Issue 143

ChanukahGelt ANTWERP: FIGHT FOR CHINUCH ISRAEL: WHAT’S NEXT FOR AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN? ChanukahGelt ChanukahGelt S P E C I A L

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JOSHUA SAFRAN: MY JOURNEY BACK IS OBAMA SELLING OUT ISRAEL? A COUPLE CONFUSED ABOUT MINHAGIM SHABBOS AND HIGH-TECH BUSINESS

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11.13.2013 10 KISLEV 5774

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10 14 18 22 24 26

Features

42

UNCH BREAK L With Jack Hidary NE SANEL GANTZ

44

ARNOOOSA P Making progress MAURICE STEI N MY WORD!

BEN ROSEN

78 80

HE JOURNEY T Guilty bystanders

EWISH NEWS J Business and Shabbos—Antwerp chinuch woes—Avigdor Lieberman—Dirshu

82

SK A Couple confused about customs

86

HE SHUL CHRONICLES T Bas mitzvah reflections

EDITORIAL Where are the halachic men?

LETTERS ATIONAL AND N INTERNATIONAL NEWS YOS SI KRAUSZ

IN THE NEWS TURX

SIGHTINGS AND CITINGS

NESANEL GANTZ, AVI TUCHMAYER AND YOSSI KRAUSZ

36 38 40

EWISH LIVING IN: J Spokane, Washington M ENUCHA CHANA LEVI N

BUSINESS YEDI DA WOLFE

MBASSADORS A The Shabbos store ANNA BARON

88

S PYVIEW: NOT AS WE DO The hypocritical games played by our governments JOHN LOFTUS

52

T AKING A GAMBLE What will the expansion of gambling mean to the Catskills?

YOSSI KRAUSZ

ASH ER V. FI NN

RABBI SHOLOM FRI EDMANN

RABBI SHAI S TAUB

RABBI MOSH E TAUB

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE My journey back

94

46

JOSHUA SAFRAN

STREETS OF LIFE Tagging along RABBI MORDECHAI KAM ENETZKY

52

Indoor pool at Grossinger’s Hotel, Liberty, New York 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

62

Q & A WITH RABBI DR. ABRAHAM TWERSKI On gambling addiction RABBI YITZCHOK FRANKFURTER

68

Q & A WITH ARNIE WEXLER About his gambling addiction and how he’s helped others RABBI YITZCHOK FRANKFURTER

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Where Are All the Halachic Men?

I

n late October, a public letter signed by 42 members of articulate a formal ruling regarding the halachic status of Open the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) was published in Orthodoxy and its members or merely expresses an informal, the leftist-leaning Israeli publication Haaretz, reprimanding non-binding opinion, obiter dicta if you will, about Open Ortho“Open Orthodox rabbis and leaders” in the United States. doxy. Since there are apparently no renowned poskim among the The signatories charged that their colleague, Rabbi Asher signatories, it appears doubtful that it was intended as a halaLopatin, the newly-installed president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, chic ruling defining the formal boundaries dividing Orthodoxy and other leaders of Open Orthodoxy were “unilaterally violat- from “neo-Conservatism,” a religious movement that until now, ing normative Orthodox laws, customs and traditions,” and were as Sarna correctly points out, no one ever heard of.

Since the letter’s signatories are disciples and followers of Rav plunging ahead “again and again, across the border that divides Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik, zt”l, their cryptic manifesto is doubly Orthodoxy from neo-Conservatism.”

Before the ink was even dry on this commendable declaration wanting. In his renowned essay Halachic Man, Rav Soloveitchik it was roundly criticized. In an opinion piece for the anti-Ortho- describes the way in which a man of halachah views the universe: through the prism and lens of haldox The Forward, historian Jonathan Sarna wrote that he found achic paradigms. in this letter “a deep historical “When halachic man irony.” In its early days, the RCA approaches reality, he comes was roundly condemned by the with his Torah, given to him from older generation of European rabSinai, in hand. He orients himself to the world by means of fixed bis as inadequate halachic lightstatutes and firm principles. An weights. “[S]o the 42 signers of entire corpus of precepts and the RCA manifesto now accuse laws guides him along the path Lopatin and Open Orthodoxy of leading to existence.” the same sins once leveled against Thus to exclude a group of their own founders. In a tale as wayward Jews from the fold by old as religion itself, yesterday’s employing non-halachic terms heretics have become today’s herostensibly represents a stark, esy hunters.” If the signatories Graves of Rav Soloveitchik and his Rebbetzin if inadvertent, departure from had only remembered history, it the teachings of the signatories’ was implied, they would not have revered mentor. been so audacious and exclusionary.

We point out these failings because it is not too late to rectify This negative reception was to be expected. As well-meaning as the letter’s shortcomings, by obtaining the halachic view of Open the RCA letter is, it unfortunately falls short.

Not only does its enigmatic declaration fail to explain how Orthodoxy from renowned gedolei Yisrael. Venerated gedolim such Open Orthodoxy is in violation of halachah and has thus parted as Rav Aryeh Leib Shteinman, Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Nisways with Orthodoxy, it leaves one to guess at what the practical sim Karelitz should be consulted. ramifications of this departure are. Do the recently-coined “neoIf nothing else, as a result of such consultation, members of Conservatives” have the halachic status of heretics like “regular” the RCA will realize that the concept of halachic man—indeed, Conservatives, as determined by poskim? May a member of Open halachic hero—is alive and well, albeit primarily on the other side Orthodoxy, for example, be given an aliyah to the Torah, or are we of the ocean. And in the future, the RCA will hopefully partner prohibited from doing so pursuant to the ruling of the Rambam in with these present-day paradigms in combating those politicians Chapter 6, halachah 8, of Hilchos Yesodei Hatorah, since his bless- who have recently found it their calling to undermine Torah in ing is devoid of religious value? (Regarding the prohibition of giv- Eretz Yisrael.

After all, they pose a far greater threat to Yiddishkeit—indeed, to ing a Conservative rabbi an aliyah, see Igros Moshe Orach Chayim, the very existence of halachic man as explicated by Rav Soloveitcheilek 2, 50, 51; Orach Chayim, cheilek 3, 21 and 22.)

One cannot even decipher whether the statement is meant to chik—than does Asher Lopatin and his cohorts.

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NOVEMBER 15, 2013 тАл╫Х╫Ь╫б╫Ы ╫С╫Щ ╫к╫й╫втАЭ╫УтАм тАл╫Ф╫У╫Ь╫з╫ктАм тАл╫а╫и╫Х╫ктАм

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LETTERS EXECUTIVE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Chesky Kauftheil

SPECIAL AS A BACHUR

Moshe Reichmann’s sensitivity as a young man In reference to “Remembering Reb Moshe Reichmann,” Issue 141

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.

Dear Editor: When Moshe Reichmann was in his late teens and a student in Gateshead, a good friend of his, Avrohom Mordechai (Gabi) Spitzer of Vienna passed away shortly after his 19th birthday. The yeshivah was able to reach Gabi Spitzer’s father, who was away on business, and inform him in time for him to attend the levayah. Reb Moshe afterwards sent at least two beautiful and sensitive letters to Gabi’s family describing Avrohom Mordechai’s last hours on Earth. It is evident from the letters, excerpts of a translation which follow, what a special and sensitive bachur Reb Moshe Reichmann was: “Until Tuesday afternoon, he had a regular shiur in the beis midrash until 8 p.m., when he had a slight headache, so he went to lie down. I went to him at 9; by then he had terrible pain. I called the doctor, who is an Orthodox man and lives in the neighborhood.

He gave him an injection. This took place on a weekly basis, so there was no major concern. Just the same, I stayed with him until he got better. I waited in case he needed anything. His chavrusa Eisig Jacobson was also there. About 11 p.m., he felt so much better, that he had no pain at all. This is what usually happens, but it never took two hours in the past for the pain to subside.... Since there was no cause for alarm, I wanted to leave, but he asked us to stay for a while. We stayed with him two and a half hours and were talking with him until 2:30 and he felt completely well. “In the past after such an attack he usually came to shul in the morning to daven, but he did not show up. I was pleased that he slept in and rested well. But after davening, I became concerned. I went to him to see if I could help. ... When I found him it was all over. I immediately called the rebbi and the doctor, but unfortunately it was all over. The doctor said that it happened to him while he was sleeping.... They could never fully diagnose what he had....

“He had shown me the telegram he received for his birthday. That night at 1 a.m. we talked about how after Tishah B’Av he was going on vacation to Tangier [to visit his grandparents]... That same morning he didn’t get up.”

He goes on to describes to the family what an unbelievably diligent learner the boy was.

Continued on page 18

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Nurturing Our Children, Ensuring Our Future

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CONVENTION SOLD OUT! Please join us Thursday night, Motzoei Shabbos and Sunday morning at our satellite locations throughout the country EMAIL locations@agudathisrael.org TO RECEIVE A LIST OF PARTICIPATING LOCATIONS FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO ARRANGE A LIVE BROADCAST IN YOUR CITY, PLEASE EMAIL: LIVEBROADCAST.AIA@GMAIL.COM

THURSDAY EVENING

THURSDAY NIGHT Rabbi Eytan Feiner Rabbi Yosef Viener

6:30 PM Symposium A JEW IN THE BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL WORLD: ACTIONS, PERCEPTIONS AND KIDDUSH HASHEM Shrage Goldschmidt Charlie Harary Avi Schron MODERATOR:

Rabbi Aaron Kotler

MODERATOR:

Uri Schlachter 3 WHEN OUR CHILDREN BUILD THEIR OWN FAMILIES: MAINTAINING A KESHER, KEEPING A DISTANCE Rabbi Ben Tzion Kokis Rabbi Mordechai Twerski MODERATOR:

THURSDAY NIGHT Plenary Session 8:00 PM

Chanoch La’Naar: Nurturing Our Children, Ensuring Our Future

Dovid Tanenbaum 4 L’CHAYIM! MAKING ONE’S WAY THROUGH THE HEALTHCARE MAZE (For Healthcare Professionals) Shimie Falik Dr. Howard Lebowitz Dr. Bernard Lee CHAIRMEN:

Jacob I. Friedman Rivie Schwebel

s Rabbi Elya Brudny Rabbi Yaakov Bender

11:30 PM Kumzitz with Eitan Katz

Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon

FEATURED WOMEN’S SPEAKERS

s

AUDIO-VISUAL PRESENTATION

Rebbetzin Aviva Feiner Rebbetzin Leah Finkel Mrs. Chani Juravel Mrs. Yael Kaisman

Parenting Perplexities, Making Sense of It All CHAIRMAN:

CONT

Avrumi Hirsch

THURSDAY NIGHT 10:15 PM Late Night Question and Answer Sessions 1 OUR CHILDREN, OUR FUTURE: ESSENTIALS FOR SUCCESSFUL PARENTING Rabbi Shmuel Berkovicz Rabbi Moshe Weinberger MODERATOR:

Naftali Salomon 2 SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE, HAPPY HOME

FRIDAY MORNING 10:15 AM Concurrent Sessions 1

A CLASH OF CULTURES: THE OBSERVANT PATIENT IN THE MODERN HOSPITAL Rabbi Baruch Ber Bender Dr. Howard Lebowitz Solomon Rosenberg Israel Rosman CHAIRMEN:

Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz Rabbi Gedaliah Weinberger

YARCHEI KALLAH Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel Rabbi Avrohom Dierenfeld Rabbi Shlomo Gottesman Rabbi Gershon Bess

2 THE DISAPPEARING AMERICAN JEW: A PLAN FOR ACTION Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky Rabbi Shmuel Klein Rabbi Yaakov Salomon Rabbi Hillel Weinberg MODERATOR:

Dr. Irving Lebovics

HASHI HERZKA •

CONVENTION CHAIRMAN

SHABBOS SPEAKERS

MOTZOEI SHABBOS Keynote Session 8:00 PM

Remembering Chacham Ovadia Yosef zt”l The Growth of the Sephardic Torah Community Rabbi Yosef Harari Raful

s The Unprecedented Assault on the Chareidi Community in Eretz Yisroel Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman

s

AUDIO-VISUAL PRESENTATION

Slashing the Social Safety Net: The Human Face of Poverty in the Holy Land

s

Rabbi Shimon Alster Rabbi Avrohom Dierenfeld Rabbi Aharon Feldman Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel Rabbi Yitzchok D. Frankel Rabbi Yosef Frankel Rabbi Nosson Greenberg Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler Rabbi Paysach Krohn Rabbi Avrohom Lefkowitz Rabbi Avrohom Yosef Leizerson Rabbi Avrohom Chaim Levin Rabbi Yisroel Mantel Rabbi Moshe Mendelson Rabbi Shlomo Morgenstern Rabbi Yaakov Perlow Rabbi Uren Reich Rabkov Reisman Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Rokeach

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Rabbi Shlomo Gertzulin Rabbi Yehiel Kalish Shlomo Werdiger

Address Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel

s

AUDIO-VISUAL PRESENTATION

Getting Involved: Energizing a New Generation of Torah Activists CHAIRMAN:

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LETTERS Continued from page 16 “I was always a good friend of his, but during this zman I got to like him so much that I can’t fully describe how much. He changed this year and became a real tzaddik. They say that about someone who departs, but I said this about him to many when he was still alive. He was such a diligent learner, it was unbelievable.

For instance, on Shavuos night the Gateshead Rav came to the beis hamidrash…and asked who was that young man learning in such an earnest manner….

“When I gathered his things, I found a huge amount of writings that he wrote to himself, giving himself mussar that he should learn more and more... From this, one could see what a high madreigah he was on.”

FROM THE SECOND LETTER: “I told Gabi’s father after the levayah that if such a terrible thing had to happen that it should be some comfort that it happened in Gateshead and not in Vienna or London....

“When they did the taharah, the Rosh Hayeshivah did not allow the chevrah kadisha or those from the yeshivah to be next to him, but only those from the kollel, the talmidei chachamim…

“Though it was Rosh Chodesh and one does not say hespedim, for a talmid chacham one is allowed, and the Rosh Hayeshivah as well as the Sunderland Rav said their hespedim in the yeshivah.

The huge hall was packed to full capacity where the aron was being carried, but there were so many people that the courtyard outside was full as well. Everyone cried so hard, as if they were

burying their own brother....

“Now I want to write about a mitzvah that Gabi had spoken to the Rosh Hayeshivah about, the afternoon before this terrible happening. That night at 1 a.m., he talked about it with me, that the Rosh Hayeshivah told him how bad the [financial] situation of the yeshivah was. Gabi said that he told the Rosh Hayeshivah that something had to be done, and when he would be in Tangier he was going to collect money.”

Pearl Herzog Lakewood, NJ P.S. My husband, Chaim Avrohom Mordechai, is named after his cousin Avrohom Mordechai Spitzer.

CORRECTION In a Jewish News article in Issue 142 entitled “A Gathering to Light the Darkness,” there was an error of identification.

Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky is the chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the world wide Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and Machne Israel, the social services arm.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky is the vice-chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch.

A MANIFESTO FOR A MAGNATE

SKEWING PEW

In reference to “Remembering Reb Moshe Reichmann,” Issue 141

In reference to “Streets of Life,” Issue 141

A life-changing article for this businessman

A theory about the nonsense Dear Editor:

Dear Editor: Full disclosure here: I’m writing to you from an anonymous email address. I am a prominent, well-known businessman and philanthropist. Your article about Reb Moshe Reichmann was a life changer for me. The ability to remember, when intoxicated by power, who you are and should be is not an easy one to master. I know from experience the adrenalin felt when fawned upon by powerful people simply because we are rich and can make or break mega deals. Lunches are a big part of my business, and I was not proud of myself when reminded of my behavior; in contrast, Mr. Reichmann’s words “I don’t do social lunch” hit home. I shall be keeping this edition on my desk as a reminder of who I should emulate in this parallel world that I live in. Thank you, Ami, for a terrific magazine and a uniquely intelligent portrayal of this great man.

In reference to the article about the Pew survey, I have a very simple explanation as to how these bizarre statistics could make sense. I’m assuming that most people who answered had some sort of agenda of their own. I know that if I myself were presented with such a set of questions, I would pretend not to be Orthodox and then say I keep all the laws, etc., with the intention of showing the world that it’s not only the “ultras” who are fanatic. And with all our smart Jewish brethren and their personal agendas, it’s easy to see how the results could easily make sense. A survey like this could never be considered reliable.

S.B.

Anonymous 16 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 / / 1 1 T I S H R E I 5 7 7 4

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NATIONAL AND WORLD

A CLOSER LOOK

ANALYZING THE NEWS THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

US to Israel: “Drop Dead” 24 HOURS OF AWFUL

I

sraelis have been concerned about the Obama administration since the first inauguration in 2009. But they got what seemed to be confirmation of all their fears in less than 24 hours last week.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, on a trip to Israel to attempt to facilitate peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, opened up perhaps too much during a television interview on the third day of his visit.

Kerry appeared on Israeli Channel 2 together with journalists Udi Segal of Israeli Channel 2 and Maher Shalabi of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation.

Kerry—breaking with previous US behavior—told Segal that the US government sees any Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “illegitimate.” Then he went on to make a number of comments that had an underlying implication of threatening Israel.

Segal asked him: “How do you think a picture of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, hugging murderers that killed children 20 or 30 years ago and saying that they’re heroes of the Palestinian people—what kind of message do you think this sent about the peace process or peace atmosphere to the Israeli people?”

Kerry answered: “It’s very difficult. I have no illusions. I know that the vast majority of the people in Israel are opposed. I understand that. Prime Minister Netan-

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem,Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013.

yahu understands that, and it is a sign of his seriousness that he was willing to make this decision. The alternative to getting back to the talks is the potential of chaos.

I mean, does Israel want a third intifada?”

When Segal asked him whether he indeed thought that was where things were headed, Kerry answered: “I believe that if we do not resolve the issues between Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not find a way to find peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel.

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There will be an increasing campaign of delegitimization of Israel that’s been taking place on an international basis.

“If we don’t resolve the question of settlements and the question of who lives where and how and what rights they have, if we don’t end the presence of Israeli soldiers perpetually within the West Bank, then there will be an increasing feeling that if we cannot get peace with a leadership that is committed to nonviolence, you may wind up with leadership that is com-

BY YOSSI KRAUSZ

mitted to violence.”

Kerry went on to wax poetic about the wonderful possibilities for Israel, the Palestinians and the region after peace would be achieved.

(He concluded, “I know so many people don’t believe anything I just said,” to which Segal simply answered, “That’s true.”)

But the threat of violence had already been made. Make peace or else.

Almost immediately, Kerry left, heading to Geneva where negotiations between the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members—that is, the US, China, Russia, Great Britain and France—plus Germany) and Iran were apparently nearly reaching a temporary deal. According to reports, that would have slowed Iranian enrichment of uranium but not done much else, while releasing frozen Iranian assets in overseas accounts and removing sanctions on Iran concerning precious metals, aviation parts, and the Iranian petrochemical and automotive industries.

What happened next is a question.

According to a number of reports from anonymous Western officials, only France stood in the way of the deal, citing as problems the details of the enrichment slowdown, and the fact that the Arak heavy-water nuclear plant would still continue being constructed.

This version of events is supported both by an interview that French foreign minister Laurent Fabius gave directly after the talks, in which he said both that France had rejected a draft document, and that they would have to be careful “not to be played for fools” by the Iranians, as well as by the reaction of Iranian media and officials afterward, who blamed the failed talks on the French.

There have been multiple theories bounced around about why the French would intervene, from charitable ones (a Jewish member of the French parliament intervened) to less charitable ones (they’re looking for Saudi customers for weapons

Dr. Daniel Pipes

systems).

Another version, which emerged late Sunday in The New York Times, suggests that Iran had demanded that a “right to enrich” be included in any draft, and the P5+1 had rejected that.

The second version is no doubt the one that John Kerry would like people to accept. On his return to Washington, he immediately began defending himself against charges of having been duped by the Iranians. “We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid,” he told reporters.

But it’s clear that Congress, which announced accelerated plans for heavier sanctions on Iran, and Israelis aren’t sure just what the Obama administration’s problem is.

Ami asked Dr. Daniel Pipes, the head of the Middle East Forum, about whether he sees the Kerry visits to Israel and Geneva as confirming Israeli fears about the Obama administration.

“It does feel like this is the real policy,” he said.

