Why is dancing with Cossacks such a risqué endeavor? Jews are supposed to be investment bankers, not impoverished milkmen.
Jewish-Americans, nowadays, are a people undeserving of a hyphen. In the murky multicultural world of identity politics, Jews are regarded as privileged wealthy white people. “Jewish Lives Matter” will not appear on any T-shirt. The solidly upper middle class — and the billionaires who founded Google and Facebook — surely have no claims on victimhood. Besides, Jews are associated with Israel, which many people believe is a colonialist country makes refugees rather than absorbs them.
With aliyah on the rise all throughout Europe, the wearing of Jewish symbols more forbidden than shellfish, and Jewry fearing for its lives as if the Czar were back in town, “Fiddler” recalls an era, before the existence of Israel, when Jews had no homeland, were unwelcome elsewhere, and yet were determined to maintain their traditions despite the challenges of modernity and the melting pot.
At a time when assimilation dominates the Pew study, and Jewish college students are being asked to prove that they are not sinister agents of a colonial power, it’s nice to be reminded of a time when Jews were very much an immigrant group, with a unique immigration story — and not just some nouveau strain of America’s WASP aristocracy.[Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and cultural critic, is the author, most recently, of “How Sweet It Is!”]---------------------
New York
JTS Plans Major Redesign Of Its Campus
Nearly $100 million land deal to pave way for new library, dorms.
Staff Report
“Bold investment” in future: The entrance to JTS’ Morningside Heights campus. Flickr via JTAMaking good on expansion plans announced last year, the Jewish Theological Seminary has completed a $96 million deal to sell a portion of its Morningside Heights campus and build a state-of-the-art library, performance center, residence hall and conference facilities.
“This signifies that JTS, as a training ground for Jewish leadership, can reimagine our campus as we boldly invest in our future,” Chancellor Arnold Eisen told The Jewish Week. He said the reinvestment in the campus would better serve the needs of the students at the Conservative seminary as well as allow for “deeper collaboration with our neighbors, our city, and with individuals and communities around the world.”
The sale of a plot of land on the eastern edge of the campus, which includes the current library and an off-campus residence hall, to Savanna, a local real estate investment and development firm, will allow JTS to fund the ambitious plan.
The centerpiece of the project is the library, which will house a world-class Judaica collection including rare books and sacred scrolls that will not only be available to scholars but will also be on public display.
In addition, through international conferences, advanced technology and a focus on the arts, the 30-year-old institution intends to broaden the reach of the seminary.
“We want to bring people to JTS and bring JTS to the world,” Eisen said. “In embarking on this mission we can better prepare leaders for the American Jewish community.”
JTS has engaged architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, who have designed projects at Lincoln Center, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
Eisen and Marc Gary, executive vice chancellor, emphasized that for more than a year, students, faculty and lay leaders have been involved in plans for the new project. The new dormitory will house about 150 students in single and double rooms.
JTS has about 500 full-time students, 1,700 adult learners, hundreds of alumni participating in continuing education programs, and tens of thousands of people taking part in their online learning programs, according to a school official.
During construction, which calls for the demolition of the current library, built in the 1970s, up to 12,000 books will be housed on the seventh floor of the school’s main building. The rare book collection will be kept off-site but retrievable within a day.
Demolition will occur over the summer and early fall, with construction following. The project is scheduled for completion in time for the 2019 fall semester.
Savanna plans to build a 250,000-square-foot residential building at 122nd Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
---------------------
New York
Fake NY Times ‘Supplement’ Trashes Israel
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Ruse headlines: The phony “supplement” was a mix of fact and fiction but the message was consistently anti-Israel.No, Hillary Clinton has not quit her race for president to advocate for Palestinian rights. Sen. Chuck Schumer is not calling for the end of U.S. aid to Israel. And The New York Times is not searching for a new publisher to end its biased, pro-Israel reporting.
A sophisticated, fake four-page supplement to The New York Times featuring those “stories” and others promoting the Palestinian cause and denigrating Israel was distributed in Manhattan on Tuesday, and The New York Times is not laughing.
The supplement, which includes phony anti-Israel ads, makes no mention of a sponsoring group. And while one of several young women distributing the propaganda near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Tuesday morning told this reporter, when asked, that “this is a supplement of The New York Times,” the paper of record had nothing to do with it.
“We’re protective of our brand and other intellectual property and object to this group (or any group’s) attempt to cloak their political views under the banner of The New York Times,” according to a statement from Eileen Murphy, senior vice president of communications at the paper. “We believe strongly that those advocating for political positions are best served by speaking openly, in their own voice.”
The handout featured a box above The Times logo that read, “Rethinking Our 2015 Coverage On Israel-Palestine – A Supplement.” In the upper left-hand corner was a spoof of The Times motto, reading “All The News We Didn’t Print.”
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called the mock issue “deceptive” and welcomed the Times’ statement objecting to the effort to fool the public.
“The diatribe, published anonymously, conveys false facts and themes consistent with anti-Israel advocates and supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,” he said.
Clearly, the publication was a costly and carefully orchestrated project, which is almost identical in appearance to the real thing. Copies were delivered to some Manhattan residential buildings where they were included, unintentionally, with the day’s copy of the “real” Times at the front door of tenants’ apartments. There was also a digital version online.
Shahar Azani, executive director of StandWithUs Northeast, commenting on the “supplement,” noted that “the U.S.-Israel alliance is strong and founded on shared values and strategic interests. Any attempt to subvert it is doomed to fail.” He added that “spreading lies and demonizing Israel will not bring peace to both parties,” which will only come through “direct dialogue and education. It is a shame there are those who chose to waste paper and contaminate the environment with unwarranted garbage.”
If nothing else, a read through the “supplement,” with its “Editorial” calling for an end to the distortions in The Times’ coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, may convince some pro-Israel readers that not everyone sees the paper’s Mideast coverage as slanted against the Jewish state.
Gary@jewishweek.org---------------------
Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
---------------------
Post-Iowa, 5 Questions For Jewish Voters
JTA
New York
Fake NY Times ‘Supplement’ Trashes Israel
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Ruse headlines: The phony “supplement” was a mix of fact and fiction but the message was consistently anti-Israel.No, Hillary Clinton has not quit her race for president to advocate for Palestinian rights. Sen. Chuck Schumer is not calling for the end of U.S. aid to Israel. And The New York Times is not searching for a new publisher to end its biased, pro-Israel reporting.
A sophisticated, fake four-page supplement to The New York Times featuring those “stories” and others promoting the Palestinian cause and denigrating Israel was distributed in Manhattan on Tuesday, and The New York Times is not laughing.
The supplement, which includes phony anti-Israel ads, makes no mention of a sponsoring group. And while one of several young women distributing the propaganda near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Tuesday morning told this reporter, when asked, that “this is a supplement of The New York Times,” the paper of record had nothing to do with it.
“We’re protective of our brand and other intellectual property and object to this group (or any group’s) attempt to cloak their political views under the banner of The New York Times,” according to a statement from Eileen Murphy, senior vice president of communications at the paper. “We believe strongly that those advocating for political positions are best served by speaking openly, in their own voice.”
The handout featured a box above The Times logo that read, “Rethinking Our 2015 Coverage On Israel-Palestine – A Supplement.” In the upper left-hand corner was a spoof of The Times motto, reading “All The News We Didn’t Print.”
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called the mock issue “deceptive” and welcomed the Times’ statement objecting to the effort to fool the public.
“The diatribe, published anonymously, conveys false facts and themes consistent with anti-Israel advocates and supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,” he said.
Clearly, the publication was a costly and carefully orchestrated project, which is almost identical in appearance to the real thing. Copies were delivered to some Manhattan residential buildings where they were included, unintentionally, with the day’s copy of the “real” Times at the front door of tenants’ apartments. There was also a digital version online.
