Ami

BASKIN: MY NEGOTIATIONS WITH HAMAS MONTREAL: CHASIDIC WOMAN ELECTED

CONTROVERSIAL HISTORY OF BAS MITZVAHS

FRUM IN THE WHITE HOUSE Tevi Troy: My Years in the Bush Administration

RETHINKING THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION THE UNITED STATES REVEALS AN ISRAELI MILITARY STRIKE ISSUE 142 NOVEMBER 6, 2013 3 KISLEV 5774

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Departments

12 16 18 22 24 26

36

UNCH BREAK L With Marc Gold NE SANEL GANTZ

38

ARNOOOSA P Taking action MAURICE STEI N MY WORD!

BEN ROSEN

68 70

HE JOURNEY T Song of freedom

EWISH NEWS J Belzer Rebbetzin, z”l—Election in Montreal—Kinus shluchim

72

SK A Responses to two letter writers

76

HE SHUL CHRONICLES T The history of bas mitzvah, part 2

78 80

BRAINSTORM

EDITORIAL In pursuit of truth LETTERS ATIONAL AND N INTERNATIONAL NEWS YOS SI KRAUSZ

IN THE NEWS TURX

SIGHTINGS AND CITINGS

NESANEL GANTZ, MACHLA ABRAMOVITZ AND AVI KLEINBERG

32 34 35

EWISH LIVING IN: J Austin, Texas M ENUCHA CHANA LEVI N

BUSINESS YEDI DA WOLFE

MBASSADORS A Kiddush Hashem in Myrtle Beach SARAH MASSRY

ASH ER V. FI NN

RABBI SHOLOM FRI EDMANN

RABBI SHAI S TAUB

RABBI MOSH E TAUB

84

STREETS OF LIFE Assume nothing

Features

40

S PYVIEW: THE SIMPLE TRUTH The plain facts of the JFK assassination

AS TOLD TO SARAH PACHTER

46

10 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / O C T O B E R 2 , 2 0 1 3 / / 2 8 T I S H R E I 5 7 7 4

JOHN LOFTUS

46

N EGOTIATING WITH HAMAS Gershon Baskin discusses his work to save Gilad Shalit.

RABBI YITZCHOK FRANKFURTER

54

F RUM IN THE WHITE HOUSE From day school to the West Wing

YITZY YABOK

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE The wedding dress

RABBI MORDECHAI KAM ENETZKY

64

TEVI TROY

Q & A WITH TEVI TROY Pop culture in the White House RABBI YITZCHOK FRANKFURTER

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In the Pursuit of Truth

M

any people, particularly those who discover Juda- unlike in the physical sciences, there are no objective criteria and ism for the first time, find the numerous differenc- absolute proofs for value judgments. Stated another way, no fact es of opinion and countless disputes that exist in denotes an ought. As the Ramban elucidates in his introducthe Orthodox world highly troubling. Observant tion to the Milchamos Hashem, “Anyone who studies our Talmud Jews, they assume, should have a single attitude knows that there are no absolute proofs to any side in a dispute and approach, while living together in complete harmony. and there are no decisive objections. This wisdom does not have This pacifist, peace-loving attitude is erroneous, not merely absolute proofs like mathematics and geometric exercises.”

While Chazal (Yevamos 14b) tell us that there was brotherly as a Jewish ideal but also from a logical perspective. As in any other legal system, seeking the truth in halachah or Yahadus love between Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai, in compliance with involves the staking out of conflicting points of view. Neverthe- what is written (Zechariah 8:16), “Love truth and peace,” this less, some insist on this mistaken conciliatory notion and adopt it was not always the case. In the Talmud Yerushalmi (Shabbos 9a) as their calling, and consewe find that before an imporquently seek to reform Torahtant vote between Beis Shamobservant Jews according to mai and Beis Hillel, many of their faulty thinking. the disciples of Hillel unfortuG.K. Chesterton wrote, “Withnately encountered violence.

We also find in many Talmudic out education, we are in a hordiscussions and throughout rible and deadly danger of takhalachic literature ardent nameing educated people seriously.” calling and ad hominem attacks As some who pontificate to the launched against an opposing community about peaceable or dissenting side. A scholar standards are so-called “public must forcefully hold his ground intellectuals,” Chesterton’s oband not yield, but personal servation is spot on.

Without doubt, peace is one attacks are seemingly unnecRav Moshe Feinstein (speaking) and of humanity’s highest ideals. essary. Yet they nevertheless the Satmar Rebbe (right) at a protest This is so not only in the securesulted from Talmudic debates.

Recently in Israel there has lar world, from whence some of these admirable people have come, but also in the Jewish tradi- been a considerable degree of disagreement among leading gedotion they have adopted. At the end of Hilchos Chanukah, the Ram- lei Yisrael. This has caused much uneasiness for many upstanding bam proclaims that the entire Torah was given to bring peace to people in the community. While we must certainly strive to stay the world. But by the same token, a machlokes l’sheim shamayim, above the fray, we should also be cognizant of the legitimacy and a dispute seeking the truth for the sake of Heaven, is not only importance of the concept of machlokes l’sheim shamayim.

Some may still recall the machlokos l’sheim shamayim that once acceptable but is actually one of the most important Jewish principles. Without machlokes l’sheim shamayim, Yiddishkeit would embroiled Orthodox Jews in the United States. For example, have ceased to exist millennia ago. For the sake of truth, a Torah gedolim like the Satmar Rebbe, zt”l, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, scholar is obligated to forcefully assert his opinion, articulate his zt”l, passionately argued about the appropriateness of putting tefillin on a person who does not have a guf naki (pure body). logic and defend it without conceding an inch.

For this reason, Chazal never condemned machlokos per se, but Likewise, there were many heated disputes surrounding some of only one that is undertaken for selfish reasons. “Any dispute that the psakim of Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l. None of these disagreeis for the sake of Heaven is destined to endure; one that is not for ments were undertaken by any side in an attempt to gain honor the sake of Heaven is not destined to endure. Which is a dispute or power but solely for the sake of Heaven, to advance an apfor the sake of Heaven? The dispute(s) between Hillel and Sham- proach that best serves the cause of Torah.

Today, the machlokos l’sheim shamayim almost exclusively take mai. Which is a dispute that is not for the sake of Heaven? The place in Eretz Yisrael. But on account of those truth-seeking disdispute of Korach and all his associates” (Avos 5:17).

Disputes relating to values are necessary and enduring, because putes, Judaism is strengthened throughout the world.

•

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LETTERS EXECUTIVE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Chesky Kauftheil EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter SENIOR EDITOR

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Ami Magazine P: 718.534.8800 F: 718.484.7731 info@amimagazine.org Ami Magazine. Published by Mezoogmag LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form without prior written permission from the publisher is prohibited. The publisher reserves the right to edit all articles for clarity, space, and editorial sensitivities. Ami Magazine assumes no responsibility for the content of articles or advertisements in the publication, nor for the contents of books that are referred to or excerpted herein.

THE PROS AND CONS OF A SPECIAL CALLING Thinking about Jewish intelligence and neurosis In reference to “Editorial,” Issue 141

Dear Editor: Rabbi Frankfurter’s insightful editorial exploring the apparently extraordinary Jewish intelligence raises an issue that has intrigued many. I heartily concur with his conclusion that the mitzvos are indeed the true source of this intelligence, and I would like to humbly posit a theory as to the inner workings of this connection.

Just as any life form or manufactured implement is equipped with the features and abilities needed to fulfill its function, so is the Jew. Every Jew is meant to live a far more calculated life than any other of the world’s peoples. The 613 mitzvos and their uncountable branches and applications require a unique level of intelligence, both to gain knowledge of and to implement. Would not the Creator endow those charged with this undertaking the unique tools necessary to accomplish it?

This would explain why these intellectual gifts would manifest in the full spectrum of Jews regardless of genetics, nurture or connection to Torah study and observance. It is simply the way we’ve been “heavenly hardwired” to do our spiritual job, and we remain thusly “wired,” whether we apply our tools to that job or not.

Related to this is the unique charge given to the Jewish people together with the Torah and mitzvos: to be “a light unto the nations,” influencing the world to come closer to G-d and to establish a more just and ethical society. Although this mission—to influence—and the tools/intelligence needed to complete it were given to us to bring the world toward kedushah, even if a Jew aban-

dons (or was never made aware of) that mission, the abilities remain. This would perhaps explain the “disproportionate” Jewish ability to innovate and attract the masses to his innovations. How many “isms” and society-changing innovations in all realms of activity have been initiated by Jews!

The editorial also raises the poignant point that Jews have been found to possess three times the rate of neurosis of other peoples. I believe that this too, fits into the above paradigm. The pioneering psychologist Carl Jung, regarding his theory of neurosis (source: Wikipedia), “found [it] particularly fitting for people who are successfully adjusted by normal social standards, but who nevertheless have issues with the meaning of their life.” He wrote: “I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.” And, “The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.”

While all peoples suffer from the neurosis-producing detachment from life’s true meaning, wouldn’t the Jewish people—the assigned exemplars of that meaning—suffer the results of this disconnection more acutely? Unobservant Jews, certainly, would experience that, but so would even observant Jews who are at least subconsciously aware that their conduct and priorities are to any degree at odds with the ideal.

Kudos to Rabbi Frankfurter for tackling this fascinating issue, and to Ami Magazine for being a positive forum of true “Jewish intelligence.”

J.N.

LETTERS OUR BOYS IN ISRAEL RESPOND Don’t use a broad brush

In reference to “Our Boys in Israel,” Issue 140

Dear Editor: Reading last week’s Ami feature article left many bachurim and me appalled and even a bit insulted. Your piece on “Our Boys in Israel” claimed to discuss us, but there was a barely noticeable disclaimer in the article’s opening paragraph and buried in its conclusion. The sentiment set forth in the article led one to believe that the issues discussed are a problem of the majority and not of the few—the rule rather than its exception. And what of the thousands of serious young men knowing little more than the hallowed walls of the beis midrash and their shtenders? What about the amazing sight of a jam-packed beis midrash on a Friday when there is no official seder? There is also the very true reality of walking into the Mir Yeshiva during bein hazmanim and an empty seat is not to be found! And it’s a simple fact that during the zman after 9:30 your empty seat is forfeited for the day because there is surely someone waiting to take it.

Of all these and many more similar everyday situations in the lives of “our boys in Israel,” the article leaves the reader woefully ignorant.

Though it is an undeniable fact that there are issues that tend to crop up for some bachurim in Eretz Yisrael, and they definitely must be addressed, it should always be prefaced with a direct clarification that they are surely not the norm. And for sure not by a bachur who was solid in his convictions before his yearlong journey to the Holy Land. Indeed ask of any bachur in the

EDITOR’S RESPONSE: As A.S. points out, the article in question did make clear at the beginning and end that for a majority of bachurim, learning in Eretz Yisrael is a positive experience. Describing that in length, however, wasn’t the focus of the article, for the simple reason that the well-known nature of the general success of the system is the reason roshei yeshivah and parents keep sending bachurim to Eretz Yisrael.

But it is also clear that there is a minority of bachurim who have some type of negative experience in Eretz Yisrael.

That may include bachurim who simply

know and he will tell you that most of the guys hanging out on Ben Yehuda were also those who frequented Times Square a couple of months previously.

For the most part, a good guy stays a good guy. It is wrong to suggest otherwise and is an affront to kavod ha’Torah.

Which brings me to my second point: To advise parents to spy on their children, whether via help of a yungerman or through the other tactics mentioned, is downright wrong. It violates the basic tenets of trust, and causes rifts in the parent-son relationship. Supervision is one thing; spying is a totally different one. Indeed a friend told me of his mother calling him in a frenzy after reading the article. Is this what we really want? That parents of a bachur who sits and plugs away three sedarim a day should be hiring private investigators instead of being imbued with a feeling of pride? That the first thing that comes to mind upon mention of bachurim in Eretz Yisrael is smartphones and Wi-Fi, rather than a hard bench and shtender?

Sincerely, A.S. (one of our boys in Israel) PS: This was sent via supervised Internet use in a yungerman’s apartment.

suffer from the isolation that can exist in Eretz Yisrael. And there is no reason that problems for a minority of bachurim should be ignored because the overriding majority is doing well.

Roshei yeshivah—including Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel, who was interviewed for the article—have expressed concern about the fact that even some fine bachurim have had negative experiences. The roshei yeshivah are certainly much more “in the know” than any bachurim A.S. refers to. Not every negative outcome is obvious to a bachur’s friends and acquaintances.

Parents should—as was made clear in the article—be careful about the level of supervision that they try to have over their sons.

Calling “in a frenzy” certainly wasn’t a suggested response. And with bachurim of all different ages and maturity levels being sent to Eretz Yisrael, what may be appropriate for one may be unnecessary for another.

The fact that parents have sent their son away from home, often entirely without a family member for thousands of miles, shows that they trust him. But that doesn’t mean— and shouldn’t mean—that they’ve abdicated their status and responsibility as parents.

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NEWS

NATIONAL AND WORLD

A CLOSER LOOK

ANALYZING THE NEWS THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Listen to Your Allies— Without Their Consent NSA SPYING LEAKS AND US-EUROPEAN RELATIONS

T

he US and its allies had a tough week. In Europe, the news— based on leaks by former defense contractor employee Edward Snowden—that the NSA had been spying on the private communications of everyone from German chancellor Angela Merkel to the Pope ignited indignant editorials and fire-breathing speeches by politicians. (Clerics, however, were noticeably calmer. The Vatican officially expressed no interest in breaches of its security.)

The fallout may not just be political.

With continued revelations about the extent that the NSA has either co-opted or breached the security systems of American companies, some business deals may get more scrutiny than they would have in the past. AT&T, for example, has been looking to buy Vodaphone, one of the top cellphone service providers in Europe and a wildly popular one in Germany. But if Angela Merkel’s home-bought cellphone wasn’t safe, will European regulators allow Americans near their market?

To get an idea of what lies ahead, Ami spoke to Prof. Stephen P. Bucci, the director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, and to Dr. Josef Braml, editor-in-chief of the DGAP Yearbook at

Dr. Josef Braml

the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).

Prof. Bucci said that the idea of friendly countries spying on one another is hardly new.

“Having the French leader and the German leader get all up in arms about this is frankly just political theater for their constituents. There’s no way that any of them didn’t think America was listening

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Prof. Stephen P. Bucci

to them. And there’s no way in the world they’re not trying to listen to what we’re doing.

“I was recently talking to the producer of a TV show, in a pre-interview discussion, and he said to me, ‘Don’t you think it’s time we stopped doing this?’ I was taken aback and said, ‘What do you mean? Stop doing espionage?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘Against everybody?’ and he said,

BY YOSSI KRAUSZ

‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘I think that’s the most naïve thing I’ve ever heard.’”

He said that he disagrees with the Obama administration’s reaction, which has been to deny knowledge of the spying and promise a change in policy: “I think it’s disingenuous, number one. And I think it’s foolish, number two. The president’s been a consumer of this intelligence. Where did he think they’d gotten the information that Mrs. Merkel had made phone calls to other leaders and other such information?”

As to the economic threat to the US: “I think European countries will warn people that if they do business with US companies that there might be someone listening.

That’s in the same way that we in the US have a process where we tell some companies that they can’t do business here because we think that’s a security risk. Each country will have to make that decision, understanding that if they don’t do business with the US, they might not be getting the best technology for the best price.”

He pointed out that the US also makes such calculations: “We accept the risk of all of the Chinese microchips in all of our technology,” he said, because of their price. He said that will probably continue to be the case even though there have been recent reports of hackers using innocuous technology such as kitchen appliances to take over wireless networks and upload malware.

“I hope this doesn’t become a protectionist situation,” Prof. Bucci commented.

Dr. Braml said that he also sees the outcry against the NSA as naïve.

“It’s not surprising at all. Germany is interesting to the United States. I’m not talking about security issues. You guys have written us off in terms of military and hard power. That’s not what you’re interested in.

“But we are still an economic powerhouse, and Germany is the lead nation in Europe, and Europe has a unity in terms of its currency. The euro is threatening the dominance of the dollar.

“There is a change going on. We are witnessing a shift from a unipolar system, in which the dollar dominated and the US

“Having the French leader and the German leader get all up in arms about this is frankly just political theater.” got the currency reserves of the world markets for free; now we’re in a multipolar system, where the US has to share the pie with the euro and the renminbi. Anyone who believes that such a shift happens without ruptures is, I think, very naïve.

“So I think the US is very interested in what Europe and its lead nation are up to, because that directly confronts the dollar dominance, and hence US interests.

Spying is a symptom of something deeper.

“For those who have been naïve, there may be a change now: They’ll have a difficulty with their transatlantic tra-la-la speeches. They’re outraged now. The emotional transatlanticists now feel betrayed and they see it in personal terms, but hey—this is foreign policy.”

He says that European leaders, like Angela Merkel, may be able to use the leaks to their advantage: “Every time you have attacks from the outside on Europeans, it helped them go beyond their national egos and work together as Europeans. Maybe this will help Europeans go beyond their unity in terms

of currency and form a political union.

You guys have been helpful in the past. It has become more difficult [for the US] to play divide-and-conquer.”

But he doesn’t think that Americans care about the revelations of spying: “Let me share a working assumption with you: They couldn’t care less, both on the elite level and especially on the [public level]—as long as there aren’t Americans who are spied upon. You can even torture foreigners and most people don’t care.

Just imagine if some congressional office had been spied upon, what debate you would have there. I would say that you would have impeachment talks. Right now people don’t care.”

Prof. Stephen Bucci says that the European rage against the US should really be about something else: the leaks themselves. “What I would be angry about would be: What’s wrong with the Americans that they can’t protect that information, which in many cases wasn’t taken from the Europeans but was given by them to the US? Why can’t they keep that safe?”

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NEWS

NATIONAL AND WORLD

Loose Lips and Syrian Strikes OUTRAGE GROWS IN ISRAEL ABOUT US LEAK The strike last Wednesday on a Syrian base in the port city of Latakia, apparently aimed at destroying missiles and other equipment headed to Hezbollah, was pronounced by an unnamed US official to be the work of the Israeli Air Force, which has set off a diplomatic furor between the two countries.

The statement by the Obama administration official was made to CNN on Thursday, and almost immediately government officials from Jerusalem denounced the leak. Israeli media has reported that Israeli officials have characterized the leak

as “scandalous” and as capable of endangering national security.

Yiftah Shapir, the head of the Middle East Military Balance project at the Israelibased Institute for National Security Studies told Ami that it is still unclear how dangerous the leak could be for Israel. He says that the leak has reinforced the views of those in the Israeli government unwilling to trust the Obama White House.

Shapir says that the Israelis usually share plans of similar military operations with their American counterparts. “In cases where they wanted things to remain silent,

they usually are not disclosed by Americans.” This case upsets that pattern.

The military analyst for Israeli Channel 2, Roni Daniel, said that keeping the identity of those who carried out such attacks allows Bashar al-Assad to refrain from launching a counterattack. The leaks, he said, “are pushing Assad closer to the point where he can’t swallow these attacks, and will respond,” leading to further reprisals by Israel. “Then perhaps the US will clap its hands because it will have started a very major flare-up.”

LIFE IN NUMBERS

Creeps with Lasers What’s your idea of a good time? How about trying to cause a massive air traffic disaster?

Hopefully you have more wholesome entertainment ideas. Unfortunately, it seems that not everyone knows how to occupy himself productively. The number of incidents of people shining lasers into airplane cockpits has shot up, despite the passage of a law last year that made such games into a federal criminal offense.

Even folks in uniforms have been getting into the fun: Last month, a Portland, Oregon, security guard was indicted for aiming a laser pointer at United and JetBlue flights coming into Portland’s airport. Prosecutors say that he admitted to shining lasers at 25 flights altogether “for the kicks of it, the thrill and excitement of it, because he would go in and listen to the police scanner.” But his case has been the only criminal case so far, and there have only been a small amount of civil cases that have been filed.

It’s time for law enforcement to really shine a light on these fools.

Number of cases of lasers shone at planes in 2005, according to FAA: Number of cases of lasers shone at planes in 2012: Number of cases of lasers shone at planes the first 9 months of 2013: Number of incidents at LaGuardia Airport last month: Most popular days of the week for shining lasers at planes: 1. Sunday 2. Friday 3. Saturday Most popular times: Between 7 and 11 p.m.

Maximum civil penalty for shining a laser at a plane: Maximum criminal penalty for shining a laser at a plane:

$250,000 and 5 years in prison

Number of civil penalties assessed last year:

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$11,000

95

300 3,600 3,188 2

BY YOSSI KRAUSZ

World Round-Up

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A leading GERMAN researcher said last week that he has uncovered historical documents indicating that Heinrich Mueller, the head of the Gestapo, died in Berlin in the final days of World War II and was buried in a mass grave in a Jewish cemetery. Johannes Tuchel says that a death certificate and other evidence shows that Mueller never escaped Germany, as some had previously believed.

Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff has commented that the level of evidence is not yet good enough to prove Tuchel’s assertion.

Also in GERMANY, news reports this week have revealed that two years ago police found 1,500 Modernist artworks that had been confiscated by the Nazis. The collection, held since the war by a German art collector, is estimated to be worth $1 billion. A large number of the paintings may have originally belonged to Jews.

NSA leaker Edward Snowden may have gone to work for a RUSSIAN website last week, according to his lawyer.

Snowden apparently wasn’t too busy with his resume to write a manifesto, which was published in Der Spiegel this week. In it—can you guess?—Snowden decries mass government surveillance.

SYRIA met the first deadline in its destruction of chemical weapons, according to the organization overseeing the effort. The weaponization facilities have been destroyed and chemical precursors have been secured, according to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Meanwhile, a polio outbreak has exacerbated the human toll of the continuing civil war inside the country.