He said that a great deal of what has gone on can be attributed to the Obama administration’s assumption that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will solve

every problem in the Middle East.

“This is a basic assumption of the Obama administration, that there is a connection between the two. Basically what they are saying is that the Arab-Israeli conflict precedes other conflicts and is a cause of the other conflicts, and if you can only solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, then the other conflicts will be more solvable.

They’ve said this over and over again.

“It’s a wrongheaded idea. There’s no reason to think the Arab-Israeli conflict is more profound, and indeed the upheavals in the Arab world over the last three years suggest differently, but nonetheless the administration’s leaders continue to think this.

“Can [the Israelis] change that? No. It’s impervious to arguments and facts,” Pipes said.

And he said that Kerry’s specific comments weren’t really new.

“Kerry has made these points before, that the Israelis are complacent, that they’re living on borrowed time, that they need to be much more fearful, much more concerned.”

What does he see as the impetus behind the sudden race by Western diplomats for only a temporary fix?

“They don’t want trouble; they want to kick the can down the road. They don’t really think it will be so terrible.

“I think the essence of liberalism is not to be terribly concerned about one’s own circumstances. One is more worried about other people—small animals, distant children. Conservatives in general are more concerned about their own well-being.

This is a classic case: Conservatives tend to be much more concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon and what it could mean for us.

“That said,” he added, “Bush didn’t do that much about an Iranian nuclear buildup, and the Democrats in Congress are quite concerned about it. So it doesn’t work perfectly.”

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NEWS

NATIONAL AND WORLD

Arafat’s Assassin?

THE MYSTERY OF THE MURDERED MURDERER PLO head Yasser Arafat died nine years ago, but we haven’t been able to say good riddance yet.

A Swiss team that had been invited to test Arafat’s remains for signs of foul play a year ago reportedly has found levels of the radioactive substance polonium-210 that they consider to “moderately support” the theory that Arafat was killed with polonium.

Arafat’s wife, Suha, had demanded that the grave be opened because of her belief

that Arafat’s death, in a French hospital after a few weeks of illness, was not natural. At the time, doctors had directly attributed his death, according to The New York Times, to “a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unidentified infection.” But they were unable to determine what the infection was.

His condition before death was not typical of polonium poisoning. Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was killed two years later in London by polonium poi-

soning.

Despite initially dismissing his claims that he had been poisoned, Litvinenko’s doctors eventually realized that his condition could be attributed to polonium poisoning. That suspicion never occurred to Arafat’s doctors during his illness or even after his death.

The Swiss team is one of two groups that Suha Arafat invited to investigate; a French

LIFE IN NUMBERS

Pocketbooks

and Plutonium There was something shocking about the eagerness with which the US and most of the P5+1 nations last week offered Iran a deal on relaxing sanctions in exchange for a short-term cessation of nuclear activity. The offer gave the impression that the extensive sanctions put in place by the international community aren’t doing their job, and that something desperate must be done to stop Iran.

A poll released last week by Gallup, however, shows a different picture. Ordinary Iranians are feeling an intense squeeze in their daily lives because of the sanctions, and they’re noticing the effects even more in the lives of other Iranians.

That hasn’t converted most Iranians to the idea that they should give up nuclear power. But a majority isn’t in favor of their country pursuing nuclear weapons. If only the Western powers were of a similar mind.

HAVE THE SANCTIONS HURT YOUR LIVELIHOOD? A great deal: 50% Somewhat: 35% Not at all: 12% Don’t know/refused: 2% HAVE THE SANCTIONS HURT OTHER IRANIANS’ LIVELIHOODS? A great deal: 62% Somewhat: 28% Not at all: 7% Don’t know/refused: 4%

WHO DO YOU HOLD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN? The US: 46% The Iranian government: 13% Israel: 9% Western European countries: 6% The United Nations: 6% Someone else/No one: 4% Don’t know/Refused: 16%

Percentage saying that Iran should continue to develop nuclear power: Percentage saying that Iran should develop other nonmilitary nuclear uses: Percentage saying that Iran should develop military nuclear applications (such as nuclear weapons):

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

68% 56% 34%

Percentage of Iranians blaming their country for sanctions who want to develop nuclear power:

39%

Percentage of Iranians blaming outside powers for sanctions who want to develop nuclear power:

76%

BY YOSSI KRAUSZ

team is keeping its conclusions confidential pending the conclusion of a French murder investigation. A Russian team invited by Mahmoud Abbas to provide a second opinion has apparently reported that it too has detected polonium in Arafat’s remains, and that his death was due to poisoning but that it is unable to conclude that polonium was the fatal poison.

Israeli officials have dismissed the idea that polonium could be detected so long after death, because the material has a relatively short half-life (the period of time that it takes for half of a radioactive material to decay) of 138 days. That means that only a tiny amount of the original substance, along with decay products, would be left by now. But an article in the British medical journal Lancet, by French scientists, was published to bolster the credibility of the Swiss findings.

For many, including some Palestinian officials, the obvious culprit is the Israeli government. Access to polonium-210 requires a nuclear reactor. And a number of sources have indicated that then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and his cabinet had contemplated killing Arafat, who had been blockaded into his Ramallah compound for over two years before he fell ill and was allowed to leave to France.

But Suha Arafat seems to be focusing on Palestinian assassins. She told the Times of Malta last week that the poison would have been administered by “someone from his entourage, or someone he knew.”

She went on to say, “I have my own personal convictions but I am afraid to reveal them.”

Professor Chuck Freilich, a senior fellow of the International Security Program at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told Ami that he sees Israel as being the main target of anger over the findings. “It might lead to a postponement of the [Israeli-Palestinian] peace talks. I think Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] will try to prevent this from leading to a collapse of the talks. It could also be the match that lights the fire; it could lead to an outbreak of violence, even a third intifada.”

He added: “Regardless of what this turns into, the fact is that Arafat was a murderer who had the blood of many, many, many Israelis on his hands, and Jews in general, and let’s not let these events divert attention from who he was.”

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Crazy Uncle Joe THE UNDERLYING GENIUS BEHIND JOE BIDEN’S SHENANIGANS

A

neurotic—goes the saying—is a man who builds castles in the air; a psychotic is the man who lives in them; and a psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent. And then there’s Vice President Joe Biden.

Joe Biden doesn’t plead insanity; insanity pleads with Joe Biden. You can take Joe Biden out of the city but you can’t take the silly out of Joe Biden. Joe Biden judges books by their covers…but he always apologizes to them and takes them out to lunch afterward. Joe Biden once knew the line between genius and insanity, but he erased it—deliberately. Joe Biden doesn’t hear voices in his head; the voices in his head listen to Joe Biden. When Joe Biden’s mind wanders it usually manages to return home, drunk and at 2:00 a.m. Joe Biden shredded the rule book…and then ate the pieces. You get the point? Well, so does Joe Biden…and after getting the point, he brings it home and introduces it to his family….

And now the story: Do you live in the Boston area? Do you own a phone? Then chances are pretty good that you got a call from Joe Biden last week.

Following Boston’s mayoral elections, in a move that surprised absolutely no one (especially not Joe Biden himself), the vice president called the wrong person to congratulate on being elected mayor. But when it happened a second time a few minutes later… well, it still didn’t surprise Joe Biden.

At first Biden called the wrong Marty Walsh with the following outburst, “You son of a gun, Marty, you did it!” Noticing his mistake he proceeded to call a sec-

ond Bostonian by the name of Toni (which hardly even rhymes with “Marty”), with an answering machine message to the reported tune of, “Mr. Mayor, congratulations. Marty, this is Joe Biden. Nice to see you win and nice to see labor win. Anything I can do to help you from the White House in terms of your needs in Boston— holler, man.”

Now, the first thing I thought when I saw this story was, “a message on an answering machine? Seriously? They even have such things??”

But anyway, this is why Biden is Biden.

Not only hasn’t his staff denied any of this, they’ve embraced it, unblinkingly adding another two anecdotes to the BidenBizarre-Faux-Pas-Repertoire folder.

And it drives the GOP nuts! Biden can commit any series of gaffs every day of the week and just get away with it. How many times has Biden forgotten the name of the

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city he was giving a speech in? How many times has he forgotten the name of the person he was addressing? How many times has he gone off script and said something that could’ve ended the career of many an elected official? (If Romney had gotten one vote for ever gaffe Biden made on the campaign trail, Obama would have won the popular vote by just two million instead of five.)

So how does Biden get away with it?

Why is he a two-term vice president on his way to contending for the 2016 presidential race? Because he doesn’t take himself seriously. And as someone who makes fun of politicians for a living, I can affirm that the satirist’s spookiest enemy is a politician who doesn’t take himself seriously. Republicans are usually the target of jokes because of how seriously they tend to take themselves. (It is for this reason that Obama—who takes himself über-seriously—gets hammered by the press these days, while Biden, despite all his shenanigans, keeps getting free passes—which he eats, probably.)

The Republican problem is not that they are “the party of stupid,” as Governor Bobby Jindal puts it; it’s that they’re “the party of stupid that also takes itself too seriously.” Think about it. Who is easier to make fun of: the substitute teacher who bellows until every squiggly purple vein in his neck shows, or the guy who comes running into the room all excited every time he does something stupid? I’ll let you answer the question yourself while I go answer my ringing telephone. Who knows?! It just may be Biden mistaking me for some Turkish ambassador, or something…

•

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

PRIVACY THROUGH POLLUTION Chinese blight blinds Big Brother The South China Morning Post reported this week that the heavy smog that blankets many Chinese towns is not just a hazard for health. It’s also impinging on the Chinese government’s vast video surveillance program.

NPR reported in January that the Chinese government has installed more than 20 million cameras across the country to keep an eye on the citizenry.

But the extreme smog is keeping those cameras in a mist.

Experts explained to the Post that unlike fog, which consists merely of water vapor, smokefilled smog is impervious to infrared cameras, as well.

The Chinese government has commissioned two task forces, one civilian and one military, to come up with a solution within four years. Some experts believe that the only solution on the smoggiest days will be to use radar or microwaves, “Or did I get drunk during my coke binge? It’s hard to remember now.”

both of which can be harmful to health.

P eople being killed by smog can’t very well complain about being killed by microwaves, after all.

ROBES AND RESPECT Poor misunderstood KKK The Atlantic Wire reported last week that the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America, a branch of the Ku Klux Klan whose members were responsible for the bombing of an African American church in 1963, which killed four little girls, has criticized a white supremacist mother’s decision to dress her child in KKK robes for the Halloween holiday.

Jessica Black (who, despite her name, is white) told the local ABC-affiliate station that her choice of costume was due to “family tradition,” and she added that she supported the KKK’s racial views.

In response, Imperial Wizard Bradley Jenkins told The Atlantic Wire that Black’s decision

was ruining the KKK’s reputation: “People look at the United Klan as a hate organization…

We don’t hate anyone. Hate is such a strong word. The Klan has seven sacred symbols and the robe is one of them. I don’t know where she’s getting that from. None of this is a joke.”

Jenkins went on: “Nowadays we’re ostracized… [The way people treat us now] is no different than [sic] the way people used to treat African Americans years ago.”

Dear me. Who would treat African Americans badly?

ADVERTISING MISTAKE OF THE WEEK A night to remember A spa in Germany has pulled its advertising for a “long, romantic Kristallnacht” after condemnation spread on Internet sites.

The spa, Kristall Sauna-Wellnesspark in Bad Klosterlausnitz, issued a statement on Monday through Facebook apologizing for the ad. “We are extraor-

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS “My children say that they feel like Jewish families in Germany under Hitler’s regime. Truly, everyone is against us.”

—Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, quoted in a recent book excerpt commenting on his legal troubles because of his truly corrupt behavior.

dinarily regretful and of course this was unintentional; believe us, we are quite ashamed about our mistake,” they wrote.

The company explained that they often tag events at their facilities with their name, hence “Kristall-Nacht.”

The spa had advertised the event for November 9, the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

You have to hand it to them, though: They’ve got good timing.

TWO ADMISSIONS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine… Probably in one of my drunken stupors.”

—Toronto mayor Rob Ford, speaking at a press conference last Tuesday

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JEWISHNEWS

The 39 Melachos of eBay A RECENTLY PUBLISHED SEFER EXAMINES THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF E-COMMERCE AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

I

n the wake of the recent passing of Reb Moshe Reichmann, z”l, many people spoke about his scrupulousness in making sure his massive business enterprises didn’t encroach on the observance of Shabbos. Some of his methods were visible, like closing construction sites and not charging for parking on Shabbos and Yom Tov. Others went on behind the scenes, requiring great halachic expertise in order to deal with complex situations, including his acquisition of immense corporations like Gulf Oil Canada, where shutting down all operations for Shabbos would be impossible.

The primary rav who guided Reb Moshe was Rav Shlomo Miller, shlita, the rosh kollel of Kollel Avreichim in Toronto, Canada, and head of the kollel and beis din at the Bais Horaah in Lakewood, New Jersey. A sefer that has just come out in English draws on Rav Miller’s expertise in the halachos of Shabbos as they relate to contemporary business and high-tech commerce.

The book, Commerce and Shabbos, was written by Rav Miller’s son-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Y. Kushner, a yungerman in the Lakewood Bais Horaah. In an interview with Ami, he explained how the sefer began with a single she’eilah.

“About six years ago, a friend of mine was doing a lot of business on eBay. He had a really simple question: Was it permissible to allow an eBay auction to end on Shabbos?

“Now, at the time, a lot of frum Jews were selling on eBay, 26 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 1 3 / / 1 0 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

and I assumed my father-inlaw would be familiar with the topic. It happens quite often that people tell me their she’eilos and ask me to present them to my father-in-law.

When I asked him the she’eilah, however, there was a slight pause before he replied, ‘eBay? What’s that?’”

Surprisingly, no one had ever asked Rav Miller about a possible problem with eBay and Shabbos, and he was unfamiliar with the topic. So Rabbi Kushner and his friend met with Rav Miller and delved into the many details involved in the bidding, buying and payment phases of the auction site.

“He asked a lot of questions in order to understand various points, like how locked-in a person is legally from the time the bidding starts until it ends. That’s really where it started,” Rabbi Kushner said. “From then on, it became a pet project of mine.

My friend had many more business-related and e-commerce questions after that; they never stopped coming: PayPal payments, FedEx and UPS shipments, Amazon. Then there was Fulfillment by Amazon.”

Each question required research into the particular business practices used in each instance. Eventually the Bais Horaah Kollel decided to learn the relevant sugyos in Maseches Shabbos, which intensified Rabbi Kushner’s research and involvement in the subject.

BY YOSSI KRAUSZ

“What happened was that my friend started sharing these psakim with others in e-commerce, and they started calling me as well. Eventually other rabbanim reached out to me to understand the nuances involved in online commerce and to refer questions that arose.”

Rabbi Kushner started writing a pamphlet about eBay and Shabbos, but it kept expanding as more and more questions came in.

He eventually realized he needed to publish it as a full sefer in order to properly cover the subject.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first section, he discusses general halachic topics like the prohibitions against doing business on Shabbos, the hiring of a non-Jew for work on Shabbos, and the prohibition of s’char Shabbos [earning money for work done on Shabbos]. In the second part, he discusses a host of specific business practices as they relate to Shabbos, from online sales to real estate management to shipping issues and accounting problems.

The division serves several purposes, he explained. One is simply that it allows the reader to apply the halachos to the rapidly changing developments in today’s business world. He admits that even in the short period of time since the sefer was published, new business practices have become popular that aren’t mentioned inside. But by providing a comprehensive overview of the basic halachos, along with their applications in a wide variety of situations, it gives people the tools they need to be able to ask a she’eilah correctly, even about emerging technologies and protocols.

That ability—to ask a she’eilah correctly—is the second reason it was important to give an overview rather than just list examples.

“If you know the basics of these sugyos, then you’ll really know what to ask. Someone once called and told me he had spoken to a rav about shipping something on Erev Shabbos, and he quoted the psak this rav had given him. I told him I was very surprised.

It was clear from the psak that the rav wasn’t aware of how companies ship out orders. It seemed he was under the impression that you take a box to a store and say, ‘Can you ship this out for me?’

Based on that, he said there was a heter of amirah d’amirah [a secondary level of asking a non-Jew to do something on Shabbos], because you give it to the first person and he then gives it to UPS. The Mishnah Berurah mentions this heter.

“However, that’s not what actually happens when an item is shipped. Nowadays, when you print a shipping label it already includes all the instructions about where you want it to go. Essentially, you’re instructing whoever gets the package what to do with it.

“I met this rav at a chasunah and I asked him, ‘If I had a note that said, “My name is so-and-so. Can you turn on the light for me?” and gave it to one non-Jew to give to another non-Jew, would that be permitted because of amirah d’amirah?’ “‘Of course not,’ he replied. “‘But if you allow people to use their shipping accounts on Erev

Business owners need to know the basics of these halachos in order to be able to present their she’eilos correctly.

Shabbos to have something delivered on Shabbos, you’re doing the same thing,’ I explained. “‘Well, why didn’t the person who asked me the question tell me that’s how the shipping process works?’ he wanted to know.

“It turned out that the reason why the person hadn’t mentioned it was that he didn’t realize it made a difference.”

So even though not every type of commerce can be included in one sefer, business owners need to know the basics of these halachos in order to pose their she’eilos correctly.

The way the cases are presented is also informative. Rather than simply pose a question (“Is a Jewish-owned business permitted to allow a non-Jewish employee to work overtime at the nonJew’s house on Shabbos and pay [him] on an hourly basis?”) Rabbi Kushner explains the halachic reasons such a question should bother an employer. Then, after the question has been articulated properly, he goes on to answer it. This method encourages the reader to formulate his own questions, suitable for asking a rav.

Rabbi Kushner said that from his experiences in dealing with these questions, it’s obvious that there needs to be more education in the community about Shabbos and business.

“For example, when it comes to e-commerce, people are uncomfortable with the idea of letting their website run on Shabbos. Yet in many cases it would be allowed,” in the same way most poskim rule that leaving a vending machine on on Shabbos is permissible.

Nonetheless, there are some areas with significant halachic problems, like real estate management, that many people don’t even realize are problematic. And while there may be ways to make certain things permissible, it often requires a rav who is competent in the minutiae of these laws.

Rabbi Kushner also said that while some rabbanim are more lenient or stringent in certain areas, a person should make sure he understands the basis of the heter on which he is relying. “When your son asks you, ‘How is your business allowed to be open on Shabbos?’ you should have a better answer than ‘I think I signed something.’”

Clarity, it appears, is crucial. Indeed, Rabbi Kushner has offered us a first step in this direction with his new sefer.

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JEWISHNEWS

Fighting for Their Children

J

ASKANIM EXPLAIN THE LATEST CHALLENGES TO ANTWERP’S JEWS

ewish education in Antwerp suffered a blow six months ago with the passage of a law that required a government curriculum in chadarim.

“We thought we’d be able to settle it with the government. But we couldn’t. We tried to negotiate, but the minister of education was not negotiable,” Rabbi Pinchos Kornfeld told Ami, when we spoke to him to find out what Belgian Jews are facing. “Now the almost 20,000 Belgian Jews are challenging this law at the highest levels of the Belgian judicial system.”

He explained the unique situation in the city.

“In Belgium, children are required by law to go to school. But the government doesn’t look at what they are learning. The children just have to go attend school,” Rabbi Kornfeld said.

“In Antwerp there are a few thousand children in Jewish schools. It is the only place in the diaspora where 95 percent of Jewish children go to Jewish schools.

Not all are in religious schools, but almost all are in Jewish schools. Some of the schools are officially recognized schools, but many of the chareidi ones aren’t.

For example, the Belz and Satmar schools aren’t officially recognized, but the government knows about the existence of these schools and the names of the children who attend them. Since they are not recognized or subsidized, the government has no right to check their curriculum. Then there are official schools like Yesodei HaTorah and the Vizhnitz Talmud Torah that are recognized; the government examines their curriculum every year. Sometimes they have to change things to meet the government’s requirements. The Belzer girls' school is official. But the Belz boys’ school is not.”

Rabbi Kornfeld says more schools would like to be recognized. “But to be recognized you have to follow a curriculum of math, history and so on. They have goals and exams you have to pass to qualify for a diploma.

It’s not so easy.

“By learning more Flemish and mathematics, some of the larger schools meet the standards and the tests, while avoiding the immoral parts of the curriculum.”