Shahar Azani, executive director of StandWithUs Northeast, commenting on the “supplement,” noted that “the U.S.-Israel alliance is strong and founded on shared values and strategic interests. Any attempt to subvert it is doomed to fail.” He added that “spreading lies and demonizing Israel will not bring peace to both parties,” which will only come through “direct dialogue and education. It is a shame there are those who chose to waste paper and contaminate the environment with unwarranted garbage.”
If nothing else, a read through the “supplement,” with its “Editorial” calling for an end to the distortions in The Times’ coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, may convince some pro-Israel readers that not everyone sees the paper’s Mideast coverage as slanted against the Jewish state.
Gary@jewishweek.org---------------------
Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
---------------------
Post-Iowa, 5 Questions For Jewish Voters
JTA
National
Looking to New Hampshire, and beyond.
National
Post-Iowa, 5 Questions For Jewish Voters
Looking to New Hampshire, and beyond.
JTA
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton participating in a town hall forum last week at Drake University in Des MoinesThe Iowa caucuses are over — and the first real test of the presidential candidates’ viability gave us more questions than answers.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won the Republican caucus on Monday night, relegating Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire, to second place. Both Trump and Cruz ran insurgent anti-establishment campaigns. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made a strong showing for third place, well ahead of the other “establishment” candidates.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) effectively tied for first.
The New Hampshire primary is on Feb. 9, with Nevada and South Carolina later this month.
By March 2, the day after Super Tuesday, when 14 states and a territory select favored candidates, we should have some answers — like who among the 11 GOP candidates is serious, how much stamina Sanders has and what the general election might look like on Nov. 8.
In the meantime, here are some of the known unknowns for the Jewish and Middle East obsessed:
1. Will Jeb’s exclamation point turn into a question mark?
A year ago Jeb Bush, the former Republican governor of Florida, was the GOP’s favored son, literally and figuratively, despite his convoluted attempts to distant himself from his father and his brother, including dropping “Bush” from his logo and replacing it with an exclamation point.
Bush attracted the lion’s share of the party’s traditional fundraisers, including Jewish funders like Fred Zeidman of Texas, Mel Sembler of Florida and Sam Fox of Missouri. They raised over $100 million toward an extension of the Bush dynasty.
Trump, who went hard at Bush from the outset, has more or less killed that dream. Bush scored 3 percent in Iowa, and before the Iowa vote was polling at 6 percent in New Hampshire. His backers have been loyal until now, but it may be time for a reality check. Rubio — once Bush’s protégé, although they have clashed during the campaign — is hoping to reap the establishment dividends of a Bush departure.
2. Is Donald Trump fired?
Before the Iowa vote, the reality TV star — who relegated dozens of would-be apprentices to the unemployment line — was well ahead in the New Hampshire race and nationally. But he has staked his candidacy on being a winner and decreed his victory in Iowa a foregone conclusion. On Monday night, he delivered an uncharacteristically subdued concession speech, promising to win in New Hampshire and consider buying a farm in Iowa.
Plenty of Jewish Republicans wouldn’t mind seeing Trump with a hoe. He has alienated a broad cross-section of the community, offending the socially moderate with his broadsides against Muslims and Hispanics, while unnerving conservatives with his dithering over whether all of Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and questioning of Israel’s commitment to making peace.
3. “Cruz and the Neocons”: A new hit band?
Cruz has been second to none in his Israel boosterism; of the four victory speeches Monday night, only his mentioned the country.
“If you want a candidate who will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel, then support a candidate who has led the fight over and over again to stand by our friend and ally, the nation of Israel,” he said.
But Cruz has also faulted neoconservatives for leading the country into too many wars, among them the signature foreign policy event of George W. Bush’s presidency, the Iraq War. The Venn diagram overlap between Jewish Republicans and neoconservatives is substantial. Cruz’s broadsides against that ideology, coupled with attacks on “New York values,” have made some Jewish Republicans wary of whether the Texan is using code to appeal to the less salutary values in the American conservative heartland.
Now that he has emerged as a front-runner, does Cruz reach out to the establishment’s Jewish wing of the party and make nice?
4. What will the Adelsons do?
Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, pro-Israel powerhouse and Republican kingmaker has taken to joking in recent weeks about his bickering with his physician wife, Miriam, over Cruz and Rubio. She favors the former, he the latter. On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, it was revealed that the couple had maxed out direct donations to Cruz’s campaign, each anteing up $2,700.
It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve made up their minds. The Adelsons gave similar amounts last year to the campaign of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), but thus far have refrained from spending the tens of millions to fund political action committees not directly affiliated with candidates. The couple have made known to associates that they do not want to repeat what they now feel was a mistake in 2012 — giving millions to groups supporting Newt Gingrich, only to wound the ultimate nominee, Mitt Romney, who lost to Obama in the general election.
With Cruz and Rubio still viable, don’t expect an Adelson determination just yet. One thing the couple will be watching is whether Rubio improves his ground game, the network of volunteers and staff necessary to get out the vote state by state. Reporting has suggested that he was surprisingly weak in this area in Iowa.
5. Does Bernie do foreign policy?
In his speeches, Sanders manages to turn typically soporific economic analysis — income inequality, banks, health care — into a rousing call to action.
Not so on foreign policy, where he has allowed himself to be put on the defensive by Clinton, the former secretary of state and first lady, who has framed Sanders as naive and inexperienced — with some success.
It doesn’t help that in one debate, Sanders called for “normalization” of ties with Iran and then seemed to backtrack, or that he has repeatedly called Jordan’s King Abdullah, a monarch not especially thrilled with the democratic process, one of his heroes.
Sanders has focused on the opposing votes he and Clinton cast 14 years ago on the Iraq War: He voted against when he was in the U.S. House of Representatives, she voted for when she was a New York senator.
If Sanders hopes to peel away foreign policy-focused voters from Clinton, he will need to flesh out his plans for the Middle East in particular, where he has said he agrees with Obama and Clinton that America needs to maintain leadership. ---------------------
The Survivor Rocker
Ted Merwin
Looking to New Hampshire, and beyond.
National
Post-Iowa, 5 Questions For Jewish Voters
Looking to New Hampshire, and beyond.
JTA
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton participating in a town hall forum last week at Drake University in Des MoinesThe Iowa caucuses are over — and the first real test of the presidential candidates’ viability gave us more questions than answers.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won the Republican caucus on Monday night, relegating Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire, to second place. Both Trump and Cruz ran insurgent anti-establishment campaigns. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made a strong showing for third place, well ahead of the other “establishment” candidates.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) effectively tied for first.
The New Hampshire primary is on Feb. 9, with Nevada and South Carolina later this month.
By March 2, the day after Super Tuesday, when 14 states and a territory select favored candidates, we should have some answers — like who among the 11 GOP candidates is serious, how much stamina Sanders has and what the general election might look like on Nov. 8.
In the meantime, here are some of the known unknowns for the Jewish and Middle East obsessed:
1. Will Jeb’s exclamation point turn into a question mark?
A year ago Jeb Bush, the former Republican governor of Florida, was the GOP’s favored son, literally and figuratively, despite his convoluted attempts to distant himself from his father and his brother, including dropping “Bush” from his logo and replacing it with an exclamation point.
Bush attracted the lion’s share of the party’s traditional fundraisers, including Jewish funders like Fred Zeidman of Texas, Mel Sembler of Florida and Sam Fox of Missouri. They raised over $100 million toward an extension of the Bush dynasty.
Trump, who went hard at Bush from the outset, has more or less killed that dream. Bush scored 3 percent in Iowa, and before the Iowa vote was polling at 6 percent in New Hampshire. His backers have been loyal until now, but it may be time for a reality check. Rubio — once Bush’s protégé, although they have clashed during the campaign — is hoping to reap the establishment dividends of a Bush departure.