Last Thursday, five Israeli soldiers were injured and four Hamas leaders were killed in a clash in a tunnel leading from Gaza into ISRAEL. There have been conflicting reports about what set off the clash, with Israeli sources reporting that a bomb was set off when soldiers attempted to clear the tunnel. An Israeli engineering corps officer who was seriously wounded during the operation, Lt. Ahiyah Klein, was able to breathe on his own by Monday, but doctors said that he would still require further surgery to save his eyesight.

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IN THE NEWS

BY TURX

The Numbing Numbers IF YOU LIKE YOUR OPINION YOU CAN KEEP IT, PERIOD

1.

A shooting spree at LAX has left one TSA agent slain, bringing the total number of murdered TSA agents up to one, from the previous total of zero. Paul Ciancia, the alleged shooter (who has the letters “CIA” all over his name), was believed to have been frustrated by the TSA’s strict security measures. Sadly, in gunning down that TSA agent, he managed to disprove his own point.

2. For two seconds, during testimony on Capitol Hill, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was overheard muttering the words, “Don’t do this to me,” when grilled by Congress about the fact that she herself has been exempted from the Obamacare exchanges. (The Congressmen questioning Sebelius had exempted themselves from Obamacare, too, of course.)

Heh. Well, Sebelius certainly isn’t the first American over the past three years who had said “Don’t do this to me,” regarding Obamacare…

3. France, Germany and Brazil are the three countries at the forefront of combating America’s spying program, in light of the fact that not only had the US government been spying on the citizens of foreign countries, but it’s been spying on their governments and leaders as well.

Russia would have played an active role too, but they never got the memo: Their spy agency forgot to mail it in.

4. A new poll released by the Pew Research Center claims that just four percent of Democrats don’t believe in global warming, while three-out-of-four Tea Partiers agree with that four percent of Democrats. According to the Climate Policy Initiative, America is on pace to spend

$359 billion over the next year fighting global warming—over a billion dollars a day! Just think: With that kinda’ money we could’ve invaded a small-to-moderately-sized country in the Middle East for absolutely no reason!

5. The Express Tribune is reporting that a school in Azizabad, located in Karachi, Pakistan, has just five students…but eighteen teachers and an additional six staffers!

The school’s dirty and bombed-out conditions keep potential students at home, while paychecks incentivize the teachers to show up. This one story paradoxically proves the evils of too much and too little government involvement at the same time.

6. According to an internal White House memo recently published by Fox News, only six people managed to sign up for Obamacare in the program’s first 24 hours. That’s right, six: S-I-X. That’s one person every four hours. And according to recent studies, in a country of 312 million people, six is not a very large number.

More people had voted for Jimmy McMillan…for president…of my shul…than had signed up for Obamacare on opening day.

(The good news? By day two the number of enrollees was up to 248.)

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7. According to the Houston Chronicle, Senator Ted Cruz has a seven-ty percent approval rating in his native state of Texas. Around the nation, however, Cruz has an approval of 23 percent, according to a CNN/ORC poll, and the GOP’s approval numbers rank lower than the number of teeth most Southerners still claim as dependents (just 28 percent approval, which actually negates my tooth analogy).

But whatever point Cruz was trying to make, it seems like he made it with his constituents. Does “everything is bigger in Texas,” include ignorance?

8. President Obama’s approval has dropped eight percentage points (42 percent approve; 51 percent disapprove), according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Further analysis shows that the president’s disproven claim, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it, period,” had a lot to do with this downward spiral. Because, as it turns out, a big percentage of Obama supporters don’t like being lied to, and the rest don’t follow the news.

9. Forbes claims that nine months ago, information technology nerds were warning that the Healthcare.gov website was headed for some serious (and spectacular) failure. They’ve been saying, “I told you so,” for the past nine months, instead of—I don’t know—actually spending that time trying to fix the broken program!

47,000. According to estimates, some 47,000 people would have to sign up for Obamacare, every single day, between now and March 1, for the government to hit their desired 7,000,000 mark.

Sigh....

•

Ben Rosen

Sightings&Citings Synopses of, and excerpts from, interesting items that have recently appeared here and there —and sometimes way over there—in the media

POPULARITY PIPE Rob Ford’s hijinks hike polls The Toronto Star reported that the announcement by Toronto police that a video, allegedly showing the city’s mayor smoking what appears to be crack cocaine, had been found sent the mayor’s poll numbers…higher.

Rob Ford has been resisting calls for months for him to resign or take a leave of absence because of allegations that he had been involved in several illegal activities, including drug use. A different copy of the video went missing earlier in the year, apparently controlled by drug dealers that Ford may have had connections to. The police were able to recover the video from computer equipment they had confiscated.

But despite the news, a poll

by Forum Research found that while earlier in the week only 39 percent of Toronto voters Yet he opposes using government money to pay for that therapy.

approved of Rob Ford’s job as mayor, after the police statement was released, a new poll showed that 44 percent of voters approved of his handling of the post.

T his is disturbing all the stereotypes about Canadians that I cherish.

believed the men were speaking Spanish.

A racist who can’t identify Jews. Who taught this guy?

THE BIGOT ISN’T BRAINY

The Atlantic Wire reported last week that three men have set up a website that helps people get enrolled in the Obamacare health exchanges more easily than the official Healthcare.gov site.

George Kalogeropoulos, Ning Liang and Michael Wasser developed the Health Sherpa site in response to the dismal launch of the Obamacare websites. Their site allows you to find out which plan you qualify for and for how much, including how large a subsidy you qualify for, and then gives you instructions about how to purchase the plan.

So far the trio only have cov-

Racist needs Rosetta Stone JTA reported last week that Dylan Grall, a 23-year-old Wisconsin man, was charged with a hate crime for allegedly punching two men who were speaking Hebrew.

Grall struck in the face the men, who were walking on a street in Madison, Wisconsin, on Shabbos morning, and demanded that they speak English. He was charged with battery and two counts of hate crimes.

The police report on the incident states that Grall

DOWNSCALING GOVERNMENT Three guys outdo Healthcare.gov

TEA PARTY TRAUMA

THE ALLIGATOR AND THE AIRPORT “In distress.” “Very lethargic.” “Needs time to recover.”

—The condition of “Allie,” a two-foot-long alligator found in Terminal 3 of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, apparently abandoned by its owner, according to a spokesman for the Chicago Herpetological Society.

I always feel the same in the airport, honestly.

ered the states without their own health care exchanges, those that use the main Healthcare.gov site for ordering insurance. But they are working on covering all 50 states.

M aybe we should just give up the three branches of government and get three guys instead.

“There are some birds we scared the living daylights out of.

Those birds are going to be in therapy for years.”

—Hero of the Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), talking about his pheasant hunting trip with fellow conservative Rep. Steve King (R-IA), as reported by Al-Jazeera America.

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JEWISHNEWS

BY NESANEL GANTZ

The Belzer Rebbetzin, z”l THE FAMILY OF THE BELZER REBBETZIN, REBBETZIN CHANA ROKEACH, Z”L, WIFE OF RAV AHARON OF BELZ, SPEAKS ABOUT HER SPECIAL WAYS

M

assive crowds filled the streets in Bnei Brak and Yerushalayim this past Motzaei Shabbos to honor Rebbetzin Chana Rokeach, the wife of Rav Aharon of Belz, at her levayah.

“She was born to be a rebbetzin” is how several of the Rebbetzin’s nephews and nieces described her to Ami. Rebbetzin Chana Rokeach, née Labin, was born in Hungary on the 28th day of Av in 5675 (August 8, 1915) to Rav Yechiel Chaim Labin, the Makova Rebbe, and Rebbetzin Bracha Devorah, a”h. Before the war, Rebbetzin Chana was married to Rav Yosef Meir Polak, zt”l, the Rebbe of Bergzas, who was killed in Auschwitz. She survived the war with her two children, a son and a daughter. Her daughter was the wife of the rav of Kommemiyus, Rav Menachem Mendel Mendelsohn, and her son Reb Avrohom Pollak, zt”l, succeeded his father as rebbe of Bergzas. Sadly, both her children passed away in her lifetime.

At the age of 32, Rebbetzin Chana married Rav Aharon of Belz, when the Rebbe was in his late sixties. She remained his loyal rebbetzin until his passing in 1957.

The present Belzer Rebbe, shlita, would often eat at her home when he was still a bachur. Later, after he married, the Rebbe would often visit her, together with his rebbetzin, when visiting Bnei Brak.

Ami spoke to Mrs. Esther Klein of Boro Park, a niece of the Belzer Rebbetzin. The Rebbetzin stayed in the Klein home on numerous occasions.

“Sadly,” explained Mrs. Klein, “most of the times she came to New York were to take care of her two children, who had traveled to America for treatment. The Rebbetzin had a very difficult life. Both of her children passed away in her lifetime, as did her oldest grandson.

“It is truly difficult to describe her in

her children were receiving medical treatment. She was a very caring mother and grandmother. I remember that despite the hectic schedule of visiting the hospital when her daughter was sick, she made sure to buy presents for her grandchildren. She expressed remorse that the children were without parents for several weeks. She was always concerned that ‘di kinder zol lernen,’ that the children should learn.”

Although it is customary to send kvitlach to chasidic rebbes, the Belzer Rebbetzin often received kvitlach herself. The great admorim of Pshevorsk, including the current Rebbe, Rav Leibish, shlita, are among those known to have sent her kvitlach. Rav Leibish said, regarding the Rebbetzin, that “she had the merit of being the rebbetzin of an angel [the Belzer Rebbe] and hot ir aigene yichis atzma'i [is great in her own right].”

The Rebbetzin was carried to her eternal resting place on the same stretcher that was used by her huswords, and I am Belzer Rebbe afraid that no band, Rav Aharon of Belz, at delivering hesped words can do her his levayah. After the levayah justice. She was of the Belzer Rebbe, zt”l, the royalty personified. She was always dav- Rebbetzin purchased the stretcher from ening and saying Tehillim. She never spoke Shaarei Tzedek hospital and kept it with more than was absolutely necessary, and her all these years. would never speak about anyone else “The Rebbetzin cherished everything under any circumstances. She would say from her husband, the Rebbe,” said another ‘Mach tzi dus moil un enfer nisht—Close niece. “The Rebbe used to drink his coffee your mouth and don’t respond [to any neg- with half water and half milk and the Rebative talk].’ betzin used to put in sugar which would “Although I was fortunate to be with her often clump on the bottom of the cups. for many years,” said Mrs. Klein, “I never The Rebbetzin saved those holy clumps of lost the feeling of awe and respect for this sugar in cups, and they remained in her great woman. Even her two sisters would cupboard in her kitchen to this day.” only refer to her by the title, ‘Rebbetzin.’

The Rebbetzin was buried in Har HameShe was the quintessential rebbetzin, always nuchos, next to her illustrious husband, giving out brachos and wishing people well. Rav Aharon of Belz, zt"l.

She was 98.

“I would act as the interpreter for the Yehi zichrah baruch.

Rebbetzin on her visits to New York when Rav Aharon of Belz, zt"l

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JEWISHNEWS

BY MACHLA ABRAMOVITZ

Chasidic Woman Elected to Montreal Borough Council TO COUNTER AN ANTI-SEMITIC CANDIDATE AN UNLIKELY CANDIDATE IS VOTED IN

H

istory was made on November 3 when Mindy Pollak, a 24-year-old Vizhnitzer chasidic woman and public speaker, was elected to borough council in the Outremont borough of Montreal, the first chasidic woman ever elected to such a post. Pollak defeated journalist Pierre Lacerte, whose online blog is filled with incitement against the chasidic community, by a whopping 160 votes, garnering over 35% of the vote compared to Lacerte’s 28%. Her success, however, had been far from assured. In fact, it took the very real possibility of a Lacerte victory for many chasidim to support her candidacy.

Pierre Lacerte and his cohort, Outremont borough councilor Celine Forget, had been targeting the chasidic community

since 2001 (as reported in Ami issue 70, "Malice in Montreal"), when Forget challenged the establishment of an eiruv in court and lost. Since then, seven discriminatory bylaws have been passed by City Hall at their instigation, such as changing zoning laws to prevent the founding of new synagogues or removing the legal status of existing ones. Their intention, many chasidim believe, was to curtail the community’s growth, which had reached 25% of the population.

City Hall, under Mayor Marie CinqMars, seemed to be intimidated by the duo, who had garnered the support of Quebec’s French-speaking media. Over the years, tensions between the chasidim and their French-speaking neighbors rose sharply.

Chasidim countered by reaching out to the community through the establishment of

Friends of Hutchison, a grassroots organization cofounded over a year ago by filmmaker and writer Leila Marshy, who is of Egyptian and Palestinian descent, and the Jewish Mindy Pollak. Its stated purpose is to engage both communities in dialogue to resolve misconceptions. Belzer chasid Cheskie Weiss, together with Bobover askan Boruch Shimon Posner, also created an online site called OutremontHassid.com to directly engage the public.

Still, in order to effect real change, it soon became apparent that these measures were not enough. Many maintained that now was the time to put forth their own candidate to better defend their rights as citizens. They now had the numbers to do that.

When Pollak was approached by Project Montreal, a municipal party that held

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JEWISHNEWS City Hall

Citing the results of the poll, askanim again approached the rabbanim.

12 of the 65 seats in the city council to run for borough council, she agreed on condition that she would obtain the support of the rabbanim. Askanim who supported her candidacy quietly approached a number of them on her behalf, and were told that given the seriousness of the threat facing the chasidic community if Lacerte won, her candidacy would not be an issue.

While Pollack’s parents were completely behind their daughter, not everyone in the community was ready to support her.

“There were concerns regarding tznius and whether she was capable of winning, given her youth and inexperience,” a Vizhnitzer chasid told Ami. “There was also the question of whether or not to support Project Montreal.”

Subsequently, the Conseil Juif Quebecois (CJQ), the newly formed umbrella organization representing Montreal’s chareidi community, put forth another candidate, Shloime Goldberg, catapulting him in from another borough under the banner of Team Denis Coderre, whose leader was a frontrunner for the Montreal

mayoralty. In fact, Mr. Coderre was elected. The Satmar Dayan, Rav Moshe Tyrnauer, who vehemently opposed Pollak’s candidacy for hashkafah reasons, gave his full support to Goldberg, and would continue to do so. So did a few other rabbanim.

But, having already committed herself to Project Montreal, the refined, self-assured and multilingual Pollak was not prepared to step down. Through Friends of Hutchison, she reached out to non-chasidim and received overwhelming support.

“When I went door-to-door, the response was overwhelmingly positive. People were so excited and thanked me for my hard work,” Pollak told Ami immediately after her win. “The message was that we need someone to defend our interests, because up until now that was not being done.”

“They trusted her,” Marshy added.

Matters changed dramatically vis-à-vis the chasidic community’s support for Pollak when an independent poll taken on Shabbos among non-chasidic voters was released one week prior

EXPERIENCED TUTORS AVAILABLE Call 917-586-9527 28 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

‫בס"ד‬

BY MACHLA ABRAMOVITZ

to the elections. It placed support for Pollak at 30% and Lacerte at 48%. Goldberg, who had entered the race late, was lagging behind at 5%. “That’s when the CJQ understood that the Jewish vote could bring her over the top,” Satmar chasid Hersh Teitelbaum said. He credits Leila Marshy for Pollak’s support in the non-chasidic community. “Through steady campaigning, Marshy delivered. She had a vision, and she believed.”

Citing the results of the poll, askanim again approached the rabbanim. Rav Asher Greenfeld of Vizhnitz Montreal (who happens to be Pollak’s rav); Rav Yochanan Wosner, the Skverer Dayan; Rav Wolfe Ber Lerner, the Belzer Dayan; and Rav Yonasan Binyamin Weiss, Av Beis Din of Montreal’s Va’ad Ha’ir, all agreed that due to the dire situation, voting for Pollak was not a halachic issue but a political one. “Subsequently, they would not come out for or against. Whatever the askanim decided was good,” explained Weiss.

“It was clearly understood that voting for Pollak was not a first choice,” Teitelbaum added. “But the community was up against a situation where two of its councilors could potentially be hate-driven people with only one agenda, to act against chasidim.”

The matter having been resolved, the campaign to assure Pollak’s success went into high gear. It was less than a week before the election and tensions were running high. Shuls were canvassed and messages disseminated by robocalls. And the messages didn’t mince words, bluntly reminding everyone of all the discriminatory laws that had been imposed upon the community, the intention of which was to make life as intolerable for chasidim as possible. In 2009, 68% of chasidic registered voters didn’t vote. Getting the vote out was crucial.

Apathy was not an option.

Indeed, the chasidic community proved to be well prepared to take on the well-oiled campaign of Forget and Lacerte.

Transportation was made available to ferry people to and from the polling stations. “We had ten drivers who kept on bringing people,” Weiss said. And it apparently worked.

Although the precise figures have not yet been tallied, it appears this was the largest chasidic voter turnout ever.

Meanwhile, Mindy Pollak is relieved, thrilled and eager to take on her new job. “I will work together with all the different communities to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard and everyone’s interests are defended,” she said.

Is she concerned about being a lone voice in a City Hall still run by Mayor Marie Cinq-Mars? She shrugs it off. “Look what harm one person, Forget, has been able to do over the last ten years working as an independent councilor with no party and no connections. We’ll see what I can get done, not by intimidation, but in a positive vein.”

•

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C S B E N V I S I O N I I I : M I S S I O N S TAT E M E N T THE MISSION OF CSB ENVISION III IS TO INSPIRE PROFESSIONAL FINANCIAL ADVISORS AND INSURANCE EXECUTIVES FROM THE JEWISH COMMUNITY TO ACHIEVE HIGHER LEVELS OF BUSINESS SUCCESS THROUGH EDUCATION-BASED CONFERENCES AND EVENTS, WHILE SERVING AS A BENEFIT FOR CSB CARE - A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION THAT HAS BEEN ENHANCING AND INSPIRING THE LIVES OF BLIND, VISUALLY IMPAIRED AND PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED JEWISH INDIVIDUALS SINCE 1997.

w w w. t h e c s b e v e n t. c o m

JEWISHNEWS

BY AVI KLEINBERG

A Gathering to Light the Darkness

T

he ranks of Chabad shluchim continue to grow exponentially.

There are currently more than 4,500 around the world (actually it is twice that number, if we include the rabbis’ wives). More than half of this number has been dispatched in the nearly two decades since the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, zt”l.

Most of those shluchim assembled Sunday night in a marine terminal along Brooklyn’s waterfront for their annual banquet, the apex of a nearly week-long conference, or kinus. Emissaries traveled from every corner of the globe, arriving at the vast warehouse

Meir Alfasi / Chabad.org

THE ANNUAL KINUS HASHLUCHIM OF CHABAD

by bus, taxi, subway and limousine.

The convention theme was zarach ba’choshech, a phrase from Tehillim (112:4) meaning “radiated light into the darkness.”

The speeches and videos were replete with metaphors of luminescence: sparks of Yiddishkeit ignited, torches lit, and Jewish souls set aflame.

The recent Pew Research Center findings were mentioned repeatedly at the kinus. Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, the head of the Chabad educational wing Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, called it a “clarion wake-up call.”

“You do one mitzvah,” Kotlarsky said,

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“and you can change the world.” He then announced an initiative to get each emissary to reach 20 people in their communities that they had never had contact with before. To what end? To get them each to do a single mitzvah.

Kotlarsky announced that even if an emissary reached every Jew in a community, except for one, the mission would not have been fulfilled.

“Until we reach each and every Jew in the community, in the state, in the city, in the country that shaliach is charged with, we cannot sit back and relax,” he told the assembled.

•

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words DISPELLING DARKNESS WITH ILLUMINATIONS

I

n her mission to provide the world with a unique digital Jewish art forum that will display the beauty of Yiddishkeit through photos, illustrations, audio and video, Sima Frankel, of the highly-regarded Smart Design graphic design firm, is definitely focused on the “big picture.” Not only will her website, Illuminations—that is set to launch as a separate entity in the near future—offer images and media related to Judaism under halachic supervision, Sima is certain that by collectively showcasing what our lifestyle has to offer this project can inspire unaffiliated Jews.

Born in Israel, it is Sima’s eclectic background and exposure to the different streams of Yiddishkeit that contributed to her passionate belief in portraying all sectors of our nation as beautiful; she taught in schools all across the spectrum, from Chasidic to Sephardic, in Israel and abroad.

A graduate of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Avni Institute for the Arts in Israel, Sima is herself a celebrated artist. She continued her education at Pratt Institute, and implemented her artistic approach in her work as a graphic designer. Sima seeks to combine her exposure to the world of art and extensive kiruv background. “Hashem gave everyone unique talents that we are to use to bring out the light. I want to use my talents to bring out the light of Yiddishkeit,” Sima says.

Sima spoke with Ami Magazine about Illuminations.

What kinds of images are available for purchase on the website?

I’m hoping to offer more than just images for graphic designers and marketing personnel on Illuminations. The goal is to create a network of Jewish artistic talent, showcasing beautiful high-resolution photos, vectors, illustrations, video clips and music that depict all aspects of our religion, where one can purchase these art forms.

Why is it that you feel Illuminations is so vital?

I’m very disappointed in the way that Yiddishkeit is portrayed

in the media and in online resources. Secular photo websites will often showcase pictures that are negative and very stereotypical about Judaism.

Moreover, other minorities have tapped into those websites as a resource. The Arabs, for example, use images on stock photo websites to portray themselves as sophisticated and family-oriented. They are using images to break stereotypes. Scroll through photo websites and you will wonder, ‘Where are we?’

How exactly will Illuminations function as a kiruv tool?

Images are powerful, constantly influencing us and our perceptions. In galus we’ve been plunged into darkness. How can we fight it? We as a nation are the illuminators of the world. We need to inspire, proving that Yiddishkeit can be congruous with an upscale lifestyle. Illuminations will showcase, for example, a photo of a state-of-the-art Shabbos table that can have a profound impact on an unaffiliated Jew. How will Illuminations differ from other Jewish stock photo websites?