Jewish quarter in Antwerp

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BY NESANEL GANTZ

A community kinus on Sunday brought Antwerp’s Jews together in opposition to the government’s position.

Noted Antwerp askan Reb Wolf (Volvie) Ollech, who was a featured speaker at the kinus, explained to Ami what has changed in Belgium: “Up until a year ago, the non-recognized schools were accepted by the government as educational institutions, albeit ones that don’t follow the government curriculum. Obviously, these schools did not receive any government funding.

“Three days before this school year began, the parents of the children attending these non-recognized schools received a letter in the mail. It stated that from now on these schools will be viewed as if they are communal home-schooling centers, which will be subject to government intervention. As the children will now be considered home-schooled, the government wants to ensure that they meet the government standards.

“Every child will be mandated to take a written exam at ages 11 and 15, to ensure compliance. As these tests will be administered on subjects the students will not be taught in school, they have no chance at passing. If they fail a second time, the government can force these parents to send their children to governmentregulated schools. The parents will be given time to enroll their children and if they fail to comply, the government will force them, although hopefully we won’t get to that situation.”

Rabbi Kornfeld explained that the new regulations, and the difficulties that have ensued, were mostly due to Muslims who avoid school; the Jewish problem is secondary in the government’s view.

The Jewish community formed a committee and went to court.

“You can go to court in Antwerp for a stay, to temporarily prevent a law from going into effect,” Rabbi Kornfeld said. “We hoped for a stay, so that we might work on our strategy before presenting our case to the higher courts.

“The court heard our case with the government opposing. They said we couldn’t get a stay because the exam commission was in process. The court decided to send the case to Brussels where the courts deal with cases deemed important. The problem is that in Brussels it can sometimes take several months for your case to be heard. Therefore we decided to approach the Belgian high court to challenge the new education laws on grounds of freedom of religion.

“The pleadings have to be introduced to the high court in the next few days. We have to file the documents now as well. Because the new regulation was passed in Parliament a few months ago, there is only a short time to appeal it before it goes into effect.”

As for why the Jews were not working together with Muslims to fight this battle, Rabbi Kornfeld explained, “The Muslims aren’t

as organized as we are. Many Muslims are okay with these new rules. However, thankfully, there is solidarity amongst the Jewish people. Even those who send to registered schools accept that chasidim want a different type of education. Perhaps only ten percent of the Muslims care about the new rules, whereas for us, the majority of the Jews are concerned. ” He explained the mission of the recent kinus, which was held in the Zichron Moshe hall of the Yesodei HaTorah school.

“The kinus was, first of all, to show our solidarity and to be a Yom Tefillah and to make everybody aware of the problem. And it also was to raise money for the lawyers, since taking this case to the high court requires high-priced attorneys. Also, there are people there who suggested some good ideas. I myself came up with a new idea there.

Rabbi Pinchos Kornfeld

Reb Wolf (Volvie) Ollech

“I can say that everyone, including Modern Orthodox Jews, are united in this.”

“We had the kinus,” Reb Ollech added, “to explain to the parents the seriousness of the situation. Many were unaware of the details surrounding the new regulations and their potential damaging results. We are hopeful the government will recognize these rules as a smack in the face of religious freedom, and we will continue to educate our children b’derech hatorah.”

At the kinus, the rav of Antwerp, Rav Aharon Schiff, spoke.

“He explained that we aren’t going against the law. Everybody has the right to go to a court. We can’t understand why the government would ask the advice of the umbrella organization of the Jewish community and the schools and the official rabbis, and yet for this law they didn’t consult with anybody.

“Usually they ask our opinion. Even if they don’t follow our advice, they listen to what we say. They didn’t do that, so we had no opportunity to discuss it with them.

Rav Leibush, the Pshevosker Rebbe, came to the event. “It’s very rare for him to go places,” Rabbi Kornfeld says.

“The hall was full, with more than a thousand people there. It was a night of true unity.”

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JEWISHNEWS

Eye on the Prize WILL AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN'S ACQUITTAL LEAD TO A COMEBACK?

A

s his acquittal was announced on November 6 in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, Avigdor Lieberman’s sense of vindication was palpable to everyone in the room.

Lieberman, Soviet-born Israeli politician, and the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, had been charged with fraud and breach of trust. He is the founder and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose electoral base are the immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Lieberman has an unmistakably rough exterior. His background as a night club bouncer has made common fodder for international media, but there also appears to be at least some substance to his “tough guy” image: Several journalists say they have been injured by Lieberman security guards at public events.

Politically, too, Lieberman maintains a tight ship, with apparently strong reverberations for breaking discipline: Of the several current and former personalities close to Lieberman that were interviewed for this article, not one would allow his or her name to be published.

Significantly, Lieberman did not respond to Labor Party Chairwoman Shelly Yacimovitch’s and Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On’s refusal to congratulate Lieberman, or to their call for Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to appeal the acquittal. His silence in the face of their attacks was consistent with his demeanor during his ongoing legal battles: He refused to play the victim either before or during his trial, and he refused to sling accusa-

tions once his court appearances ended.

Lieberman’s media statements during the legal proceedings and since the acquittal took pains not to criticize the legal establishment, stressing instead that Lieberman was clearly anxious to put his legal troubles behind him and to look to the future.

“I want to thank the court,” Lieberman said after the verdict was handed down. “I don’t want to dwell on this issue anymore; I want to put this chapter behind me and look forward to the challenges ahead.”

By all accounts, those challenges will include a rapid assessment of the current political landscape and climate, with his sharp political senses focused on one clear,

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long-term strategic destination: the prime minister’s office. Political insiders and academics agree that Lieberman has bided his time for the right moment to make a push for the top job. Now, as he begins his second stint as Foreign Minister, they say it is only a matter of time before Lieberman makes his move.

“The first thing you have to know about Yvette [Lieberman’s Russian first name] the is that he is the consummate political animal,” said a former senior aide to Binyamin Netanyahu who worked with Lieberman during Netanyahu’s first term in office. “He got involved in politics on Bibi’s coattails in the 1990s, then used that

BY AVI TUCHMAYER

platform to create his party, Israel Beitenu, after Bibi was defeated in 1999 and took a hiatus from political life. I don’t think it’s a negative thing—all politicians get into the game dreaming of becoming prime minister—but it’s the prize Yvette has had his eyes on from his very first day in the game.”

To accomplish that goal, Lieberman must choose between two competing strategies: whether to position himself as Netanyahu’s heir apparent for the leadership of the right-wing whenever Netanyahu decides to step down, or whether to mount a frontal challenge to wrest that mantle away from the prime minister.

At first glance, it would appear that Lieberman has little choice but to select the first option. No right-wing candidate has the public credibility to match Netanyahu, Lieberman included. In terms of pure politics, then, Lieberman’s wise course of action would be to bide his time until Prime Minister Netanyahu retires from politics either at the end of the current Knesset cycle or the next, while continuing to shore up his credentials amongst the Israel right-wing as Netanyahu’s obvious successor.

But Netanyahu does not take kindly to potential challengers, and has never shown any inclination to groom a successor. The prime minister is more likely to try to sideline Lieberman when the latter resumes his position as Foreign Minister.

It would not be the first time: Lieberman’s penchant for speaking his mind—supporters say he is one of the few politicians to voice the same opinions in front of a room full of reporters that he does behind closed doors—led to deep tensions and suspicion between Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman during the latter’s first term in office.

There is the Likud party itself. Although Lieberman was active in Likud party politics during the 1990s, he is now viewed as an outsider, and a resented one at that.

Even if Lieberman were to disavow Israel Beitenu and rejoin the Likud, he does not have a power base inside the party, which he would need in order to effectively position himself alongside Bibi at the top of the party food chain.

And then there is the Israel Beitenu party, which is showing signs of restlessness with the current arrangement with the Likud. The party also may not support the party chairman playing second fiddle to Netanyahu, since this may not be what the Israel Beitenu party has in mind for its chairman.

A year ago, the party joined forces for a joint right-wing ticket for elections for the

The prime minister is more likely to try to sideline Lieberman when the latter resumes his position as Foreign Minister. current Knesset. By all accounts, however, the alliance was a marriage of convenience: Naftali Bennett was the rising star of the election campaign, and his Jewish Home party threatened to siphon off enough votes from the Likud to deliver the prime minister’s chair to Shelly Yacimovitch. Each party sacrificed some individual parliamentary power in order to preserve Netanyahu’s spot at the top.

The move worked, but a year later, many Israel Beitenu members want to leave the agreement and continue building the party as an independent, major force in Israeli politics. They believe their voters brought

at least half the faction’s Knesset seats last year, and they indicated to Ami magazine that the party should be more than the Likud’s junior partner. Rather, it should be an independent, major political force.

Israel Beitenu is due to hold a national convention on November 25, but it is not at all clear that the party will choose to continue the alliance with Likud.

For Lieberman, a decision to leave that alliance could bring him into a full frontal clash with Netanyahu. Presumably, Lieberman would try to build support among the right-wing of the Likud Knesset faction, Central Committee and voting constituency with a series of strongly-worded statements about the futility of landfor-peace, the necessity for population transfers between Israel and an eventual Palestinian state, and perhaps a strong call on President Obama not to compromise during negotiations on Iran’s nuclear development.

The uncertainty inside Israel Beitenu neatly underscores the unique moment of risk and opportunity Lieberman faces as he plans his political future.

“Whether or not he challenges Bibi directly, Lieberman’s path to the prime minister’s chair will be via solidifying his right-wing base, then moving toward the center. Essentially, his choice right now is whether he can do that as the leader of a relatively junior party, or as a regular member (albeit the serving Foreign Minister) of the Likud,” said Dr. Jonathan Rynhold, a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and a senior researcher at the university’s Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.

In either event, Rynhold said he expects Lieberman to pepper his statements in coming months with strong statements —“populist rhetoric,” Rynhold called it —about population exchanges with the Palestinians, Washington’s nuclear talks with Iran, and other issues affecting Israeli security. But while he acknowledged that

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JEWISHNEWS JEWISHNEWS City Hall

Lieberman’s world view stems from the idea that the best way to manage ethnonational conflicts is to draw national borders that reflect ethnic realities.

Lieberman’s controversial statements do the situation vis-a-vis West Bank Palestincreate problems for Israeli diplomats in ians (peace cannot be achieved with the Europe and North America, they do not current Palestinian leadership, and not at create problems on a state-to-state level. all until the economic gaps between Israel and the Palestinians begin to narrow).

“Foreign diplomats feel that Lieberman is a man ‘you can do business with.’

On domestic issues, too, Lieberman has shown the ability to play hard poliYou’ve got to remember, Lieberman is not an ideological right-winger,” Rynhold tics. Despite rhetoric in recent years about continued. The dominant example in his instituting civil marriage in Israel and mindset is the post-World War II period, drafting yeshivah students, Israel Beitenu in which borders were redrawn all over rejected the Plesner Commission recomEurope to make nation-states more ethnimendations in 2012 that would have led cally homogeneous, after two catastrophic to compromise agreements on both issues. wars in which minority groups had fought Cynics say Lieberman rejected the deal one another brutally. Thirty million people only because he hadn’t positioned himwere displaced. self to take credit for the breakthrough, “So Lieberman’s world view stems from but there were also solid practical reasons the idea that the best way to manage for rejecting the deal: As a prime ministeethno-national conflicts is to draw national rial hopeful, he does not want to come to borders that more-or-less reflect ethnic the negotiating table in the future having realities. It’s a fundamentally different alienated the chareidi political parties and view than the Israeli left: They are worried “Israelis.” Whereas a majority of Russian public.

At the end of the day, Dr. Jonathan Rynabout Israeli democracy; Lieberman isn’t. immigrants voted during the 1990s for He’ s worried about a massive ethnic war.

Israel Beitenu or Israel Ba’aliya, headed by hold believes Lieberman will hold the 12 of the 65 seats in the city council to run for borough coun- mayoralty. In fact, Mr. Coderre was elected.

The Satmar Dayan, That’ s the nature of his mistrust of Arab Foreign Ministry portfolio for the foreNatan Sharansky, their children now vote cil, she agreed on condition that she would obtain the support Rav Moshe Tyrnauer, who vehemently opposed Pollak’s candiIsraelis.”

Rynhold Askanim said. overwhelmingly for “normative” Israelireasons, seeable that toPrime Minister of the rabbanim. who supported her candidacy quietly dacy for hashkafah gavefuture, his fulland support Goldberg, and parties, from across the political spectrum.

Netanyahu will personally administer the approached a number of them on her behalf, and were told that would continue to do so. So did a few other rabbanim.

In many ways, Lieberman has tried hard FROM RUSSIAN TO ISRAELI American, Iran and Palestinian files.

That But, having already committed herself to Project Montreal, the given the seriousness of the threat facing the chasidic community to transform his image, refined, and to reach out to and ultimate question for Lieberman means Lieberman’ s influence on Israel’ self-assured multilingual Pollak was not prepared tos ifThe Lacerte won, her candidacy would not be an issue. non-Russian Israelis.

The party has a comappears to be whether he can transform foreign policy will be negligible, but that While Pollack’s parents were completely behind their daughter, step down. Through Friends of Hutchison, she reached out to himself from the of a small,was sectoral group activists. it willoverwhelming also afford thesupport. latter to use the time not everyone in leader the community ready tomitted support her. of English-speaking non-chasidim and received There are clear signs that a majority of Israeto solidify plans for a run overwhelmingly to the top. party—the vast majority of Israel Beitenu “When I went door-to-door, the response was “There were concerns regarding tznius and whether she was voters still come from the ranks of immilis agree with Lieberman’ s plans for Judea “I don’t see that Lieberman has hard any capable of winning, given her youth and inexperience,” a Vizh- positive. People were so excited and thanked me for my chance to beat Netanyahu in a headgrants from the former Soviet Union, and Samaria (annexing large settlement nitzer chasid told Ami. “There was also the question of whether work,” Pollak told Ami immediately after her win. “The message to-head clash,” our Rynhold said, “but I’m although party Project has made inroads with blocs which are home to 80that percent of thesomeone or not tothe support Montreal.” was we need to defend interests, because up Jews in that area), Arab Israelis (redrawing other immigrant communities.

But as the confident that he will be making plans to Subsequently, the Conseil Juif Quebecois (CJQ), the newly until now that was not being done.” s national borders to“They include a maxiyears of massive aliyah representing fade, the Israel’ becomeadded. the next prime minister of Israel, formed umbrellaRussian organization Montreal’ s chareidi trusted her,” Marshy immigrants who arrived in the 1990s mum number of Israeli Jews inside Israel, in one way or another.

As I saidcommubefore: community, put forth another candidate, Shloime Goldberg, catMatters changed dramatically vis-à-vis the chasidic and early him 2000s identify less borough and less under as and It’s the prize he’s been dreaming of for maximum number Arabs inside apulting in from another the abanner of Team nity’of s support for Pollak when an independent poll taken on “Russian Israelis,” and more as the for Palestinian state), and his analysis of years.” voters was released one week prior Denis Coderre, whose leaderand wasmore a frontrunner the Montreal Shabbos among non-chasidic

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

•

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JEWISHNEWS

BY NESANEL GANTZ

From New York to Jerusalem

T

ARE WE DOING ENOUGH FOR OUR BROTHERS IN THE HOLY LAND?

he dire situation faced by the Torah-observant community in Eretz Yisrael was highlighted at Dirshu’s second annual Shabbos of chizzuk and inspiration.

Rav Yitzchok Sorotzkin, Rosh Yeshivah of Telz, declared in a fiery tone: “The avreichim are falling apart under the burden placed upon them by this government of shmad.

What are we going to do about it here in America? We are not adequately feeling the anguish of our brothers or helping them carry the load of supporting Torah learning in Eretz Yisrael! Saying a kapitel Tehillim for the situation isn’t enough! The Torah world in America must accept upon itself a greater share of the burden to counteract the evil gezeiros in Eretz Yisrael. We must also strengthen ourselves in limmud Torah, now more than ever!”

In a heartfelt, emotionally-charged speech, the rosh yeshivah Rav Shmuel Yaakov Borenstein, shlita, keynote speaker from Eretz Yisrael, spoke directly and frankly about the need for financial support to help the frumme Yidden of Eretz Yisrael.

“The kochos of tumah and evil are waging war against the world of Torah. There are terrible decrees with regard to the draft; against kollelim, against mosdos Torah, against pure Torah education. I am turning to our supporters in America: Help us against this evil koach! Help us fight back this battle. Can you sit back idly and watch from the sidelines? There is a war being waged against the world of Torah! Support the Torah and

the Torah will reward you in return.

The Nasi of Dirshu, Rav Dovid Hofstedter, shlita, spoke about the strategy being used. “When the Torah cannot be attacked, supporting the Torah is attacked,” he explained. “The only way to do teshuvah is to fortify ourselves in the support of Torah.”

Rav Hofstedter concluded by expressing the wish that more people join Dirshu

in the learning of Mishnah Berurah, adding that by the time they make a siyum on the present cheilek, many more will have hopefully joined in time to begin the next.

Rabbi Shlomo Rozenstein, a prominent member of Dirshu Eretz Yisrael who traveled to the United States for the event, said that the yearly gathering serves two key functions: It serves as a means of recognizing and inspiring the thousands of Dirshu members around the world, and motivates them to continue being part of something special. “The kinus,” said Rav Rozenstein, “serves as a testament that Torah learning will not be interrupted by any decree or for any amount of time. It shows that klal Yisrael will do all we can to increase the quality of limmud haTorah throughout the world, as well as increase the numbers of those who learn the holy Torah.”

PERHAPS THE MOST moving part of the Shabbos that truly illustrated the power of Dirshu to make Torah the defining part of one’s life, literally "ki heim chayeinu," was the presence of chaver Dirshu, Rav Avrohom Dovid Weisz. Rav Avrohom Dovid has been taking bechinos for years with nearly perfect scores.

What separates the quality of his learning are the circumstances in which he learns. Reb Avrohom Dovid has ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease). There is not a muscle or a limb that he can move, aside from his eyes. On a res-

pirator and feeding tube, the only way that he communicates with society is through movement of his eyes. Reb Avrohom Dovid learns the Daf, is chozer the Daf, takes the bechinos and finishes Shas! It takes him 14 hours to complete each test!

On Shabbos, his wife—whose role in facilitating his learning and everything he does in a manner that defies description—gave a speech to the women infusing them with indescribable feelings of chizzuk and emotion. She related how, after one of her husband's many

surgeries when he had remained in a comatose state and was not waking up, it looked like he was not going to make it. Tehillim and tefillos were recited for his recovery around the world. “One night when it was really bad, our aide, Oto, came to visit and walked over to my husband. ‘Abraham,’ he said, ‘you have to live! You can't die! You have to come home to take your Dirshu test!!’ Imagine,” Mrs. Weisz exclaimed, “even a non-Jew recognized the importance, the fact that Torah gives life, literally!”

(Seated l to r) Rav Steinmetz, Rav Borenstein, Rav Hofstedter, Rav Lowy, Rav Fuhrer and Rav Smith Partial view of crowd at the Dirshu Shabbos

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JEWISH LIVING IN

Spokane, Wash The challenges of Spokane are the very small number of shomer Shabbos families and the isolation

S

pokane is a small city in eastern Washington State, 280 miles east of Seattle, with a current population of about 209,000. In 1879, when Simon Berg, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, arrived in tiny Spokane Falls to build his general store, the isolated pioneer village consisted of only a few wooden storefronts.

Berg realized that he wasn’t the first Jewish trader to visit the area when local Native Americans mentioned that earlier traders were “egg eaters,” a clue that they were Jewish. Many Jewish traders avoided meat due to kashrus problems, surviving mainly on hard-boiled eggs, a fact that seemed to fascinate the local Native Americans.

It is poignant to imagine these lonely wandering Jews, far from home and a Jewish community, yet still clinging to the laws of kashrus as best they could.

After Berg built his store, others came to join him, and by 1885 about a dozen Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs, mostly from Germany, had settled there.

Later, around 1900, a second influx of Jewish immigrants arrived. These new arrivals were different from the well-off, assimilated German Jews. Coming from Eastern Europe, they spoke Yiddish and were frum. They launched Orthodox Congregation Keneseth Israel and, in 1909, built their own shul. The congregation arranged for kosher meat to be prepared and acquired a Jewish cemetery, named Mount Nebo, still in existence today.