2. Is Donald Trump fired?
Before the Iowa vote, the reality TV star — who relegated dozens of would-be apprentices to the unemployment line — was well ahead in the New Hampshire race and nationally. But he has staked his candidacy on being a winner and decreed his victory in Iowa a foregone conclusion. On Monday night, he delivered an uncharacteristically subdued concession speech, promising to win in New Hampshire and consider buying a farm in Iowa.
Plenty of Jewish Republicans wouldn’t mind seeing Trump with a hoe. He has alienated a broad cross-section of the community, offending the socially moderate with his broadsides against Muslims and Hispanics, while unnerving conservatives with his dithering over whether all of Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and questioning of Israel’s commitment to making peace.
3. “Cruz and the Neocons”: A new hit band?
Cruz has been second to none in his Israel boosterism; of the four victory speeches Monday night, only his mentioned the country.
“If you want a candidate who will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel, then support a candidate who has led the fight over and over again to stand by our friend and ally, the nation of Israel,” he said.
But Cruz has also faulted neoconservatives for leading the country into too many wars, among them the signature foreign policy event of George W. Bush’s presidency, the Iraq War. The Venn diagram overlap between Jewish Republicans and neoconservatives is substantial. Cruz’s broadsides against that ideology, coupled with attacks on “New York values,” have made some Jewish Republicans wary of whether the Texan is using code to appeal to the less salutary values in the American conservative heartland.
Now that he has emerged as a front-runner, does Cruz reach out to the establishment’s Jewish wing of the party and make nice?
4. What will the Adelsons do?
Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, pro-Israel powerhouse and Republican kingmaker has taken to joking in recent weeks about his bickering with his physician wife, Miriam, over Cruz and Rubio. She favors the former, he the latter. On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, it was revealed that the couple had maxed out direct donations to Cruz’s campaign, each anteing up $2,700.
It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve made up their minds. The Adelsons gave similar amounts last year to the campaign of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), but thus far have refrained from spending the tens of millions to fund political action committees not directly affiliated with candidates. The couple have made known to associates that they do not want to repeat what they now feel was a mistake in 2012 — giving millions to groups supporting Newt Gingrich, only to wound the ultimate nominee, Mitt Romney, who lost to Obama in the general election.
With Cruz and Rubio still viable, don’t expect an Adelson determination just yet. One thing the couple will be watching is whether Rubio improves his ground game, the network of volunteers and staff necessary to get out the vote state by state. Reporting has suggested that he was surprisingly weak in this area in Iowa.
5. Does Bernie do foreign policy?
In his speeches, Sanders manages to turn typically soporific economic analysis — income inequality, banks, health care — into a rousing call to action.
Not so on foreign policy, where he has allowed himself to be put on the defensive by Clinton, the former secretary of state and first lady, who has framed Sanders as naive and inexperienced — with some success.
It doesn’t help that in one debate, Sanders called for “normalization” of ties with Iran and then seemed to backtrack, or that he has repeatedly called Jordan’s King Abdullah, a monarch not especially thrilled with the democratic process, one of his heroes.
Sanders has focused on the opposing votes he and Clinton cast 14 years ago on the Iraq War: He voted against when he was in the U.S. House of Representatives, she voted for when she was a New York senator.
If Sanders hopes to peel away foreign policy-focused voters from Clinton, he will need to flesh out his plans for the Middle East in particular, where he has said he agrees with Obama and Clinton that America needs to maintain leadership. ---------------------
The Survivor Rocker
Ted Merwin
Theater
From Shoah-era Poland to Rivington Street, 'Rock and Roll Refugee' tells the little-known story of Genya Ravan.
Theater
The Survivor Rocker
From Shoah-era Poland to Rivington Street, ‘Rock and Roll Refugee’ tells the little-known story of Genya Ravan.
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Scene from “Rock and Roll Refugee,” which is based on Ravan’s tell-all memoir from 2004. Russ Rowlands
Before the appearances on television and radio, the European tour with the Rolling Stones, the sexual abuse, the failed marriage, the heartbreak of alcohol and drug addiction — before all the notoriety of a career in rock and roll, she was a frightened little Polish Jewish girl, Genyusha Zelkovicz, escaping from the Nazis and coming to New York with her parents and older sister.
Little could anyone have guessed that someday she would reinvent herself as Genya Ravan (pronounced “raven”) and become a seminal figure in the history of rock and roll. Blending punk rock and power pop, Ravan became the lead singer of Goldie & the Gingerbreads (the first all-girl rock band in history), and then the first female music producer to be signed by a major label. And then, battling first substance abuse and then lung cancer, falling out of the limelight into near obscurity.
And now her star may rise again with “Rock and Roll Refugee,” a musical play about Ravan’s remarkable life and career, directed by Chris Henry and based on Ravan’s tell-all 2004 autobiography, “Lollipop Lounge: Memoirs of a Rock and Roll Refugee” (Billboard Books, 2004). Ravan’s character (played by Dee Roscioli as a girl and Katrina Rose Dideriksen as an adult) recollects her immigration to the United States, her singing stardom and her subsequent work producing The Dead Boys, Ronnie Spector, and other artists. The play ends with “202 Rivington Street,” a song about Ravan’s childhood on the Lower East Side.
“Rock and Roll Refugee” follows other recent biographical musicals about Jewish songwriters, including the still-running, hit Broadway show, “Beautiful,” featuring songs by Carole King, and “Piece of My Heart,” the 2014 Off-Broadway show about the 1960s pop music pioneer Bert Berns.
By all accounts, Ravan, 75, has had a remarkable career; at her peak, she was described as virtually a force of nature. As music critic John Gabree put it in “Our Lady of the Sorrows,” a 1978 profile of Ravan in New York magazine, “On a stage she is a fire that miraculously does not consume itself, one of the few women performers — Tina Turner was one, Janis Joplin is another — who can give the kind of high-energy show we expect from the best male rockers.” One can see this fieriness enacted in the 2013 film “CBGB,” starring the late Alan Rickman as the owner of the legendary punk music club; TV star Stana Katic plays Ravan.
In an interview, Ravan told The Jewish Week that “You name it, I’ve survived it all. Andrew Loog Oldham [the manager of the Rolling Stones] called me a ‘female Rocky.’” But she insisted that she “wouldn’t have made it so far if I weren’t Jewish. I love being Jewish more and more each day.”
Her father’s partner in his candy store, an African-American man whom she called Uncle Louie (DeAngelo M. Kearns in the play) came every Friday night to Shabbat dinner in their home on the Lower East Side. “He brought me my first record player,” she recalled. “And then I glued my ear to the radio to listen to Ornette Coleman,” the great saxophonist who reinvented jazz in the late 1950s.
Her success stemmed, she said, from an indomitable will to succeed. “Some radio stations said that this hard rock and roll was too hard for a chick to do. But before there was a Pat Benatar, I paved the road.” Sometimes it’s better to be a follower, but it’s not in my nature. I redefined what a woman rocker could be.”
Henry had never heard of Ravan when the singer approached her four years ago to write and direct the play. But Henry found her story compelling, partly because Henry, who was raised in a nominally Christian family in rural Maine, found out less than a decade ago that her biological parents were Jewish. Ravan’s story of taking her Jewish background and transmuting it into art, led Henry to ponder the loss of her own Jewish roots; giving her up for adoption was, she said, a “primal wound that destroyed my family and led my grandmother to have a nervous breakdown.” Similarly, Ravan struggled mightily to transcend a traumatic childhood, which continued even after her arrival in New York, where she ended up as doing topless modeling as a teenager; her most recent album, released in 2013, is entitled “Cheesecake Girl.”
The story of this cheeky, phenomenally talented musician, Henry said, needs to be told. “Without Ravan, there would be no Madonna and no Lady Gaga,” she insisted. “There are a core group of people who know her music and a lot of people who don’t; it’s time for her music to be heard again.”