While other Jewish websites currently in existence offer photos and fonts, they don’t contain vectors, illustrations or audio clips.

Their images are also not of the highest quality available. These websites also focus on life in Israel, but a secular Jew in Manhattan would possibly be more drawn to a photo of a Jewish man who is depicted in a similar setting; that image will speak to him.

I want Illuminations to show concepts. Our images will be upscale and high quality. I’m seeking to recruit new talent, for artists to send us work that is contributed, creating linkage.

Overall, I want to raise the bar as far as our images are concerned.

Perusing the gorgeous Illuminations collection temporarily available on Smart Design’s website, it’s clear to see that once Illuminations launches as its own entity, it will surely accomplish just that.

JEWISH LIVING IN

Austin, Texas Attracting families remains a goal of the Austin Jewish community.

A

ustin, a small village located on the Colorado River, was chosen as the capital of the Texas Republic in 1839. Ten years later its first Jewish resident, Phineas DeCordova, arrived in town.

Originally from Jamaica, Phineas moved to Austin at the governor’s invitation to work with the state government to encourage European immigration to Texas. Attracting families to settle in Austin remains a goal of the Jewish community to this day.

The Austin Jewish community began to change in the 1980s with the advent of entrepreneurs such as Michael Dell, whose start-up company, Dell Computer, transformed Austin into a high-tech industrial center. As the quiet town evolved into a

flourishing city, Austin’s Jewish population mushroomed from 2,100 to 5,000. Estimates put the current number somewhere between 12,000 and 18,000.

High-tech industry executives, led by Dell and his “Dellionaires,” transformed Jewish philanthropy in Austin and reshaped the community. In 1992, Dell and his wife, Susan, purchased a 40-acre parcel of land in northwest Austin to create a unified campus for the city’s Jewish community. Today, the Dell Campus contains the Jewish Community Center, the Austin Jewish Academy day school, the Austin Jewish Federation and the Orthodox shul, Tiferet Israel.

Rabbi Eliezer Langer explains that Austin has many services that Orthodox families require, such as a daily minyan,

32 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

REAL ESTATE The housing market in Austin is currently strong.

Average-sized three-bedroom house: $330,000–$450,000 Rent for a three-bedroom duplex apartment: $1500–$2000 per month

mikvah, kosher food, and classes for adults, including a small kollel. About 60 individuals attend the shul on Shabbos, with more and more new baalei teshuvah joining them. There is a Daf Yomi shiur with a siyum planned for the spring.

Reaching out to the wider Austin community, Tiferet Israel offers vari-

BY MENUCHA CHANA LEVIN

Cost of Living

 WEATHER

Austin’s subtropical climate with southerly winds averages 300 days of sunshine annually. Summers are long and hot; winters are mild, with only occasional brief cold spells.

Most rain falls in late spring and early fall.

Snow is rare; there may be several successive winters without any snowfall. Due to a continuing drought, water—such as for lawns—is expensive.

Average temperatures: January, 50.1° F; July, 84.3° F; annual average, 68.6° F Average annual precipitation: 31.35 inches

KEDEM GRAPE JUICE: 1.89 liter bottle—$4.97 CHALAV YISRAEL MILK: 1.89 liter container—$3.99

Getting there

Tashlish

small children have recently settled in Austin. They enjoy the warmth of their new community with its relaxed lifestyle but miss the varied abundance of their communities of origin. They find Austin very warm in a literal sense too—the extremely hot summer climate—and they look forward to cooler, more comfortable weather in the late fall and winter.

Although Austin has the potential to become a more significant Jewish community, it remains overshadowed by the larger, thriving communities of Houston and Dallas, two and a half and three hours away, respectively.

“The growth seen in Houston, the fourth



ous programs including the opportunity to learn to read Hebrew in a five-week crash course. Under the tutelage of Rabbi Langer, the National Jewish Outreach Program’s introductory Hebrew program successfully teaches Jewish adults to read Hebrew in only five sessions.

Kashrus in Austin is making good progress too. “We can justly feel proud of the kosher options available—the HEB Supermarket, Madras Pavilion (offering vegetarian Indian food), Moses Falafel and the new kosher food trailer at Hillel,” says Rabbi Langer.

An eruv committee has been hard at work with local power agencies, and the entire Jewish community is involved with the project.

Chabad-Lubavitch of Austin’s Bais Menachem Hebrew Academy and the Austin Jewish Academy are options for elementary education.

Hillel’s Jewish Learning Fellowship educator and mashgiach, Rabbi Moshe Trepp, explains that while Dallas has five vibrant Orthodox schools and Houston has four, both day schools in Austin end with eighth grade. “For Orthodox families, the number-one concern is a good religious education. My wife and I love Austin and if we had what other communities have to offer in terms of education, we’d have no reason to leave Austin until the arrival of Mashiach. We don’t need all the kosher Chinese and pizza stores or a shul on every corner, but education is vital.”

Still, several young frum families with

DAY SCHOOL TUITION: $13,700 a year

Flight from NY: 3½ to 4 hours From London via NY: 10½ hours From Tel Aviv: 14½ hours

largest city in the United States, will take a while to emulate, and we look forward to the pioneers and leaders who will join us in creating further options in Austin,” Rabbi Langer concludes hopefully.

•

To submit a community’s story or to have your community featured here, please contact us at submissions@amimagazine.org.

Lag Ba’omer 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4 / / N OV E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M I M AG A Z I N E

33

BUSINESS

l NEWS

B Y Y E D I DA WO LF E

Tapping Tax-Dodging Corporations NEW FUNDS; LOWER RATES

W

ashington economist Marty Sullivan has figured out how to lower corporate tax rates while generating more tax revenue for the US Treasury. Sullivan documents his solutions in his TaxNotes column, which is highly regarded by both liberals and conservatives. It’s a multi-pronged approach to addressing corporate tax evasion that would eliminate unfair, investment-distorting variations by getting rid of loopholes. First, he’d change the definition of “small business” from a legal classification that now includes privately held corporations with profits of $500 million to only firms bringing in less than $50 million in profits per year. Another change would be to embrace a “territorial” tax system whereby profits are taxed where they are earned and there are rules against shifting revenue, expenses and assets to foreign subsidiaries to avoid US taxes. These changes would put over $20 billion in the Treasury’s coffers and lower the overall corporate tax rate by at least 1.5%. (Source: Washington Post)

Data Point In the 1980s, CEOs earned 40 times more than the average employee; today, CEOs make 200 times more.

(Source:NPR)

200

Grabbing Up Bits of London THE NEW REAL-ESTATE CURRENCY RESERVE

The British have become a “nation of property speculators,” according to Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf. Soaring London housing prices reveal that British real estate has become a currency reserve, especially for Greek and Italian investors unsure where the rocky euro experiment will end up. Wealthy Greeks and Italians have spent 400 million pounds in London “bricks and mortar,” citing the stable British government and gentle tax laws. Housing prices are up 7.1% from a year ago. It seems both international and domestic investors are treating London properties like a reserve asset.

Experts say an influx of people looking for work in the city is also keeping property values high.

(Source: BusinessInsider)

times more

The Squeeze Is On COULD TIGHT MORTGAGE PRACTICES BE WORSE THAN LOOSE LENDING?

US homeownership has fallen to 65% since its peak in 2004. Tighter lending rules and greater legal hazards for high-risk loans have led to lower US homeownership in the years following the burst of the real estate bubble. Mortgage-bond pioneer Lewis Ranieri blames the “irrational restriction” of credit as lenders and regulators overreact to the loose lending that fed the bubble. Ranieri fears the new rules will choke would-be buyers out of the chance to own a home, causing longterm social consequences in addition to economic losses.

(Source: Salon)

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6

TYPES OF

THINKERS

TO SEEK FOR YOUR

TEAM 1.

DREAMER

— Thinking big and stretching bounds of what’s achievable supplies your team with optimistic creative energy.

2. DEBATER—Their questioning nature forces you to strengthen your arguments.

3. DISRUPTOR — Challenging the status quo helps spot latent competitors and untapped opportunities.

4. DRIVER —Natural leaders, they advocate for the customer, which focuses the team on the main goal.

5. DETAILER

—By identifying what’s missing in the best-laid plans, they offer insight into potential problems and improvements.

6. DOER

—They deliver on time all the time.

(Source: LinkedIn)

BUSINESS

KIDDUSH HASHEM IN THE WORKPLACE / / AMBASSADORS l

The Kiddush Hashem of Myrtle Beach

BUSINESS BOOMS FOR A STOREOWNER WHO CLOSED HIS STORE FOR SHABBOS B Y S ARA H M A S S RY

T

he weekends are hectic in the resort town of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina—especially on Saturdays. This is the time when thousands of vacationers frequent the beaches and tourist shops, drawing a huge profit for the local business owners. But when Moe, a Jewish store owner, learned about the importance and kedushah of Shabbos, he made the radical decision to close his store on Saturdays.

One Friday afternoon, even though his store was bustling with customers, he shut off the lights and informed everyone that he was closing for the day. The customers, stumbling their way through the darkened aisles, thought Moe had gone mad. How on earth could he close his shop in the middle of the day?

“I’m sorry,” Moe told them, “I am closing for Shabbos. Come back on Saturday night and I will give you a ten-percent discount.”

Annoyed, many of the customers threw their merchandise onto the floor, yelling and cursing as they left the store. Some even had the audacity to throw merchandise at Moe. That, however, did not sway his conviction. He happily closed his store and went home to welcome Shabbos.

True to his word, Moe returned to his shop on Saturday night. Although he had been worried that closing his store on Shabbos would be bad for business, he was amazed to find a long line of eager customers waiting outside for him to make good on the discount he’d promised them.

It was remarkable, but probably just a onetime occurrence, Moe thought. But lo and behold, the following week, the same scene— outraged Friday customers returning for their discounts on Motzaei Shabbos—repeated itself, and continued to do so every weekend. Moe’s fellow shop owners, who had assumed Moe wouldn’t recover from his Saturday losses, were astounded to see his business booming.

Word of the strange phenomenon of Moe’s store being closed for Shabbbos soon spread and eventually became known as “the kiddush Hashem of Myrtle Beach.” His decision to close

his store on Shabbos made a tremendous impact on the entire town, inspiring many other local Jews to observe Shabbos as well, including some special guests at Moe’s Shabbos table: children of Jewish business owners who kept their stores open on Saturdays.

Years later, when Moe decided to retire, he was faced with a serious dilemma: Since he would be leasing his store to a non-Jew, he was not required to ensure that it remained closed on Shabbos. However, because his store had become “The Kiddush Hashem of Myrtle Beach,” Moe was reluctant to allow any business to take place there on Shabbos and Yom Tov. After discussing it with his rav, he put a clause in the contract that stipulated that the store remain closed CLAUSE 26 OF THE LEASE: 26. Religious Holidays/Store Closing: Landlord and tenant agree that no business shall be conducted on the leased premises and that the store thereon shall be completely closed on certain Jewish religious holidays. The agreed closing days are as follows: 1. The Jewish Sabbath (Saturdays) 2. The first two days and the last two days of Passover

Years later, when Moe decided to retire, he was faced with a serious dilemma

3. Shavuot (Two days) 4. Rosh Hashanah (Two days) 5. Yom Kippur (One day) 6. The first two days and last two days of Sukkot The method of calculating days hereunder shall be as follows: Each day shall begin one hour before sunset on the previous day and shall end one hour after sunset on the same day; e.g., Friday one (1) hour prior to sunset until one (1) hour after sunset on Saturday.

on those days. Naturally, Moe was required to lower the rent significantly and sustained a great loss, yet he was happy to do so for the honor of Hashem.

When this story was told to Rav Hillel Zaks, shlita, he said, “It would be better to daven in that store than in a shul.”

•

To submit your story for this column or to have your story featured here, please contact us at submissions@amimagazine.org.

3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4 / / N OV E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M I M AG A Z I N E

35

BUSINESS

l TALK // WEEKLY INSIGHTS FROM BUSINESS LEADERS

B Y N E S A NE L G A NT Z

Name: Marc Gold

Employees: 70

Company: Gold Pure Food Products Co., Inc.

Bottles of horseradish produced daily: Over 50,000

Position: Co-CEO

Number of different products: More than 30

Age: “My wife will be upset if I tell you”

Established: 1932

Lives: Staten Island Background: Marc Gold is a third-generation member of the business, following in the footsteps of his father Morris and grandfather Hyman, who founded the company with his wife Tillie. Originally from Galicia, Hyman and Tillie acquired an unwanted horseradish grinder and started selling to stores. While Gold’s eventually expanded to include other products, they still use the same 1932 recipe: horseradish, vinegar and salt.

And tradition is continuing into the next generation of the Gold family: Marc's son Shaun and niece Melissa are now working for the company. Although the company was originally located in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, today their factories are in Hempstead, on Long Island.

Marc still remembers marking the boxes with a red crayon to distinguish between the two classic flavors, with beets and regular horseradish.

LUNCH BREAK with Marc Gold What are the challenges of inheriting a family business?

In our case it wasn’t so much inheriting as it was a gradual process. My two brothers and I worked together with my father and uncles. There’s always the feeling of wanting to maintain the family legacy and reputation. That’s something that’s always on our minds.

Another challenge is how to allow the next generation to take over.

You've already incorporated the next generation into the company.

Yes. One of the challenges of handing over the reins is learning to let go.

Just because you did things a certain way doesn’t mean that they have to. I

also can’t expect them to work the production lines and do everything I did, and that’s okay. You have to put your trust in the younger generation.

What are some of the benefits and difficulties of working together with family?

The positive aspect is that you’re all working together towards a common cause. You want to uphold the tradition together. As far as the challenges, we make sure not to take our business home with us or “talk shop” at simchos or get-togethers. Well, at least we try. [He laughs.] It’s also very important to ensure that the new generation forms a strong bond among its own members.

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How does an “old” company continually foster growth?

You have to keep introducing new items. We started out with borsht and horseradish in the ’40s, went on to duck sauce in the ’60s, and added mustard in the ’90s. We’re constantly on the lookout for new products, and I’ll explain to you how that helps grow the business. When someone buys a new product from Gold’s, it automatically promotes our original staple products and connects them with the brand. They also see on the label that we make salsa, hot dog relish and wasabi sauce. It’s called cross-advertising, and it’s free.

How does a company that’s been around for a while connect with the modern consumer?

That’s a very good question. My 22-yearold son Shaun runs campaigns with social media like Twitter. We also sponsor sports events, which are great for exposure with the younger crowd.

Do you sell directly to stores or only through distribution?

Distributors, or large chains with their own warehousing. It’s just too expensive to have the manpower to deal with stores.

Is that what you would advise a new business starting out?

Absolutely not. It’s not so easy to get distributors to carry your products nowadays. What I would suggest is tackling one area at a time and working with every store, one on one. Once you’re selling to them, find a distributor who can take it over and you’ll save money. Then move on to the next area until you’ve acquired a following.

I’ve started to hear a lot more about Gold’s recently in what I’m assuming was a huge marketing push.

other things you can do with it, and by making the consumer aware of them it increases the selling market. Horseradish is great on meat, in salsa and soup—even in cholent if you want to add a little kick right before serving. It’s delicious. This is a strategy that applies to all businesses.

Find different ways for the consumer to utilize your product, and watch business pick up.

Were there any turning points to your success?

Not really; it was more gradual growth.

The most important thing is methodical perseverance. That’s how we expanded.

Gold’s is closely associated with being a Jewish company. Has that affected your business?

That’s a very good question, and the answer is yes. There are several places even in the United States where we haven’t been able to break into the market or our products haven’t sold well, and we believe it’s for that reason. It’s very discouraging.

We’re very proud of our Jewishness. My grandfather was Orthodox. He always said that being Jewish was number one, and we still feel that way.

You’re right about a new marketing campaign. Although we always advertise, and especially during the holiday season, we focused on two main things. The first is the health benefits of horseradish. Recent studies have shown that it’s high in antioxidants, low in carbs and is overall healthier for you than broccoli. We also started promoting the many different ways it can be used.

Have you had any failures?

Most people associate horseradish with gefilte fish.

Failures are a part of life, so you’ve got to expect them. Just make sure not to make the same mistake twice, and move on.

That’s right, but there are hundreds of

Yes. Onion borscht. It was delicious and the packaging was nice, but it didn’t go.

In the ’60s my father made Gold’s fruit punch, and I drank it every day, but there was too much competition. We even tried Gold’s charoses. It went great for Passover, but not so much the rest of the year.

How does a business owner deal with failures?

•

BUSINESS

l PARNOOOSA

PARNOOOSA!

BY MAURICE STEIN

Taking Action THE NEXT STEP WITH OUR PARTICIPANTS

CHAIM

SHALOM

PROFILE: CHAIM W.

PROFILE: SHALOM T.

Age: 21 Resides in: BORO PARK Family status: MARRIED; 1 CHILD Education: YESHIVAH, KOLLEL Field of interest: WORKING WITH PEOPLE, BEING CREATIVE Years of experience: NONE Chaim’s last assignment was to call a few caterers and ask them for work, but when I followed up on him a few days later, I learned that he hadn’t done anything. His reasoning was that in the catering business he would have to work late hours and at odd times, as most events are on nights or weekends, and he felt that he just wasn’t ready for that.

It seems that he keeps coming back to the starting point, where he doesn’t really know what he wants to do. With-

out a long-term vision, each new idea is approached from scratch. As much as I would love to help him figure it out, I think at this point he just has to get into the work force, and after a few months of actually working he’ll be more in a position to narrow it down.

While some people are able to formulate a vision for themselves at a very young age, due to their upbringing and level of maturity, others are unable to articulate their goals until later in life, as I find is the case with Chaim. I therefore feel that as soon as he gets any job at which he has to work hard, his vision for the future will start to develop.

Based on this observation, my next assignment for him is to call anyone who is programmed into his cell phone and ask if that person knows about a job opening. I believe it is urgent that he get to work and stop thinking about why he doesn’t like a lot of job options.

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Age: 24 Resides in: FLATBUSH Family status: MARRIED; 3 KIDS Education: YESHIVAH Field of interest: OPEN TO ANYTHING Years of experience: 1 YEAR IN SALES

The decision Shalom made to launch an incubator business is a significant one that will change his life in many ways. It will entail going from being a salesman to managing a business, where he will be responsible for running the whole show.

One of the reasons I encouraged him to go for it is the fact that although he didn't enjoy sales, he was successful in that field. The biggest challenge to any new entrepreneur is discipline. Having

done well in sales, I can see that he is a selfstarter and does not need anyone standing over his head to remind him to work hard.

This tells me that with Hashem’s help he will succeed at this as well.

However, at this point I feel that Shalom lacks the experience to be able to advise other businesses. While he has managed a number of small projects for others, it’s not enough to be able to tell others what to do.

I have therefore advised him to get some basic training in business coaching and learn what it takes to make a business work.

I have signed him up for some classes, and

will involve him in several coaching projects I am currently working on so he can observe what goes on in real business situations.

While much of the business world has changed in recent years, the dynamics that make its wheels turn are still the same.

SIMON PROFILE: SIMON W. Age: 56 Resides in: LAKEWOOD Family status: MARRIED; 8 KIDS Education: BACHELOR'S DEGREE Field of interest: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND/OR BOOKKEEPING Over the past few days I reached out to a few of my younger clients whom I thought might benefit from someone with 30 years’ experience in business.

I wanted to get a better understanding of the way younger people look at older employees.

Here is the unvarnished truth of what they said: The complaint: “I’m not comfortable with hiring older people because they’re going to retire soon. I’d rather hire younger ones who will stay with the company long-term.”

The facts: Older employees aren’t retiring so fast. In fact, they end up staying with a company a lot longer than the average young worker. According to numerous studies, the average length of employment for people under the age of 40 is 3.2 years, versus ten years for

people over 50.

The complaint: “I’m uncomfortable having someone double my age as my employee. I’d be embarrassed to yell at him.”

The facts: Older people are generally more respectful to their bosses than younger people.

They are more appreciative of what you do for them and more amenable to following your orders. Yes, it would be difficult to yell at them, but yelling at employees is never a good idea.

It doesn’t help much and creates a bad environment for your office.

The complaint: “They’re not up-to-date on today’s technology.”

The facts: While it’s true that some older people aren’t familiar with the latest social media platforms, they’re very familiar with the basics of business: building relationships and communicating with integrity. So while much of the business world has changed in recent years, the dynamics that make its wheels turn are still the same.

After speaking to these younger people and listening to their concerns, I came to the conclusion that the solution is to prepare the older job-seeker to present himself in a way that eliminates their fears.

I am scheduled to meet with Simon on Sunday to discuss this further.

Until then, make it a great week.

•

You can contact Maurice at Maurice@ amimagazine.org or at askmaurice.com.

by John Loftus

The

Simple The plain facts of the JFK assassination

Truth

I

was five years old the first time I saw John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was our United States senator from Massachusetts and a war hero. That was in the days before we “swiftboated” our naval heroes and smeared their reputations along with their silver stars. JFK was speaking at the Columban Fathers Seminary, an Irish Catholic enclave in mostly Protestant Milton. He was there to judge a feiche, or Irish dancing competition. To my young eyes, then and now, Irish dancing looks like a race to stomp as many bugs as possible while pretending to look bored with your arms by your side.

Irish dancing is right up there with Irish gourmet cuisine. Yeah, we don’t have any famous Irish restaurants, just pubs. We have farm food: high carbohydrate energy food. My mother thought bacon grease was a condiment and stored it in a glass jar above the stove. Don’t laugh; I know about gribenes and shmaltz. How could such an intelligent people as the Jews eat such heart attack food?

Anyway, at five I was much more interested in my hot dog than JFK’s speech. But a few years later, I stayed up through the night into the dawn to see if America really had shed enough of its

bigotry to elect its first Irish Catholic president. My dad’s father, Michael, came to Boston when the mills had signs at the door: “No Irish need apply.” He drank himself to death out of despair.