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REAL ESTATE Rent for a four-bedroom house: $1,000/month.

Houses range in price from $150,000 for a three-bedroom to $250,000 for a spacious house with large yard.

The building of the Interstate 90 freeway in 1966 sparked a tragic change in the Jewish community. The Keneseth Israel shul was directly in the path of the freeway and had to be razed. At that point, the small community decided to amalgamate with Spokane’s non-Orthodox congregation, sadly ceasing to exist.

The city’s Jewish population has remained steady over the years, estimated at

shington  WEATHER

less than one percent of the metropolitan area’s population. There are now about 1,500 to 2,000 Jews in the area, mostly unaffiliated with any Jewish organization.

The Chabad Jewish Center is currently the only Orthodox shul in Spokane.

Rabbi Yisroel Hahn and his wife Sarah have been the Chabad representatives in Spokane for the past six years.

“Every Jew is welcome here,” explains Israeli-born, Brooklyn-raised Rabbi Hahn.

“We are here with an unconditional love for every Jew, regardless of their background or affiliation.”

Forty families are affiliated with Chabad, though only 10 of them are fully shomer

Shabbos at this time. There is a mikvah, a wide range of shiurim, guest speakers and women’s programs.

To meet the needs of the kosher consumer in Spokane, Chabad offers a kosher co-op, for meat, poultry and fish that are not readily available in Spokane. To make it as easy and affordable as possible to keep kosher, Chabad has arranged for very reasonable prices and orders in bulk. Periodically throughout the year, a whole truckload of kosher food products is shipped in from New York and sold to anyone in the community who wants it.

Not everyone who buys kosher food is necessarily shomer Shabbos.

There are no kosher restaurants in Spokane, but the community has still come a long way since the early days of the pioneering “egg eaters.”

The challenges of Spokane are the very small number of shomer Shabbos families and the isolation, as the closest frum community, Seattle, is a four-hour drive away.

When asked about anti-Semitism, Rabbi Hahn stated that he feels there’s probably more anti-Semitism in Brooklyn now than

The community has still come a long way since the early days of the pioneering “egg eaters.”

Cost of Living There is no day school tuition as the frum children learn via online schooling.

Bottle of chalav Yisrael milk: $3.00 Bottle of Kedem grape juice: $5.00

Getting there 

Hot/warm summers; a cool, brisk fall with beautiful foliage; cold, wet winters, ranging from mild to severe; and a beautiful spring.

December, the coldest month, averages 27.4 °F (−2.6 °C). July, the warmest month, averages 69.8 °F (21.0 °C).

BY MENUCHA CHANA LEVIN

Flight from NY: 4 hours 50 minutes From London: 9 hours From Tel Aviv: 14½ hours Drive from Seattle: 4 hours

in Spokane.

The city enjoys the beauty of nature, has a four-season climate with lakes for swimming, boating and fishing, and mountains for skiing, hiking and sightseeing. Another bonus is no traffic problems! Spokane is big enough to have most of the amenities of a larger city, while maintaining a friendly, small-town atmosphere.

•

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

Rabbi Yisroel Hahn teaching Torah

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37

BUSINESS

l NEWS

B Y Y E D I DA WO LF E

Big Sharia Under Big Ben WHY DOES LONDON WANT TO BE A CENTER FOR ISLAMIC FINANCE?

B

ritish Prime Minister David Cameron announced last week that he wants London to become “one of the great capitals of Islamic finance.” He then promised to issue $320 million in sukuk, or Islamic bonds, starting next year. Under Islamic law, interest is not allowed, so sukuk bring a fixed return from an asset or service. Islamic banks weathered the global financial crisis better than regular financial institutions, and the market is expected to increase from $1.2 trillion to $2.6 trillion by 2017. Public interest remains lukewarm, however, as HSBC shuttered its Islamic banking retail operation last year. (Source: NPR)

Data Point The US budget deficit fell 37% in 2013.

(Source: Washington Post)

PayPal Free Fall

BKLYN ONLINE SALES SLOWING

Brooklyn came in third this year on PayPal’s list of US cities. Manhattan and San Francisco took the top two spots. While Brooklyn’s online receipts grew 25% by September 2012, they were up only 9% this year. Some surmise Brooklyn’s rents became too expensive for startups, who’d rather invest in their business than shell out for high rents. (Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

Trickling Down

US IS STILL IN A RECESSION Achuthan, founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, claims manufacturing numbers of the past couple of years are not correlating to the production targets in the US and China. Booming stock markets are being fed by the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy. By increasing the value of risk assets, like stocks, the Feds hope this will transfer down into the economy. (Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

37%

The Grey Lady Bleeds Green

HOW BEING A TAX DUMMY COST THE NEW YORK TIMES $60 MILLION A short-sighted accounting mistake cost The New York Times $60 million.

The Times bought the Boston Globe 20 years ago, before the print newspaper market tanked. Assuming it would own the Globe forever, the Times used a combination of cash and stock to complete the purchase, without using a corporate tax structure called the “horizontal double dummy.” The dummy changes the tax basis of the acquisition. As the Globe’s value tumbled, the Times wrote down the value of its New England operations by $900 million, affecting the profit-andloss sheet. Since it didn’t use the “double dummy technique,” the Times continues to pay taxes on the Globe totaling $56 million, not including state and local taxes. (Source: Fortune)

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10

PRESTIGIOUS

JOBS W I T H

SURPRISINGLY

LOW PAY Job: Average Annual Earnings OPTOMETRIST $94,134 BIOMEDICAL ENGINEER $72,016 CHEMIST $68,730 NETWORK SYSTEMS/DATA ANALYST $67,106 BUDGET ANALYST $66,414 CREDIT ANALYST $66,163 ARCHITECT $64,481 PSYCHOLOGIST $62,731 ACCOUNTANT/AUDITOR $60,845 PROFESSOR $59,860 ZOOLOGIST/MARINE BIOLOGIST $52,186 LEGISLATOR $49,510 DIETICIAN/NUTRITIONIST $49,032 POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW $45,000 HEAD CHEF $38,297

BUSINESS

l AMBASSADORS / / KIDDUSH HASHEM IN THE WORKPLACE

The Shabbos Store A WEEKLY 24-HOUR SENSATION OVERTAKES ISRAEL

BY ANNA BARON

T

he first time I heard about The Shabbos Store was when it burned to the ground one Shabbos afternoon.

The second time was when my walking partner told me that she plans on buying her entire Friday night meal at The Shabbos Store.

“The what?” I asked.

She reassured me that they sell the most amazing food. “Why cook?” was her reasoning.

The third time it came up was when my friend Malka told me I can pick up a copy of Ami at The Shabbos Store.

That Thursday night, I wore my walking shoes and huffed up the steep Beit Shemesh hills in search of the latest issue of my favorite magazine.

When we got to the store, I understood.

I was shocked; was I really in Beit Shemesh? Was I really in a store that preempted my every desire and actually catered to it? There were dips, cold cuts, herrings. The bakery aisle sold the home-baked goods and dainty pastries I remembered from sweet tables of long ago—

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forgotten were the margarine-laden commercial rugelach and bourekas so essential to Israeli living. In their place were yeasty kokosh cakes and fluffy challos—American style. There was a section for nuts, long ice cream freezers, paper goods and the irresistible nosh aisle. But there weren’t just typical Israeli jellies. There was licorice! And nutty chews! It was the garden of the American Eden.

Yehuda Kohen opened The Shabbos Store, a full-service supermarket that opens only for 24 hours before Shabbos, after an idea flew into his head “like a dream.” He immediately quit his job as a contractor and pursued his vision. “It was straight from Hashem,” he confessed.

Customers found it intriguing, not to mention reassuring—especially in terms of freshness— that a store would stay open for only 24 hours each week.

Yehuda feels good about sharing his parnasah with other families. “There’s one family that makes these delicious cheesecakes and blintzes.

If the product sells out, they earn and I earn.”

How does the store operate? Aren’t there unsold products that need to be disposed of? “I either return leftovers to the vendor, or I distribute them to the needy,” Yehuda explains.

At The Shabbos Store, the customers keep coming back every week for years. Looks like Yehuda is doing something right. Customers wonder how he can have better prices on Gerlitz rugelach or Beis Yisrael chopped liver. “Gerlitz only sells baked goods. A wine store only sells wine, keeping the store open every day. But I sell everything under one roof and save on manpower and utilities during the week. That’s how I can afford to sell at such good prices.”

A relationship with the store’s owner is an essential part of the shopping experience. Yehuda remembers when he opened a Bnei Brak branch two years ago and would spend Erev Shabbos there; people kept stopping by to tell him that the Beit Shemesh store was not the same.

Although everything was running smoothly, his

personal touch was missing.

And it’s no wonder. Yehuda is a friendly fellow, one who greets customers with ready friendship; he is on a first-name basis with most of them.

Sometimes, community tensions seem to interfere with business, but Yehuda does not get worried. “When the politics here were really heated, my dati leumi neighbors didn’t want to come to my store because that would support chareidim, and the chareidim were upset that the store catered to the dati leumi crowd. But I say it doesn’t matter what you look like. Anyone who wants to buy for Shabbos is welcome.”

“The Beit Shemesh I know is not the Beit Shemesh in the news,” he says. Yehuda thinks that people from different communities can help each other despite their differences. “The 12 tribes were also different.”

But the most difficult part of Yehuda’s business is seeing people who can’t afford groceries.

“There was a woman who took three chocolates to the checkout, but after finding out the price and counting out change, needed to put one back on the shelf.” Moments like those had Yehuda running to his back office with tears blinding his vision. Then one of his customers gave him 200 shekels, “for those who can’t afford the small change.” The customer keeps replenishing the fund, saying that he can’t bear to see a child wanting something but deprived because of poverty. Yehuda can easily spot these people, the ones who need the financial help, by the way they look around the store, wanting everything but taking nothing.

“How do you know which ones they are?” his worker once asked incredulously.“Don’t you see it on their faces?” Yehuda replies.

I asked if he has a special relationship with Shabbos. “On the contrary,” he claims, “I close my store very late [on Friday afternoons]. But I’m sure Hashem is happy. It’s my parnasah and my tafkid: making other people’s Shabbasos beautiful.” He remembers his first year, when he needed to go home Friday afternoon on foot, because it was already past shkiah. It was an Erev Simchas Torah and the orders were dizzying; he hadn’t counted on the fact that each shul would be ordering food for a kiddush.

Since then, he has streamlined his business.

Shuls email their orders in advance, and Yehuda already knows what they will buy.

The locations each have different preferences, all of which Yehuda is intimately familiar with.

“Chasidim buy salads. Americans don’t…but they buy the liver, the eggs, the cake. Yerushalmim buy kishke, herring and kugel.”

For Yehuda to be successful, he needs to anticipate the demands. “In Beit Shemesh, I’m the only one who sells takeout food with a hechsher.

Nevertheless, not more than five people a week ever buy chicken or fish. In Bnei Brak, I’m only five percent of the market, but I sell 10 times more meat, chicken and fish. I’ll sell two kokosh cakes a week [there], while in Beit Shemesh up to 50 can fly off the shelves.” It’s a real balancing act to know how much to stock, so that there’s just enough of everything but not too many leftovers. “Just last week I had an entire shelf of baked goods unsold in Bnei Brak two hours before the zman. But just then a shul called to order the entire stock for a kiddush.”

Even though he claims that his entrance into Shabbos is less than exemplary, his words speak of an enriched relationship with the special day.

“The store had a fire on a Shabbos afternoon. On Motzaei Shabbos, before Havdalah and before going over to see what had remained, a sense of calm overtook me. I figured that whatever’s burned is burned. Let’s look to the future and set up a store for the coming Thursday.” His father, who was still examining the debris, was incredulous, but Yehuda managed to pull it off. The entire community got together with generators, tools and manpower. By the end of that week he was dishing out cholent from a new location.

People told Yehuda he was crazy for opening such a business. “But I held on to the plan of only opening it before Shabbos.” And, baruch Hashem, his idea has proven itself. “I’ve had great siyata di’shmaya,” he says.

My copy of Ami tucked under one arm, I looked around and started placing cole slaw, whipped cream and kettle-cooked potato chips in my little shopping basket. Should I have started feeling self-conscious, as an American Israeli hungry for the tastes of my home, a large sign reminded me of the Gemara that “all parnasah is designated on Rosh Hashanah, aside for expenses of Shabbos and Yom Tov, which are reimbursed by Hashem.”

By keeping his store open just for erev Shabbos shoppers, Yehuda practices that belief.

But the most difficult part of Yehuda’s business is seeing people who can’t afford groceries.

•

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

28 TISHREI 5774 // OCTOBER 2, 2013 // AMI MAGAZINE

41

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

BUSINESS

l TALK // WEEKLY INSIGHTS FROM BUSINESS LEADERS

Name: Jack Hidary

Position: Chairman

Age: 45

Lives: Manhattan, NY

Family: Single

Past Experience: Co-Founder, Dice Inc. and Vista Research

Company: Samba Energy Solutions Background: Founder of Samba Energy, Jack Hidary is currently serving as its chairman. His first commercial venture, EarthWeb—later Dice.com—was a publicly traded company that later sold for $200 million. In 2001, Jack founded Vista Research, an independent financial research company serving institutional investors, which was later acquired by McGraw-Hill. In the recent election, Hidary ran for mayor, coming in first amongst those running without a major party backing.

Originally from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush and a pillar of the local Sephardic community, Jack is the latest in a long line of Hidary family members to take an active role in community service.

LUNCH BREAK with Jack Hidary I’ve interviewed many prominent people for this column, but you were the first to describe your profession as “entrepreneur.” Why? Because I love being an entrepreneur. It's an opportunity to enhance lives. This is where jobs come from.

Job growth doesn’t come from big companies. It comes from small and growing businesses and start-ups.

How has your expertise in cutting-edge technology helped your businesses?

It taught me the power of the Internet. My four-year tenure as a neuroscientist also helped. In the early '90s,

when almost no one was using the Web yet, scientists were already frequent users of the Internet, which enabled us to share research. I realized that soon major commerce would be done through the Web. I used that knowledge to create my first company.

This principle applies to all entrepreneurship. Seek what is up and coming.

Tell us a little about your first company, EarthWeb.com.

IT professionals, techies like myself, had no one really serving them. We were serving everybody else, but we were like cobblers' children with no shoes. EarthWeb.com was created to serve the needs of techies and provide

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them with much needed information.

I later acquired Dice.com, a job search site for techies, and merged the two companies, which we grew from three million to 60 million in revenue in two years.

How did you make that happen?

We expanded the sales force. From Iowa to California, New York, Colorado—to all the major test centers around the country, and we expanded our services. We went from being a job board to also providing salary and career information, and other types of useful data. We made money off of listing fees as well as advertising on the

site. The user base and employer base expanded tremendously and we benefited from that financially.

How many people worked for that company?

When I sold it we had over 40 people.

And everyone made money. The investors made six times what they put in.

Now you started Samba Energy.

Tell us about that.

In a nutshell, we created software that building owners or managers use to analyze whether they can save money by switching to energy-efficient materials. We make money by charging for the use of the software as well as by providing the items needed for an energy efficiency overhaul, for instance by installing energy-efficient lighting.

What’s more important in entrepreneurship: business talent or hard work?

Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration/99% perspiration, and I’m inclined to agree. Basically you have to have that capacity for inspiration and the ability to draw inspiration from other people. But most of one’s success comes from being focused, working hard, and becoming the best at that one thing. Focus on being the best in one specific field.

What's the secret to successful entrepreneurship?

Don’t be everything to all people. It’s very important to start with a specific goal and slowly build up. For example, if you start by saying, “We’re gonna be the website for everyone who loves music,” you won’t succeed. But if you say, “We’re gonna be the number one website for everyone who loves rock music of the ‘80s,” or whatever it is, you can then become the best in that and then expand. This applies to every company and every business.

Once you are successful in one area you can expand, but only then. It was the same strategy with my first company, EarthWeb: We first focused on providing information on certain types of computer programming, and once we were successful in that field we moved on to other codes.

Is there any one core ingredient that every entrepreneur has to have?

Chutzpah. If you are satisfied with the status quo you’ll never be a great entrepreneur. You have to have the chutzpah to say that despite the fact that there are ten big tech giants out there I can make things better. I can create a new tech company that does things they don’t. That sense of going beyond the status quo is very important to being an entrepreneur.

If there is an area every business can improve in by adding one aspect of technology, which one should that be?

Customer interface. Every company can do a better job engaging its customers, maintaining a relationship with customers through technology. Engage, engage, engage. There can never be too much engagement with a customer. Most customers feel that companies only call them when they want something from them—if they have a bill. The more you can engage a customer the better off you will be.

You founded EarthWeb with your brother Murray, and Samba with your brother Michael. How do you work with family?

When working with family, you have to have an open relationship. You have to sometimes agree to disagree. The way to avoid fighting is to divide the labor. One brother could do sales and another: operation or design; divide the work responsibilities.

•

BUSINESS

l PARNOOOSA

PARNOOOSA!

BY MAURICE STEIN

Making Progress CHAIM PROFILE: CHAIM W. 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 This past week, I received a number of emails from readers wondering about the approach I’m taking with Chaim. If he’s already shown an interest in event planning, why am I advising him to find a regular office or warehouse job instead of helping him break into the event management industry?

The answer is that it has become obvious to me that Chaim is not really ready.

He has so many doubts about himself. At every opportunity that comes

his way, potential employers are picking up on those feelings. Then, when they don’t hire him, it reinforces his belief that there’s nothing out there for him, and the cycle continues.

I therefore feel that the most important thing at the moment is for Chaim to overcome his paralysis and take any job he can get. The experience of actually working will enable him to clarify many things, including which direction to take.

With so many people out of work nowadays and available for hire, employers want to make sure they’re getting the very best. They want to have the feeling that a potential employee is confident and excited about the job.

Regardless of how much experience you have in the position for which you are being interviewed, you can always project enthusiasm and commitment to excellence. That’s what employers are looking for.

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Right now I’m looking for an office manager for my own business, and so far the few people I’ve interviewed were all nice, but none of them showed the wherewithal to take charge of the position and do whatever it takes to succeed.

Ideal workers are those who are willing to do more than merely follow instructions between the hours of 9 and 5, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their lunch hour.

Businessmen today are under a lot of pressure, and when they make the decision to hire help, they’re looking for someone with fire in his belly who will add more to the company than it costs to pay his salary. So far, I haven’t figured out how to “make” someone excited, but everyone can make himself excited about anything at any time if he sets his mind to it.

Meanwhile, Chaim is still looking. Let’s see what happens.

PROFILE: SHALOM T. 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 more time I spend with Shalom, the more confident I am about his ability to run a successful incubator. He has a lot of common sense and is very on top of things. He is also energized and stays focused on the bottom line.

Nonetheless, he still needs a lot of mentoring in order to be able to analyze and help

new startups, so I decided to reach out to some successful entrepreneurs in the community with whom I’ve discussed the incubator issue in the past.

I put together a group of three successful business people who will guide him along the way, and I will help out as well. The team will analyze the ideas that are proposed and decide which ones they feel have the most potential. I will then create with Shalom a plan of action for each of them, and Shalom will follow up to help with the actual launching.

For now, we are going to leave Shalom to work on his incubator. I am confident that with G-d’s help it will be successful, and I will keep you posted on its progress.

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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 week, Simon spent over 15 hours taking online classes in advanced Excel and business management. He also received basic training in dealing with employees, staying positive and leading with a clear vision.

At this point I feel that Simon has a lot to offer a growing or struggling business. The next challenge is to position him as a valuable resource to any company rather than someone who is looking for a job, because as we discussed last week, not many businesses are interested in hiring older employees. If we can present Simon the right way, he should be able to find him a great job.

We will therefore be working on his cover letter and resume to reflect his management skills and how much he can help businesses

improve their bottom line.

Most resumes are focused on a person’s past activities and what he’s looking for, but neither of these things is important to an employer. All he cares about is what you can do for him. It’s your responsibility to convince him that you will be a great investment rather than a liability.

I also suggested that Simon work on his belief systems and change the way he views himself. I want him to start feeling successful and ready to take on any task, because whenever you meet a potential employer, there’s an unspoken energy that gets communicated without saying anything.

Most people searching for work feel discouraged, and that’s not the message you want to project to someone who’s deciding whether or not to hire you. While most employers won’t admit it, these decisions are often based on how they feel about a person rather than skills and experience.