Scott Benarde interviewed Ravan for his book, “Stars of David: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Jewish Stories” (Brandeis, 2003). “Being a Holocaust survivor has set the tone for everything else in her life,” he told The Jewish Week. Many of the singers he wrote about were the children of survivors. “A lot of them had really weird childhoods,” he said. “Their parents were so paranoid and afraid of every little thing.” Ravan, he noted, was a good example. “She’s a bulldog who just went out there with nothing to lose.” But her Jewishness became even more important to her after she survived cancer. “She told me that she considers every song to be a prayer.”
That Ravan did not become better known, he said, could be due to a number of factors. Goldie & the Gingerbreads hit it bigger in Europe, where they performed and appeared on TV, than in the United States. Then again, Ravan “didn’t care about fame,” Benarde observed, “but only about doing the work.” Finally, “the PR machine wasn’t as well-oiled as it is now. And she kept changing her name from her original name to her stage name and back again. If you weren’t a hard-core fan, then you didn’t necessarily know that it was the same person.”
“Rock and Roll Refugee” runs through Feb. 16 at Royal Family Productions, 145 W. 46th St. The schedule is irregular; for information and tickets, $18, call OvationTix at ---------------------
---------------------
HEALTHCARE
Supplement
To The Jewish Week
Healthcare February 2016
Terrorism-related stress doesn’t only affect mental health. The acclaimed kosher restaurateur turns to nutritious ‘meals without food.’
Hadassah neurologist discusses ‘encouraging’ study.
Inside This Special Section:
---------------------
Days Of The Locust: Adventures In Kosher Food
Hilary Danailova
From Shoah-era Poland to Rivington Street, 'Rock and Roll Refugee' tells the little-known story of Genya Ravan.
Theater
The Survivor Rocker
From Shoah-era Poland to Rivington Street, ‘Rock and Roll Refugee’ tells the little-known story of Genya Ravan.
Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week
Scene from “Rock and Roll Refugee,” which is based on Ravan’s tell-all memoir from 2004. Russ Rowlands
Before the appearances on television and radio, the European tour with the Rolling Stones, the sexual abuse, the failed marriage, the heartbreak of alcohol and drug addiction — before all the notoriety of a career in rock and roll, she was a frightened little Polish Jewish girl, Genyusha Zelkovicz, escaping from the Nazis and coming to New York with her parents and older sister.
Little could anyone have guessed that someday she would reinvent herself as Genya Ravan (pronounced “raven”) and become a seminal figure in the history of rock and roll. Blending punk rock and power pop, Ravan became the lead singer of Goldie & the Gingerbreads (the first all-girl rock band in history), and then the first female music producer to be signed by a major label. And then, battling first substance abuse and then lung cancer, falling out of the limelight into near obscurity.
And now her star may rise again with “Rock and Roll Refugee,” a musical play about Ravan’s remarkable life and career, directed by Chris Henry and based on Ravan’s tell-all 2004 autobiography, “Lollipop Lounge: Memoirs of a Rock and Roll Refugee” (Billboard Books, 2004). Ravan’s character (played by Dee Roscioli as a girl and Katrina Rose Dideriksen as an adult) recollects her immigration to the United States, her singing stardom and her subsequent work producing The Dead Boys, Ronnie Spector, and other artists. The play ends with “202 Rivington Street,” a song about Ravan’s childhood on the Lower East Side.
“Rock and Roll Refugee” follows other recent biographical musicals about Jewish songwriters, including the still-running, hit Broadway show, “Beautiful,” featuring songs by Carole King, and “Piece of My Heart,” the 2014 Off-Broadway show about the 1960s pop music pioneer Bert Berns.
By all accounts, Ravan, 75, has had a remarkable career; at her peak, she was described as virtually a force of nature. As music critic John Gabree put it in “Our Lady of the Sorrows,” a 1978 profile of Ravan in New York magazine, “On a stage she is a fire that miraculously does not consume itself, one of the few women performers — Tina Turner was one, Janis Joplin is another — who can give the kind of high-energy show we expect from the best male rockers.” One can see this fieriness enacted in the 2013 film “CBGB,” starring the late Alan Rickman as the owner of the legendary punk music club; TV star Stana Katic plays Ravan.
In an interview, Ravan told The Jewish Week that “You name it, I’ve survived it all. Andrew Loog Oldham [the manager of the Rolling Stones] called me a ‘female Rocky.’” But she insisted that she “wouldn’t have made it so far if I weren’t Jewish. I love being Jewish more and more each day.”
Her father’s partner in his candy store, an African-American man whom she called Uncle Louie (DeAngelo M. Kearns in the play) came every Friday night to Shabbat dinner in their home on the Lower East Side. “He brought me my first record player,” she recalled. “And then I glued my ear to the radio to listen to Ornette Coleman,” the great saxophonist who reinvented jazz in the late 1950s.
Her success stemmed, she said, from an indomitable will to succeed. “Some radio stations said that this hard rock and roll was too hard for a chick to do. But before there was a Pat Benatar, I paved the road.” Sometimes it’s better to be a follower, but it’s not in my nature. I redefined what a woman rocker could be.”
Henry had never heard of Ravan when the singer approached her four years ago to write and direct the play. But Henry found her story compelling, partly because Henry, who was raised in a nominally Christian family in rural Maine, found out less than a decade ago that her biological parents were Jewish. Ravan’s story of taking her Jewish background and transmuting it into art, led Henry to ponder the loss of her own Jewish roots; giving her up for adoption was, she said, a “primal wound that destroyed my family and led my grandmother to have a nervous breakdown.” Similarly, Ravan struggled mightily to transcend a traumatic childhood, which continued even after her arrival in New York, where she ended up as doing topless modeling as a teenager; her most recent album, released in 2013, is entitled “Cheesecake Girl.”
The story of this cheeky, phenomenally talented musician, Henry said, needs to be told. “Without Ravan, there would be no Madonna and no Lady Gaga,” she insisted. “There are a core group of people who know her music and a lot of people who don’t; it’s time for her music to be heard again.”
Scott Benarde interviewed Ravan for his book, “Stars of David: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Jewish Stories” (Brandeis, 2003). “Being a Holocaust survivor has set the tone for everything else in her life,” he told The Jewish Week. Many of the singers he wrote about were the children of survivors. “A lot of them had really weird childhoods,” he said. “Their parents were so paranoid and afraid of every little thing.” Ravan, he noted, was a good example. “She’s a bulldog who just went out there with nothing to lose.” But her Jewishness became even more important to her after she survived cancer. “She told me that she considers every song to be a prayer.”
That Ravan did not become better known, he said, could be due to a number of factors. Goldie & the Gingerbreads hit it bigger in Europe, where they performed and appeared on TV, than in the United States. Then again, Ravan “didn’t care about fame,” Benarde observed, “but only about doing the work.” Finally, “the PR machine wasn’t as well-oiled as it is now. And she kept changing her name from her original name to her stage name and back again. If you weren’t a hard-core fan, then you didn’t necessarily know that it was the same person.”
“Rock and Roll Refugee” runs through Feb. 16 at Royal Family Productions, 145 W. 46th St. The schedule is irregular; for information and tickets, $18, call OvationTix at ---------------------
---------------------
HEALTHCARE
Supplement
To The Jewish Week
Healthcare February 2016
Terrorism-related stress doesn’t only affect mental health. The acclaimed kosher restaurateur turns to nutritious ‘meals without food.’
Hadassah neurologist discusses ‘encouraging’ study.
Inside This Special Section:
---------------------
Days Of The Locust: Adventures In Kosher Food
Hilary Danailova
Travel
Travel
Days Of The Locust: Adventures In Kosher Food
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
The “two Aris” in an underground grotto matzah-baking facility in Ptigliano, Italy. Courtesy of Ari Greenspan
Note: This is the second of two stories on kosher travel.