The election of JFK was to the Irish then as the election of Obama is to the African Americans now. It was a time of great hope and promise.

Then came the death of dreams. In a way, many Irish Americans were only surprised that JFK had lived as long as he had. JFK and his brother Robert had endorsed the civil rights movement led

by Dr. Martin Luther King, much to the fury of J. Edgar Hoover and several score of southern senators. When all the American reformers died along with the good pope, John XXIII, it looked like America (and the world) was in regression. There was a time when everyone from Boston believed the Red Sox would never win a World Series, and that the Irish were cursed. “Luck of the Irish” was a bitter, sarcastic phrase uttered only when a small catastrophe occurred.

There were always those among us who suspected that there was more than one gunman at the grassy knoll. There were always whispers that no one could have shot Kennedy at that distance.

When I became an army officer I discovered that this, at least, was

by John Loftus not true. To everyone’s surprise, I was the only city kid rated as an “expert” marksman. When I finally visited the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, and stood where Lee Harvey Oswald stood, I realized that at that distance I could have made that shot with ease, even without the telescopic sight that Oswald used.

Oswald facing reporters as he is led to his arraignment

Peeking into Classified Files Sixteen years after JFK’s assassination, I was one of the shooting stars, the bright young things who were given high security clearances at the Justice Department to investigate wrongdoing in the secret world of spies and such. I was supposed to be hunting Nazis, but truth be told, from time to time I would peek at the still classified JFK assassination files. Hey, I was an Irishman from Boston, and my childhood hero had been murdered. I wanted to be sure that justice was done…and I was curious.

The autopsy had been carried out by military doctors at Walter Reed Hospital. They called it just right. Contrary to what civilians would expect, a military round travels at such high velocity that the physics of impact are reversed. Instead of JFK’s head being pushed forward in the direction of the bullet, it went backward, as if towards the shooter. That is the bizarre effect high-speed military ammunition normally causes when it strikes a human skull. That is why the Zapruder film was so hard to understand for nonmilitary observers, and why there was so much suspicion about a second gunman.

I can understand why the grisly autopsy photos were not released to the public, but the written autopsy report should have been released immediately. Mistakes were made, but they were made out of kindness, not cover-up.

Now the Russians, they did cover up. Or at least they only told half the truth. Oswald was a pathetic attention-seeking nutcase who desperately wanted to be regarded as a famous, important man, but was too lazy or too stupid to bother with any work to support his ambition. He defected to Russia from a sensitive American spy base in Japan, but did not bother to bring any important secrets with him. Oswald had stolen no code words, no weapons blueprints, and no “security compartmentalized information.”

Oswald thought that it would be gift enough to the Russians just giving himself, the great Oswald. It was enough for his new Russian friend, Marina, but the KGB and GRU (Russia’s main foreign intelligence agency) soon washed their hands of him as an egotistical pain in the neck. There were no objections from Moscow when Oswald decided to re-defect back to America.

To Oswald’s chagrin, the US government did not arrest him as a fugitive defector to the Communists. They ignored him, which was the most painful thing they could have done. For the rest of his life, Oswald would desperately flee from one attention-seeking endeavor to the next. For Cuba, against communism—the politics really were irrelevant to Oswald’s vain search for the spotlight. The American classified files confirm the Russian insistence that, at the time he assassinated the President, their government had no classified relationship with Oswald whatsoever.

42 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / O C T O B E R 3 0 , 2 0 1 3 / / 2 6 C H E S H VA N 5 7 7 4

Secret Russian Community of Dallas I later learned that was only half the story. In Dallas, there was a large and powerful community of Russian émigrés. Among them was George de Mohrenschildt. He and Oswald became close friends. George admitted Oswald into the inner circle of the Dallas émigré community, which included several right-wing Russians who had significant intelligence contacts with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Russian intelligence agencies made no public mention of their relationship with de Mohrenschildt. And that, as Sherlock Holmes used to say, is the dog that does not bark. Russian intelligence files must be crawling with files on the de Mohrenschildt family, but no one in Russia disclosed that Oswald’s second family in America had been a target of Russian espionage for decades.

Indeed, there is substantial reason to suspect that George de Mohrenschildt himself may have been blackmailed by Russian intelligence to spy on the hornet’s nest of CIA activists in the Dallas area.

George’s family was originally called von Mohrenschildt, in recognition of their Teutonic heritage. George’s father was the managing director of the czar’s Nobel Oil Company, the energy giant of its day. In return for Wall Street investment and efficient German management, the czar granted his oil barons all the monopoly powers they could wish. Freed from Teddy Roosevelt’s pesky antitrust and anti-cartel legislation, American investors like the Rockefellers and the Harrimans poured money into Russia.

Then came the Bolshevik revolution. George’s father fled Russia for the Baltic States, where he became a spy for German intelligence, which meant that eventually he worked for the Nazis.

Copies of his father’s handwritten intelligence reports from the late 1930s still exist in the files.

After World War I, the von Mohrenschildt family moved to France and changed their name to de Mohrenschildt. According to the classified files, young George became an oil agent, then an agent for French intelligence, which at some point became French Vichy intelligence, which meant that the son—like the father—eventually worked for the Nazis.

British intelligence files (not part of the Warren Commission report on JFK’s assassination) show that before World War II, George de Mohrenschildt was part of an American oil syndicate, lawyered by Allen Dulles, which secretly supplied the Third Reich with petroleum products. With FDR’s permission, the British secret service began an assassination program in Manhattan, seizing American oilmen who were helping the Nazis and shoving them out the window. Their deaths were invariably listed as

suicide by the helpful New York police, despite obvious signs of struggle preceding their defenestration.

The Justice Department eventually cracked down on Wall Street’s oil-for-Nazis program, but a financial settlement was reached equivalent to one week’s salary for one of the American oil executives. Crime does pay; it pays lawyers like eventual director of central intelligence Allen Dulles. Dollars for Dulles; Dulles über alles.

FDR’s untimely death left an ignorant and vulnerable Harry Truman in the White House. As a US senator, Truman had a reputation for nonpartisan investigations that tore war profiteers to shreds. As president, he could unearth all the misdeeds of Dulles’s clients, which included financial aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war. Dulles’s response was to keep President Truman “mushroomed,” an intelligence term which means keeping him in the dark and burying him in manure.

Dulles contrived to control any investigation that might pry into his murky past, hence his presence on the Warren Commission. As far as the Warren Commission knew, George de Mohrenschildt was just a minor businessman. They knew nothing of his participation in a front company that owned several million acres of Cuba for oil exploration, or his previous work for German, Nazi, French and American intelligence. “Let bygones be bygones” was Dulles’s byword.

LANDER COLLEGE FOR MEN

LEARNING

FOR LIFE BEIS MEDRASH L’TALMUD

The Not-So-Fantastic Truth There are two books about the JFK assassination that I admire.

The first is Case Closed, by Gerald Posner, which takes the position that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and makes a powerful case ruling out many of the popular conspiracy theories. The second book, which I confess I have just started reading, is by Russ Baker. His book is called Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last 50 Years.

Russ’s work is heavily footnoted from recently declassified documents and makes the case that far from being closed, there is still much to investigate about JFK’s assassination. Through his friendship with George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald wormed his way into the elite inner circle of the Russian émigré community in Dallas, which unsurprisingly, often volunteered to participate in one or another of Allan Dulles’s schemes to make their Nobel Oil stock valuable again. Dulles had set up the Crusade for Freedom as cover for laundering CIA funds to a proprietary organization called Radio Liberty. The Dallas crowd was big contributors to Radio Liberty. Dulles’s deputy director at CIA came from Dallas. Heck, for all intents and purposes, Oswald’s friends in Dallas were company men, and in Dallas the CIA was the company (next only to the oil business).

No, I am not going to join the left-wing conspiracy crowd.

I believe Oswald acted alone, sort of. Oswald was a good shot and apparently (as a favor) once fired a round into the home of an enemy of his friends. Just a prank, but it made Oswald a bit popular with the “in” crowd. He loved the attention.

After the Bay of Pigs debacle, JFK discovered that Dulles had been lying to him. The invasion could not have succeeded without direct American military support, which would be an act of

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by John Loftus

war. To Dulles’s shock, the young president stood up to him and refused to send in American fighter planes and bombers. JFK let Dulles’ ill-prepared invasion of Cuba go down the drain. As an act of mercy, JFK asked Cardinal Cushing of Boston to raise $3 million of private funds to buy medicine as ransom for the Cuban rebels. It worked.

They were all eventually released.

Dulles knew his days were numbered.

You don’t lie to the president and get away with it. JFK muttered that he was going to break the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds. One after another, Dulles’s programs were closed down. Word Jack Ruby shoots spread around the in-crowd like wildfire. and kills Oswald The general response was that someone ought to shoot Kennedy.

Sure-shot Oswald said he would volunteer to kill the President, but no one took him seriously. Shooting out a window as a prank was one thing; shooting a president is another. But eventually George de Mohrenschildt became nervous about Oswald’s intentions. According to my friends in the intelligence community, George picked up his personal phone book and called his local Dallas CIA contact.

I obtained a copy of de Mohrenschildt’s phone book from the archives. Sure enough, there were the phone numbers and addresses of unlisted CIA offices in the Washington area which I recognized. But most curiously, de Mohrenschildt had the Dallas address and phone number of “Poppy” Bush. Poppy was George H.W. Bush’s college nickname from the Yale baseball team.

According to my sources, George de Mohrenschildt called Poppy Bush to warn him that Oswald had dangerous plans for the president’s upcoming visit. To his credit, Poppy immediately sent a note to the Dallas office of the FBI. This is the famous “missing” FBI memo. According to my friends, it read something as follows: “CIA has information that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald is planning to make an attempt on the president’s life during his upcoming visit to Dallas.”

Unfortunately, the FBI ignored the warning. There was no conspiracy of silence. It was just that no one takes such threats seriously until they finally happen. Look at the assassination of Rabin in Israel. Israeli security had several warnings about possible assassination attempts, but, well, they ignored them just like the Dallas FBI. Look at Palme’s assassination in Sweden. Heads of state think themselves immune and often refuse even basic security measures. Rather than making themselves unpopular, security services often look the other way. It is just human nature.

When JFK was killed, an embarrassed J. Edgar Hoover panicked and ordered the CIA warning notice destroyed. Poppy Bush was able to blackmail Hoover for the rest of his life. None of Bush’s Dallas CIA connections emerged, and none of his father’s 44 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / O C T O B E R 3 0 , 2 0 1 3 / / 2 6 C H E S H VA N 5 7 7 4

embarrassing Nazi connections became public. George H.W. Bush became president of the United States, and his son after him. Some will say that was the price the FBI paid for ignoring Oswald. In all candor, Bush would probably have been elected president anyway, even without his leverage over the FBI.

Admirable Legacy It infuriates my left-wing friends when I say what I think to be true: that there was no conspiracy to kill JFK. Rather, George Bush did the right thing in Dallas and tried to save JFK’s life. It should be noted that I am no fan of the Republican Party in general, or the Bush family in particular. I am an old fashioned Scoop Jackson Democrat: conservative on crime and government spending; moderate on defense and foreign policy; liberal on human rights and the environment. I think this sort of balance is what most of the American people want, but neither party gets it. This explains why independents are the largest and fastest growing movement in American politics.

When it comes to the Kennedy assassination, many Americans loved JFK as I did. We are tired of conspiracy theories. We only want to hear the truth, calmly and objectively, without political spin. That’s why I like Baker’s book. It has footnotes to each of the documents he has uncovered. I may disagree with some of his conclusions, but his thorough research and documentation are a breath of fresh air.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts. History does not belong to the Republicans or the Democrats. The truth belongs to no political party. It is what it is, a treasure that belongs to us all.

Sometimes when I am in Washington, I visit JFK’s grave in Arlington Cemetery. His brother Robert is buried nearby. Robert was a war reporter for a Boston newspaper who covered the Israeli fight for independence. He liked the Jews, and infuriated his future Muslim assassin by respectfully wearing a yarmulke during a televised speech from a synagogue. Whatever finally emerges as the truth about their assassinations, I pray that the eternal flame that guards their graves brings more light than heat into the world. That would be an admirable legacy for honorable men. Most of the time American leaders, whether Republican or Democrat, honestly try to do the right thing and eventually get it right. That, not Oswald, is worth remembering.

•

Attorney John Loftus, author of America’s Nazi Secret, is a retired Army officer, intelligence analyst and federal prosecutor. He previously held a Q clearance for nuclear top secrets while working for the US government.

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NEGOTIATING WITH

BY RABBI YITZCHOK FRANKFURTER

HAMAS GERSHON BASKIN DISCUSSES HIS SECRET NEGOTIATIONS AND CLANDESTINE MEETINGS WITH HAMAS.

GERSHON BASKIN, PH.D., the founding cochairman of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), is an American-born Israeli peace activist who was the initiator and the person responsible for the secret backchannel between Israel and Hamas that successfully secured the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. His book The Negotiator: Freeing Gilad Schalit from Hamas, on the secret negotiations with Hamas, was published in English in October 2013 by Toby Press.

Tell me about The Negotiator, the book you authored.

The book tells the story of my attempts to conduct a secret direct channel between the Israeli government and Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted by Hamas in June 2006. I have been active in building relations between Israelis and Palestinians for 35 years, and when Shalit was abducted I was contacted by someone from Hamas to try to open up a channel of communication between the two sides.

I immediately undertook the mission and decided that I wouldn’t rest until had I succeeded in completing it.

The Negotiator tells the whole story from beginning to end, and even after Shalit came home. There are also some insights into what could happen in the future.

How did you feel about negotiating for the exchange of one Israeli soldier for 1,000 Palestinians?

Look, I didn’t set the price. The price was set by the Israeli government. Six months after the kidnapping, the government of Israel and Hamas, working through the Egyptian government, agreed on the formula of 1,000 for 1. I didn’t make that agreement.

Did you support it, though?

I didn’t support anything. I supported bringing Shalit home. That was the price that was set. From my perspective, I say that if Israel could have gone in with a tweezers, picked him out, killed the terrorists who abducted him

and not had to negotiate, that would have been the best solution. I remembered what happened in 1994 when a soldier was kidnapped by Hamas: The Shin Bet found out where he was and conducted a commando raid, and in the end not only were the soldier and the commander of the attack killed but nine other soldiers were wounded. With that in mind, I said that if there was no military solution there had to be a communication vehicle to be able to talk to these people and negotiate a deal as soon as possible.

But do you feel that Israel paid too much for one person?

The obvious answer is yes, but that’s irrelevant and it’s not a good question. It was either pay that price and bring Shalit home, or don’t pay it and Shalit would have died.

Another month in captivity and he would have come home dead. That’s the reality.

Why was that month so crucial?

Shalit returned home with extreme vitamin and mineral deficiencies. He had seen sunlight only once in five years and four months and was extremely Vitamin-D deficient.

For his last six months in captivity, he’d had no appetite at all. He wasn’t able to keep food down and wasn’t eating. The IDF medical officers who examined him after he crossed the border said that he wouldn’t have lasted another month.

Of course, they didn’t know that during the negotiations. But there was a suspicion that this was a window 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4 / / N OV E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M I M AG A Z I N E

47

everybody with his mental strength. I thought I’d be a lot less frail.

How long were you involved in the negotiations?

I came in six days after he was abducted. The negotiations lasted five years and four months.

If the price was set in the beginning, why did it take so long?

Gilat Shalit with Gershon Baskin

"The Shalits were told by the Israeli officials that I was a nuisance who was hindering the process and they should stay away from me." of opportunity, and if we didn’t take it, Shalit would turn into a Ron Arad, the navigator who was lost in the 1982 Lebanon War and never came home, or else he would die in captivity.

Did you ever meet with Shalit during the negotiations?

No. They wouldn’t let me. I made an offer to Hamas to take me instead of Shalit, but they wouldn’t do it. They also never agreed to bring in the Red Cross, even though we demanded it repeatedly. As I wrote in several articles in the Israeli press and told them in private, they were in contravention of international law, which affords prisoners the right to visits from the International Red Cross and communication with their families through letters and other means. Shalit had none of that.

Why did you feel that Gilad Shalit’s life was more important than yours?

I wasn’t afraid that they would kill me. I knew I was physically stronger than Shalit, although he surprised 48 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

That’s a question you have to ask the decision makers, because they’re the ones who made the decision not to decide. Prime Minister Olmert refused to make a decision until his very last day in office. He refused to support the deal that was on the table, probably feeling so vulnerable politically after his indictment for corruption that he didn’t want to leave with the release of 1,000 Palestinian terrorist prisoners on his record. Then Netanyahu came in with the posture that we don’t negotiate with terrorists.

So they brought in a German mediator to negotiate, and he worked out a deal. Hamas refused to accept the deal.

Then Israel decided they’d wait until Hamas changed their minds. So for over a year there were no negotiations, until the guy who was in charge of the negotiations for Netanyahu resigned. Then someone new came in, David Natan, who refused to take the job unless he had a clear mandate from Netanyahu to bring Shalit home. He got that mandate. I contacted him his first day on the job and told him I had these contacts with Hamas. After verifying the line of communication, he got authorization from Netanyahu to run the secret backchannel. And a few months later Shalit was home.

So you were involved the entire time?

The entire time. I produced the first sign of life from Shalit two and a half months after his abduction, a handwritten letter that was delivered by Hamas to the Egyptian representatives in Gaza. Over the next few years, I was involved in repeated attempts to convince the Israelis and Hamas to agree to a secret backchannel until April 2011, when David Natan from the Mossad was appointed. In early May, the secret backchannel I had proposed five years earlier finally became the official channel for resolving the issue.

Did you actually meet in person with your Hamas counterpart?

Several times. Twice in Gaza before 2007, when Hamas staged a coup d’état and threw out Fatah, after which it became impossible to go back to Gaza. I also met with him face-to-face after the deal was done. And we also met in Egypt when we were trying to push negotiations for a long-term bilateral ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after repeated rounds of violence between the two sides.

Were you involved in the details of the prisoner release?

talk from time to time. I’ve taken him out for lunch a few times. And I’m glad to have played a role in the fact that he’s alive today.

The selection of the names? No. And how Shalit would be handed over?

No. That was all done on the level of the Mossad and Shin Bet. There was an Egyptian intelligence officer with the rank of general who was the mediator in those talks, which took place in Cairo under the auspices of Egyptian intelligence. There were four Hamas negotiators sitting in one room and three Israeli negotiators sitting in another room.

How would you describe your contribution to the negotiations?

Setting up a direct secret backchannel. Because of the basic trust that existed between us, we were able to write up a document of principles that set the terms for which prisoners would be released, where they would be released to, who would not be on the list, and the security arrangements for those prisoners Israel determined were the most dangerous and the biggest risk to release.

Were you in contact with the Shalits?

Yes. When I was initially contacted by Hamas six days after Gilad was abducted, my contact suggested arranging a telephone conversation with the soldier’s father. A phone conversation took place between Noam Shalit and a Hamas representative later that day. The following day the Shalits came to Jerusalem and I met them for the first time, and I stayed in contact with them over the next few years.

Most of the time, though, they were being told by the Israeli officials not to talk to me, that I was a nuisance who was hindering the process and they should stay away from me. The Shalits describe the first two years as their “naïve” period. After that, they realized that maybe the government wasn’t in fact doing everything possible to bring Gilad home and had other interests. Our relationship went up and down during that period of time. When Netanyahu gave the green light for the backchannel, I didn’t contact them because I felt it would be too hard for me to keep it a secret. I didn’t want to be in a position where I’d be in contact with them while knowing I was involved in a clandestine attempt that might succeed in bringing their son home. They had so many disappointments, and I didn’t want to contribute to that.

Afterwards, they heard that I had been involved, but it took a good few months before they learned the extent of my involvement. Then they read my book that came out in Hebrew and learned a lot more. Noam even spoke at one of my book-launching events. I’ve been in touch with Gilad since he was released. We’re very good friends and

Some people have criticized you and said that other Israeli citizens have been killed by terrorists because of this exchange.

That’s absolutely not true. Of the first list of 450 prisoners who were released, none of them have been involved in any terrorist activity against Israel. Fifteen were rearrested for probation violations. Most of them have been rereleased. No one was killed as a result of this.

If you want to look back in history, it wasn’t the first time Israel released terrorists. Israel set 1,800 terrorists free back in 1987 in the Ahmed Jibril release. They released terrorists in exchange for Tennenbaum, the criminal who was taken to Lebanon and held there. They also released terrorists for the dead bodies of soldiers held by Hezbollah. The Shalit case was not the first time and will unfortunately probably not be the last.

Columnist Shmuel Rosner said that Tomer Hazan was killed as a result of the Shalit swap.

First of all, that was nonsense to begin with. Shmuel Rosner is the person responsible for publishing my book in Hebrew, and I actually confronted him about that statement. Second of all, Israeli security isn’t one hundred percent convinced that Tomer Hazan was killed in a terrorist attack. There are more than rumors that it was a criminal case, maybe a drug deal that went bad. So Shmuel Rosner was wrong in coming to that conclusion.

He should apologize to the Israeli government that voted 26 to 3 to do the exchange and to the 80 percent of the Israeli public that supported the deal.

In what sense did Rosner publish your book?

He’s the chief editor of Koby Press, the publishing house that printed it. He was the one who brought it to the attention of their board. That’s the Hebrew version, but I think the English version is better. They tell the same story but they’re written differently.

Why did you write two different versions?

Because they’re for two different populations. There were a lot of things I didn’t have to explain to the Israeli public that I had to explain to foreign readers who aren’t familiar with all the ins and outs of what happened. The Israeli public lived with the story every day for over five years.

What lessons would you like the public to learn from your books?