I look forward to seeing the “new” Simon showing up to our next meeting.

Until then, make it a great day!

•

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

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by John Loftus

Not as The hypocritical games played by our governments

We Do

T

he more things change in the world of spies, the more they stay the same.

There are always brief spurts of technology surrounded by boundless oceans of hypocrisy. At the moment, the Europeans are agog that American intelligence organizations record their conversations. Back in the 1920s, it was the reverse. The Americans were the victims of European wiretapping.

The world was amazed when the first telegraph cable was successfully laid from Canada across the Atlantic Ocean. For the first time, news and business reports could be sent by wire instantly across an entire body of water.

Wall Street stock telegraphs could be read in the City of London and vice versa. Soon American businessmen were taking advantage of the time difference to play both ends of the market against the middle.

Wiretapping Frenzy What the Americans did not realize was that Canada was still part of the British Empire in those days. Wiretappers physically glommed onto the transatlantic cable in Nova Scotia before it descended into the ocean and mined its secrets for the Brits.

Crudely coded American telegrams were being decoded by British code breakers.

The robber barons of Wall Street were being robbed of their secret plans to sell Britain short with put and short options. Instead, Perfidious Albion was playing the American

money market game right back at them. The nerve!

How the Americans screamed when they discovered the wiretaps. Why, spying on Americans was quite against the rules. A Congressional investigation full of angst and chest-beating was begun. How dare the ungrateful British spy on Americans after we had paid for most of the cable’s cost, not to mention rescued Britain from the debacle of defeat at the hands of the Hun. They didn’t call it World War One in those days; it was “The Great War” or “The War to End All Wars.” Seriously. They said stuff like that without even blushing.

There was perhaps some blushing when it was pointed out to Secretary of State [Henry L.] Stimson that the US government also maintained its own “Cipher Unit,” codenamed the “Black Chamber,” under a business front in New York City. The Secretary ordered all code breaking to cease on the grounds that “gentlemen do not reach each other’s mail.” Yeah right. What an idiot.

Once silly Stimson was out of the way, the American gentlemen resumed their mail reading and code breaking with a frenzy.

The British had never stopped. Air mail to Europe generally went on British Overseas Aircraft Corporation flights, which stopped off at Bermuda for refueling. It just so happened that British Intelligence had an entire wing of the local prison on Bermuda refitted as a mail opening outfit. The seams on canvas diplomatic bags, containing important documents, were ripped open and the contents

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by John Loftus

Payback was much more important to J. Edgar Hoover than a pesky little thing like winning WWII. photographed. Skilled seamstresses replaced the ripped stitching while the BOAC flights were being (slowly) refueled.

The Americans, perhaps being genetically predisposed to spying by our British heritage, had broken the Japanese diplomatic and naval codes, which gave us a considerable advantage in treaty negotiations. On the eve of WWII, the American Magic and Purple codes were bartered to the Brits for their German Ultra Codes, while the Russians stole codes from both sides through their spies.

Settling the Score Even in the hallowed halls of the Justice Department, the rules had changed. At one time, Assistant Attorney General William J. Donovan ordered a young ambitious clerk named J. Edgar Hoover to cease wiretaps without first obtaining court ordered warrants. Hoover hated that and plotted revenge.

When WWII broke out, Donovan the wiretap prude ironically became head of the Office of Secret Services, which sometimes supervised warrantless wiretapping. J. Edgar Hoover waited until Donovan’s OSS men had scaled the walls of the Spanish Embassy in Washington and were breaking into the safe where the codes were kept. Then, at this awkward moment, Hoover’s FBI agents began beeping their car horns and flashing their lights to wake up the Spanish guards.

Payback was much more important to J. Edgar Hoover than a pesky little thing like

winning WWII. After the war, of course, Hoover lost the wiretap war to the newly-formed National Security Agency, which like the CIA, was the creation of that infamous Wall Street Lawyer, Allan Dulles. Dulles had arranged for General Sarnoff’s company, the Radio Corporation of America, to get the lucrative no-bid contracts to build what would eventually become the biggest wiretap agency in the world.

Sarnoff, it should be noted, started his career as the wireless operator who received the very first telegram from the Titanic that she was sinking. There should have been a bit of a warning there for the NSA. It really does not matter all that much if you get the news when it is too late to do anything about it.

The National Security Agency’s wartime predecessors, the Army Security Agency and the Office of Naval Intelligence stand as the all-time winners of the “too little, too late” code-breaking award. Yes, they actually broke the code warning of an upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor, and yes, President Roosevelt ordered the warning sent to Pearl Harbor in plenty of time. But the snotty Navy and pompous Army were having a hissy fit over who would control code-breaking, so the critical warning of the attack on Pearl Harbor was sent so slowly that it never got there in time.

President Roosevelt decided that he could not court-martial every one of his top Admirals in Washington on the first day of the

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war (although they really deserved it), so he ordered a cover-up. The poor Admiral in Hawaii took all the blame for the big Navy brass in DC, and actually kept his mouth shut. Many years later, the Admiral’s intelligence chief told the truth to my British friend, John Costello, who verified the tale from the declassified code files. The Admiral in Hawaii was completely innocent but kept the Pearl Harbor secret to himself. Talk about taking one for the team.

The funny thing about code breaking is that it never seems to do much good because it is so good that no one in power believes it. Presidential Candidate Dewey thought the breaking of Japanese codes was public knowledge because nearly two dozen American newspapers had openly reported it. President Truman’s military leaders had a hard time but successfully convinced Dewey that the Japanese were so arrogant that they refused to believe news reports that their unbreakable code had been broken by the dum-dum Americans.

American Generals like Mark Clark arrogantly ignored deciphered German Ultra codes telling him that there were no enemy forces whatsoever near his landing area.

Clark insisted on a time-wasting buildup of force that eventually turned his Salerno beachhead into a death trap. What an idiot!

Similarly, the KGB ignored most of Kim Philby’s betrayals of American secrets on the grounds that his information was so good, it must be an enemy trap.

T•R•A•V•E•L

Tapping into Friends As far as spying on an ally, the French and Vatican used their knowledge of the upcoming American invasion of Africa to make lucrative bets on the rise and fall of currencies.

The huge spike in currency trading on the bourse tipped the Nazis off. The invasion was a disaster, and the Americans had to retreat through the Kasserine Pass. Sort of like the deposed Saudi intelligence chief selling two airline stocks short on September 10, 2001, because he knew that the aircraft from those two particular airlines would crash the next day. Thanks for sharing.

I love the recent French whining about NSA surveillance. In the first place, France gives shelter to a lot of dissident Islamists who deserve to be watched 24/7. In the second place, France is one of the world leaders in intrusive espionage. Remember the Concorde, the super-fast French airliner?

The entire business and first class sections were wired to collect every private discussion from businessmen on their way to and from France. The French spy service was in cahoots with French business, nothing more. They still do it. I am warned not to discuss anything of import in any seat on any French airline.

I had an American friend who worked inside the West German intelligence services as it was put back together after WWII. The Germans had a wiretap unit hidden inside their Air Force Research Department, the

Luftfahrt Forschungsamt. They wiretapped all of the telephone lines and cables crossing Germany, connecting the post-war American wiretappers to almost all of Eastern and Western Europe. It is a bit funny to hear a German politician complain about being spied upon when they do more of it than any other European power.

Even Brazil, which has joined the “naughty, naughty NSA” chorus has been hoist on its own petard. Somehow a tenyear-old document was released revealing Brazilian wiretapping of all foreign embassies. Oopsies! With a straight face, Brazil demanded the death penalty for whoever leaked this classified document. I hope it was Snowden, but that would be just too ironic as Brazil has gone to such lengths to portray the American document leaker as an international hero.

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Two-faced Pakistanis Of course hypocrisy in foreign policy pronouncements cannot be limited to wiretaps.

The government and parliament of Pakistan howl with well-played outrage on the stage whenever an American drone tracks down a terrorist on their soil and kills him. The grisly deeds of the terrorist are ignored, as is the fact that the terrorist had been living openly for years in Pakistan without any apparent fear of apprehension. What gets the Pakistanis in an uproar is the principle of the thing! How dare the Americans intrude upon Pakistani territory, their beloved sovereign soil, without first getting permission from the elected government of Pakistan!

What a farce. Every government in Pakistan has made the same secret deal with every new American administration. The US drones can go on killing as many terrorists as we wish as long as the Pakistan government gets to condemn us in public. We even had a secret deal specifically approving the kidnapping and removal of Osama bin Laden from Pakistan without any foreknowledge of the

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office wing at the Chancellery in Berlin.

German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Washington tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone from the US Embassy.

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by John Loftus

The world would be genuinely shocked to learn that almost all the targeting of Taliban terrorists has originated with the Pakistani government itself.

Pakistan government. It is just a stage piece to appease the right-wing lunatic fringe. I wish Snowden had leaked all those documents. It would have been fun watching the Pakistani snake chasing its tail.

I think the world would be genuinely shocked to learn that almost all the targeting of Taliban terrorists has originated with the Pakistani government itself. Sometimes, evil Pakistani politicians targeted innocent rival politicians so that the gullible Americans would knock off their rivals. Sometimes politicians who wanted a bigger share of profit from the American pie would target an entire innocent gathering, such as a wedding, so as to cause the Americans as much embarrassment as possible. Pay the Pakistani politician off, the targeting errors will be corrected and the press problems will go away, at least until the next time. The Pakistanis raise some of the best con men in the world. Thievery is their national sport.

Saudi KKK Another bit of hypocrisy is the Saudi refusal to accept a seat on the UN National Security Council, a seat for which they had been lobbying many years. During the lulls

of the Saudi wailing, breast beating, and screams of protest, we were able to learn that the Saudis were protesting that the Americans were not toeing the Saudi Line on Syria.

No, we will not nuke Damascus, thank you very much.

The Saudi Line, upon fine scrutiny, turns out to be an extremely bigoted religious war against America, Christians and Jews. Nearly every library in America has a copy of the “Green Version” of the Holy Koran, a notso-holy book gift of the House of Saud. The left-hand page is in English, the right is in Arabic. Only on the Arabic side can you read the insertions (heretical alterations?) that the Saudis have put in their Holy Book. On the very first page, when the Prophet speaks of the enemies of G-d, the Saudis have parenthetically explained that the enemies of G-d are “Christians and Jews.” Yup, that bigot filth is in almost every library in America.

Wait till you hear about how your tax dollars helped fund the Saudi outreach educational program. Billions of American tax dollars have gone to fund this Arab version of the Ku Klux Klan. Apart from the Bush family, there are very few in American politics who see anything worthwhile in Saudi

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Arabia beyond their oil, and soon we will be independent of that, thanks to numerous exploration missions in West Africa.

The Saudi bigots are scared we don’t need them anymore.

The Saudis beat their breasts about the way things used to be. We should remind them that 9/11 was the inevitable fruit of the Saudi-Wahhabi tree of bigotry, and that some of us have not forgotten that the House of Saud permitted its clerics to call for the deaths of all American soldiers in Iraq. We have not forgotten that the House of Saud built the mosques for their bigoted cult in Afghanistan and Pakistan and trained the Taliban in the Saudi-Wahhabi line of hatred.

It is their students, their Taliban, who kill our children even today. The Saudis’ twisted religion is a heresy to Islam.

The Saudis try to distinguish between Sallafiyah and Sallafiyah Jihaddiyah. It is a distinction without a difference. It is hypocrisy to assert that their Islamist cult demands death for all non-Salafists and then proclaim that they have nothing to do with those Salafists who pull the trigger as they have been taught. The old men of Saudi Arabia may have bought the old men of the Bush family, but they have not bought the GOP or the Democrats.

I am reminded of the foreign visitor who was taken to see the splendor of the newly built Palace of Versailles, constructed at a time when the French peasants were starving for food. The visitor looked in awe and muttered “What a vengeance is due for this.”

So let it be for the hypocrites.

•

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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GAMBLING IN THE

CATSKILLS

Will the Catskills stop being a haven for the Jewish community and become a gambler’s paradise?

New York’s Catskill Mountains and Jews have a long history together, going back to the 1920s. The 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of the large Catskill resort hotels, which attracted Jews to the mountains, particularly in Sullivan County, each summer.

Eventually the secular Jews stopped patronizing the large hotels and subsequently these magnificent hotels were abandoned. But for the frum community, the attraction of the Catskills was just beginning.

As camps and bungalow colonies expanded in Upstate New York, Sullivan County began to have a particularly Jewish feel every summer. By 2007, the county’s population tripled every summer.

Not only families travel to the mountains. Children head up in droves for camp. And a particularly striking phenomenon is the dozens of yeshivos that relocate to the “mountains,” as the Catskills are called, for two months or more, to learn in a full-depth manner in an atmosphere without the drawbacks of the urban jungle.

And in recent years, more and more Jews have been heading up all year round. There were always continuously occupied frum enclaves in the mountains, such as in the town of South Fallsburg, where Yeshiva Gedolah Zichron Moshe (“Yeshiva of South Fallsburg”) is located. But in recent years, the number of Orthodox Jews owning homes in the Catskills that they use year-round or regularly for Shabbosim and Yomim Tovim has been growing at an impressive rate.

All of this makes the recent vote, ratifying New York State Proposition 1, more concerning. That vote changed the New York State constitution, allowing full-blown Las Vegas-style casinos to operate in a number of regions in New York, including the Catskills. At the moment, several developers have announced plans to bid to build casinos in Sullivan County, and it is expected that two will probably be built there.

There has already been slot machine gambling in the Catskills at so-called racinos, located next to racetracks, a concept that had been legalized by the legislature in 2001. Full-service casinos would bring in even more gamblers, however, according to experts.

That endangers the nature of the Jewish Catskills in several ways. It could tempt Jews to visit casinos, especially during the more leisurely days of summer, perhaps even drawing them into devastating gambling addiction. Casinos have also been found to increase crime and other social ills; that bodes ill for Jews living in such surroundings. And casino companies, with their deep pockets, have intense political power to do whatever they like in the towns they are built in, often changing the nature of those towns entirely.

The following articles examine various aspects of this threat. The first casinos may be built within two years. We need to be prepared.

(opposite page, photo by Marisa Scheinfeld. Poker Chips and Playing Cards, Grossinger’s Catskill Resort and Hotel, Liberty, NY)

Taking WITH THE FUTURE

A Gamble

]

OF THE CATSKILLS

W

hen I was a child growing up in Colorado, my family would frequently drive up to the small mountain towns for a day trip.

Two scenic locations close to Denver, only 30 miles beyond the city limits, were Black Hawk and Central City, two former gold mining towns that together were designated a national historic district.

Historical buildings lined the main streets of both places. One of the biggest attractions was the stately Central City Opera House, built in 1878 at the height of the local gold rush. We never went inside, but I knew that the performances that were held there, along with gold-panning sites and mining museums, were a major driver of the tourist business in the area.

That is, until 1991. In 1990 a change to the Colorado constitution allowed limited-stakes gambling to begin the following year in three locations: Black Hawk, Central City, and a third far to the south, Cripple Creek.

Sometime between the passage of the law and the actual start of gambling, my parents drove up to Black Hawk and Central City for a last look around. The billboards blaring “LOOSEST SLOTS IN TOWN” had not yet been erected, but they would be soon. In fact, Colorado’s mountain towns would be changed more radically by the introduction of gambling than their residents could ever guess.

The memory of the transformation of Black Hawk and Central City came back to me last week after the results of the New York elections were in. There was plenty of talk about a number of races for political office and what they meant for the future; the vote to allow seven full-service casinos to be built in New York State got less attention. But there were just as many questions about what it portended.

For our community, the most worrisome aspect of the legislation might be the possibility of full-service casinos opening up in the Catskills. Several developers have been hoping to resurrect several famous Catskills resorts as casinos, including the Nevele, Grossinger’s and the Concord.

The spiritual threat such casinos pose is intense.

(See accompanying articles about gambling addictions.) A kol korei from a number of American rabbanim and roshei yeshivah urged Jewish voters to oppose the change in the law because of those dangers.

But the proposed casinos may spell trouble even for those who will never set foot inside. Casinos have the potential to change communities in myriad ways.

For many people, this may mean something new to worry about for a couple of months in the summer, when they or their children vacation in the mountains. For the growing number of observant Jews who own homes in Sullivan County and travel there for Shabbos or Yom Tov or even live there yearround, casinos may be coming closer to home.

PLANS The first thing to clarify, of course, is precisely what the voters of New York State approved last week in the legal sense. In actuality, all they really did was insert a single line into the state constitution, “…and except casino gambling at no more than seven facilities as authorized and prescribed by the legislature.”

Since 1894, the New York State constitution has officially prohibited all forms of gambling. Nonetheless, various amendments have repeatedly trimmed off little pieces of that prohibition. In 1939, an amendment permitted pari-mutuel (pool) betting on horse races. In 1957, religious and non-profit groups were allowed to conduct bingo games. State lotteries were okayed in 1966.

Then the legislative process went even further, allowing electronic gambling, most notably slot machines, at racetracks around the state. Anyone who has ever taken the A train to Far Rockaway will have seen the most recent of these so-called racinos, reportedly more lucrative on a per-machine basis than Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

This latest law also technically leaves the ban in place—except for a new round of exceptions, seven casinos to be exact.

The real details of what will happen are contained in legislation Governor Cuomo signed back in June.

The 200-page document is rather dense and opaque, but some things seem clear: Four casinos will be approved as soon as possible for locations in Upstate New York. There will be three separate zones: the Catskills, the Southern Tier (the counties bordering on northern Pennsylvania), and near Albany. (It’s assumed by many that two casinos will end up in the Catskills.)

After seven years, three additional casinos will be built Downstate, although the present law still doesn’t allow them in New York City proper.

Eighty percent of the tax revenues made by the casinos will go to pay for primary or secondary public education or to reduce property taxes. Ten percent will go to the town and county hosting the casino.

The last ten percent will go to surrounding counties.

That’s the law, give or take 200 pages. But what does it really mean?

BY YOSSI KRAUSZ

A PRETTY PENNY According to the law’s proponents, it means a lot of tax revenue from the casinos for the benefit of the entire state. It also means revitalizing the Upstate region with lots of new jobs.

Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy put numbers to both of those ideas. The casinos, he said, were expected to make $1 billion in revenue all together. That would mean $430 million would go to schools and local governments around the state, with the ones closest to the casinos benefitting even more.

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As for employment opportunities, Duffy said that 10,000 jobs would be created, although he didn’t break that down.

This would include all kinds of positions: construction jobs for building the casinos, staff for the casinos themselves, and ancillary jobs in the hotels the casinos are required to build nearby. Of course, there might be other jobs as well in businesses that pop up because of all of the tourists flocking to the casinos.

Anyone who has ever visited Las Vegas knows the kind of optimism gambling engenders. Here you are, driving through the Nevada desert, when all of a sudden you come upon this flashy oasis full of water—and money. Fluorescent Roman pavilions, pirate ships, Egyptian pyramids, castles and volcanoes on the desert sands, right in the middle of nowhere—all made possible by gambling.

The idea that their region might be suddenly transformed into a showy wonderland is appealing to many people in Upstate New York. But according to some experts, just the opposite is likely to happen.

GAMBLING DOESN’T PAY, BUT DOES CRIME? One of the main worries people have about casinos is crime. And according to experts, that concern is justified.

The popular conception of casino-related crime, based on the history of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, is connected to

the Mob. But while it’s true that organized crime has always had an interest in casinos, what most people will have to worry about is robbery and theft.

Anita Bedell, head of the Illinois Church Action on Alcohol and Addiction Problems, an anti-gambling group, characterized the rise in crime around new casinos as the natural result of more addicted gamblers desperately trying to find money. “You use all of your money. Then you borrow, steal and embezzle. That’s why there are increases in crime.”

Professor John Warren Kindt, professor emeritus of business administration at the University of Illinois, has studied gambling for over 25 years and has testified in the United States Congress against the expansion of gambling. He is also one of the most vociferous opponents of gambling you are likely to ever encounter.

He told me, “The National Gambling Impact Study Commission concluded that once you introduce slot machines— known as the ‘crack cocaine’ for creating new addicted gamblers—into an area, the number of addicted gamblers doubles within a 50-mile radius. But when you put them in big cities, or close to New York, it’s much higher than just double.” While most people who gamble aren’t addicted, more than two-thirds of casino profits are made from addicts, so there is little real motivation for the casinos to stop them.