Over three decades of globetrotting, Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky and Dr. Ari Greenspan have cultivated a career as kosher adventurers — and accidental entomologists.
Their reputation was definitively cemented a few years back when a locust plague hit Cyprus, providing a rare opportunity for the two scholars to witness a phenomenon usually confined to the Haggadah.
“We had never seen a real plague, and this was our opportunity,” said Greenspan, a Jerusalem-based dentist. “So we got on a plane right away. In 10 minutes I identified the species.”
It just so happened that because this locust is a kosher North African delicacy, it was the only species they were familiar with. But the Cypriots, bowled over by the duo’s esoteric knowledge, assumed they were in the presence of renowned entomologists. “We were picked up by a team of agronomists and followed around by news cameras everywhere,” recalled Greenspan with a chuckle. “They thought we were these big experts.”
The “two Aris” — as they are known to readers of their chronicles in Mishpacha and other publications — are indeed experts, on kosher travel if not precisely insect-based cuisine, having foraged for Jewish life together in places as diverse as Namibia and Uzbekistan, Iraq and Uganda. I caught up with the pair recently over Skype from their homes in Israel, curious as to how they’ve maintained kashrut in places without plumbing.
Their most eye-opening discovery: Eating kosher can actually be easier in the developing world. Foods are often simple, like fried bananas in India or camel’s milk in Djibouti. “There’s nothing going into it,” explained Greenspan.
Recently modernized countries can also be kosher-friendly. “In Bahrain, it was one of the easiest places to keep kosher, because nothing was locally produced,” explained the dentist, who found British-made matzah and kosher staples like Coca-Cola.
“You can live, by the way, for two weeks on bananas and Coke,” added the rabbi knowingly.
Their diet is doubtless spicier this week: The pair is currently in India leading their first-ever mission for the Orthodox Union, a two-week “halachic adventure” through India’s Jewish communities — from Mumbai’s Baghdadi Jews to the Bnei Menashe in the north and a southern enclave of ex-Christians eager to become Jews.
India holds enduring fascination for the pair, though Rabbi Zivotofsky is convinced his partner’s favorite country is Ethiopia: “He’s been there at least 10 times, five by himself, and every time he comes back, he swears: ‘I’m never going there again.’”
Rabbi Zivotofsky prefers the Tunisian Jewish community of Djerba, though not necessarily for the food: “They have a custom that’s observed nowhere else in the Jewish world” — a ceremonial feast of raw, oiled, fermented dough. Did it taste good? “Not to us, but they seemed to like it,” he said.
Another memorable feast: In the pampas of Uruguay, the pair joined Jewish gauchos for an epic meat roast. “It’s not Jewish, but it is a religion,” joked Rabbi Zivotofsky. “You didn’t need to eat for days afterward. I think there was one bowl of salad for 40 men, and it was still there by the end.”
The American-born pair, both 52, met as teenagers at an Israeli yeshiva. Greenspan is also a mohel, shochet and sofer; Rabbi Zivotofsky is a professor in the Brain Science Program at Bar Ilan University. The pair started traveling in earnest in the 1980s, starting with a Jewish research mission to Ethiopia and Kenya.
“In those days, if we were offered a free flight, we went,” said Greenspan, recalling a diet of salami and chocolate bars on that first trip. They were bitten by the travel bug in Africa, and their lively accounts of struck a chord with readers; Jewish publications sponsor their investigations of Semitic life around the globe. “We haven’t paid for a trip since,” said Greenspan.
They still, however, travel with salami — as well as matzah and canned tuna for convenience, although their halachic expertise allows improvised kosher meals in the most unlikely places.
In a “hole in the wall” in Alexandria, Egypt, Rabbi Zivotofsky determined the pita — made from only flour, water and yeast — was kosher by default: “There’s nothing else being made on those surfaces.” The men have gone inside kitchens and kashered the pots, and once at the Addis Ababa Hilton, they kashered the oven and made their own pizzas after closing.
“The best thing we’ve ever eaten on any trip was a fish called tambaqui in Brazil,” said Greenspan, recalling how they kashered a pot at the river, cooked the fish and ate with plastic forks.
If this doesn’t sound like your idea of vacation — well, that’s why their families usually stay home. “We’re like meshugas. We hit the ground running at three a.m., and we do in 48 hours what people think is crazy,” said Greenspan. “I have to say, our wives deserve medals, because this is our passion — the digging, the finding of these ancient traditions, the connections.”
“The chutzpah,” Rabbi Zivotofsky chimed in. “He even took his wife once with him instead, to Morocco.”
But maybe there were locusts on the menu, because she hasn’t been on an expedition since. ---------------------
MORE HEADLINES:
Purim Baskets With A Political Punch >
New York
Purim Baskets With A Political Punch
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Young Israel of Jamaica Estates’ Purim food packages this year, with Israeli-only contents. Young Israel of Jamaica EstatesThe leaders of the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates came to Rabbi Shlomo Hochberg with a question last year.
The sisterhood leaders told their synagogue’s spiritual leader that they wanted participants in the Young Israel’s annual mishloach manot project, which sends food baskets to hundreds of recipients on Purim, to make a political and financial statement by only including Israeli products.
The activist Queens congregation, which sponsors a series of social action programs on behalf of Israel and the synagogue’s local community, had completed a five-year-long project, conducted at Purim, which raised funds for refurbishing a Torah scroll for an Israeli army base.
This year’s project would be a strike against the international BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement and serve as economic support for Israeli businesses, they told Rabbi Hochberg. They asked him how they could expand it beyond their congregation.
The rabbi contacted the National Council of Young Israel, which endorsed the idea – the National Council is urging its 150 member congregations to have congregants fill their mishloach manot packages exclusively with items from Israel on Purim, which begins on the evening of Wednesday, March 23.
Mishloach manot (Hebrew for the sending of portions), is based on a commandment derived in a verse in the Scroll of Esther; mishloach manot drives have become a popular Purim-time activity in many Jewish homes and congregations.
This year, said Rabbi Hochberg, his congregation’s project will feature anti-BDS tags explaining the provenance of each package’s products, “To show our moral support” for Israeli businesses that are the target of the BDS movement.
“They’re on the front line,” he said.
Participants can order products directly from Israel or from local vendors — as long as items come from Israel proper or from businesses in the West Bank across the Green Line that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories, Rabbi Hochberg said, noting that Young Israel doesn’t differentiate between the two areas.
As a facet of BDS, some supporters, including the European Union, have begun to label items made on the West Bank, which they consider subject to Israeli “occupation.”
“The message” of the Young Israel campaign “is about showing a connection between Jews” in the diaspora and those in the Jewish homeland, said Rabbi Hochberg.
“We must battle against the Hamanic decree of the BDS movement,” said Rabbi Binyamin Hammer, director of rabbinic services at the National Council. “Rabbi Hochberg and his congregation … are our modern-day Mordechais and Esthers.”
Rabbi Hochberg and his wife Karen, who during 25 years at the Young Israel congregation have pioneered such activities as a Memorial Day Run for Israel and a collection of blankets for homeless people in their area, will be honored at the synagogue’s annual journal dinner Saturday, Feb. 6 at the Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation.
Members of Rabbi Hochberg’s congregation will send at least 1,000 mishloach manot packages on Purim next month, he said. His family’s will probably include a bottle of grape juice, some crackers and some candy.
“Everything will be from Israel, he said.”
For information about the Young Israel of Jamaica Estate’s mishloach manot project contact Rivkyorlow@aol.com.
Travel
Days Of The Locust: Adventures In Kosher Food
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
The “two Aris” in an underground grotto matzah-baking facility in Ptigliano, Italy. Courtesy of Ari Greenspan
Note: This is the second of two stories on kosher travel.