One is that there’s always a possibility of negotiating 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4 / / N OV E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M I M AG A Z I N E

49

with people you thought it was impossible to negotiate with. That lesson stretches broadly throughout the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were also elements of how the negotiations took place and how relationships developed on a personal level that I think are significant with regard to the official Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The story also tells the impact individuals can have on events, on history and on people’s lives. It’s a call to activism, for people to take a stand and do something.

In way, it’s also a story about the uniqueness of Israel. I’ll give you an example: Two weeks after Shalit was released, one of the Hamas negotiators, a very nasty person who was responsible for creating the Hamas military machine in the West Bank, was interviewed from Damascus on Israeli radio in Hebrew. He was one of the four Hamas people sitting in Cairo at the negotiations. He made a comment to the effect of how much he admired Israeli society for being willing to pay such a price for one Israeli soldier, and wished that his own people had the same respect for their soldiers. The Shalit case was very unique in that Israel was willing to pay that price for one soldier. The fact that it was overwhelmingly supported by the government, the military and the Israeli public was extraordinary.

There’s an American Jew named Alan Gross who is in prison in Cuba. He’s a friend of mine. He had done work in development in the West Bank. The Cuban government demanded that America release five Cubans from prison, one of whom has already been released and a second who’s scheduled to be released in eight months, so they basically demanded three Cuban prisoners in exchange for Gross, who was doing work in the Jewish community on behalf of the American government. The US government refuses to release them. That would not go down in Israel.

Do you think his Jewishness has anything to do with it?

No. America just has a different attitude toward its citizens than Israel. I personally appealed to Secretary of State Kerry to make the deal. After I and others tried for two years to put pressure on the Cuban government to get them to change the conditions of the deal, I came to the conclusion that the Cubans weren’t going to give in. Alan Gross has been sentenced to 15 years. He’s not going to come home unless the Americans release those prisoners.

I think the Americans should pay the price and bring Alan home.

What was the lowest moment during the Shalit negotiations?

Probably in the summer of 2010. After the negotiations broke down in December 2009, the German mediator was fired by Hamas and sent home. However, he had left a document on the table, which was at that time rejected by 50 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

Hamas. In July, seven months later, Hamas sent me a document saying they were willing to restart negotiations based on the German document. It was a clear attempt to restart the negotiations, but the Israelis in charge refused. They kept telling me to keep my nose out of their business. By that time the German mediator was out of the picture, and nothing was going on. I contacted the prime minister and the minister of defense, who all had excuses and refused to deal with this breakthrough opportunity. So I called the German mediator, and he told me to have the Hamas guy send the document directly. When I called Hamas, their response was to have the German guy call them. I felt like I was a kindergarten teacher.

When I showed the document over a year later to David Natan, he couldn’t believe it. “This is a breakthrough document!” he said. “What we’re doing now in July 2011 should have been a year ago.”

That was a moment of total frustration because no one was listening to me. I’m holding a document in my hand that came from the people holding Shalit saying they’re ready to make a deal, and no one would listen.

How do you explain Netanyahu’s change of heart?

It was a number of things. There were geopolitical changes occurring in the region, the most important of which was that Hamas was leaving Syria. Assad had attacked the Palestinian camps and they made the decision to head to Egypt. This was a big strategic change. Then there was the public campaign launched by the Shalit family that was increasing the pressure.

Then there was the sentiment by the security people that a real opportunity had in fact opened up. The new Mossad guy in charge told Netanyahu that it was possible. But the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was on Pesach, when the Shalit family conducted their seder in front of the Prime Minister’s residence, which was a horribly sad event. As was reported by the media, Sarah Netanyahu told Bibi, “It’s time to bring him home.”

Have you ever negotiated with Hamas about other things on behalf of Israel?

I’ve been involved in Israeli-Palestinian relations for 35 years. I founded and directed an Israeli-Palestinian think tank for 24 years, and have conducted upwards of 1,500 negotiating sessions between Israelis and Palestinians on every subject you can imagine, from security to economic issues, agriculture and tourism, education, borders… You name it, we’ve dealt with it. My work involves developing methodologies of conducting negotiations and, of course, building relationships based on trust between both sides.

In the end, the negotiations that took place between the government of Israel and Hamas were the result of the experience I’ve gained over the last three decades, and my

Gilat Shalit salutes Prime Minister Netanyahu upon his release

belief and insistence that the best way to conduct these kinds of negotiations is directly and secretly.

Were your 35 years of involvement in negotiations in an official capacity?

No. We worked in channels that are commonly called “track two,” which are usually not official meetings but are aimed at generating ideas. The institution I founded and still co-chair has never presented itself as being opposed to the government of Israel; rather, it is a body that provides assistance to officials on both sides and to the international community. I’ve been an adviser on the peace process to two different prime ministers, Rabin and Barak. We developed a model we called “track one and a half”—unofficial meetings between officials and nonofficials. On more than one occasion, we were asked by either the Israeli government or the Palestinians to arrange these. I was always in the role of assisting and facilitating contacts. Even now I am asked for my input regarding secret negotiations through policy papers, suggestions and meetings that I conduct with the Israelis, Palestinians and Americans.

Do you believe there has been any progress on the peace process, or has everyone been stuck in the same spot for the past 35 years?

In both official and unofficial negotiations, the parties have come very close to reaching full comprehensive agreements. There are obviously areas where it’s easier to

agree than others; we’ve obviously not reached full agreement on all the issues. If we had, we would have signed a peace treaty. But I believe very strongly that it’s possible, and perhaps the current ongoing negotiations will lead to that. There are many reasons it has not yet occurred. The most difficult barrier is the high level of mistrust between the two parties—which I would say they’ve earned. Objectively speaking, when you review the last 20 years of the Israeli-Palestinians conflict in detail, they’ve signed six agreements that were repeatedly breached by both sides.

The process was originally designed to be an interim process to build trust and enable the two sides to negotiate the really difficult issues. In fact, what happened was the exact opposite, and the parties lost trust in each other.

Today, 20 years after Oslo, there is total mistrust. Each side assumes from the onset that the other has no intention of implementing what it says it will. Negotiations have therefore become very, very difficult.

Why do you think the parties trust you?

I think it begins with my basic approach. I believe that negotiations should be conducted by what I call a team of “stakeholder” mediators. The ideal situation would be a person like me on the Israeli side and a person like me on the Palestinian side working with the official negotiators as problem solvers, helping generate decisions that are mutually beneficial. We serve as a model for trust, which enables the parties to reach an agreement.

I’ll give you an example from the Shalit negotiations.

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Those were really difficult because my counterpart was a senior Hamas official. He actually got into a lot of trouble for exposing the hand of the military party that was holding Shalit, laying their cards down on the table. He showed their red lines, I showed the Israelis’, and we agreed on a middle point between the two. That became the basis for the agreement to do the prisoner release.

It took five years to build up that relationship of trust, to know that I wasn’t trying to dupe him and he wasn’t trying to dupe me. Both of us were only trying to resolve a problem, which for me was to get Gilad Shalit home, and for him was to negotiate as best a list as possible of Palestinians to be freed.

What’s your background?

I was born in the States and grew up on Long Island.

I was very active in the Zionist youth movement in high school and decided to make aliyah after finishing my BA in politics and Middle Eastern history at NYU. I moved to Israel in 1978 and joined a program called Interns for Peace. After a six-month training program on a kibbutz, I went to live in an Arab village for two years, a Peace Corps kind of thing. I worked in the village school and did leadership training, developed a program that led to youth and community centers, and was instrumental in fostering interaction between the village and nearby Jewish communities. After that, I discovered that there weren’t any civil servants in Israel responsible for improving Jewish-Arab relations. I convinced the government, led by Menachem Begin, to hire me, and I became the first. I worked in the Ministry of Education. By request of the prime minister’s office and support from the German government, I created the Institute for Education for Jewish-Arab Co-existence, which I directed for seven years until the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987. In March of 1988, I formed IPCREI, the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, which was created as a joint public policy think tank aimed at advancing the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. After 24 years as co-director, two years ago I and my Palestinian colleague retired and handed it over to the next generation and became chairman of the board, assisting from the side. This is what I’ve been doing my whole life.

The Arab world has dramatically changed over the years. Have you changed along with it?

My basic principles and ideologies haven’t changed. I supported the two-state solution to the conflict from as early as 1975. I wrote my first op-ed piece in a Jewish newspaper in California in 1976, calling for a two-state solution. That principle comes from my belief in the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own. I’ve always believed this was a conflict by two peoples who have a 52 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

territorial expression of their identity over the same piece of land. Neither wants to live under the rule of the other, and neither wants to live in a homogenized state. The only solution is two states for two peoples. But in contradistinction to the original Oslo paradigm, I’ve always believed that the two states need to have borders that are as open as possible. The only way to achieve real peace is for both sides to have an interest in changing the nature of their relationship and becoming partners in a long-time venture that would enable us to do great things. I think both nations are great and have much to offer their own people and each other, and cooperation is the way to go.

Today, I’m on the board of five different joint IsraeliPalestinian organizations. That’s what I believe in. So my principles in terms of cooperation, political vision and methodology have pretty much remained the same, although I’ve certainly evolved and matured like everyone else. Of course, three decades later I’m a lot more knowledgeable than when I first got started. I speak Hebrew and Arabic. I know basically all the players involved, and I think there are very few people around who have had the experiences I’ve had.

But surely you concede that the people you are negotiating with have become much more Islamic.

How have you changed because of that?

The party we are negotiating with on the Palestinian side is the same PLO we’ve been dealing with for the past 20 years, and they represent a secular, nationalist movement.

It has very deep Islamic roots but it is not an Islamic movement. I don’t think we can make peace with Hamas, nor do I believe that we should negotiate peace with them.

We’ve negotiated an agreement with Hamas that allows daily life to go on because there are 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza for whom we still bear some amount of responsibility. But the negotiations remain with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and head of the PLO. While we have a strong relationship with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and its security forces, we unfortunately don’t have very good relations between the people of Israel and the people of Jordan, nor do we have that with the Egyptian people. That very much stems from the non-resolution of the Palestinian issue, which is like a bone in the throat of the Arab world when dealing with Israel. We have no problems, politically or otherwise, with countries like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, or to a great extent even with the Saudis, although we’d love to see them more open and conscious of human-rights issues.

While the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt refused to have contact with Israel, I have met with them through contacts.

It was a very difficult conversation. I was only going to talk to them because there are two Israeli-Arab citizens who are

SA

LE

prisoners in Egypt, one of them a Bedouin who’s been in jail for 12 years. On a political level there’s nothing to talk about. I’m very happy there was coup in Egypt and they’re on the road to a different future—not an Islamic one.

G-d knows what’s going to happen in Syria; the country’s a huge mess. We need to have our defenses up in Israel’s north. Hopefully one day Syria will be stabilized and they’ll have a normal government that doesn’t kill its own people. The Tunisians went through a revolution, and the Al-Nahda party, which is a Muslim Brotherhood party, came into power and they’re still in turmoil. Tunisia was one of the most liberal countries in the Arab world. It had a law that 50 percent of the candidates running for parliament had to be women. That’s the highest percentage in the world. But they’ve just decided to have new elections and they’re rewriting the constitution, so it’s in flux.

But my basic position is that Israel should be at peace with the whole Arab world. The Arab Peace Initiative offers us the opportunity to do that, if we resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I believe that when we are at peace with the whole region it will also affect the internal dynamics in those countries. The rise of political Islam is not because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But that conflict feeds the hatred of Israel in the region, which

feeds the political, radical Islam we don’t want to see gaining a strong foothold.

Have you ever felt exposed or threatened during negotiations?

Not in the way you’re suggesting. I’ve been in situations that were uncomfortable and more than two or three times I’d describe them as near-death experiences. But they were more arbitrary than something that was directed against me.

I’ve never been threatened physically or politically, although I do get hate mail from time to time and certainly some negative comments on my weekly articles in The Jerusalem Post. One Israeli right-wing crazy even contacted me by telephone. I felt threatened and told him I was calling the police. I never did and he left me alone. He was actually a former American like me.

Are you viewed as a leftist in Israel?

Some people call me a leftist but I don’t think it’s a particularly appropriate term. I mean, what’s right and what’s left when the Prime Minister, who’s head of the right wing, supports the two-state solution? Does that make Netanyahu a leftist? I don’t know.

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IN THE WH

By Tevi Troy, special to Ami

HITE HOUSE

From Day School to the West Wing

I

n 2003, while serving in the White House as President Bush’s liaison to the American Jewish community, I set up a meeting between senior White House officials and representatives of the Orthodox

Union. I scored a coup and arranged for Karl Rove, Bush’s best known and most influential aide, to speak to the group. As it turned out, I would have to address the crowd next, a daunting challenge after they had just heard from Karl. As I stood up to speak, I told them that “speaking after Karl Rove makes me feel like the Maariv service after Ne’ilah.”

K

arl didn’t get it, but the audience sure did.

On another occasion, when I was briefing President Bush before a meeting he was having with Jewish community leaders, I warned him that the woman who would be sitting next to him was a religious woman who would not shake hands with men. Bush, who was familiar with the concept from other events he had held with frum Jews, signaled that he understood and we went into the meeting uneventfully. He greeted the woman, the head of a girls’ seminary, but respectfully did not shake her hand. During the meeting, he became rather animated when providing his assessment of the War on Terror and on AlQaeda specifically, explaining that thanks to aggressive antiterror efforts, “We’ve got our foot on the [expletive’s] throats, and we’re not letting go.” Bush then glanced nervously at the frum woman next to him, and apologized for his use of profanity. Her steely response: “Say it again.”

As these anecdotes suggest, serving as the liaison between the Bush White House and the Jewish community frequently turned me into a translator between the world of my youth and home life, and my hyperpolitical professional career.

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Tevi Troy

I had to speak in the language of the Jewish people to the community, but I also had to be fluent in the language of politics and policy, and among people who certainly didn’t know Maariv from Ne’ilah, and often even the basics of Shabbos, kashrus or negiah.

Fortunately, I had a background that served me well for the task. I grew up in Queens in the 1970s, and attended first a Solomon Schechter school, and then the Ramaz Upper School. While the religious training I received was not as rigorous as what my children are now receiving in the Torah School of Greater Washington and the Melvin H. Berman Hebrew Academy, it was sufficient, and has served me well.

Furthermore, both of my schools, and especially Ramaz, placed a heavy emphasis on secular education, and on being able to communicate effectively with people who had never heard of Williamsburg, Boro Park, Kew Gardens Hills or the Five Towns.

For college I attended Cornell and had frum roommates in an off-campus apartment. I ate meals at the Young Israel, and in my senior year, at Cornell’s new kosher dining hall—a mechayah. That dining hall still exists, and Cornell now provides kosher options at all campus dining locations, in addition to the specifically kosher one.

After college I moved to Washington, DC, determined

Polk County Court, Tevi Troy and his son Ezra with Des Moines, Iowa President Bush in the Oval Office

to get involved in politics. Pre-Giuliani New York, where I grew up in the 1970s, was a dysfunctional entity, wracked with crime, graffiti and bankruptcy, as well as a strong and depressing sense that things just weren’t working. Inspired in large part by Ronald Reagan, I entered politics out of a desire to give back to this great country, to make the US a better place and to help alleviate social ills. Both of my parents were teachers in the New York City public school system, and we were raised with a powerful belief in tikkun olam. Washington seemed like the best place to pursue these goals.

After a few years in Washington, working at the American Enterprise Institute and attending Georgetown’s Kesher Israel synagogue, I realized that a graduate degree would be instrumental in the political world. Having spent my entire life in the Northeast, I decided I needed to see more of America if I was going to be successful in politics, so I attended a PhD program in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision: When George W. Bush became president, my Texas connection would have significant value.

After I finished my degree I went to work on Capitol Hill, where I served on the leadership staff of California Republican House Member Chris Cox, and then as policy director

for Missouri Senator John Ashcroft. In both roles, I naturally gravitated toward acting as Jewish liaison for the office, without any formal designation. Ashcroft, in particular, as an Evangelical Christian, was understanding of frumkeit, and I was not the only frum Jew on his staff. In fact, he was more than understanding: I found him to be downright philoSemitic. His mother had served as a Shabbos goy and his father had brought a mezuzah along with them when the family moved from a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago to the far less Jewish Springfield, Missouri. The senior Ashcroft kept that mezuzah affixed to his doorpost until his death in 1995.

When I told Senator Ashcroft that I would not be able to work on Saturdays and certain holidays, it was a point in my favor, not a strike against me. Once, I stood up during a Friday afternoon briefing and said I needed to leave. He asked me where I was going, as it is unusual for staffers to walk out of briefings. I told him that the sun was setting, and he immediately understood and ordered me to hurry along.

This kind of interaction was not unusual. In fact, I found that the absolute best bosses for Orthodox Jews were what I call “frum goyim,” religious Christians who understand the concept of holy obligations. I had friends who worked for nonobservant Jewish senators who had far more difficulty 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4 / / N OV E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M I M AG A Z I N E

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Orthodox synagogue in Georgetown,Washington, DC

than I did in getting off for Shabbos and holidays.

Frumkeit was not a problem in the Ashcroft office, but working for Ashcroft did raise another challenge, one that came from within the Jewish community. As a conservative Republican and evangelical Christian, Ashcroft was none too popular among my coreligionists. Once, at a bas mitzvah, a woman asked me what I do for a living. I sensed that she was of a different political persuasion, so I kept my answer generic: I work in politics. But she kept on pressing until she got the answer she wanted—or perhaps, did not want: “I work for Senator John Ashcroft, Republican of Missouri.”

Her response: “I’m speechless.”

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had become a Republican in my teenage years—a predisposition that solidified during my college days—and constantly suffered a barrage of verbal assaults from fellow Jews about my political preference. But I must confess that I had never before rendered anyone “speechless” solely by expressing my choice of party. It is important to recall that while the Republican Jewish Coalition is now a robust organization and that GOP Jews, while a minority, are no longer unusual, the standard joke about those days is that meetings of Republican Jews 58 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

would take place in a phone booth. Today, both the joke and the phone booth reference are completely out of date.

After Bush was elected president, Ashcroft was nominated to serve as Attorney General. I wrote an article in The New Republic defending Ashcroft from suggestions in the Jewish community that he was somehow intolerant of Jews, arguing that nothing could be further from the truth. The article caught the attention of White House aide John DiIulio, President Bush’s head of the new White House Faith-Based Initiative. I was a political appointee at the Department of Labor at the time—Ashcroft had lost his 2000 bid for reelection—and DiIulio asked me to serve as Labor’s representative to the White House faith-based office. In addition, my work on regulations at Labor brought me in close contact with Jay Lefkowitz, a high-ranking shomer Shabbos official at the Office of Management and Budget. When Jay was promoted to a West Wing job as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, he brought me along to serve as a special adviser to him.

While working in the White House, I befriended Adam Goldman, who served as President Bush’s first liaison to the Jewish community, a semiofficial position dating back to

The Jewish community had managed to figure out the phone number of the Jewish liaison, and every leader of the major Jewish organizations—of which there are many—wanted to call and introduce himself. the Kennedy administration. When Adam left to return to Texas, he recommended that I take his place. Taking on a professional role that required me to keep my feet planted in both the religious and secular worlds was a new experience. Ever since leaving home, I had davened in Orthodox shuls and lived in Orthodox communities, but had also kept my professional career exclusively in the secular world. I lived according to Y.L. Gordon’s vision of being “a man in the street and a Jew at home,” or, more accurately, a Jew at home and an American in the workplace. At the same time, the new role provided an opportunity to serve both my community and my country, and was something I could not forego.

Before starting I asked Adam for guidance, and he gave me two pieces of advice. The first was that every decision I made must have a logical Talmudic rationale. I found this statement odd coming from a secular Jew, but it turned out to be extremely valuable. Every message, every phone call and every invitation from the White House gets scrutinized by the members of the Jewish community establishment, and the White House Jewish liaison had better have an explanation for all of the choices he or his colleagues make.

The second piece of advice was more of a warning: Get ready for your phone to ring. A lot. Adam told me the story of his first day at the White House. Because of the contested 2000 election, Bush had a truncated transition, and when the administration began in January of 2001, things were extremely disorganized. The White House did not have time to put together a phone directory of new staffers before the new team took over, and extremely senior people were wandering the halls, trying to find each other. Phones, faxes and emails had long before been invented, but the Bush White House was stuck with 19th century methods of communication.

There was, however, one exception to this communications blackout. Adam’s phone was ringing all day, as the Jewish community had managed to figure out the phone number of the Jewish liaison, and every leader of the major Jewish organizations—of which there are many—wanted to call and introduce himself. In subsequent days, after the confusion was sorted out and his colleagues’ numbers became available as well, Adam’s phone continued to ring at an extremely high rate.

I discovered the same thing when I took on these new responsibilities. My phone started to ring and ring and ring.

In fact, when I attended a holiday party in the office of the White House press secretary that December, a couple of older women I didn’t recognize came up to me and said, “Are you Dr. Troy? We’re the White House operators. You get so many phone calls!”

I wish I could say that all of these calls were substantive in nature. Many of course were, but far too many fell into the sinas chinam category, as almost every Jewish leader had to tell me about a competing Jewish group he didn’t like: This one is just a front; that’s an umbrella organization; this one is just a mailing list; this is a Democratic group; that one is Republican but ineffective. It was reminiscent of the famous joke about the Jew stranded on the desert island who builds two syna-

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I was a symbol to other frum Jews in Washington. If I worked on Shabbos, even in this case, their bosses might tell them they have to work on Shabbos as well. gogues: his own, and the one he refuses to set foot in.

Another reason behind many of the calls was people angling to get into the White House Chanukah party. And I was far from the only one. All of the Jewish staffers were inundated with requests from people who wanted to be invited. In fact, Karl Rove once proclaimed at a West Wing meeting in December that an invitation to the White House Chanukah party was officially the toughest ticket to obtain in town.