Anita Bedell pointed out that in Illinois there are 10,348 people on the self-excluded list. “This means that their gambling is so out of control that they are willing to allow the casinos to have them arrested and confiscate all their winnings if they are caught gambling.”

It is also possible that some of the crime around casinos has a different cause. Minkyung Park is a professor of tourism and events management at George Mason University. In her studies, the crime rates of communities near casinos were compared to the crime rates around other tourist attractions.

“There were no significant differences,” she told me. The only type of tourist attraction that did have a significantly higher crime rate was ski areas. Her hypothesis is that skiers are younger and wealthier than those who vacation elsewhere, so they attract more criminals. Her research thus indicates that while crime rates do go up when casinos are placed in communities, the threat is no greater than any other tourist attraction, where miscreants go looking for tourists to victimize.

relation to their proximity to casinos. One surprising finding was that while there was a 13-percent rise in burglaries in counties near casinos, drunk-driving rates were even higher, 13.9 percent, and drug possession rates were 21.9 percent higher.

“If you put the casinos out in the Catskills,” he warned, “you’ll definitely have drunk driving, since driving is one of the few ways to get there.”

There are other social ills associated with gambling.

When I mentioned that Nevada seemed to be doing okay, Professor Kindt said, “You see them advertising all the time on TV. They have a great PR mechanism. But the numbers show that Nevada is at the top of the list for all of the social problems. It’s always number one, two or three with regard to divorces, spousal abuse, child abuse, crime and suicide.

The industry tries to hide all of it, like Big Tobacco.”

Perhaps it’s not the paradise we might have imagined.

BELIEVING THE BENEFITS? All of the experts I spoke to were skeptical—or downright negative—about the true impact of gambling on the local economy. “The economic arguments have already been totally debunked,” Professor Kindt told me.

What about the jobs?

The jobs that are available for local people in casinos aren’t high-paying or the kind that have potential for advancement. “They’re kind of dead-end jobs,” Professor Thompson said, and they tend to have a boom-bust cycle associated with them. Meanwhile, the skilled workers are brought in from out of state by the casino companies.

There’s also an insidious effect on the local economy.

“It cannibalizes the rest of the economy,” Professor Kindt explained. When people spend their money in slot machines, the less they have left over to buy goods from local businesses and stores. So rather than improving the local economy, their money usually goes into the hands of out-of-state corporations or, at the very least, already wealthy businessmen from in-state.

SOCIAL ILLS But it’s not just property crimes like robbery and theft that are associated with casinos. Like Professor Kindt, Professor William Thompson is a longtime foe of the casino industry.

There’s some irony here, as Professor Thompson is a professor emeritus at the School of Environmental and Public Affairs at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. He’s been condemning the beast from inside its belly.

Professor Thompson told me about research he did in Wisconsin in 1996, examining crime rates in counties in 1 0 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4 / / N OV E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M I M AG A Z I N E

57

Indoor pool at Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, Liberty, New York

Ameristar Casino Resort Spa Black Hawk (below) (Far right) Vintage stereoscopic views of historic Black Hawk City, Colorado, incorp 1886.

Both Illinois and Detroit are, in fact, bankrupt.

Moreover, he claimed, taxes never end up helping as much as promised—especially once the casinos get political power and work out sweetheart deals for themselves.

A number of people I spoke to pointed to the slums just a few blocks away from the casinos in Atlantic City as proof that they don’t boost the local economy.

Professor Kindt told me that famed billionaire Warren Buffett once joined a group of fellow Omaha businessmen to raze a racetrack rather than let it become a casino. It was converted into an industrial park instead, adding actual value to the local economy.

He also told me that he and several fellow academics correctly predicted that the expansion of casinos in the state of Illinois and the city of Detroit, Michigan, would lead to fiscal difficulties.

BACK TO THE MOUNTAINS What happens when a small town is suddenly deluged by a flood of money?

It turns out that the mountain towns of my youth might be a good place to find out, as I learned by speaking with a pair of historians who have studied them.

Oddly, the fates of Black Hawk and Central City widely diverged, even though they are only about a mile apart, five minutes by car. That’s because the first town you come to when driving up from Denver is Black Hawk, and that’s where the overwhelming majority of the gamblers stop.

After all, they’re not up in the mountains to see the sights.

Tom Noel is a professor of history at the University of Colorado-Denver, who goes by the sobriquet “Dr. Colorado.” He told me that, in Central City, much of the historic look of the town remains. That’s because lower demand meant that casino owners simply refinished the exteriors of the buildings, leaving them pretty much

“If you put the casinos in the Catskills,” he warned, “you’ll definitely have drunk driving, since driving is one of the few ways to get there.”

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the way they were. You only notice the flashing lights and ringing bells once you walk inside.”

In Black Hawk, by contrast, the casinos ran wild. “It now has a 34-story hotel, the Ameristar Hotel, in the middle of this little one- and two-story mining town.”

He described suddenly seeing the incongruous structure jutting up out of the landscape while hiking through the surrounding forests.

Eric Clements, a historian at Southeast Missouri State University who has studied the mining towns of the West, including Black Hawk and Central City, told me that the casinos use their power to simply change or bend any preservation law they wish to circumvent.

Normally, a 34-story hotel would not be permitted to mar the appearance of a national historic district. But the casinos’ lawyers were able to somehow successfully argue that the proposed building was in consonance with the town’s status.

“If the people of the town can bring one lawyer, the casino can bring 50,” he explained.

(Bizarrely, the casinos of Black Hawk have aided preservation elsewhere in the state, because the law that permitted the establishment of the casinos also set up a preservation fund from the tax proceeds.

To date, over $300 million has gone to preserve other Colorado communities.)

As it happens, Professor Noel doesn’t believe that there are many opponents of the casinos left in either town. Property taxes skyrocketed, driving people out.

(Of course, some values went up too, but the property taxes were based on “highest and best use,” which eventually meant a casino and nothing else.) “Anyone who opposed them moved away,” he explained. The people who still live there

work for the casinos.

In fact, there aren’t even any regular stores left in Black Hawk. Just try to find a grocery, barber or drug store.

It’s all casinos.

CORRUPTION? The complete demise of a town is not probably in the cards for New York. In the three mountain towns in Colorado, there weren’t any limits on the number of casinos that could be built. So they took over Black Hawk entirely. That couldn’t happen here.

But the story does show the power that casinos can wield. Laws they don’t like can simply be changed or “reinterpreted,” as political opposition is slowly, or not so slowly, eroded.

(There’s another lesson as well. Professor Noel told me that most of the locally owned casinos, or “mom-and-pop casinos,” as he called them, couldn’t compete economically with the chain casinos whose headquarters are in Las Vegas or overseas. Most profits therefore flow out of state.)

Which brings us to a disturbing question that should bother all New Yorkers, even those who won’t be living near a casino: Have the casinos corrupted our government, perhaps through the simple stratagem of making careful campaign contributions?

There are several reasons to think so.

One is simply the overwhelming evidence that gambling isn’t great for a state. Why would the politicians ignore all that?

There was also a slimy feel to the way the ballot question was phrased.

It read, “The proposed amendment to section 9 of article 1 of the Constitution would allow the Legislature to authorize up to seven casinos in New York State for the legislated purposes of promoting job growth, increasing aid to schools, and permitting local governments to lower property taxes through revenues generated.

Shall the amendment be approved?”

The mention of those “legislated purposes” certainly made gambling sound good. In fact, there was a lawsuit that unsuccessfully attempted to have the language made more neutral.

The placement of the question raised questions as well. It, together with the

other six questions, was on the back of the paper ballot; many voters didn’t realize they should turn it over. According to news reports, only around one percent of voters voted on the ballot initiatives.

It’s hard to say that was a clear advantage for one side or the other, but it certainly makes you wonder.

As does Governor Cuomo’s strongarm tactics, including, reportedly, toward Jewish politicians and activists.

“New York is becoming as corrupt as Illinois,” Professor Kindt said.

But David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values, who campaigned heavily against the casino bill, gave me a different perspective on politicians’ apparent ardor for casinos. The taxes they generate are free money.

“They don’t think they’re going to be held accountable the way they are for other taxes. It’s cynical. It’s a take-from-thehave-nots-and-give-to-the-haves-type of situation, and it’s surrounded by extreme deception. The campaign donations are meaningful. But I think what’s really going on, why we have bipartisan agreement, is because it’s free money for government.

“In some ways I blame the public too, because they, especially the conservatives, have so punished politicians for raising taxes over the years that any politician who raises taxes is seen as bad, bad, bad.

So how can they raise money? This is what happens.”

If he’s right, at least we don’t have to feel like the whole government’s been bought and sold.

WHAT TO DO Is there anything people can do to stop casinos from showing up in their communities? Most experts I spoke to were somewhat pessimistic.

According to the actual legislation, community disapproval is supposed to keep the Gaming Board from approving a bid on a specific site. But whether it will really keep the casinos out is unclear. And even if one town succeeds, the next one over may take it in gladly.

At the end of the day, Anita Bedell’s advice to communities facing the prospect of a local casino may be the best: “They have to be ever-watchful.” 

UNDERSTANDING

compulsive gambling RABBI DR. ABRAHAM JOSHUA TWERSKI, M.D.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Twerski is an ordained rabbi and psychiatrist specializing in addictions. The author of over 60 books, including Compulsive Gambling: More Than Dreidel, Rabbi Twerski also lectures extensively on addictions and other topics such as stress, self-esteem and spirituality. Rabbi Twerski is the founder of the Gateway Rehabilitation Center, an alcohol and drug dependence treatment facility that has been ranked one of the nation’s top 12. He recently spoke to Ami about New York’s Proposal 1.

A proposal to allow the New York State legislature to authorize and regulate up to seven casinos was passed this week. What was your reaction to that?

It reminded me of the cartoon where a child asks an elder, “Why don’t you just legalize illegal stuff?”

One of the things I point out is that there were two populations in Chumash that were destroyed. One was Sodom; the other was the generation of the flood. The reason was that as long as something is illegal and forbidden, there’s hope that people will avoid it. Once you make it permissible, there’s no hope anymore. That’s what happened in Sodom. They had a set of laws that were corrupt, so you could be a criminal but by their definition you weren’t one.

You could be a tzaddik, even though you stole. The same thing happened with the generation of the flood. They therefore had to be wiped out because there was no possibility they would ever do teshuvah.

That’s where we are now with gambling. Gambling is an addiction. Not everybody falls prey to it, just like not everyone who takes a l’chayim becomes an alcoholic. But if a person has a tendency towards addiction and is exposed to alcohol or drugs or gambling, the risk is that he may become addicted. This is particularly true of young people, who are very vulnerable. Gambling among young people has become widespread, including among yeshivah students. Children steal from their parents in order to gamble. Adults commit credit card fraud and embezzle or go into unbelievable debt, and if they get into severe enough trouble they go to jail.

They swear on a stack of Bibles they will never, ever do it again. But it’s a promise they cannot keep, because gambling is an addiction over which a person has no control.

Not everyone who goes into a casino becomes an addict.

But if you don’t go into a casino, you’re not going to become an addict.

New York is building more casinos. Other states have legalized marijuana. What’s your feeling about that trend?

I think we’re headed to a situation like Sodom that legalizes everything. That’s the easy way out. Instead of dealing with the problem, legalize it.

Does an addict get a kick out of gambling when it’s illegal?

You mean because it’s forbidden fruit? No. Alcohol isn’t forbidden but people become addicted to it. Legal drugs aren’t forbidden but people become addicted to them much more often than cocaine or heroin. The legality of it isn’t the challenge. It’s the fact that these behaviors tickle the pleasure sensation of the brain. And a person who’s vulnerable to addiction—and we don’t really understand what that means—when he has that particular high, he is virtually compelled to go back and do it again. That continues until he comes to terms with his addiction and gets the proper help for it.

I will say that cocaine and heroin addictions are difficult addictions. But a gambling addiction is much harder to get rid of than a drug addiction. There’s no external chemical involved, but there are certainly theories that the gambling high is created by something that stimulates the brain to discard one of its neurohormones and causes a sensation of pleasure. It makes no difference to the gambler whether he wins or loses. He gets the same high. It’s the act of gambling that does it.

Is it the release of dopamine?

It may be dopamine or it may be other chemicals.

Are you saying that a gambler gets a greater high than a drug addict?

I’m not sure that what the gambler experiences is a greater high. But compulsive gambling is more difficult to overcome.

Do gamblers and drug addicts share the same personality traits, or do some people have a tendency towards a particular type of addiction?

If they’re not the same personality when they begin they’re the same personality when they end, because addiction causes changes in a person. An active addict cannot tell the truth. Even if he didn’t start off as a liar, the addiction turns him into one.

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The act of gambling seems to be harmless, as opposed to drug addiction, where the act itself damages the body.

Yes, but taking an occasional l’chayim doesn’t cause any damages. The damage is when one loses control of the addiction. The person who goes to a casino and says he’s going to stay until he blows $500, that’s controlled gambling, just like there’s controlled drinking. But if the person has whatever the propensity is towards addiction, he loses control and no amount of losses can restrain him.

Is every dependency an addiction?

No. There are some dependencies that may be addictive but aren’t harmful. For example, a person who lives harmoniously with his wife may be addicted to that lifestyle. If he’s separated from his wife he experiences symptoms of withdrawal. Nothing wrong with that. Harmful addiction is doing something that is wrong, particularly if you know it’s wrong, and you can’t help yourself.

Are you scared that building new casinos will attract new gamblers?

I think the more you make it available, the more likely people will become addicted—and especially young people.

Young people are looking for thrills. If you put the thrills right at their doorstep, chances are they’ll be pulled in and seduced.

What can we do now that New York is determined to turn the Catskills into another Atlantic City?

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I think parents have to set a pattern of controlled behavior so children see how their parents use alcohol and legitimate drugs. There are parents who pop Valium many times a day because they’ve become addicted, and the child sees that. There are parents who gamble. They have to realize that they’re setting a pattern for their children. They also have to be tremendously alert and not be in denial when they think that something’s missing from the house. They have to entertain the possibility that the child may have stolen it in order to gamble.

If a parent knows his child is stealing to gamble, what’s the next step?

To immediately get in touch with an expert on gambling.

Don’t try to do it yourself. You might not realize that your efforts to discipline your child, using whatever method, aren’t adequate. You need expert guidance.

You wouldn’t take out your child’s appendix; addiction isn’t a do-it-yourself thing either. Gambling can be very tricky. If the possibility of compulsive gambling exists, you have to get to an expert to find out what to do.

“It makes no difference to the gambler whether he wins or loses. He gets the same high.”

How do you locate a true expert?

You can contact the State Association for Gambling or you can call someone. I get calls all the time and refer them to someone else, like Arnie Wexler. Arnie’s last bet was placed 48 years ago. I wrote up his story in my book on gambling.

What other advice would you share?

If someone is dealing with his own addiction, I strongly urge him to go to the appropriate group of recovering addicts: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, whatever. Just this morning I had a call from a woman with a son in his 20s who told her, “Mama, I know I’m sick. I’m an addict.” So we have to get some help for him. But I also told her to go to a group for family members of addicts. I urge people to attend these groups because there they hear not from psychiatrists but from people who have themselves struggled with the problem of a family member who’s an addict, and they know what to do and what not to do. Nothing is as valuable as experience.

Is there a cure for addiction, or do addicts struggle with that problem their whole lives?

Well, my mentor in alcoholism used to say about himself, “I

am a recovering alcoholic.”

At that time he was 40 years sober. He said, “I will never say I’m recovered, because that would mean I no longer have the disease. I have the disease; it’s just arrested. The only time I will have recovered is if I die sober.” When he died at age 84, the word went around the fellowship: “John has recovered.” As it says, “Do not believe in yourself until the day of your death.”

Are most people who gamble in casinos addicts?

No. Most people who drink aren’t alcoholics.

So why should we deny most people their recreational pleasures because some people will become addicted to it?

That’s a good question. There are already casinos in existence.

There are existing forms of gambling. I just don’t think we have to put it right in front of people’s noses, especially youngsters.

Has there been an upsurge in addiction in our youth, or has human nature remained the same?

Human nature remains the same, but we’re living in a world that is totally different from the one I grew up in. When I was

ten years old, we could not have imagined that the purpose of life would be to have fun. We had fun. But there was just too much misery around to say that pleasure was the be all and end all. That’s all changed now, because so many miseries have been eradicated and technology has given us so many kinds of pleasure that we’ve turned into the most hedonistic society that ever existed. We’ve come to believe that pleasure is our due; life is for instantaneous pleasure. I think that mindset feeds addiction.

Does all the available pleasure make people look for new things to get a high?

Right. People always look for something different.

The problem with the Internet is that it hits a very sensitive area, not only for the individual because he’s in violation of Torah behavior but because it kills marriages. Wives feel betrayed, and it’s very difficult to heal from that kind of betrayal.

Unfortunately, marriages are being killed left and right by Internet addiction.

Do you think that Internet addicts would have been other kinds of addicts if not for the Internet?

Not necessarily. We don’t know the answer to why some people are attracted to one thing and some people to another.

A person who’s an Internet addict, had he not been exposed to it, might not have gone into alcohol or drugs. Some people seem to have an addictive personality and are addicted to a dozen different things.

What about Internet addiction?

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Can you replace one addiction with another?

It can happen.

A final thought?

Just today I was writing about the brachah we recite every morning, thanking Hashem “shelo asani eved,” for not having been created a slave. Freedom is the most precious thing in the world. And yet, the person who does not want to have cancer or heart disease but cannot stop smoking has made himself into a slave.

That’s what happens when we allow our habits to tyrannize us and assume control; we’ve thrown away our freedom and become enslaved. People become slaves to smoking, alcohol, drugs, food. I think it’s important for a person to work very hard to maintain his freedom because it’s a gift to mankind. 

4O YEARS in ONE BOOK The Inside Story of a Rabbi’s Therapeutic Work with the Sisters of St. Francis

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ARNIE WEXLER, A CERTIFIED COMPULSIVE GAMBLING COUNSELOR (CCGC), AND THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE COUNCIL ON COMPULSIVE GAMBLING OF NEW JERSEY FOR EIGHT YEARS, IS ONE OF THE FOREMOST EXPERTS ON COMPULSIVE GAMBLING IN THE UNITED STATES. HE HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN HELPING COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS FOR OVER 30 YEARS.

UNDERSTANDING

recovery WITH ARNIE WEXLER

At what age did you become a compulsive gambler?

I started gambling when I was seven or eight. I was flipping baseball cards, shooting marbles, pitching pennies against the wall and playing cards in the streets of Brooklyn.

That’s how it started.

Do you think you were already destined then to become an addict?

A lot of people did what I did as a kid and never got in trouble, just like a lot of people go to a bar and have a drink and don’t become alcoholics. But some of us do. The truth is there’s no way to figure out who’s going to become a compulsive gambler. I personally believe it’s in the genes. Some people get addicted and some people don’t.

When did you realize you were an addict and not just some guy playing on the street corner?

That’s a tough question. It’s very difficult to figure out when the line is crossed from social gambling to compulsive gambling. But let me share some of my personal recollections: Memorial Day 1951. I was 14 years old, making 50 cents an hour after school in the garment center. I went to Roosevelt Raceway and won $54. I thought to myself, What an easy way to make money! What a jerk I am to make 50 cents an hour. I’m gonna be a millionaire by the time I’m 30, and it’s gonna come from gambling. I was hooked. By 17 I was stealing to support my gambling addiction. So in answer to your question, I think I got hooked as a teenager.

Did you have any run-ins with the law?

There was one incident. I once got arrested because some cops thought I was a bookmaker. I was actually on the phone with a bookmaker making a bet when two policemen pushed their way into the phone booth and arrested me. I got out on bail that night. That was the only time I was arrested.

She was and she wasn’t. She knew I gambled because she used to go with me to Monticello. We went to the racetrack every night. I was working in North Bergen. I’d leave work at 4 p.m., pick her up and drive up to the mountains. The next morning I’d wake up at 4 a.m. to get to work on time. This went on for seven years. But she wasn’t aware that I was stealing.

To whom did you reach out when you decided that enough was enough?

Somebody had told me there was a 12-step program in New York and that they straightened out money problems.