Over three decades of globetrotting, Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky and Dr. Ari Greenspan have cultivated a career as kosher adventurers — and accidental entomologists.
Their reputation was definitively cemented a few years back when a locust plague hit Cyprus, providing a rare opportunity for the two scholars to witness a phenomenon usually confined to the Haggadah.
“We had never seen a real plague, and this was our opportunity,” said Greenspan, a Jerusalem-based dentist. “So we got on a plane right away. In 10 minutes I identified the species.”
It just so happened that because this locust is a kosher North African delicacy, it was the only species they were familiar with. But the Cypriots, bowled over by the duo’s esoteric knowledge, assumed they were in the presence of renowned entomologists. “We were picked up by a team of agronomists and followed around by news cameras everywhere,” recalled Greenspan with a chuckle. “They thought we were these big experts.”
The “two Aris” — as they are known to readers of their chronicles in Mishpacha and other publications — are indeed experts, on kosher travel if not precisely insect-based cuisine, having foraged for Jewish life together in places as diverse as Namibia and Uzbekistan, Iraq and Uganda. I caught up with the pair recently over Skype from their homes in Israel, curious as to how they’ve maintained kashrut in places without plumbing.
Their most eye-opening discovery: Eating kosher can actually be easier in the developing world. Foods are often simple, like fried bananas in India or camel’s milk in Djibouti. “There’s nothing going into it,” explained Greenspan.
Recently modernized countries can also be kosher-friendly. “In Bahrain, it was one of the easiest places to keep kosher, because nothing was locally produced,” explained the dentist, who found British-made matzah and kosher staples like Coca-Cola.
“You can live, by the way, for two weeks on bananas and Coke,” added the rabbi knowingly.
Their diet is doubtless spicier this week: The pair is currently in India leading their first-ever mission for the Orthodox Union, a two-week “halachic adventure” through India’s Jewish communities — from Mumbai’s Baghdadi Jews to the Bnei Menashe in the north and a southern enclave of ex-Christians eager to become Jews.
India holds enduring fascination for the pair, though Rabbi Zivotofsky is convinced his partner’s favorite country is Ethiopia: “He’s been there at least 10 times, five by himself, and every time he comes back, he swears: ‘I’m never going there again.’”
Rabbi Zivotofsky prefers the Tunisian Jewish community of Djerba, though not necessarily for the food: “They have a custom that’s observed nowhere else in the Jewish world” — a ceremonial feast of raw, oiled, fermented dough. Did it taste good? “Not to us, but they seemed to like it,” he said.
Another memorable feast: In the pampas of Uruguay, the pair joined Jewish gauchos for an epic meat roast. “It’s not Jewish, but it is a religion,” joked Rabbi Zivotofsky. “You didn’t need to eat for days afterward. I think there was one bowl of salad for 40 men, and it was still there by the end.”
The American-born pair, both 52, met as teenagers at an Israeli yeshiva. Greenspan is also a mohel, shochet and sofer; Rabbi Zivotofsky is a professor in the Brain Science Program at Bar Ilan University. The pair started traveling in earnest in the 1980s, starting with a Jewish research mission to Ethiopia and Kenya.
“In those days, if we were offered a free flight, we went,” said Greenspan, recalling a diet of salami and chocolate bars on that first trip. They were bitten by the travel bug in Africa, and their lively accounts of struck a chord with readers; Jewish publications sponsor their investigations of Semitic life around the globe. “We haven’t paid for a trip since,” said Greenspan.
They still, however, travel with salami — as well as matzah and canned tuna for convenience, although their halachic expertise allows improvised kosher meals in the most unlikely places.
In a “hole in the wall” in Alexandria, Egypt, Rabbi Zivotofsky determined the pita — made from only flour, water and yeast — was kosher by default: “There’s nothing else being made on those surfaces.” The men have gone inside kitchens and kashered the pots, and once at the Addis Ababa Hilton, they kashered the oven and made their own pizzas after closing.
“The best thing we’ve ever eaten on any trip was a fish called tambaqui in Brazil,” said Greenspan, recalling how they kashered a pot at the river, cooked the fish and ate with plastic forks.
If this doesn’t sound like your idea of vacation — well, that’s why their families usually stay home. “We’re like meshugas. We hit the ground running at three a.m., and we do in 48 hours what people think is crazy,” said Greenspan. “I have to say, our wives deserve medals, because this is our passion — the digging, the finding of these ancient traditions, the connections.”
“The chutzpah,” Rabbi Zivotofsky chimed in. “He even took his wife once with him instead, to Morocco.”
But maybe there were locusts on the menu, because she hasn’t been on an expedition since. ---------------------
MORE HEADLINES:
Purim Baskets With A Political Punch >
New York
Purim Baskets With A Political Punch
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Young Israel of Jamaica Estates’ Purim food packages this year, with Israeli-only contents. Young Israel of Jamaica EstatesThe leaders of the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates came to Rabbi Shlomo Hochberg with a question last year.
The sisterhood leaders told their synagogue’s spiritual leader that they wanted participants in the Young Israel’s annual mishloach manot project, which sends food baskets to hundreds of recipients on Purim, to make a political and financial statement by only including Israeli products.
The activist Queens congregation, which sponsors a series of social action programs on behalf of Israel and the synagogue’s local community, had completed a five-year-long project, conducted at Purim, which raised funds for refurbishing a Torah scroll for an Israeli army base.
This year’s project would be a strike against the international BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement and serve as economic support for Israeli businesses, they told Rabbi Hochberg. They asked him how they could expand it beyond their congregation.
The rabbi contacted the National Council of Young Israel, which endorsed the idea – the National Council is urging its 150 member congregations to have congregants fill their mishloach manot packages exclusively with items from Israel on Purim, which begins on the evening of Wednesday, March 23.
Mishloach manot (Hebrew for the sending of portions), is based on a commandment derived in a verse in the Scroll of Esther; mishloach manot drives have become a popular Purim-time activity in many Jewish homes and congregations.
This year, said Rabbi Hochberg, his congregation’s project will feature anti-BDS tags explaining the provenance of each package’s products, “To show our moral support” for Israeli businesses that are the target of the BDS movement.
“They’re on the front line,” he said.
Participants can order products directly from Israel or from local vendors — as long as items come from Israel proper or from businesses in the West Bank across the Green Line that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories, Rabbi Hochberg said, noting that Young Israel doesn’t differentiate between the two areas.
As a facet of BDS, some supporters, including the European Union, have begun to label items made on the West Bank, which they consider subject to Israeli “occupation.”
“The message” of the Young Israel campaign “is about showing a connection between Jews” in the diaspora and those in the Jewish homeland, said Rabbi Hochberg.
“We must battle against the Hamanic decree of the BDS movement,” said Rabbi Binyamin Hammer, director of rabbinic services at the National Council. “Rabbi Hochberg and his congregation … are our modern-day Mordechais and Esthers.”
Rabbi Hochberg and his wife Karen, who during 25 years at the Young Israel congregation have pioneered such activities as a Memorial Day Run for Israel and a collection of blankets for homeless people in their area, will be honored at the synagogue’s annual journal dinner Saturday, Feb. 6 at the Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation.
Members of Rabbi Hochberg’s congregation will send at least 1,000 mishloach manot packages on Purim next month, he said. His family’s will probably include a bottle of grape juice, some crackers and some candy.
“Everything will be from Israel, he said.”
For information about the Young Israel of Jamaica Estate’s mishloach manot project contact Rivkyorlow@aol.com.