There was a good reason for this. Bush’s first Chanukah party, in 2001, gained national attention as the first one ever thrown in the White House residence. Bush then continued the tradition, adding various refinements along the way. That

first year, the children of a White House staffer lit the menorah in a ceremony kicking off the festivities. In subsequent years, Bush sought out different people to serve as candle lighters: children of Jewish men and women in uniform; the father of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; and, in a joint ceremony to acknowledge Israel’s 60th birthday, the grandsons of Harry Truman, the president who first recognized the fledgling nation, and of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister.

Another refinement as time went on was the introduction of kosher food. For the first few years, the party wasn’t kosher. There would be one kosher table, but this led to confusion over which offerings were kosher and which were

Tevi Troy and his son Ezra with President Bush in the Oval Office

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Oval Office

not. One year, due to a labeling mishap, some frum Jews accidentally ate from the treife tables, leading to high-decibel complaints directed at the prim and proper White House ushers. From then on, Mrs. Bush decreed that the parties would be completely kosher, regardless of the difficulties or the expense.

Another time, the photographer’s camera malfunctioned, and hundreds of guests who had traveled thousands of miles did not get their expected and much coveted photos with the president. Karl Rove would later torment the White House photographer about this, jokingly warning him that Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League would be coming after him for his discriminatory behavior.

Despite these snafus, the parties remained a hot ticket.

People were not only desperate to get in, but once there, weren’t eager to leave either. White House holiday parties were supposed to go from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM sharp, but the Chanukah party invariably ended far later than the Xmas parties would. After one particularly late Chanukah party, then-Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, himself Jewish, joked at the next morning’s senior staff meeting that the White House military aides—who staff events in full ceremonial garb— almost had to unsheathe their swords in order to get Chanukah celebrants to exit. After Bolten made this comment, I added that the lingering Jewish guests adhered to the old

maxim that “Gentiles leave without saying goodbye, while Jews say goodbye and never leave.” Karl Rove loved that one, and asked me to repeat it after the meeting so he could write it down.

I left the Jewish liaison slot after a year or so, but I remained in the Bush Administration until the end, also serving as Deputy Assistant and later Acting Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy—my former boss Jay Lefkowitz’s old job—and later Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. These jobs allowed me to spend more time with President Bush and get to know him better.

While heading the Domestic Policy Council, for example, I met with him at least once a week. Getting to see him up close revealed that he was both funnier and more serious than his reputation suggests. By funny, I mean that he was very quick with a joke, and would frequently break the tension in a situation with a quip or an aside. By more serious, he was very direct and quick to get to the point. Sometimes he would combine both of these tendencies. Once, Jeremy Katz, one of my successors as White House Jewish liaison, explained in a briefing regarding a meeting with Jewish leaders that, “first, you enter the room. . .” Bush immediately cut him off, saying, “Whoa, this is helpful. This is helpful. I enter the room first.” Everyone at the briefing laughed, perhaps a little nervously, but the president also made an important

President Bush at Chanukah Party

point: Presidential time was precious, and the briefer should not waste time going over the obvious.

In family meetings, he was more generous with his time.

He met at least three times for pictures with my entire family, and many more times with my wife and me. During one photo session, my daughter Ruthie, who was two at the time, was still using a pacifier, and my wife warned me to make sure it was out of her mouth for the picture. Of course, when it came time for the photographer to snap the picture I forgot, and my wife chided me in front of the president.

President Bush laughed and instructed the photographer to take another one.

Another time, my son Ezra, five at the time, was spending the day at work with me. President Bush saw him in the West Wing and instructed me to “bring [my] lad” into the Oval Office, where he brought Ezra right up to the desk, gave him a pin with the presidential seal and posed for a picture with him. I still have that picture on my wall, and visitors to my office love the sight of President Bush posing with my frum yeshivah bachur with his yarmulke and pei’os.

One Chanukah, my wife had just given birth and couldn’t join me for the White House Chanukah party. Instead, I brought my mother-in-law, Dr. Vita Pliskow, as my “date.”

When I explained the situation to President Bush, he said, “You brought your mother-in-law along? Good move.”

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is the long hours. In fact, one question I always got while serving in government was how I was able to manage being shomer Shabbos with the pressing responsibilities and lengthy hours of these high-pressure jobs. It generally wasn’t a problem, but there were certainly some challenges. During the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, for example, President Bush declared to his senior staff that there would be no weekend that Labor Day week; we would all be expected to work the entire time. I wondered what to do, and called Rabbi Levi Shemtov—who had been my mesader kiddushin—for advice.

Rabbi Shemtov thought about it for a few moments and then explained that he found several reasons why I should not work that Shabbos, despite the exigent circumstances. The first was halachic: Pikuach nefesh, he said, did not apply in this situation. My work in the White House was not directly saving specific lives. I would not personally be putting the water bottles in the mouths of those in need.

Second, he said, as a prominent Sabbath-observant Jew, I was a symbol to other frum Jews in Washington. If I worked on Shabbos, even in this case, their bosses might tell them they have to work on Shabbos as well. So working on Shabbos, even in these circumstances, would put other frum Jews in a difficult position.

Third, from a personal perspective, my colleagues and bosses respected me for my observance. Indeed, a few years earlier, I had gone to work for the 2004 Bush reelection campaign doing debate preparation, even though campaigning

Karl Rove once proclaimed at a West Wing meeting that an invitation to the White House Chanukah party was officially the toughest ticket to obtain in town. is usually a seven-day-a-week job. I told my superior that I was reluctant to take the job given my Sabbath observance.

To his credit, he responded that he would rather have me six days a week than someone else for seven. Given the support I had received in the past, how could I now violate Shabbos, even for this very good reason? Finally, Rabbi Shemtov added that if I worked on Shabbos in this situation, colleagues might wonder what other circumstances would lead me to violate my principles. What about a legislative crisis or budget disaster? Would I work then? The right thing to do, he concluded, was to remain true to my principles.

Indeed, I left the West Wing for Shabbos, but returned to work right after Motzaei Shabbos. It was an important lesson then, and remains so to this day. As the Zionist thinker and writer Ahad Ha’am said, “More than Jews have kept the Sabbath, the observance of the Sabbath has kept the Jews.” It is the observance of traditions like Shabbos that have kept the Jewish people together through thousands of years of exile.

This is not to say that being frum in the White House did not present difficulties. The White House senior staff meeting took place at 7:30 every morning, and in the months before the clocks change in the fall, there was no way for me to daven before leaving for work. Instead, I kept a spare pair of tefillin in my office and davened after I arrived, but before the senior staff meeting. There was one time that my immediate boss, a serious and devoted Evangelical Christian, walked in on me with my tefillin on, but he was the one who was embarrassed, and he apologized profusely.

Kashrus was also somewhat hard. Given the intense security, it was such an ordeal to get in and out of the White House that most people stayed inside the complex for the entire—and lengthy—workday. As a result, on most days I brown-bagged breakfast, lunch and even dinner, but on the occasions that I had to eat in the White House Mess, the stewards knew my order as soon as I came in. “Fruit plate,” they told me, every time. I’ve heard that the White House Mess serves good food, but all I can say on the subject is that the fruit was always fresh.

In addition to the halachic difficulties, working in the White House puts a great deal of pressure on one’s family life. I am blessed to have a lovely wife, Kami, and four fantastic children—Ezra, Ruth, Rina and Noah—but in the years I spent in the White House, I did not get to see my kids from Sunday night when they went to bed until Friday evening when I came home for Shabbos. I left for work when

they were still sleeping, and returned home when they were already in bed. Part of the reason for these absences is that, in addition to the long White House hours, I live in Kemp Mill, a frum community with many people who work in government and have impressive secular credentials. Unfortunately, it is at least 45 minutes from downtown Washington, and that’s without traffic.

When President Bush’s term was over in 2009, I left the administration and went to work as a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington. I have remained active in Jewish causes, and write about Jewish issues as well as healthcare and presidential history, my main secular interests. I am a frequent contributor to Commentary, a Jewish magazine, but I write for them mostly about secular subjects, usually healthcare. I’ve also remained active in politics, and was a senior policy adviser to the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign. In that capacity, I had to advise the Romney campaign about its Tishah B’Av trip to Israel that summer. My first advice was not to go then, but when told that was not an option, I explained both the meaning and the five restrictions of Tishah B’Av the campaign would have to be aware of. A few days later, I received a call from a nonJewish senior member of the campaign staff. “I understand all of the restrictions of Tishah B’Av,” he told me, “except one.” Oh no, I thought, bracing myself. “What’s with the leather shoes?” he asked. Relieved, I explained the reasoning, and at least that part of the trip went off without a hitch.

Most recently, I have written a new book, What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House (see following page). The book, while ostensibly on a secular subject, contains a number of Jewish-related themes and stories, especially regarding the important role that American presidents have played in promoting the work of Jewish artists. The book, like most of my career, is part of the secular world, but is necessarily informed by my Jewish values, training and upbringing.

Whatever new challenges my career brings in the future, I am happy to have had the opportunity to serve my country, and also to remain true to frumkeit in the process.  Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Tevi Troy is a former senior White House aide and Deputy Secretary of HHS. He is the author of What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House.

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POP CULTURE

IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Tevi Troy discusses his newly published book, What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched and Obama Tweeted: 200 years of Popular Culture in the White House

By Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter

What difference does it make what presidents watched or tweeted? What role does popular culture play from a historical perspective?

There are a number of reasons pop culture is important. Number one, it shapes who the presidents are.

Popular culture changes over time along with technology. For entertainment, the Founding Fathers had only the choice of going to a live performance or reading. Today you have TV, movies, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and everything else popular culture has to offer. But the bottom line is that presidents are affected by those outside influences.

Secondly, it can influence their policies. What the Founding Fathers read shaped not only the ideas behind the American Revolution but also the writing of the Constitution. They read important books on history, philosophy and law, and applied those concepts to the Declaration of Independence and later to the Constitution.

Third, what the president reads or watches has an economic impact. The book the president is reading often becomes a bestseller. This happened to Tom Clancy when he was still an unknown. Ronald Reagan not only read his book but said he couldn’t put it down.

It contributed to Clancy becoming a major bestselling author.

Finally, it can send signals about certain groups to society. Let’s say the president looks favorably at Jewish artists, which I argue presidents have been doing for 200 years. That can have a positive impact not only on the acceptance of Jewish artists in mainstream culture, but on Jews themselves being accepted in mainstream culture. This is one of the themes in my book.

So pop culture doesn’t only influence presidents.

Presidents influence pop culture, too.

Absolutely. It’s clearly a two-way street. In the book I make the point that if you’re the president you don’t just watch TV—you are TV. Presidents like to watch television, but some enjoy it more than others. Eisenhower was a big TV watcher. Obama too. Both Bushes less so.

But you can’t get away from what’s on television in this society. Presidents use it to talk to the nation, they’re discussed on the news, referred to on popular shows,

and are made fun of by late night comics. People form their opinions of the president from what they see on TV. It definitely goes both ways.

Were there any specific findings about presidents and Jews in pop culture?

The Founding Fathers admired not only the Bible but Jews as well. James Madison taught himself Hebrew while at Princeton so he could understand the stories of the Tanach better. John Quincy Adams thought about writing a history of the Jews in his post-presidency.

Unfortunately, he did not complete the project.

In 1819 James Monroe went to see a play by a Jewish playwright named Isaac Harby in Charlestown, South Carolina. As far as I can tell—and I’ve checked this out with other academics—this was the first work of fiction by an American Jewish writer seen or read by an American president.

Why does it matter if they were Jewish or not?

I’ll tell you why: Harby was not unknown to Monroe.

A few years earlier he’d written a note to Monroe, when he was secretary of state. Monroe had been involved in the firing of Mordechai Manuel Noah, who as envoy to Tunisia was the first Jewish American envoy. He was fired at the behest of the Tunisian government, which objected to a Jewish diplomat in their midst. Harby wrote a letter to Monroe saying that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be in America. Some historians have even speculated that by going to see that play, Monroe was apologizing to Harby for his role in that shameful episode in American history.

When a president reads a book, do you think he cares if it’s a Jewish author or not? I would imagine that most people don’t.

I would say that that’s where we are today. But that’s only due to 200 years of acceptance by American presidents of American Jewish authors that most people now read a Jewish author and don’t think twice about it. Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Michael Chabon—they’re great American novelists. It doesn’t matter that they’re Jewish per se.

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THE IDEA THAT PRESIDENTS ARE WILLING TO EMBRACE JEWISH-THEMED SHOWS OR JEWISH ARTISTS IS A GOOD THING. IT MAKES AMERICA A HAPPIER HOME FOR JEWS. You chose three authors who actually wrote about Jewish themes. But many Jewish authors choose subject matter that has nothing to do with being Jewish. Is there a distinction between the two?

I don’t think there’s such a big distinction today. And I think it’s a good thing that Jewish writers can just be American writers. But that wasn’t always the case.

When do you think it changed?

In the book I tell the story of Israel Zangwill, a Jewish playwright who met Theodore Roosevelt and was very taken by his ideas on the assimilation of new immigrants.

He wrote a play called The Melting Pot that couldn‘t have been written by anyone other than a Jewish author. But it was a very big deal. Roosevelt had him over for lunch at the White House—the first Jew to have lunch at the White House. On opening night, Roosevelt shouted, “It’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill! It’s a great play!” That was a very important sign of acceptance for a Jewish writer by an American president.

A hundred years ago, it was still a big deal to have a president read a work by a Jewish author. I’d say that after World War II, when many successful Jewish writers emerged—Roth, Bellow, Malamud, Mailer—it became less of a surprise. From that point on, as Jews became more accepted into American society, they were seen more as American than Jewish writers.

How come we’re suddenly talking about literature? Are literature and pop culture the same thing?

Years ago, the only popular culture was the written page or what was appearing in the theater. In the 20th century, with the rise of movies and broadcast technology, pop culture began to emerge in its current form, and Jews were very important in making that happen.

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Is there a distinction between literature and pop culture when it comes to presidents?

Absolutely. I think it’s more important that presidents read than watch TV or movies. But my book is about the overall cultural influences on presidents. These days that’s mostly pop culture, but that wasn’t always the case. I think it’s important to make distinctions.

Some presidents were more interested in literature or serious non-fiction than popular culture. But it’s all a part of the larger American culture.

Have any presidents actually been a part of the pop culture?

Yes, to some degree. Obama goes on pop culture shows all the time. He was the first president to appear on a late night comedy show. As a candidate, Nixon went on Laugh-In, and Clinton wore sunglasses and played the saxophone. In the 1990s, a popular TV show depicted a president who was a composite of Kennedy and Clinton, without their foibles.

What were some other notable moments in pop culture history involving presidents and Jews?

As I relate in the book, in 1916 singer Al Jolson went to the White House at Woodrow Wilson’s request. Wilson was a huge fan of theater. He attended 225 plays as president. When Jolson got to the White House he said, “I’m Al Jolson. I’m here to see the president.” Wilson replied, “I’m Woodrow Wilson, and I’ve never seen you perform.” Right then and there Jolson belted out his signature song. While writing about this incident, it occurred to me that in 1916 there was no way a similar thing could have occurred with a Jewish artist in any European country, not in front of the czar or the kaiser or the queen of England. Even though those countries all had significant Jewish populations, American Jews had a degree of acceptance that didn’t exist in those other places.

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FLAT RATE FARES Did any presidents go out of their way to support Jewish artists in order to integrate them into the larger culture?

I cite three instances. I don’t know if the presidents actually said, “This is a Jewish artist, so I’ll do this for him.” But I believe that the fact that presidents are willing to embrace Jewish-themed shows or Jewish artists is a good thing. It makes America a happier home for Jews.

There was a recent incident in the White House where Obama received three different Jewish-themed books from three different visitors. I guess Jews feel they can contribute their works to American presidents with impunity. I mean that in a good way.

How much does it matter if a person is Jewish in this day and age?

I don’t think it matters from a cultural perspective. But there was a long time when it mattered greatly. The fact that three of the last five White House chiefs of staff were Jewish is only due to the contributions of others in politics, art and other areas like science. We stand on their shoulders.

Yes and no. To some extent, if a president isn’t engaging Jewish artists that’s a bad sign. On the other hand, Nixon had his anti-Semitic moments. But there was no sense that he was anti-Semitic to his staff. Kissinger, his foreign policy adviser, and William Safire, one of his top speech writers, were both Jewish. In fact, there’s a story that Safire once told him he couldn’t come to work because he was going to shul on Yom Kippur. And Nixon said, “You really do all that, with the shawl and cap and everything? Good for you.” Of course, some of the people on his “enemies list” were Jews in the media. I’m sure he was aware there was criticism from the Northeastern Jewish establishment.

What can other historians learn from your book about pop culture in the White House?

It’s an important lesson in the way Jews became integrated and accepted in America.

How do you think presidential acceptance of an artist relates to general levels of anti-Semitism?

I think that the acceptance of Jewish artists took some time, but that happened well ahead of actually reducing anti-Semitism.

A president doesn’t meet with an artist unless there’s already some cultural recognition. Al Jolson was having success on Broadway when he was summoned by Wilson, and that was during a time when there was still a lot of antiSemitism. So I think it goes in waves.

But an artist can also be popular in some areas and shunned in others, and a president can give that artist a “hechsher” by bringing him to the White House.

Any final thoughts?

Jews should be very grateful for the home we have found in America, and some of the credit goes not only to American presidents but especially to those who embraced Jewish artists.

It’s also important to remember that American culture is greatly affected by Jews. So Jews have an important role in shaping the environment in which a president grows up.

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As a historian, can you assess how warm or cold a particular president was towards Jews from the way he treated Jewish artists?

my word!

A S H E R V. F I N N

Each week, “My Word!”—penned by the esteemed president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to English—highlights often-misused or misspelled phrases or words, common grammatical challenges, unusual expressions or neologisms. Or it just calls attention to curious or interesting locutions.

So if you want to learn some new things about English—or are already expert in the language and want to prove it to yourself—you’ve come to the right place.

A Pecan… or The Klan?

W

ell, then, rather than some other topic, shall we deal this week at long last with “then”?

And “than”?

“Then,” of course, means “at that time” and rhymes, conveniently, with “when.” So it’s quite easy to remember that the word one is looking for when writing or talking about a particular time is “then”: When? Then! Got it? Good!

“Than,” though, is a different word entirely. It not only means something else – it is used to introduce the second member of a pair of things being compared – it is pronounced differently, with its “a” sounding like the one in “and” or “stand” or “Rabbi Frand.”

In other words, “than” rhymes with “pecan” and with “Ku Klux Klan,” which makes its pronunciation easy to remember too! Just think of the following sentence (and once you do, you surely won’t forget it): “I would rather eat a pecan than be visited by the Ku Klux Klan.” Got it? Good, again!

Whether to use “me” or “I” after “than” when speaking of oneself depends on the sentence. The basic general rule about “I” and “me” when referring to oneself and someone else is simple: Leave out the other person altogether and see which one sounds right.

Thus: “Yankel and I went to the restaurant” is correct, since, were only the speaker eating out, he would surely not say “Me went to the restaurant” (unless, perhaps, he had blue fur and intended to order a plate of cookies).

And “The waiter took Yankel and me to a table” is also 68 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

correct, since one would not say that the waiter “took I to a table.” (Unless, that is, one was both pretentious and ignorant, imagining that using “I” in every circumstance is somehow sophisticated, a belief that really amuses I.) Things are much the same when using “than.” And so: “The clumsy waiter spilled more soup on Yankel than on me” is correct, because if one removes Yankel from the restaurant (for which he would surely thank us, under the circumstances), one would not say that the waiter spilled soup “on I.” And so, “me” it is.

Ah, but here things get a little sticky (besides the soup). If one wishes to say that Yankel was even more distraught than oneself, one would say “Yankel was even more upset than I,” not “than me.” That is because there is an invisible word at the end of that sentence. You don’t see it? Well, of course not, silly, it’s invisible! But it is, all the same, understood—that is to say it is really there even if it doesn’t seem to be.

The missing word is “was.” Yankel was more upset than “I was” is the intended thought, and so, even though English doesn’t require the use of that “was” (or “were” when the subject at the end of the sentence is “they” or “we”; or “am” or “will” in other such sentences), it’s as if the word is there, and so the pronoun to use is “I,” not “me.”

One needs to be careful, though, when using “than,” so that one’s intended meaning is properly understood. A recent news article carried the headline: “Women Make Better Doctors Than Men.” A wag commented, “Well, of course. Women make lousy men.”

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Melody of Hope DEFYING EVIL THROUGH SONG

I

am willing to bet that few, if any, of our readers have ever attended an opera or theatrical play. I’m not talking about your kid’s Chanukah skit—I mean Broadway. Even among the non-Jewish population, such events are patronized only by the rarefied upper strata of society. Yet, because of their prominence, such productions have the ability to make news that resonates well beyond the theater walls.

In Hungary, one director has used his work to send a message of protest against the country’s rising tide of antisemitism.

Ivan Fischer, a Jewish composer, vividly displays these sentiments in his new opera, The Red Heifer. The play is based on an infamous 19th-century case in which a group of Jews were wrongly accused in the death of a Hungarian peasant girl. Featuring dancing cows, singing politicians and rowdy soccer fans chanting antisemitic slogans, the performance is designed to draw parallels between Hungary’s burgeoning right wing and the country’s antiJewish past.

In an interview this month, Mr. Fischer said that he had long wanted to write an opera based on the case, but it was the rise

Inmates in Buchenwald performing in a band

of Jobbik, a far-right political party, that spurred him to action.

“In the last one or two years,” Fischer said, “it came up to me, and I thought, Now I have to write it.”

The rise of the far right comes amid a significant Jewish revival in Hungary since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Recently, Hungary’s deputy prime minister said in Parliament that Hungarians must accept responsibility for the Holocaust. Next

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year, Hungary plans to dedicate millions of dollars for programs commemorating the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Hungarian Jews.