So in my sick mind I thought that meant they’d pay off my gambling debts! I sought them out and found them on February 12, 1968. Instead of paying off my debts they gave me what we call a “budget program” and told me I needed to find two more jobs. That was in March.

Is that when you stopped gambling?

I stopped gambling eight weeks later, on April 10, 1968.

And I haven’t gambled since.

To what do you attribute your strength to kick your addiction?

To the people who stretched out their hands to help me.

Did you need to replace the gambling with other things to fill that void in your life?

Everyone has to replace his addiction with something else. You hear compulsive gamblers talk about the high they get from gambling. I was able to channel that into helping people. I get my high from seeing a new person come for help and then seeing him three months later. I ran the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling for eight years. I ran two national hotlines. I have one right now: 888-LASTBET. My wife of 52 years ran a treatment center in New Jersey for 17 years.

When did you hit rock bottom?

I was at Monticello Racetrack the night it opened. I think it was ’57 or ’58. I had gone up to the Catskill Mountains because my boss had a bungalow he let me use for two weeks. I ended up blowing $400.

She herself never had any addiction issues? She was just married to an addict?

I got married when I was 23, but didn’t go for help until I was 30. I was the plant manager for a Fortune 500 company. It was the biggest dress manufacturer in America at the time. I was stealing every day from them to support my gambling addiction.

Yeah. A lot of ladies are married to compulsive gamblers.

And a lot of compulsive gamblers are Jewish. They spend Passover in Atlantic City. They have Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services there. The biggest days at the racetrack used to be Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover. All the Jews would be off from work and they’d go to the track.

And if you look at the history of the racetrack, you’ll see that’s the case. Just check the dates to see how attendance swelled on those days.

Was your wife aware of your problem?

Rabbi Twerski told me that curing a gambling addic-

Did you seek help at that point?

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

69

A dreidel competition

tion is more difficult than curing a drug addiction.

Do you agree?

It’s never cured. It only gets arrested. It’s not cured. I know people who went back to gambling after 38 years.

Let’s get to the root of it. Let’s say you and I go to the casino. You’re not a compulsive gambler and I am. We both win $100. You go out and buy a nice pair of shoes or a meal in a restaurant. I think to myself, “Wow, today’s my lucky day. I can turn this into a million.”

Another scenario: We both lose $100. You get upset because you lost the money and walk away, but I can’t. I’ve got to get my money back. The point is that compulsive gamblers chase. Normal people don’t chase.

Give a drug addict or alcoholic $1,000 and he’s passed out and lying on the ground before the money is gone.

Similarly, the gambler goes through the $1,000, signs a marker, signs a check, sells some jewelry… But unlike drug addiction, it’s an invisible disease. There are no track marks or dilated pupils. Compulsive gamblers hide it well and don’t seek help until they really hit rock bottom. I’ve gotten calls from women telling me that their husbands are compulsive gamblers. How long are you married? Thirty70 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / N O V E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 1 3 / / 1 0 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4

three years. When did you find out he gambles? Three weeks ago, when the FBI arrested him for embezzlement from the insurance company he works for.

What was your reaction to New York State’s recent mandate to build more casinos?

Eventually it’s going to reach a saturation point. I think we’re nearing that now. New Jersey is opening up Internet gambling sites this month. People are going to be able to gamble in their pajamas in the middle of the night from the comfort of home.

A lot of states think that creating more gambling venues is an easy and painless way to raise money, but they’re destroying their own populations. There are tons of people who are addicted to gambling. My guess is that about five percent of the population is addicted.

What percentage of people going to Atlantic City are doing so out of compulsion?

I don’t know. It’s hidden, so it’s hard to tell.

Is there anything we can do as parents?

“The addiction is never cured. It only gets arrested.

I know people who went back to gambling after 38 years.”

A lot of parents don’t understand how addictive gambling is. I’ve gotten calls from parents who tell me, “Well, my kid isn’t doing drugs and other stuff, so it’s okay.” In some cases it’s the parents who are addicted, so they take the kids along. But in my opinion, gambling is the worst.

you helped?

In what sense?

Who supports this organization?

It’s worse because you can’t see it, and the gambler has no saturation point so he can keep on going and going: Credit cards. Checks. Markers in a casino. Calling a bookmaker and betting.

I just had a case three weeks ago where I got a 27-yearold guy into treatment. He gambled 54 hours in a row without stopping. On the way home he was involved in a crash on Route 80 and ended up in the emergency room.

Now he’s in treatment.

We don’t have an organization. My wife and I run a hotline. We pay for it.

Aside from going for expert help, what would you advise someone whose child has a gambling problem to do?

The first thing is not to bail him out and enable him. The worst thing a parent can do is pay off debts for a young gambler. All they’re doing is sending the message, “We’ll take care of it if you get into trouble.” A classic case is this Jewish lady from Houston who’s been calling me for years.

She’s 80-something years old. The conversations always go like this: “My zinaleh (son) is in trouble. He needs $6,000.

He needs $8,000, $20,000.” She’s been bailing him out for years. One day, when she eventually dies, he’ll go through all her money like that.

If someone has a gambling problem, get him help. Call me at 888-LAST-BET, and I’ll help you.

What does that help consist of?

Some people need therapy. Some need a 12-step program. Some need both. The gambler needs to go to Gamblers Anonymous, and the parents have to go to GamAnon. There’s plenty of counseling available today. The gambler will never be able to stop on his own. I used to tell my wife a thousand times, “I’m never going to gamble again.” I’ve been in recovery for 45 years. I’m still waiting for the first person to come and tell me he did it on his own. Once you cross the line and become a compulsive gambler, it’s impossible.

I have no idea. All I can tell you is that I’ve run two national hotlines. I don’t think anybody has spoken to more compulsive gamblers than I have over the last 45 years.

When I called that number a gentleman answered the phone. Are those volunteers?

No. That’s the treatment center that answers the phone, and they’re supposed to refer everyone back to me.

Why do you think Rabbi Twerski found your story so fascinating?

I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.

From the perspective of a casino owner, you’re hurting his business.

We work for a lot of casinos. We train their employees; we teach them how to help people with a gambling problem.

Why would the casinos want to push away customers?

Some states mandate it. And some of the people in the industry are really concerned about hurting people. Not a lot of them, but some.

Tobacco companies have been hit with lawsuits for feeding addictions. Could casinos also be sued?

Absolutely. A lot of them are truly scared. I think it’s a possibility.

Final thoughts on what happened in New York.

A lot of lives are going to be destroyed by constantly adding all this new gambling. They’re clueless about this addiction.

Did they reach out to you before they put it on the ballot?

Is that true for any compulsion?

Not to me personally. But I’ve worked with the state of New Jersey on this issue for years. I ran its Council on Compulsive Gambling.

I can’t talk about other addictions. I don’t know about drugs or alcohol or any of that stuff, but I know about gambling.

I guess it didn’t help. There’s a lot of gambling going on in New Jersey.

How many gamblers have

You betcha. And there are plenty of people from the Orthodox community in the casinos too.  1 0 K I S L E V 5 7 7 4 / / N OV E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 1 3 / / A M I M AG A Z I N E

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“

GAMBLING in the eyes of the

TORAH

…AND THE FESTIVAL OF CHANUKAH

BY RABBI MOSHE TAUB

F

“

or she has felled many victims, and the number of her slain is enormous” (Mishlei 7:26).

The above verse is how R’ Yitzchak ben Sheshes Perfes (d. 1408) described the dangers of gambling and its pull toward criminal activity and addiction, regardless of whether or not it is deemed permissible by the letter of the law (shu”t Rivash 432).

Gambling is not a new topic to halachah. In fact, the very word “gamble” may have its roots in the Hebrew language.

The word is derived from the Middle English “gamel,” which is also the root of the English word “game.” It is perhaps not a stretch to speculate that the Hebrew letter gimmel, the winning marker in the Chanukah game of dreidel, led to the word “gamel,” which in turn evolved into “gamble.”

The objective of this short monograph is to give the reader a primer on the halachic view of gambling.

But what is gambling? Does buying a state lottery ticket, participating in a Chinese auction or playing dreidel fall under that rubric? What about “playing” the stock market?

To understand the Torah view of gambling, and how that

term is defined, it is worthwhile to clarify an essential debate on this topic.

The Shulchan Aruch (Ch”M 370:2) and the Rama (ad loc. and 207:13) disagree on the very nature of gambling and when it is prohibited. Based on a debate that goes back to the Gemara (Sanhedrin, 24 ff.), the two arguments are as follows: View 1: Asmachta Gambling, like rolling dice (i.e., “craps”; Rambam in Peirush Hamishnayos on Shabbos 148b explains that kubiyah, dice rolling, is simply the generic term Chazal use for various forms of gambling), invokes a very real monetary issue. That issue is known as “asmachta.”

The halachic concept of asmachta is broad and has ramifications far beyond gambling (see Pischei Hachoshen 8:21, 1–12 at length), but for the purpose of our discussion the following explanation will suffice: In order for an exchange of title to take place between Person A and Person B, there must be a realistic agreement between the two parties and a relinquishing of their respective ownership. Rolling dice and similar games do not seem to have such a complete renunciation. When Person A puts his money down on a number or a color, he is not, at that

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moneylender, makes a deal with Antonio to lend him money on condition that if he fails to pay him back, he is permitted to take a “pound of flesh.” (Many believe that this fictional work has contributed to much anti-Semitism in the world.) Asks R’ Zevin, would Shylock win the support of a beis din for such a condition?

In a lengthy opening footnote, R’ Zevin explores the parameters of asmachta and whether such a strange and painful stipulation was ever truly intended.

In summation: For a kinyan to take place, or an exchange of goods, the conditions must be both bound in reality and allow for a relinquishment of title. Winnings from gambling would therefore be deemed “stolen.”

moment, relinquishing his funds. Indeed, he is hoping not only to get that money back but also to make more! He never really believes he will lose.

Accordingly, a Jew who gambles would be committing some form of theft by taking his winnings (re: Is this Biblical or Rabbinic, see Bach siman 207:16; the Ketzos, ad loc. #1; Magen Avraham Oh”Ch siman 441:2; see also Shulchan Aruch

Oh”Ch siman 322 for how this would affect certain laws of Shabbos. Cf. Tosafos Shabbos 149b, s.v. “mei.”)

To demonstrate how far-reaching the rule of asmachta is, consider the following interesting example. Rav Zevin, z”l, in his much-celebrated Leor HaHalachah (p. 310) includes a fascinating essay on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In the play, the Jewish character, Shylock the

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View 2: Yishuv Olam The Shulchan Aruch (Ch”M ibid.; see also siman 34:16) brings a second opinion that is supported by the Rama called “yishuv olam.” According to this view, gambling does not fall under the asmachta rule and is therefore not theft (see Tur); rather, the concern with gambling is a philosophical one. A person who gambles is not taking part in the human endeavor necessary to build, maintain and improve civilization (cf. Rambam; see Gra on Ch”M 203). In other words, “This is no way for a Jewish boy to earn money.” The Talmud is replete with laws derived from this and similar concepts, i.e., the need to play an active role in assuring a functional society. The Rama (ad loc.) rules according to this view, and asserts that the minhag (among Ashkenazim) is that as long as someone has another job, his gambling does not fall into this category. By no means should this be interpreted as indicating that the Rama and like-minded poskim condone gambling (see Rivash with which we opened), but rather that in order to characterize the act alone as forbidden, which would invalidate someone as a witness, certain conditions must be met.

As the Gemara notes, there is a critical distinction between Views 1 and 2.

According to View 1 (asmachta), any single act of gambling is forbidden; according to View 2 only a perpetual player, and cer-

tainly one who has no other profession, would be in violation of the law.

We would be remiss not to add a caveat to the more lenient view. In this writer’s recent article in Ami, “The History and Halachah of Smoking,” we discussed the issue of addiction in halachah. In a scholarly article, “Functional Imaging of Neural Responses to Expectancy and Experience of Monetary Gains and Losses,” Dr. Hans Breiter of Massachusetts General Hospital shows that people who are addicted to narcotics and those who are addicted to gambling have similar brain activations.

Furthermore, the issue of taking on a new addiction or a new demanding pleasure is discussed elsewhere by Rav Moshe (Y”D 3:35), and he is indeed very strict.

The negius of an addiction is so profound that it causes one to wonder whether the addict himself should be the one to decide if his addiction of choice is halachically acceptable. (See, however, the amazing words of the Chazon Ish in Emunah Ubitachon 3:30, quoted in Shaarei Aharon on Devarim 16:19, where he explains that halachah often does allow a person who has a stake in a psak to be its arbiter.)

For a wonderful treatment of this topic and on addiction in general, see Judaism and Psychology by Moshe HaLevi Spero, Ktav Publishing, Yeshiva University Press, 1980, pages 120-141.

With the above in mind, let us consider the halachah in many common examples.

Dreidel and Lotteries Rabbi Dovid Grossman of Bais HaVaad of Lakewood points out that buying a lottery ticket may not be a concern even according to View 1. Unlike actual money or chips on a table, a lottery ticket is an item that has been purchased. No one thinks he will ever get that dollar back.

While he may hope to win something, the potential winnings are seen as a separate enterprise.

This is all the more true with a lottery for the benefit of a yeshivah, where the very act of buying a ticket is considered giving charity. Thus even those who view gambling as asmachta/theft may agree that in this case, the buyer does in fact relinquish

Accordingly, a Jew who gambles would be committing some form of theft by taking his winnings ownership of his funds.

Furthermore, in Volume 1 of Mishpatei Hatorah (R’ Spitz), the point is made that not only is a lottery not gambling, due to the fact that an item (a ticket) is being purchased, but that the ticket is only worth its cost in damages, regardless of whether it is the winning one (provided Person A destroys Person B’s ticket before it was announced as the winning one)!

Every winter Motzoei Shabbos, I arrange an Avos U’banim learning program. Like most such programs, mine ends with a raffle. Is this a concern? Applying what we have learned above, it is clear that this is not a concern. In fact, the raffle tickets aren’t even purchased; each child receives one upon entry. Issues of theft, therefore, do not apply.

In fact, every year during the week of Parshas Pinchas, I share a fascinating teshuvah with my baalei batim by the Chavos Yair (d. 1702) siman 61, where he discusses the rules governing lotteries and raffles (for example: What if, after the drawing, one notices a ticket has been left out?), implicitly indicating that raffles are halachically permissible. The Shvus Yaakov (d. 1733) also enumerates the rules pertaining to raffles (refer to Pischei Hachoshen). Chavatzeles Hasharon on Bamidbar (page 882) even has a beguiling discussion of whether a goral (lottery) may be utilized when lives are at stake (e.g., whom to throw off of a sinking ship; see Sefer Chasidim siman 679; Margolios ed., with footnotes Mekor Chesed).

However, we must note that even the more innocuous lotteries and raffles are severely frowned upon if not deemed outright forbidden by Rav Ovadia Yosef, z”l, (shu”t Yabia Omer 7:6).

And what about Chanukah? Based on all of the above it would seem, at least according to View 1 (Shulchan Aruch), that betting

with money should be considered theft!

The Chavos Yair (siman 126) cites the custom of playing games, even cards, on Chanukah. The Chofetz Chaim (Biur Halachah, siman 670, s.v. “v’nohagin”) warns us to stay far away from such activities (see also Aruch Hashulchan; cf. Minhag Yisrael Torah). Likewise, Rav Yechiel Michel Stern’s Otzar Hayedios quotes certain chasidic masters as saying that the gematria of “cards” is the same as “Satan!”

Others, however, ascribe great significance to some of these “Chanukah games.”

For instance, the Bnei Yissaschar points out that the “gimmel,” “nun,” “shin” and “hei’ of the dreidel stand for the four powers of man: gufani, nafshi, sichli and hakol (physical, spiritual, intellectual and all-encompassing); they also share the same gematria as Mashiach (Piskei Teshuvos, ibid.)! In fact, the Chasam Sofer sought to participate in such games on one night of Chanukah.

The previous Klausenberger Rebbe and others have explained why this is not considered halachic gambling: These rules are relaxed by family gatherings (see Oh”Ch 322).

Regarding small sums of money, people do not care and/or easily relinquish their title so there is no issue of asmachta (see Hilchos Ribbis, Y”D, siman 170, and Rabbi Reisman’s The Laws of Ribbis, page 33 ff).

Based on the Rama (siman 207), placing all the money on the owner’s table may sometimes eliminate issues of theft.

These games are not what they once were, nor do we fear the encroachment of professional gamblers, so we can be lenient.

This last view, citing a change in the times, found in the writings of an Acharon of the previous century (Rav Y.C. Sonnenfeld), would need to be viewed in light of today’s realities, where we do find a return to professional gamblers and casino playing becoming more normative.

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It would be advisable that the winnings of such games be donated to tzedakah.

Points Not Covered What did the meraglim do wrong? Is it forbidden to say, after a trip to Eretz Yisrael, that the weather was hot? Indeed, many of the major infractions found in Chumash are not cited in the Shulchan Aruch. Sometimes a focus on halachic issues blinds us to the concept of “kedoshim tihyu” (“you shall be holy”), the “fifth Shulchan Aruch.”

Casino gambling is not just a form of gambling, nor is it “only” an addiction. It is broken marriages, pritzus, debts and much ye’ush (despair).

The Shulchan Aruch is but one, albeit essential, element of our deveikus with the Ribbono Shel Olam. Indeed, searching for halachic sanction can be its own form of procrastination from doing what we already know is right in the eyes of Hashem.

As many Rishonim and Acharonim teach, non-Jews are enjoined to keep not only the Seven Noahide Laws, but also any additional laws that are based on simple human seichel like kibbud av va’eim. We must then conclude that Jews are also obligated in commonsense issues that are not necessarily found in our codes (see the Netziv’s haskamah to Ahavas Chesed by the Chofetz Chaim; Rabbeinu Nissim Gaon’s hakdamah to Talmud; cf. Derech Sichah, Vayeitzei, with Midrash Rabbah, beginning of Lech Lecha.)

When I was in the 11th grade I approached my rebbe, Rabbi Shmuelevitz, and proclaimed, “If only we had ‘v’yo’atzeinu kevatechilah’ (the prophets and advisors we daven for in Shemoneh Esrei, yearning for the times of Mashiach), then I would know what to do with my life.”

His response was a broad smile and the comment: “You already know what’s right, but now you want to blame it on the galus!” 

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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.

Trouble With Women

E

ver notice how some native Yiddish or Hebrew speakers mistreat women? I mean the word, of course, pronouncing it the same way as “woman”?

(Most Yiddish and Hebrew speakers I know are entirely deferential to the actual ladies in their

lives.)

Last week’s column, you may recall, was about the words “then” and “than” (and ended with the two ways of reading the sentence “women make better doctors than men,” one intriguing, the other obvious).

As it happens, just as “then” and “than” are spelled and pronounced differently, so are “woman” and “women,” the former word referring to a single woman (even if she’s married—am I confusing you?) and the latter to two or more of the species.

The spelling difference is limited to the penultimate letter of each word. (“Pen” means “almost” and “ultimate” means “the last”; so “penultimate” means the next-to-last. You probably remember that from a column in this space many weeks ago, but one can’t be too careful.)

But the pronunciation difference asserts itself in both of the vowels in each of the words. To wit: The “o” of woman is pronounced like the “oo” in “cook” (which, of course, many a woman does); the “a,” like the “o” in “won,” which every woman in an argument has done (or, if you prefer, like the one in “hon” which is how many a woman sales clerk in Bal’mer, also known as Baltimore, addresses customers—as in “How can I help you, hon?”).

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Whereas in the word “women,” both the “o” and the “e” are pronounced like the “i” in “win” (which all women do in arguments).

In other words “woman” rhymes with frummin (as in “He’s really frummin out these days, isn’t he?”) and “women” with the Chassidishe way of saying the same thing (“He’s really frimin out these days, no?”).

Interestingly, “woman” is not a straightforward linguistic form of “man.” It began, rather, as a compound word comprised of “wif” (Old English for “wife”) and “man.” “Man” meant any human being, and “wif” meant a “wife” or female human. At some point the two words were, somewhat redundantly, combined, so that “women” really means “wife-man,” or, so to say, the kind of man that is not male.

(And speaking of “wife,” that word’s plural is not “wifes” but “wives,” just as the plurals of knife and life are knives and lives. Just don’t think too much about “fifes.”)