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Rabbi David Wolpe's Musings >
Musings
The Ultimate Offering
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David WolpeOur sages speak of both love of God and fear of God. Fear is more akin to awe. Think of the way people respond in a movie when they first see Godzilla or an alien: They are paralyzed for a moment with amazement that such a thing exists. Similarly, we should have a sense of awe, wonderment tinged by being overwhelmed, at the reality of God’s presence.
But of course equally present is the love that makes awe bearable. We are not only subjects of God’s love, but God’s eternal love — ahavath olam — as our prayers teach us.
This dual consciousness is evident in ancient sacrifices. On the one hand, taking a life evokes awe. We shudder in the presence of death. At the same time a sacrifice is called a korban, a coming close. To sacrifice for another expresses love and intimacy. Giving freely opens the heart of the giver.
In our day, most Jews feel very far from the practice of sacrifice. Yet we should appreciate the deep meaning in its mystery: In one act, the experience of awe and of love are joined.[Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book is “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press).]
Rabbi David Wolpe's Musings >
Musings
The Ultimate Offering
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David WolpeOur sages speak of both love of God and fear of God. Fear is more akin to awe. Think of the way people respond in a movie when they first see Godzilla or an alien: They are paralyzed for a moment with amazement that such a thing exists. Similarly, we should have a sense of awe, wonderment tinged by being overwhelmed, at the reality of God’s presence.
But of course equally present is the love that makes awe bearable. We are not only subjects of God’s love, but God’s eternal love — ahavath olam — as our prayers teach us.
This dual consciousness is evident in ancient sacrifices. On the one hand, taking a life evokes awe. We shudder in the presence of death. At the same time a sacrifice is called a korban, a coming close. To sacrifice for another expresses love and intimacy. Giving freely opens the heart of the giver.
In our day, most Jews feel very far from the practice of sacrifice. Yet we should appreciate the deep meaning in its mystery: In one act, the experience of awe and of love are joined.[Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book is “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press).]
---------------------
Helen Latner, Advice Columnist, 97 >
New York
Helen Latner, Advice Columnist, 97
Jewish Week writer doled out sage wisdom on range of issues.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Helen Latner: Wrote advice columns, etiquette books. “She wanted to be a writer. She also wanted to be a teacher,” her daughter
A reader identified only as “Curious,” from Mount Vernon, sent a letter to this newspaper in June 1993, asking “Is there such a thing as ‘Jewish dress?’”
“Curious” inquired about clothing worn by chasidic Jews, women’s wigs and variations in kippot worn by men.
Jewish Week columnist Helen Latner answered the question in one of her last advice columns, “Ask Helen Latner.” She explained the history of various styles of typical Jewish garb, offered some cultural background, and wrote that, “Generally, Jews have adopted the dress styles of the cultures in which they live.”
Over a dozen years, Mrs. Latner, who died on Jan. 25 at 97 in her home in Newton, Mass., dealt with such topics as a husband’s treatment of his second wife and the Jewish community’s acceptance of converts, reinforcing her reputation, which she established by writing three books about Jewish behavior and beliefs, as the go-to person for advice in the dozens of Jewish newspapers where her column was published.
“People loved her advice,” said Sarah Stambler, Mrs. Latner’s daughter. “She always gave you great advice.” Some people would find Mrs. Latner’s home phone number and call her to discuss topics too personal for inclusion in a newspaper, Stambler said.
Born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn to Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Poland, Mrs. Latner graduated from Hunter College and Columbia University, serving as an English teacher and principal in the New York City public schools, but, like many women of her generation, had minimal formal Jewish education.
Her first book grew out of a request from a rabbi friend for a wedding invitation that included a Hebrew text. She could find neither a proper invitation, nor a book that described how to design one. “It dawned on me that there were large areas of deportment familiar to my generation, in our tightly knit Jewish environment, that would not be handed down as interaction between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds increased,” she said in a 1981 New York Times interview
That experience, and realizing her lack of knowledge about Jewish customs when making funeral arrangements for her first husband, David Stambler, in 1967, motivated her to embark upon a campaign of self-education, attending adult education classes and consulting with local rabbis, Mrs. Latner’s daughter said.
The result was her books —“The Book of Modern Jewish Etiquette: A Guide for All Occasions,” “Your Jewish Wedding,” and “The Everything Jewish Wedding Book” — and her column.
Her preparation for doing an advice column? The “many thousands of students” she had helped as a teacher,” Stambler said. “And she was a mother.”
“She wanted to be a writer. She liked to tell stories,” Stambler said. “She also wanted to be a teacher.”
Mrs. Latner, a self-described “Conservative Jew with liberal leanings,” called her etiquette books “a roadmap” for Jews of all backgrounds. “Even those who don’t observe anything will attend weddings and funerals.”
An amateur actress, she worked as a teacher until she was 58, then turned her attention to full-time writing, moving to Florida, then to Massachusetts.
Her second husband, David Latner, died in 2000.
Mrs. Latner is survived by four children, Sarah, Zipporah, Morris, and Abigail; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
steve@jewishweek.org
Helen Latner, Advice Columnist, 97 >
New York
Helen Latner, Advice Columnist, 97
Jewish Week writer doled out sage wisdom on range of issues.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Helen Latner: Wrote advice columns, etiquette books. “She wanted to be a writer. She also wanted to be a teacher,” her daughter
A reader identified only as “Curious,” from Mount Vernon, sent a letter to this newspaper in June 1993, asking “Is there such a thing as ‘Jewish dress?’”
“Curious” inquired about clothing worn by chasidic Jews, women’s wigs and variations in kippot worn by men.
Jewish Week columnist Helen Latner answered the question in one of her last advice columns, “Ask Helen Latner.” She explained the history of various styles of typical Jewish garb, offered some cultural background, and wrote that, “Generally, Jews have adopted the dress styles of the cultures in which they live.”
Over a dozen years, Mrs. Latner, who died on Jan. 25 at 97 in her home in Newton, Mass., dealt with such topics as a husband’s treatment of his second wife and the Jewish community’s acceptance of converts, reinforcing her reputation, which she established by writing three books about Jewish behavior and beliefs, as the go-to person for advice in the dozens of Jewish newspapers where her column was published.
“People loved her advice,” said Sarah Stambler, Mrs. Latner’s daughter. “She always gave you great advice.” Some people would find Mrs. Latner’s home phone number and call her to discuss topics too personal for inclusion in a newspaper, Stambler said.
Born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn to Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Poland, Mrs. Latner graduated from Hunter College and Columbia University, serving as an English teacher and principal in the New York City public schools, but, like many women of her generation, had minimal formal Jewish education.
Her first book grew out of a request from a rabbi friend for a wedding invitation that included a Hebrew text. She could find neither a proper invitation, nor a book that described how to design one. “It dawned on me that there were large areas of deportment familiar to my generation, in our tightly knit Jewish environment, that would not be handed down as interaction between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds increased,” she said in a 1981 New York Times interview
That experience, and realizing her lack of knowledge about Jewish customs when making funeral arrangements for her first husband, David Stambler, in 1967, motivated her to embark upon a campaign of self-education, attending adult education classes and consulting with local rabbis, Mrs. Latner’s daughter said.
The result was her books —“The Book of Modern Jewish Etiquette: A Guide for All Occasions,” “Your Jewish Wedding,” and “The Everything Jewish Wedding Book” — and her column.
Her preparation for doing an advice column? The “many thousands of students” she had helped as a teacher,” Stambler said. “And she was a mother.”
“She wanted to be a writer. She liked to tell stories,” Stambler said. “She also wanted to be a teacher.”
Mrs. Latner, a self-described “Conservative Jew with liberal leanings,” called her etiquette books “a roadmap” for Jews of all backgrounds. “Even those who don’t observe anything will attend weddings and funerals.”
An amateur actress, she worked as a teacher until she was 58, then turned her attention to full-time writing, moving to Florida, then to Massachusetts.
Her second husband, David Latner, died in 2000.