Mr. Fischer said he welcomed the steps but wished the government would go further, to “isolate themselves from everything that the far-right does.”

Will his efforts have any impact? We’ll have to wait and see, but Mr. Fischer is using his talent for music to do what he

A page from Mr. Alt’s diary, where he records the songs they were forced to sing at Buchenwald. Property of the KFHEC

can.

This is not the first time music has been used as a tool of opposition by Jews. In an article published last year, Ami (Issue #90) reported that many Holocaust victims composed musical pieces under the most grueling conditions. More than 4,000 scores were discovered—many cheerful and upbeat—and there are many more thought to exist.

In the horror of the concentration camps, the Nazis, ym”s, tried to humiliate the prisoners by forcing them to sing. In Buchenwald, a camp of 25,000 prisoners, the most common musical experi-

ence was SS-organized musical torture, which was a part of every inmate’s daily life. The most ubiquitous form was forced mass singing. As thousands of exhausted inmates gathered for evening roll call, the camp commander would insist that they all sing in unison, on key and loudly. This was impossible, and it became an excuse to arbitrarily punish prisoners.

Buchenwald had its own camp song, and ironically, it was as much loved by the inmates as by the guards who forced them to sing it. How did this happen? Early on, the Germans announced that a competition would be held for the best song, and

the winner became the “Buchenwaldlied” (Buchenwald song). It was set to a rousing march, and its chorus voiced the inevitable freedom beyond camp walls. It’s not surprising that many prisoners actually were energized and uplifted. One survivor recalls: “The camp leader walked through the camp and whoever wasn’t singing loudly enough or at least didn’t open his mouth wide enough while singing was beaten...

But the Buchenwald song also brought us a little pleasure, for it was our song. When we sang, ‘then once will come the day when we are free,’ that was itself a demonstration, which sometimes even the SS officers noticed. And then it could cost us a meal [as punishment].”

Other prisoners remember similar treatment. One of the artifacts that the Kleinman Family Holocaust Education Center has from Buchenwald is the diary of Reb Moshe Nosson Alt a”h. For five years until liberation, Mr. Alt worked in Buchenwald as a clerk in the hospital. His short diary records not only the atrocities that took place, but also his commitment to davening every day along with wearing tefillin when possible. The Buchenwald theme song is prominently featured in his work.

Mr. Fischer’s symphony is a welcome voice countering the raucous tone of nationalism in Europe. It is unlikely that Hungarian politics will be altered by his efforts, but at the very least, we are reminded of lesser-known components of the Holocaust. Baruch Hashem, much has been accomplished to preserve the legacies of those who kept their spirits and Yiddishkeit alive in the darkest of times. As new generations emerge, we know that even if the song is ended, the melody will linger on.

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Rabbi Sholom Friedmann is the Director of the Kleinman Family Holocaust Education Center, located in Brooklyn, NY. To learn more, visit kfhec.org. You can also contact the Center at kfhec@kfhec.org or 718-759-6200.

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A Second Look I received a number of responses to my column two weeks ago (Ami 140) that addressed the dilemma arising when one parent wants to tell his or her grown children, “Don’t be like your father/mother.” If you recall, dear reader, the original letter was from a parent who was concerned that the other parent had been a poor model of a healthy marriage for their children who were nearing shidduch age. I received letters (including one from the author of the original letter) asking me to further explain my answer.

I began the process of formulating responses to these letters, and as I was asking Hashem for guidance, I received an email that clarified things in a way that I never could. I trust that the insight and point-of-view so eloquently expressed below will provide sufficient direction for those who wrote to me on this matter, as well as for anybody else who may desire further explanation of what I was trying to say in that column.

Dear Ami Editors: After reading the letter to Rabbi Taub from the woman who is concerned for her kids’ future marriages, I felt compelled to respond.

I grew up in what sounds like a very similar situation to the one she describes. I’d like to share with you what is very possibly going on in the minds and hearts of your children—or what will, one day, when they are building their own homes.

First of all, don’t be naive. Don’t assume that your kids don’t see exactly what the situation is—no matter how good of an actress you may be. You don’t need to tell them that their father’s behavior is inappropriate in a normal, healthy marriage. They know. They have already looked outside of their home to find role models, and hopefully have found them.

I’d like to bring up an important point, though. If you are looking for respect from your children for having been the hero in this story, the martyr who “accepted” her situation, I highly doubt you’ll find it. Sympathy?

wonder why in the world you didn’t stick up for yourself, for what is your right in marriage, and thereby give them a healthy, functional home environment to grow up in, and a role model for them to emulate.

You say you accepted your situation early on, and oh, I know that “acceptance” all too well. So do my 10 siblings. Not doing anything to change the situation is not acceptance. It’s a cop-out.

Please believe me, my friend: While my siblings and I know that my mother was not to blame, and she too accepted her lot (oh, and with a hefty dose of “in the name of shalom bayis,” which she sincerely believed then and still believes now, over 40 years later) and put on the greatest show for the world (if you knew how many people have called my parents for shalom bayis advice over the years you’d laugh—or cry...) trust me when I say that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but never yourself, and never—not ever—your kids. They know.

And as each and every one of us grew up and established our own homes, we began to feel more and more resentful of the fact that my mother, tzaddeikes that she is, allowed all those years to pass without sticking up for herself and her marriage, and cheated us out of a normal home. (For the record, as kids we thought it was normal, which is your fear, but we definitely learned as we grew up.)

Oh, people always believed we had the greatest, warmest, most loving family...and for the most part we did, save for our parents,

I GREW UP IN WHAT SOUNDS LIKE A VERY SIMILAR SITUATION TO THE ONE SHE DESCRIBES. Yes, most probably. Respect? Probably not.

Resentment? Again, most probably. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but one day, when they have their own homes and, G-d willing, know what “normal” is, they will begin to

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who relate to each other in the strangest, most unhealthy of ways.

Did my father himself ever realize it? Well, he knew my mother always had issues with his bizarre behavior, which I now attribute to emo-

tional handicaps on his part, but he always told her it was all in her head.

Well, did he get a wake-up call at their 45th anniversary when not one of his children—not one!—made any reference to their parents, their marriage, the beautiful shalom bayis we saw, the way we all hoped to emulate them... all the regular, normal things children say at their parents’ anniversaries... No, that was all carefully sidestepped throughout all the speeches, grammen, and festivities.

After all is said and done, I hope you read Rabbi Taub’s response and took it to heart.

You want to help your kids? Help yourself.

Show your kids that standing up for yourself takes strength of character and is worthwhile.

It’s admirable. It’s correct. We all wish our mother would have.

Sincerely, Your child, 20 years from now

While not everything this letter writer advocates is necessarily applicable for all situations and may especially not apply to yours, one thing stood out as being extremely enlightening. The This letter was written to the Ami editors, in response to my column last week (Ami 141) about the wife who was jealous of her husband’s professional life.

To the Editor: I usually enjoy reading the “Ask Rabbi Shais Taub” columns. However, I am so disturbed by this week’s answer to “Missing Out” that I feel compelled to respond.

In her letter, the writer admits that since her husband has joined the work force in a professional, mixed environment, she has started to feel resentful of her role as a stay-at-home mom and of having to dress in a tzniusdik manner.

I do appreciate that Rabbi Taub validated her feelings and did not brush her off as yet another victim of our generation’s misconception of a woman’s tafkid in this world.

Yet, were there no words of support and encouragement to be offered?

children were all quite aware of the state of their parents’ marriage and of their respective personalities and faults.

—RST

Instead, Rabbi Taub asks: “Where did it even become a thing that a married person with children is supposed to leave the house and join the professional world?” Surely, he cannot be saying that it is wrong for a man to work outside the home in order to support his family, but is Rabbi Taub implying that it’s only okay as long as the man is a farmer who plows the field, or a merchant, but not a professional?

But what really disturbed me greatly is that—although the woman in the letter does not at all mention her husband’s integrity or lack thereof—Rabbi Taub, simply based on the fact that he is a professional in a mixed firm, goes on to describe him as someone who is living a double life, who no longer cares about his family, who is having an exciting life outside the home, who behaves inappropriately with the women he works with, and who needs to be taught basic values...

Does Rabbi Taub personally know the husband in this particular case, or is this what he

assumes is the reality for all the hundreds of men who support their families in a professional, mixed environment?

On behalf of the wives of all of these men (some of them stay-at-home moms, and some of them—like me—with careers of their own), I respectfully feel that a clarification is in order.

I, for one, have been left not only deeply offended, but with a fresh new worry and resentment in my heart and mind.

Thank you.

M.P. PS: I know this is a rather long letter and I fully understand that not all letters received can be printed. However, if even one other woman who has a husband in the professional world felt as distraught as I felt, reading Rabbi’s Taub article this week, it would mean a lot that you print this letter, hopefully along with some clarification or guidance from Rabbi Taub.

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D

ear M.P.: It seems that I have touched a raw nerve. I’m sorry that you were upset by what I wrote. I agree with you that further clarification is in order and I thank you for writing to the editors to ask that your concerns be addressed.

You make several valid points, which I will try to address. However, I will begin with that which seems to have bothered you the most. You say that the woman who wrote the original letter does not give any indication that her husband has done anything especially wrong, thus how can I jump to conclusions about him just because he is part of the professional world? After all, as you correctly point out, I don’t know this man. So how can I make such assumptions?

In answer to these questions, I would like to point out that what I wrote last week was not a reaction to anything I know about the husband. I am reacting to what the wife wrote about her husband.

She wrote that she feels like her husband “joins another world” when he goes off to work. I know it bothers her when her husband “attends social functions” and “parties of his work associates.” And how do I know all of this? Because that’s exactly what she told me (and you and all of us who read her letter last week). I have no reason to doubt anything she says, especially as she did not accuse her husband of any impropriety, but rather she merely reported her own feelings. So I believe her when she describes how she feels. And if this woman feels this way, then no further knowledge of her husband’s conduct is necessary. His actions at work are causing shalom bayis issues and this needs to be addressed.

For the record, I don’t think that this husband is doing anything that would shock his wife if she were to find out. I think she is pretty much aware of what his work life is like. But why does my concern necessarily imply that things are even worse than his wife suspected? His professional life is a wedge between her and him. That’s not enough? It’s an area where they can improve. Is there anything wrong with that? I’m sure he’s no worse than the

average frum professional. But even so, that itself warrants at least a conversation between husband and wife.

And this brings me to address another point you raised. Certainly there are many men (and women) who function in the professional world and do maintain proper emotional boundaries. I apologize if my column categorically implied that there are not. On the other hand, the problem that I was describing is so widespread that it really does affect all of us, even the best of us, on some level. As such, we would all do well to reevaluate the influence that our work life has on our homes. In the world we live in, it’s never a bad idea to stop and reexamine our values, especially when it comes to our sensitivity to relationships and loyalties that can interfere with our dedication to family, marriage and the home.

As for my failure to offer this woman support and encouragement, I guess my response is this: This woman identified something that was bothering her. I could have told her that she should get over it (which you yourself say you’re glad I did not do) or I could have told her that she has a good point and that she should follow up on it. I chose the latter since I honestly believe that this is a talk that she can and should have with her husband. Perhaps I should have been more supportive and encouraging in my tone, but to my thinking, offering someone a course of action is itself support and encouragement.

Lastly, I would like to raise a question of my own, and I pray that I say this the right way, for my intention is only to be helpful and not to win an argument. You conclude your letter by saying, “I, for one, have been left not only deeply offended, but with a fresh new worry and resentment in my heart and mind.”

Could it be that your objection to what I wrote last week is not so much based on the former (that it offended you) as it is based on the latter (that it scared you)? As I said at the beginning of my response to you, I believe I have touched a raw nerve.

But if last week’s column got you thinking about the workplace in a new way, I think that’s a good thing. My intention was not to cause alarm, but rather to remind us

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not to lose our sensitivity in a world that bombards us with values that are implicitly as well as explicitly antithetical to the stability of the family. The response I had hoped to evoke wasn’t worry and resentment, but rather awareness. I think our families are valuable enough, and that the threat from society’s values is real enough, that this issue warrants an honest discussion between every husband and wife.

It is hashgachah pratis, no doubt, that this Shabbos we read Parshas Vayeitzei.

This sidrah describes how Yaakov Avinu established a family that would become the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Where did Yaakov accomplish this task (a task that eluded both Avraham and Yitzchak)? In Charan, a lewd and lascivious place that provoked Hashem’s anger. There, our father Yaakov worked for the corrupt Lavan. The environment was anything but conducive to holiness. There were plenty of potential distractions. Yaakov not only emerged unscathed, he managed to raise a perfect family, mitaso sheleimah, as our Sages say.

What was his secret?

Yaakov Avinu’s secret was that the whole time he was in Charan, he was only there for one reason: He was there for his family.

We don’t need to hide from the world, but we do need to make sure that being in the world doesn’t become an end unto itself.

Thank you for your letter and for the chance to elaborate on this subject that is vital to us and our families.

With blessing, RST

•

Rabbi Shais Taub is a noted expert on Jewish spirituality and addiction. He is the author of the best-selling G-d of Our Understanding: Jewish Spirituality and Recovery from Addiction. Questions to Rabbi Shais Taub should be sent to ask@amimagazine.org.

Rabbi Shais Taub is available for private consultations. For an appointment, contact him at Ask@Amimagazine.org.

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On Bar and Bas Mitzvah Celebrations, Part 2

THE ORIGINS OF THE BAS MITZVAH PARTY, AND WHY SOME SEE IT AS PROBLEMATIC

I

n 1922, the first American bas mitzvah celebration took place. Mordechai Kaplan—the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism—had a daughter, Judith, turning 12. That Shabbos, she walked up to the bimah and read from the Torah. Even the liberal crowd was shocked.

We like to think that the frum world’s desire to enhance how we celebrate bas mitzvahs of late is unconnected to that moment in time—and perhaps that is true—but the simple fact is that others do not see it that way.

The American Jewish Historical Society, in their entry regarding Judith Kaplan’s bas mitzvah, discusses the changes that sprang from that moment in time: “Change came gradually. As late as the 1930s, despite Judith Kaplan’s path-breaking example, only a handful of Conservative synagogues had adopted bat mitzvah. By 1948, however, one-third of Conservative congregations conducted them and, by the 1960s, the ceremony became the norm within Conservatism… A number of modern Orthodox congregations have now adopted some form of bat mitzvah as well. Bat mitzvah, an innovation in 1922, is now an American Jewish institution.”

This perception is either a gross error or highly disturbing. Either way, it was at the heart of what disturbed Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt"l, relating to this issue.

In his first teshuvah (Orach Chayim 1:104) on the matter, written in the 1950s, he makes three essential points: • A bas mitzvah party is seen, halachically, as just a birthday party, and therefore must not take place in a shul.

• This is especially true due to its stemming from non-halachic branches of Judaism that we mustn’t emulate.

• It would also be good to get rid of bar mitzvah celebrations too, as they do nothing to increase the boy’s growth in Torah.

Four years later, writing to Rav Meir Kahane (yes, that Rav Meir Kahane, hy”d), Rav Moshe added a fourth concern relating to Shabbos bas and bar mitzvahs: • They lead to chillul Shabbos, thus eradicating any potential or perceived gain.

In yet a third teshuvah (Orach Chayim 2:97), Rav Moshe was asked the $64,000 question: Why? Why should we not do the same for a girl who becomes obligated in mitzvos as we do for a boy?

While Rav Moshe had already said that he was not happy with American bar mitzvah celebrations, even he was aware of the ancient custom of doing something (e.g., kichelach and herring after davening) for boys.

Indeed, Rav Moshe himself strengthens the question before offering his answer by mentioning the Yam Shel Shlomo (Bava Kama 7:37), who says that a bar mitzvah meal is considered a seudas mitzvah, as on this day the boy is accepting Torah. Why then should a girl be any different?

Furthermore, the proof to the Yam Shel Shlomo has nothing to do with a bar mitzvah, per se, but to mitzvos in general. The Gemara (Kiddushin 41a) tells us that Rav Yosef, who was blind and thus patur from mitzvos, said that should it be proven that blind people are indeed obligated in mitzvos, he would then make a feast.

From here we see that anyone, at any age, should make some type of meal when he

76 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

becomes obligated in mitzvos. So why not girls?

Rav Moshe explains that a bar mitzvah bachur and Rav Yosef have something in common that is not found with girls: Their becoming obligated in mitzvos has an effect on the tzibbur (e.g., they can now join a minyan). This is why we invite the public to an event in those cases, so as to inform the masses. This does not apply to a girl, and to make a festivity simply to inform the public about a personal change or triumph is not done.

Several years later, the journal Hapardes published a teshuvah from Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, later published in his Seridei Eish (2:39), where he implicitly disagrees with Rav Moshe (whom he briefly references) and explicitly allows for such changes in how we celebrate a bas mitzvah. He explains, in a strikingly similar argument made by the Chofetz Chaim in explaining the change brought by the Bais Yaakov movement, that today Jewish girls do not get the same familial education once received at home, and this added chizzuk, when they turn 12, can be helpful. However, Rav Weinberg’s teshuvah still reads as being somewhat reluctant.

Rav Ovadia Yosef, on the other hand, is far more accepting of this change. He dismisses Rav Moshe’s distinction between boys’ and girls’ bar/bas mitzvahs as “having no foundation.” In one of his teshuvos on this issue (Yechaveh Daas 2:29), he goes so far as to say that the very fact that all of the changes are happening outside of Judaism between boys and girls would cause others to look at us negatively unless we too adapt(!), thus seeing the change from

BY RABBI MOSHE TAUB

Rav Moshe explains that a bar mitzvah bachur and Rav Yosef have something in common that is not found with girls the outside as the very reason for us too to change, contrary to Rav Moshe and many others (Rav Eliezer Silver, shu”t Zekan Aharon, inter alia) who say the exact opposite!

While it is tempting to explain that Rav Yosef was writing from Eretz Yisrael, where the creeping influence from outside movements is not as threatening, this would not seem to be the case, for Rav Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg, also from Eretz Yisrael, comes to the side of Rav Moshe.

In an extraordinary teshuvah (chelek 18), Rav Waldenberg reprimands an author of a book relating to the laws of bar mitzvah for only bringing the sources allowing for bas mitzvah celebrations: “An important sefer such as yours should have included the negative views…” He then goes on to list those views ending with his own view in agreement with those that are stringent.

He does, however, offer a different perspective on why bas mitzvah celebrations should be avoided: issues of tznius.

While this issue is still unresolved, the reader should note that there are gedolim on both sides of the matter. We should all hearken to the words of Rav Weinberg, who ends his teshuvah on this matter pleading with the public to respect the intentions of those who have accepted, to some degree, bas mitzvah celebrations that are modest.

And let us hope that the equality that comes out of this discussion is the lessening of bar mitzvah excessiveness, as opposed to bringing bas mitzvahs to that same level.  Rabbi Moshe Taub has served as the rabbi of the Young Israel of Greater Buffalo since September 2003, and also serves as the rav hamachshir of the Buffalo Vaad Hakashrus.

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77

BRAIN STORM YITZY YABOK is the pen name of a young man who shared his life-altering experience in Ami’s exclusive serial. His story, which began a little more than 12 years ago and traversed several continents, has touched the hearts of people all over the world and been an inspiration to many who face challenges. He has lectured before all kinds of audiences, from medical doctors to

kollel yungeleit, about his nisyonos and salvation. He is currently a rebbe in the Midwest and a candidate for a license in clinical mental health counseling. With the blessings of gedolei Torah and tzaddikei Yisrael, he shared the chasdei Hashem that were bestowed upon him, as both chizzuk and guidance for all those who may be dealing with traumatic illness.

CHAPTER LIV

Our worst fears had materialized:

The tumor was back. Our only consolation was that Dr. Epstein had characterized the surgery to get rid of it as a “layup,” implying that the operation was relatively simple. But after all I had been through, I knew I was ultimately in the hands of the Ribbono Shel Olam.

Thank G-d, Dr. Epstein proved to be a wonderful shaliach. After my first marathon surgery, this one seemed like a stroll in the park. While the first operation had lasted 14 hours, and it took me days in the ICU to get back to myself, this time I was in and out of the operating room in five hours, and the recovery time was also much shorter. I was almost immediately aware of my surroundings and spent only an hour or two in the ICU. I was also hooked up to only a couple of monitors, unlike the first time, when I was tethered to countless machines. I don’t even remember having the leg massagers to prevent blood clots the second time around. I do remember waking up in the operating room after the procedure was over, but I was put right back

to sleep.

Eventually, I was transferred to a regular room. This time, though, it was semiprivate, and my roommate turned out to be a 20-year-old Buddhist monk from Tibet. Unfortunately for him, he had come to New York for surgery all alone.

The nearest family member was 6,000 miles away, and he did not speak a word of English. I remember my uncle trying to communicate with him; it reminded me of a comedy routine.

However, this did not mean that he had no visitors. The kindly Dr. Epstein had arranged with the Tibetan embassy to have representatives and delegates visit him in the hospital, and they brought all kinds of martial arts movies in his native language. The grunts, groans and battle cries played 24/7 from his side of the room. But before I knew it I was discharged, pretty much recovered from a successful second operation. It was only two days after the surgery.

Then came the next round of chemo, this time with something called CCNU (lomustine), which, as was explained

78 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

to me, worked differently from VP-16.

Again, I was able to take it in pill form, for which I am still thankful to Hashem.

But don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t exactly on easy street yet. There were days when I was so miserable that I couldn’t even roll over in bed, either because I was simply too weak or I was afraid I’d throw up if I moved even the slightest bit.

Again, I had to keep close tabs on my blood counts, sometimes even daily.

The drugs were really wreaking havoc on my poor insides. One evening I had an alarming scare. It was Thanksgiving of 2001, and I’d just had a CBC (complete blood count) taken in Dr. Shanik’s office. The results were frightening. A normal platelet level is anywhere within the range of 150,000 to 400,000 per microliter (mcL); my level was 20,000.

The nurse started to panic and told me I needed an immediate platelet transfusion.

“And don’t let them poke you ahead of time!” she warned me. “You might not stop bleeding!” She made me feel like I was about to die.

But while Dr. Shanik’s office was open

A PERSONAL JOURNAL BY YITZY YABOK in Lakewood, the rest of the world was busy watching football and eating turkey, and it was impossible to get in touch with my doctors in Manhattan or North Carolina. I’m not blaming anyone; everyone needs a day off, but I really needed a transfusion—and quick. There was no time to play around. I called my parents and they made arrangements for my uncle who lived in Lakewood to drive me to the INN (Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery), and they would meet us there. Time was of the essence.

The reader should keep in mind that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were still fresh in every New Yorker’s mind. As mentioned previously, the Institute was located directly across the street from Gracie Mansion. When I arrived, Mayor Giuliani was apparently hosting a huge Thanksgiving feast, and some of his guests were important foreign dignitaries. The entire area was cordoned off; no vehicular traffic was being allowed within a two-block radius, with the exception of patients arriving by ambulance. So even though it was truly an emergency, my arrival by regular car made me just like anyone else, and I had to walk the last two and a half blocks to the emergency room on foot. It looked like Gracie Mansion was under siege, under the watchful eye of snipers in military gear. There were also two sand-filled dumpsters meant to absorb the shock of an explosion right outside the front gate.

I still don’t know if there was any specific threat. In any event, there was certainly a lot of excitement surrounding my arrival at the hospital that night.

I went directly up to the tenth floor, pediatric neurology, and told the nurses about my situation. They immediately found an empty room for me and told me to wait there. Then we proceeded to wait. And wait. It was midnight when I had arrived; I fell asleep around 2:00 a.m. At 3:00 I was awakened by a nurse who came in to prep me, and informed me that the platelets were on their way. I fell asleep again. But at 4:00 a.m. a differ-

My roommate was a 20-year-old Buddhist monk from Tibet who didn’t speak a word of English. ent nurse finally arrived to start the infusion process. I had never seen platelets before and never want to see them again.

They’re a bright neon orange, almost like a cartoon—not typically what comes to mind when thinking of the color of blood.

After that, I’m happy to report, the rest of my treatments went off without any real glitches. Of course, every chemo cycle has its ups and downs, but thank G-d, I made it through relatively unscathed. After another year of treatment I was declared tumor-free by Dr. Friedman. His pronouncement was based on the results of a PET (positronemission tomography) scan, which was coincidentally developed at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, just a couple of blocks from where

I now live. The PET scan watches the function of bodily processes in real time, as they occur. After a radioactive dye was injected into my bloodstream, the doctors were able to see it move through my brain. They determined that all the cells in the area where the tumor had been located were inactive, which meant that even if there were some remnants left they were dead.

But by no stretch of the imagination was I “free to enjoy life” just yet. For the first year I needed to undergo a scan every three months, every four months for the second year, and every six months for the next few years. After five years of being tumor-free, the doctors allowed me to wait a year between scans, and I still undergo an annual “MRI re: brain tumor fwp w/wo gadolinium.” I won’t lie about it; there are times I get a headache and immediately panic. I no longer live in fear that the tumor will return, but statistically speaking I’m a rarity. Of course, I deal with my situation not with scans and medicines, but with emunah and bitachon in the Healer of all Healers.

••• Epilogue: I was zocheh to continue learning for three more years in my small yeshivah in Lakewood. Then I spent the next year and a half in Eretz Yisrael at the yeshivah of Rav Dovid Soloveitchik. I was married the following year. After learning in Lakewood as a yungerman at Beth Medrash Govoha for almost four years I joined the St. Louis Kollel in St. Louis, Missouri. Five years later, I am a thirdgrade rebbe and soon-to-be graduate of a master’s program in mental health counseling at the University of Missouri.

My experience has led me to live a life unlike that of many others. While it has certainly not been an easy journey, it has taught me how to conquer fear, to discern the positive in every situation, and to ultimately realize that even in seemingly hopeless situations there is always hope. 

The End.

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The Wedding Dress

IT TOOK ME YEARS TO REALIZE THE TREASURE I’D BEEN GIVEN. BUT WAS IT TOO LATE?

I

was born in Yerushalayim, the oldest of 13 in a monetarily poor but spiritually rich old-world family. My mother ran a tight ship. She raised us children single-handedly, ensuring that my father could continue to learn Torah undisturbed. This entailed tremendous self-sacrifice on her part. Yet despite the fact that money was hard to come by, she still found a place in her heart and home for those who were less fortunate.

My mother’s chesed was legendary. She was and still is my role model in life. We were imbued with what she described as the three foundations: love of Torah, fear of G-d and kindness to one another.

As the oldest, I was the first of my siblings to get engaged. I still remember the euphoria that filled our little home. My mother spent the entire day dabbing her eyes while my father hovered in the background, hopping and dancing excitedly, his feet barely touching the floor. The chasan, a masmid, was from a wonderful family and was the protégé of a local yeshivah. An onlooker would have been forgiven for thinking that my parents had won the lottery, but they felt they’d won something even better. All they could do to show their gratitude to Hashem was to keep repeating “Shehecheyanu vekiyimanu vehigianu lizman hazeh!”

After the engagement party was over we immediately tackled the wedding preparations. There were gowns to be sewn, menus to be planned and invitations to be mailed—not to mention the search for an apartment and other financial concerns. I enjoyed all the hustle and bustle, and especially looked forward to the day we’d go shopping for my bridal gown. I dreamed of layers and layers of pristine white skirts, a pearl-beaded bodice and a matching tiara. But when I mentioned this 80 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 3 / / 3 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

AS TOLD TO SARAH PACHTER

to my mother, she called me into her room and sat me down.

Then, standing on a chair, she reached up to a high shelf in the closet and took down a box. Opening it with care she gently removed a bridal gown and held it up for me to see. My heart dropped. The gown looked like it belonged in the Purim box.

“There’s nothing to talk about!” I said emphatically. “I will not get married in that thing…”

My mother was not the kind of parent who took orders from her children. Nevertheless, she understood my reservations.

“Listen to me, Chava. I am asking you, telling you that you must wear this gown.”

I looked at it disdainfully. It was plain, very plain, bordering on ugly. Even the color was dull. There were no beads or sequins or layers of fabric. Nothing.

“Immmaaa,” I groaned.

“Sha, mamaleh,” she said. “Let me tell you about this gown. It was sewn by my mother especially for me. She was so filled with joy and gratitude to Hashem that every stitch contained a prayer. She finished Sefer Tehillim three times while working on it, and it was in this dress that I stood under the chuppah.

“My mother—your grandmother, you remember her—loved you dearly. She isn’t alive anymore but this is what she would have wanted. She hinted it to me on more than one occasion, and even mentioned it just before she passed away. It was her burning desire that you wear this gown.

Tell me, are you really willing to forgo those three Sifrei Tehillim?

Grudgingly, I agreed that my grandmother’s prayers were too precious to reject. So I did what was right and wore the dress, and despite my worst fears I was a radiant bride.

My mother had the dress professionally bleached, and although it was not what I had envisioned, it was beautiful in its own way. Throughout my wedding day I felt my grandmother’s presence and those mizmorei Tehillim standing by my side. It was a wonderful feeling of security—one that has never quite left me.

Nonetheless, I decided that I would not put my own children through that same ordeal. I would give the dress away.

My daughter would be spared the need

your daughter of the gown—the gown that will stand her in good stead for years to come. Don’t you understand that every stitch was a kapitel of Tehillim? The fabric itself is soaked in prayer. How can you waive her right to such a gift?

“You will go and find that gown,” she ordered me, “and mark my words—your daughter will wear it to the chupah even if it means combing planet Earth until you find it.”

The forcefulness of my mother’s words

When she held it up for me to see my heart dropped. It looked like it belonged in the Purim box. to wear this old dress, for in my heart of hearts I still nursed some broken shards of a shattered dream.

I packed up the gown, without my mother’s knowledge, and passed it on to a bridal gemach my friend had opened. Even now I don’t know how I dared.

The years passed by, and I was zocheh to raise a beautiful family. Then, as is every mother’s dream, my daughter became a bride. We threw a big engagement party, after which my mother cornered me and said, “Chava, darling, don’t forget about the gown.”

“The gown? Oh, the gown!” My heart started doing overtime. “Ima, I have to be brutally honest with you. I don’t have it anymore.”

That was it, I’d said it: clearly and to the point. My mother paled.

“Whaaaat? What did you do with it? Get it back! How could you? You’ve robbed

took me by surprise. I knew she wouldn’t be pleased, but I didn’t expect such an extreme reaction, and I suddenly realized how rash I’d been.

There was no arguing with her. “I’ll do the praying, and you go find that dress,” she insisted. I marveled at how little my mother had changed over the years; her word was still my command.

And so, the hunt was on. Instead of taking care of the myriad other wedding details, I found myself searching for a gown that had been “lost” years ago.

First I called my friend, who’d been the original recipient of the dress. She was a grandmother now.

“You’ve got to be joking!” she said, “I closed the gemach years ago. What did I do with the gowns? I gave them all away to a woman from Tzfas. I don’t remember her name, but I might have her address written down somewhere. I’ll take a look.”

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“How can you waive your daughter’s right to such a gift?” my mother cried.

The information she gave me was long obsolete, and since I realized it would be ridiculous to try to describe a particular gown over the phone, I boarded a bus to Tzfas and went gemach-hunting. I visited every bridal gemach listed in the telephone book. I finally reached the one I was looking for; the woman’s name was Tzippy.

Unfortunately, she’d relocated her gemach to a basement apartment in…

Yerushalayim. So, frustrated, weary to the bone and almost in tears I got back on a bus and headed back home. A few days later, after having made dozens of calls, I headed out once again. This time my destination was south rather than north.

Since I could see that this was going to take longer than expected, I took a prewedding leave from my job as a teacher and, armed with a picture of the dress, scoured the country. I met some fascinating women—but no gown.

Eventually, a woman named Louise Ravinsky, who not only runs a gemach but is a gemach knew exactly which gown I was looking for. And she also knew why.

Apparently, the gown had made quite a reputation for itself.

“It’s a supernatural gown,” she said, smiling. “Every kallah who has ever worn it has come back to me later with a wondrous story of how it brought about miracles. In fact, I recently received a call from a brokenhearted woman in Cleveland who had an unmarried 40-year-old daughter.

She wanted to buy the gown in the hope that if she owned it her daughter would get engaged.”

“And?” I was beyond curious. “She bought it?”

“Of course. And with the money she gave me I was able to buy several new gowns for the gemach.”

I suddenly realized how foolish I had been in taking G-d’s gifts for granted. I had sons who were all involved in learning, a good job, a wonderful husband and a calm, happy home. In what, or in whose, merit? I asked myself. Maybe, just maybe, my own dear grandmother had ensured that the foundations of my home were steeped in holiness. And I, in a moment of stupidity, had given away that pipeline to G-d.

Once again I knew that trying to bargain for my dress over the phone would be futile, and so I, who had never left Israel before, flew all the way to Cleveland to hunt it down.

No wonder my mother had been so adamant that I wear the gown under the chupah! I would fight to the death to get it back—but was it too late?

My husband supported me all the way.

But most of all, my appreciation goes to a woman named Sarah Weiner who was my contact in Cleveland. She took me under her wing and helped me create flyers to post in and around the shuls in the city: “LOOKING FOR A WEDDING GOWN PURCHASED FROM A GEMACH IN ISRAEL…” By now I had also said my fair share of Tehillim. Even before leaving Israel I’d completed Sefer Tehillim three times, corresponding to my grandmother’s three recitals, in whose merit I hoped to find

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the gown. I said even more Tehillim on the plane and still more when I reached Sarah Weiner’s house. I had undertaken not just a physical journey but a spiritual one too.

While we waited for people to respond to the notices I made inquiries about local bridal gemachs and rentals in the event the gown had been passed on for the benefit of other brides. Eventually a woman named Karen knew exactly which gown we were talking about; she’d received it from a woman whose 40-year-old daughter had just gotten married wearing it. The bride’s mother had been sure it was the gown that had brought about the long-awaited miracle. Karen said that the woman had wanted her to spread the word about the dress. She felt that if she’d benefited from it, others should too.

“At the moment, though,” she added somewhat apologetically, “the gown is on its way to Mexico.”

I thought I might faint. I immediately burst into tears.

The dress kept slipping through my fingers. Maybe I just wasn’t worthy of getting it back.

“Don’t despair,” Karen told me. “We’ll figure it out together.”

And we did. This time I didn’t have to hop on a plane to Mexico. Karen was the owner of the dress, and the Mexican bride had only borrowed it for her auspicious occasion.

I headed back to Israel, and the dress arrived shortly after. And guess what? My daughter was the most beautiful, radiant bride even without layers and layers of skirts.

And I never felt more blessed than when I walked her to the chupah.

•

To submit your story for this column or to have your story featured here, please contact us at submissions@amimagazine.org.

Assume Nothing THERE ARE MANY ASSUMPTIONS ON THE STREETS OF LIFE

L

ast week I flew to Toronto. I took a morning flight from Kennedy, and while I assumed there would be some Orthodox Jews, perhaps even some rabbis on board, I didn’t notice any. Going through customs at Toronto’s Pearson Airport the Canadian customs official, whose badge indicated that his name was Samson, took my passport and began the perfunctory interrogation.

“What is the reason for your visit to Canada? How long do you plan to stay?”

I answered that I had come for personal reasons and would be leaving that afternoon. Then I decided to clarify a bit and added, “I came to pay a cond—” “Reichmann,” said the agent, in an assured tone of voice as if it were obvious.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“They’ve been streaming in and out all day.”

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My mind went back to a humorous story I once read about a Mr. Goldstein, who was returning by train from New York City to the small upstate town of Saratoga Springs. He’s sitting next to a young man, a yeshivah boy, and it’s a long ride so Goldstein starts a conversation with the fellow.

He learns that his name is Alan Levine, and he’s also headed to Saratoga Springs.

“Are you going there on business?” Goldstein asks. “No. It’s personal.”

RABBI MORDECHAI KAMENETZKY

“Do you have relatives there?”

“No.” Goldstein then asks if he is single and the answer comes back in the affirmative.

The Jewish mind then goes to work.

Goldstein thinks to himself, He’s going to Saratoga Springs. He’s not married, he’s not going on business, and he has no mishpachah in town. He’s obviously going to meet a girl, or more likely, her family. Maybe to confirm their engagement? I wonder who it is. Aside from me, there are only three other Jewish families with eligible daughters in Saratoga Springs: the Finkelsteins, the Schwimmers and the Cohens. It couldn’t be the Finkelsteins. Finkelstein would never take a boy with a black hat.

The Schwimmers have four girls, but one is married and one is in seminary in Israel for the year. The other two are still in high school.

It must be the Cohens. They have three daughters: Miriam, Shayna and Nechama. Miriam is already married. Shayna is in no way a match for this fellow; she’s way too tall for him. So it must be Nechama. Yes, Nechama!

A wonderful girl.

With this, Goldstein breaks the silence and smiles at the stranger. “Well, congratulations on your forthcoming engagement to Nechama Cohen.”

“B...but we haven’t told anybody yet!” the young man stutters. “How did you know?”

“It was obvious,” Goldstein replies.

Though it is almost impossible to carry on through life without making assumptions, they are sometimes unfortunately based on stereotypical prejudices.

A famous Jewish comedian was once talking about crime and racism and stereotypes and quipped, “I don’t think anyone ever suddenly crosses the street when he sees he’s being followed by three Jewish accountants.”

There’s a riddle I was asked as a child that I wasn’t able to answer. Thirty years later, my own kids figure it out in a flash.

“A young boy was in a car accident. He’s immediately rushed to the emergency

room. The doctor walks in and gasps, “ Oh no! It’s my son!” The doctor, however, is not the boy’s father. How is this possible?

It took a lot longer 30-odd years ago to figure out that the doctor is the boy’s mother.

Assumptions determine many facets of our lives and often drive our decisions,

Inside the 7-Eleven there is a glass case containing doughnuts and pastries. On the case is a letter attesting to the kashrus of the confections inside. The letter is from a rabbi I never heard of and a congregation I never heard of as well. I have always assumed that the clergyman is either selfordained or leads a Conservative congre-

“But we haven’t told anyone yet,” the young man said. “How did you know?

“It was obvious,” Goldstein replied. even if we remain somewhat skeptical when they’re based on facts declared by governmental agencies and big corporations. We have to assume that timetables are at least somewhat accurate, otherwise we wouldn’t go to the train station until we heard the whistle of the locomotive. Likewise, we have to assume that the mail will be delivered and that the government will continue to function, although it seems to break down more often than not.

Even certain religious practices rely on chazakah, which I assume is a form of assumption. We hope or assume that the kosher symbol placed on a commercial food item isn’t a forgery. We assume that the kashrus agency is doing a proper job, and that the mashgiach actually showed up at the plant. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t put a morsel of commercially prepared food into our mouths. When people ask me if products or establishments are kosher, I usually reply, “They bear a supervising symbol.” Those who know me understand that I can’t bear witness to more than that.

Indeed, assumptions like those can lead others astray. A few weeks ago I was on the way to Brooklyn, and stopped by the local 7-Eleven on the corner of a busy intersection that is the gateway to our community.

gation.

That evening, however, something changed when I saw what I assumed to be a chasidishe yungerman looking at the letter, opening the case and removing two doughnuts. I assumed he was a chasidishe yungerman because he had peiyos and a beard, and spoke fluent Yiddish to the woman I assumed to be his wife. I also assumed he would be very stringent about the doughnuts he chose to eat.

And so, without hesitation I sauntered over to him and gave him a yasher koach.

“What for, a ’shkoiach?’” he asked. The accent confirmed some of my previous assumptions. “Well,” I said, “I’ve been living here for years, and never thought that letter meant more than a hill of beans. But now that I see a chasidishe yungerman buying doughnuts, I have to assume you know the rav and can attest to the worthiness of his hashgachah.”

The guy shrugged. I now assumed that nothing more than the word “rabbi” on the letter was enough for him, and I was confused and upset.

I told him a story that happened to me about 15 years ago. I had gone to the airport in Newark one morning to drop off one of my sons. Before heading back

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home, I decided to buy a cup of coffee at one of the many stands that dotted the terminal.

Walking towards the café, I noticed a bearded man wearing a cardigan sweater.

He looked like an academic, but something else he was wearing made him appear noticeably different. A large knit yarmulke was sitting comfortably on his head. It was so big, in fact, that it looked more like a beret than a kippah.

He was sitting at a table near the counter, munching on a pastry while sipping his coffee. As one who enjoys shmoozing with Jews of all varieties and from all walks of life, I decided to say “Shalom” to him after making my purchase. And so, steaming black coffee in hand, I made my way over to his table. As I approached it, however, I was startled to see that the man was bareheaded. I could have sworn that just moments before there was a huge yarmulke on his head.

“Excuse me,” I said very politely and extremely carefully. What I said next would probably be an invasion of privacy, but my curiosity was getting the better of me. After introducing myself and asking his name, I popped the rude question.

“Weren’t you just wearing a kippah?”

“Yes,” he said with a small smile.

“I thought so,” I meekly responded.

“Well, um, did you take it off upon seeing me?” He nodded in the affirmative.

All of a sudden I felt a pang of guilt. After all, in a small way I felt my job was to get people to put on a yarmulke, not take one off! “What made you remove it?” I asked.

“Let me explain,” he began. “When you walked by I was eating a pastry I had just purchased from the café. I’ve just started

What I said next would probably be an invasion of privacy, but my curiosity was getting the better of me. keeping kosher, and the letter of certification on the display was good enough for my standards.

“However, by wearing a yarmulke while eating it, I felt that I was declaring this food to be kosher to a higher standard. When you walked by,” he said, “an obviously Orthodox Jew, you would have assumed that I was endorsing what I was eating. I didn’t want you to buy a pastry here because of me. I knew I was being observed, and it worried me that it could influence someone else. So I took off my yarmulke. Simple as that!”

After relating this anecdote, I then chided the chasidishe yungerman rather bluntly. “If you have no idea who’s giving the hashgachah on these doughnuts, how can you just go ahead and buy them? In addition to the fact that there might not be proper supervision, aren’t you afraid that someone will see you and assume they’re kosher?”

What he answered was even more shocking. “This is a Jewish neighborhood.

You told me you live here. I assumed you wouldn’t let an establishment sell an item that isn’t kosher enough for your standards.”

I looked at the two Pakistani owners of the 7-Eleven standing behind the counter.

Was this guy assuming that the residents of the Five Towns have such influence that

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they can dictate the brands of pastry every single entrepreneur sells around here? My goodness.

Okay, so I’m a little naïve for thinking that everyone with a beard and peiyos is a standard-bearer for kashrus, but I was still surprised that someone could assume that an item was kosher just because “it’s sold in a 7-Eleven in a Jewish neighborhood.”

On the way back from Toronto, the waiting area at the gate was full of heimishe looking Jews. One of them was pointed out to me as the Krula Rebbe from Williamsburg. Everyone was waiting for flights to the New York area, some to LaGuardia, some to JFK. I pondered the name “Krula Rebbe,” but decided not to assume anything. I had about an hour before boarding and approached the Rebbe. He was not only extremely kind, he was engaging and welcoming and shared Torah with me for 40 minutes. And of course, like the customs agent, I assumed the reason for his visit.

“Reichmann?”

“Avadeh!” (Of course!) 

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky is the rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva Toras Chaim at South Shore, a weekly columnist in Yated Ne’eman, and the author of the Parsha Parable series. He can share your story through the “Streets of Life,” and can be reached at editorial@amimagazine.org

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