Mrs. Latner is survived by four children, Sarah, Zipporah, Morris, and Abigail; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
steve@jewishweek.org
---------------------
Jew By Voice >
Jew By Voice
No Comment
Erica Brown
Special To The Jewish Week
Erica Brown
Rashi’s wife came home one day from the market. Rashi, the 11th-century scholar from southern France, asked her why she had chosen to wear a particular dress and told her what he did not like about her outfit. She was offended: “Rashi, do you always have to comment?”
Yes. He always had to comment. He was a commentator. Fortunately for you, this is the only medieval Jewish exegete joke I know.
While we excuse a scholar, it’s harder to forgive the rest of us. Everyone’s a critic. But our people may very well exceed them all. Jews are known for being expressive, a characteristic identified in an early midrash. We are great at being expressive but perhaps not as good at self-restraint. Can I introduce you to the comment section, to Twitter and to Facebook?
Let’s take a look at what online comments were supposed to achieve. In 2010, the journalist Jeff Jarvis believed that online comments should be a vehicle for greater interactivity. Writers put up their work and allow the public to comment rather than engage the public throughout. He felt this insulted readers. It gave writers the impression that their job was merely, in his words, to throw the product over the wall and let people react while writers retreated into the castle and shut the gates so readers could not hear them. Open up the process earlier, and it becomes more collaborative, productive and respectful of public advice.
But two years later, in 2013, the tide turned. Maria Konnikova wrote an article for The New Yorker headlined “The Psychology of Online Comments” after the magazine Popular Science decided to ban comments from its website. The comment section was filled with too much venom and was feeding into a culture of aggression, allowing a vocal and often hate-filled minority to influence readers’ perceptions of what they read, unfairly biasing them negatively.
The psychologist John Suler created a term for the behavior of anonymous comment-makers: online disinhibition effect. While comment sections allowed a greater degree of risk-taking and participation from the public, anonymity was increasing incivility by leaps and bounds. No one is meaner than an anonymous writer.
Just ask comic writer Lindy West who has trolls attack her every single day. A troll used to be a mythic cave-dwelling creature with an unpleasant disposition. It has now morphed into a term for people who write deliberately provocative and cruel comments online. On Ira Glass’ “This American Life” you can listen to a supremely sad and painful encounter Lindy had when she actually confronted one of her trolls. The name of the article says it all: “If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT ALL IN CAPS.” Warning: this is graphic stuff for an adult-only audience. That’s how bad it is.
Lindy did not listen to the advice that every journalist shares. NEVER READ COMMENTS. As I gratefully learned early, those with wise insights and helpful critique will find you through regular channels. Writers who read comments often experience paralysis, rejection, shame and humiliation caused by an angry stranger too cowardly to sign his or her name. In the Bible, any anonymous figure is identified by name by the Sages. They could not believe that anyone who made it into the Good Book could do so anonymously. To be named is a blessing.
In 2014, research told us what we already suspected. Professors from University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication termed what happens online as the “Nasty Effect.” Negative comments unduly influence readers. When people aren’t accountable, they are much less likely to think through the consequences of what they write and its potentially harmful impact. Obvious, right?
Well, what’s not obvious to many is what we need to do about it. If giving people the right to comment anonymously online squelches writers and writing, ideas and creativity, then we need to shut down comment sections or at the very least demand that people attach names and contact information to posts. Before you write a comment, think for one moment how you might feel on the receiving end. To me, the comment section is an experiment that failed.
I invite this newspaper, for one, to consider eliminating online comments altogether. Snarking people with drivel and a side dish of abuse is not a Jewish value, neither are ad hominim attacks. Dayenu. I am not Pollyana-ish about Jewish newspapers. Respectful controversy is healthy, important and vital to our ethnic and national well-being, and Jewish newspapers should welcome conflict. But online comments are not a tribute to democracy. They are a platform for the ugly, not the thoughtful. If we learned anything from Genesis it is this: protect the dignity of the word.[Erica Brown’s column appears the first week of the month.]---------------------
The Jewish Week
Jew By Voice >
Jew By Voice
No Comment
Erica Brown
Special To The Jewish Week
Erica Brown
Rashi’s wife came home one day from the market. Rashi, the 11th-century scholar from southern France, asked her why she had chosen to wear a particular dress and told her what he did not like about her outfit. She was offended: “Rashi, do you always have to comment?”
Yes. He always had to comment. He was a commentator. Fortunately for you, this is the only medieval Jewish exegete joke I know.
While we excuse a scholar, it’s harder to forgive the rest of us. Everyone’s a critic. But our people may very well exceed them all. Jews are known for being expressive, a characteristic identified in an early midrash. We are great at being expressive but perhaps not as good at self-restraint. Can I introduce you to the comment section, to Twitter and to Facebook?
Let’s take a look at what online comments were supposed to achieve. In 2010, the journalist Jeff Jarvis believed that online comments should be a vehicle for greater interactivity. Writers put up their work and allow the public to comment rather than engage the public throughout. He felt this insulted readers. It gave writers the impression that their job was merely, in his words, to throw the product over the wall and let people react while writers retreated into the castle and shut the gates so readers could not hear them. Open up the process earlier, and it becomes more collaborative, productive and respectful of public advice.
But two years later, in 2013, the tide turned. Maria Konnikova wrote an article for The New Yorker headlined “The Psychology of Online Comments” after the magazine Popular Science decided to ban comments from its website. The comment section was filled with too much venom and was feeding into a culture of aggression, allowing a vocal and often hate-filled minority to influence readers’ perceptions of what they read, unfairly biasing them negatively.
The psychologist John Suler created a term for the behavior of anonymous comment-makers: online disinhibition effect. While comment sections allowed a greater degree of risk-taking and participation from the public, anonymity was increasing incivility by leaps and bounds. No one is meaner than an anonymous writer.
Just ask comic writer Lindy West who has trolls attack her every single day. A troll used to be a mythic cave-dwelling creature with an unpleasant disposition. It has now morphed into a term for people who write deliberately provocative and cruel comments online. On Ira Glass’ “This American Life” you can listen to a supremely sad and painful encounter Lindy had when she actually confronted one of her trolls. The name of the article says it all: “If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT ALL IN CAPS.” Warning: this is graphic stuff for an adult-only audience. That’s how bad it is.
Lindy did not listen to the advice that every journalist shares. NEVER READ COMMENTS. As I gratefully learned early, those with wise insights and helpful critique will find you through regular channels. Writers who read comments often experience paralysis, rejection, shame and humiliation caused by an angry stranger too cowardly to sign his or her name. In the Bible, any anonymous figure is identified by name by the Sages. They could not believe that anyone who made it into the Good Book could do so anonymously. To be named is a blessing.
In 2014, research told us what we already suspected. Professors from University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication termed what happens online as the “Nasty Effect.” Negative comments unduly influence readers. When people aren’t accountable, they are much less likely to think through the consequences of what they write and its potentially harmful impact. Obvious, right?
Well, what’s not obvious to many is what we need to do about it. If giving people the right to comment anonymously online squelches writers and writing, ideas and creativity, then we need to shut down comment sections or at the very least demand that people attach names and contact information to posts. Before you write a comment, think for one moment how you might feel on the receiving end. To me, the comment section is an experiment that failed.
I invite this newspaper, for one, to consider eliminating online comments altogether. Snarking people with drivel and a side dish of abuse is not a Jewish value, neither are ad hominim attacks. Dayenu. I am not Pollyana-ish about Jewish newspapers. Respectful controversy is healthy, important and vital to our ethnic and national well-being, and Jewish newspapers should welcome conflict. But online comments are not a tribute to democracy. They are a platform for the ugly, not the thoughtful. If we learned anything from Genesis it is this: protect the dignity of the word.[Erica Brown’s column appears the first week of the month.]---------------------
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