Even more interestingly, it’s not only English in which the respective words for “man” and “woman” have different roots; the two words are even more dissimilar in other languages.

For instance, in French, they are “homme” and “femme”; in German, Mann and Frau; in Spanish, “hombre” and “mujer”; in Swahili, “mtu” and “mwanamke.”

In fact, only in Hebrew, to the best of this writer’s vast knowledge, are the words for man and woman truly related, indeed, as the Torah recounts, the latter is derived directly from the former.

Just as Chava, of course, was from Adam.

•

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JOURNEY B Y R A B B I S H OL OM F R I E D M A N N

A W E E K LY L O O K A T T H E K L E I N M A N F A M I LY H O L O C A U S T E D U C A T I O N C E N T E R

Guilty Bystanders HISTORICAL EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT THE CHURCH COULD, AND DID, FIGHT BACK AGAINST NAZI GENOCIDE—WHEN IT BOTHERED THEM

A

s the Nazis unleashed the horror and fury of the Holocaust across Europe, was there anyone they feared?

Could it really be that in twentieth century Europe, no one was able to stop the murders?

During the Third Reich’s reign of terror, there was one instance where the Nazis had to actually stop killing people because of public backlash. Here is the story of the T4 program and how it was officially suspended.

It is well-known that the Nazis were obsessed with racial cleansing, which included the extermination of men, women and children with all sorts of physical and mental disabilities. This was a priority as Hitler ym”sh rose to power, but until the war broke out, it was difficult to implement. As medical facilities grew crowded due to the war, hospitals and institutions for the mentally ill were required to submit lists of patients with serious disabilities. SS men, wearing white coats to give a medical appearance, loaded these unfortunate souls onto buses and took them to “transition centers,” to avoid patients being traced by their families.

They were then taken to different facili-

ties throughout Germany where they were gassed to death.

The “doctors” who operated these centers spent much of their days producing death certificates listing false causes of death, such as “complications from pneumonia” or appendicitis. Thousands of families began receiving small urns filled with ashes—the only remainder of their chil-

of medical personnel proved impossible to keep under wraps for long. In the towns where killing centers were located, many people saw the loaded buses arrive, but no patient ever left. They saw the smoke rising from the crematoria and became certain of the murders. In the town of Hadamar, bits of human hair would rain from the sky.

The protests spread to Bavaria, and it was there that Hitler was jeered by an angry crowd—the only time he was opposed in public during his twelve-year rule. dren. Tiergarten 4 was a suburban Berlin address where such massacres took place, hence the name “T4” was given to this horrific practice.

Many of these patients had families who cared deeply for their welfare. After transfers, they were told they could not visit patients due to wartime conditions. This did not prevent suspicion, and indeed, such a huge operation involving hundreds

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In the face of such evidence, the Catholic Church could no longer remain silent.

Thousands of patients were disappearing from hospitals and asylums, and their fate was public knowledge. While some clergy protested privately, it was not until July of 1941 that letters of protest were read in churches across Germany. Many citizens now began voicing their opposition, but the strongest pushback came when

A 1944 plea to the Pope that he assist in rescuing the Hungarian Jews.

It was submitted to the US government by Rav Aaron Kotler, Rabbi Baruch Korff and Reb Elimelech (Mike) Tress. (Property of KFHEC)

Catholic Bishop of Münster in Westphalia, Clemens August Graf von Galen, publicly denounced the T4 program in a sermon.

He telegrammed his text to Hitler, calling on “the Führer to defend the people against the Gestapo.” Galen wrote, “It is a terrible, unjust and catastrophic thing when man opposes his will to the will of G-d. We are talking about men and women, our compatriots, our brothers and sisters. Poor unproductive people if you wish, but does this mean that they have lost their right to live?”

This sermon was immediately circulated in the form of illegal leaflets, and the British Royal Air Force dropped copies among the German troops. Many Nazis called for Galen’s arrest, but Josef Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler warned that this would result in open revolt. The protests spread to Bavaria, and it was there that Hitler was jeered by an angry crowd—the only time he was opposed in public during his twelve-year rule.

On August 24, 1941, Hitler ordered the cessation of the T4 program, and issued strict instructions to avoid further confrontations with the Church. Most of the personnel were simply shifted to the

Eastern Front to help implement the Final Solution, a much more important program. However, the killing of the disabled did not end; other methods, such as lethal injection and starvation, were used in smaller scale operations.

All told, more than 200,000 people with disabilities were murdered between 1941 and 1945. But let the story of the Catholic Church officially curbing T4 dispel any notion that the German citizens were innocent bystanders, completely helpless and irrelevant against a ruthless tyrant. Clergy could not stand by and watch as their “compatriots, brothers and sisters” were taken away. Yet most were silent from the very beginning—from the shattering of windows and livelihoods on Kristallnacht to the cries of children in cattle cars—they were silent to the Jews.

•

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.

Couple Confused over Minhagim Dear Rabbi Taub: My husband and I both grew up in chasidishe homes. In our first year of marriage, my husband and I had deep conversations about the meaning of Yiddishkeit, chasidus, our tafkid in life, and which is the best “Jewish” way to serve Hashem.

Most of the questions we had were regarding minhagim. There were so many chasidishe minhagim our parents kept that we didn’t feel were important for us to continue keeping, because we didn’t know the reasons for them. We know that one of the main things that kept klal Yisrael alive all these years was not straying from our parents’ path. But it is so hard to do something that doesn’t make any sense, especially when other Jewish communities are not doing it.

Let me give you some examples of what I’m referring to, so you can better understand my question. For example: My husband wears veisse zaken on Shabbos. He hates wearing them, feels out of place when in a crowd of other Yidden who don’t wear them, and doesn’t understand the reason for wearing them. He started wearing them when we got married because everyone else in his chasidus wears them, including his rebbe. Another example is chasidish women shaving their heads after marriage.

Most Litvishers don’t wear veisse zaken, and their women don’t shave their heads. Does that mean they’re doing an aveirah? Does that mean we (chasidishe people) will get more s’char because we wore a shtreimel on Shabbos, covered our wigs with a hat, and wore only beige tights?

Are these doubts of bitachon we’re having, or are we just not well-informed?

Please try to give us a clear black-and-white answer. It is so hard living in the gray!

May Hashem end this galus speedily in our days and show us the true meaning of Torah.

Sincerely, CCC (Confused Chasidish Couple)

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D

ear CCC: I’m glad you wrote to me about this. You are definitely not the only young people struggling with these type of questions. The fact that you recognize your conflict and have sought to gain clarity is to be commended. I will try, with Hashem’s help, to give you some insight so you can feel more confident to “get off the fence,” so-to-speak, and make a committed decision.

I will start by addressing the concept of minhagim in general. What’s the difference between a mitzvah d’oraisa and a mitzvah d’rabbanan? How about a gezeirah mi’d’rabbanan? Or a takanah? What about a minhag? How about a minhag Yisrael and a minhag of a particular community? Or a minhag of a family? And what about the difference between a chumra and a hidur? My point is that there are many distinctions, and each of these distinctions actually means something. We do ourselves a disservice when we lump them all together.

Indeed, one of the first hard lessons that humankind learned was when Adam told Chavah that not touching the eitz hadaas was part of Hashem’s commandment, instead of being transparent about the fact that it was his (Adam’s) own “syag” or safety measure. Of course, we all know what happened. The nachash pushed Chavah into the tree, and when she saw that nothing happened he said, “Just as you can touch it without dying, so you can eat from it without dying.”

I want to make clear that the problem was not that Adam made a “fence around the Torah.” Not at all. The problem is that he didn’t tell Chavah that’s what it was.

To put it another way, going beyond the letter of the law doesn’t mean that I don’t know what the letter of the law is.

To the contrary, it means I do know what is required of me, yet I choose to do more.

Think of it this way. Going above and beyond the requirements is an expres-

sion—or at least, is supposed to be an expression—of feeling love of Hashem and awe of Him. I know what’s required of me, yet I feel like doing more. If I don’t know the difference between shuras hadin and lifnim mishuras hadin, then what emotional significance does it have when I do more than required?

So when you ask me (I assume sincerely) if a Litvak who’s not wearing veisse zaken is doing an aveirah, it sort of raises a red flag for me. I don’t mean to poke fun, but it’s sort of like asking if someone who doesn’t eat kugel on Shabbos is doing an aveirah. Can it be that the whole distinction between halachah and minhag has—at least from an emotional perspective—become blurred for you? That’s the first point of clarity that I wish to make.

But this leads me to another point.

Many people who do pay attention to the distinction between halachah and custom misunderstand the implications of this

that it will please his wife if he shows up at 5:00? That’s the nicest. These three scenarios may be taken as an analogy for Biblical commandments, rabbinic obligations, and customs respectively. In a certain way, the custom—that which I do completely on my own initiative—has a unique quality that surpasses even doing what my beloved asks me to do (as long as I am also doing what my beloved asks me to do).

Another point about customs is that keeping customs can have an even stronger effect on our Jewish identity than keeping mitzvos. A mitzvah is a religious obligation. Religious obligations are not unique to Jews. All religions have their own laws. Customs, however, show us that even in our regular lives, we do things in a special Jewish way.

The Ben Ish Chai, in his commentary on the Gemara, tells a story about a prominent Baghdad Jew who considered converting (rachmana litzlan) to Islam in

IT’S EASY TO HAVE FRUM, EVEN CHASIDISHE, OUTSIDES. IT’S THE INSIDES THAT TAKE WORK. distinction. They falsely conclude that one is more important than the other, chas v’shalom. One is not more important. They are just different. It all depends on context, and it’s all relative to what we’re talking about.

That’s why, in some ways, we can say that a minhag has something that a halachah or even a Biblical commandment doesn’t have. For instance, if a man’s wife tells him to be home at 5:00 for dinner and he does it without questioning, that’s nice.

But what if she doesn’t tell him explicitly?

What if she only hints at it, and he gets the hint and he shows up at 5:00? That’s even nicer. What if she didn’t even hint to it at all, but the husband decides on his own

order to advance his status. The Muslims there had a rule, however, that before they would accept his conversion, a rabbi had to try to talk him out of it. That way they would know his conversion was sincere.

The rabbi tried every compelling argument he could think of, but the man insisted that he still wanted to become a Muslim.

But then, the man’s childhood friend showed up and put forth a much simpler line of reasoning. He said, “Just realize that if you become a Muslim, you will never again eat the egg from the chamin on Shabbos.” This was enough to change the man’s mind. Is an egg in the chamin on Shabbos a mitzvah? Is it like hearing shofar

on Rosh Hashanah or making a bris milah on the eighth day? Yet it was the chamin egg that got this guy in the end.

I would add that this is the same basic idea behind the order of the Four Questions in nusach Chabad. According to the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the first question is “matbilin,” or “Why do we dip the karpas in saltwater?” Why is dipping the first question? It’s not the first thing the child sees? (That would be mesubin—leaning, which is done at Kiddush.) It’s not the highest degree of severity (Matzah is d’oraisa. The four cups and maror are d’rabbanan. And dipping is a minhag.) But that’s the whole point. What has the most formative influence on a child? More than our Jewish religious obligations, it’s our holy Jewish customs that show us that we are truly meant to turn every aspect of life into a way of connecting with Hashem.

Now, I would like to specifically address customs related to clothing. What we’re dealing with here is the distinction between chitzoniyus (outsides) and pnimiyus (insides). It is true that “levush” is chitzoniyus. Nobody would suggest that it’s all right to be irreligious on the inside as long as you keep to the dress code on the outside. Indeed, I am reminded of the story of someone who had the audacity to question the Satmar Rebbe, zt”l, about why he gave special attention to a certain Jew who had no beard. The Satmar Rebbe replied sharply, “It’s true: When he goes to Heaven they may ask him, ‘Reb Yid, where is your beard?’ but what will they ask you?

‘Reb beard, where’s your Yid?’” (Parentheti-

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cally, I will note that having a beard is not an issue of custom but rather a question of how to adhere to a Biblical prohibition, but this only makes the story of the Satmar Rebbe even stronger.) It’s easy to have frum, even chasidishe, outsides. It’s the insides that take work. It requires a lot more of a commitment to have a refined mind and heart than a refined mode of dress. And yet, chitzoniyus can be very important in its own way.

Our outsides can help to act as a sort of barometer for our insides. In other words, when I feel like I look, then I know I am doing something right. Obviously, if I’m just trying to “look the part” for its own sake, that can become a form of hypocrisy. But if I am trying to get my insides to match up with my outsides, that can

Dear Rabbi Taub: Several months ago I wrote a letter which the Ami editor titled “Married to a Lazy, Unambitious Husband.” You kindly responded to my letter instructing me to make it very clear to my husband that counseling is non-negotiable for us.

The truth hurts. Reading your words, I felt like a knife had been wedged into my soul.

How could I be so blind to the fact that there actually was a problem? And what if my husband wouldn’t agree to go for counseling?

We have children together... Grappling with the issue felt like torture, but I realized that to confront my husband in a completely nonnegotiable way would be the only way out of our mess. I confronted him and, as you wrote in your original letter, he was traumatized by my confrontation. But he agreed to go with me for counseling.

We went for one session of counseling together, and I subsequently met up with the counselor on my own, “per chance,” at a public event.

Our sessions were a complete eye opener for us as a couple and for me as an individual. Until then I had considered my husband to be the one with the issue, and I viewed myself as a victim who had no other choice but to work or my household would fall apart and the whole world would be allowed to see

be a way of keeping myself focused on my spiritual growth. I’m not saying that someone who was not born into it should put on a levush just to have something to aspire to. But for you and your husband, who were blessed to have been raised in a community with a strong commitment to traditions and customs, it makes a lot more sense to keep your chitzoniyus while trying to get your pnimiyus to catch up.

What I would say to you is that if you are feeling uninspired right now and thus feeling like your “levush” is unnatural to you, that shouldn’t be an immediate sign to you that you need to slack off on your outsides. Rather, let it be a sign that you need to take it up a notch in your insides.

I will add that in order to really change your insides, you need to learn. It’s one

how poorly we were functioning.

The counselor made it clear that my role as a wife did not mean picking up the slack for my husband. At our joint session she made it very clear that the burden of parnasah is my husband’s. In private, the counselor also pointed out areas that I could improve in so that I would become more of a wife, which would automatically turn my husband into more of a husband/breadwinner, filling the role that Hashem designed for him.

Months have passed since our initial meeting and our home is a different place. The stress and tension that were a part of every facet of our lives have gone down considerably. I’ve cut down many of my crazy hours, giving me more time to enjoy my husband and children.

Is my husband working full-time yet? No. This is not a fairy tale and I accept that parnasah will always be a challenge for him. The difference is that now I don’t feel the burden of having to provide. My husband has taken on many temporary jobs since our counseling session (and done something on a larger scale over the Yomim Tovim). He’s doing this because he truly doesn’t want us in the red at the end of the month, and to hear him say, “This is my burden,” is priceless.

In the meantime, I’m davening that he finds a permanent full-time job as I know that this

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thing to look chasidish. It’s another thing to think chasidish. I won’t show my own bias by telling you which chasidisher sefarim to learn. But definitely, if you and your husband start to actually learn chasidus, then CCC won’t stand for Confused Chasidish Couple; it will stand for Chasidish Couple with Clarity.

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.

A Second Look

cannot go on indefinitely. However, he knows that too; and as we are communicating so much better now, we know that this is something we have to work on together.

We recently arranged a meeting for him with a job advisor. In addition, my husband’s daily schedule has changed drastically so that it better reflects the yungerman that he is, so he is not quite as “dysfunctional” as you aptly labeled it in your letter.

In short, I wish to thank you for your invaluable words, and I hope that you can print this letter to give chizzuk to others.

In retrospect, I realize that had I not gone for help when I did, the resentment in my marriage would have built to such an extent that it would have been almost impossible to repair. Allowing resentment to grow does a favor to no one, but dealing with the matter head on and confronting it despite the inherent pain is the only way to get to the core of the problem and to fix it.

I continue to daven that we overcome this challenge, and that Hashem give me the tools (therapists, magazine articles, etc.) to make my home a positive place.

Thank you.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been discussing workplace loyalties and their effect on the family. The discussion began when a woman wrote in stating that she was jealous of her husband’s career. My response was to underscore the validity of her feelings, and in doing so I highlighted the problems that can crop up when we put work before family. In the next issue, when I received a letter questioning my approach, I stuck to my position and reiterated it even more strongly.

I received another letter this week that brings out a new perspective that I find to be tremendously valuable. The letter is lucid, well-written, and I think it will be very helpful to many people, perhaps even to the author of the original letter on this topic.

I believe the point made below stands on its own and does not need to be a contradiction to anything I’ve said on the topic over the past two weeks. Both can be true. Both are useful perspectives to keep in mind. I think you will understand what I mean after reading it. RST Dear Rabbi Taub: I always read your columns with great interest and am highly impressed with the insightful and smart answers you provide, that show that you grasp the letter writer’s inner workings head-on.

However, after reading your column in both Issue 141, where a woman wrote about her husband in the workplace, and the follow-up this past week in Issue 142, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe the husband’s “issue” was a little dramatized.

You see, I myself could have been that letter writer just a few short years ago. I remember feeling like my husband was out having an exciting life while I was home with the kids, and I worried that he didn’t think of me during his work day—as though he had another life. I also was often concerned about his interaction with the women he worked with.

Since this was impacting me negatively, and consequently, our marriage was affected somewhat, I started going to therapy. As it turns out, I was suffering from mild depression, slight anxiety and overall very low selfesteem. The low self-esteem and negative self-image had plagued me for most of my adolescence and followed me into marriage,

but only emerged in certain situations. This situation was certainly one that triggered all my insecurities.

After two to three years of intensive therapy I was finally able to see how, basically, all my concerns and fears were in my imagination. My husband was not enjoying work in a social and meaningful way. He did not value the relationships he had there and was only working in order to provide for the family; he was (and is) doing so for me and us.

I am now able to look back at those years and those awful feelings through a more realistic lens. Speaking to my husband about my feelings during those times was never productive because he of course denied any accusations or concerns I had and was totally flabbergasted as to why I even thought such things about him in the first place. He also then chose to hide certain stories or situations from me, for fear that I would misconstrue a meaningless encounter to immense proportions! It had nothing to do with him; rather, it was my insecurities and lack of confidence in myself and our relationship that caused me to have such worrisome thoughts and feelings.

When I read the letter from “Missing Out,” I felt sympathy for her and wonder whether

she too could use a boost in her self-esteem.

It would only strengthen her, making her happier and less worried, and it would do wonders for her marriage.

I learned the power of confidence. Once I had confidence, I was able to be my husband’s best friend, his source of support and his listening ear. He can now talk to me about his day without fear that I’ll have a panic attack that he was inappropriate, G-d forbid, or that he does not love me.

I am sharing this information to provide a different view of what might actually be the inner workings of the letter writer who feels she is “missing out.” What she may truly be missing out on is a secure and confident view of herself as a wife and akeres habayis. The wedge that she feels her husband’s professional life is driving between them may very well be of her own doing, and no amount of discussion or changes on her husband’s part will alleviate that.

Only she has the ability to make changes within herself that will enrich her personal life satisfaction as well as her marital relationship.

Sincerely, Been There

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Bas Mitzvah Reflections A WORD ON HALACHIC INNOVATION

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ver the past couple of weeks we have discussed the issue of bas mitzvah celebrations and the many halachic and cultural distinctions we find between bas and bar mitzvahs.

I always remind my baalei batim that there is no such thing as a chumrah (stringency) or a kula (leniency). Although one holding, for instance, that Shabbos ends 72 minutes after shekiah (sundown) may seem like a chumrah, it really represents a view that would also mean that Shabbos starts much later (Today no one is noheg to start Shabbos “late” unless there are extreme circumstances at play).

Which brings us to halachic innovation: While halachah—our codes and the way we arrive at a final psak—never change, realities on the ground can lead to a new psak. However, to suggest that this truth will only lead to new leniencies, to halachah becoming less rigid, is not just Pollyannaish but also simple-minded.

Once one opens up that door, if one is intellectually honest, then it can just as easily mean that we must make changes that are more stringent.

A wonderful example from the secular world: The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, contained in the Bill of Rights—ratified in 1791—states: “Excessive bail shall not be required…nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

This last clause has often been used as a legal Rorschach test to discover how one views the constitution, and to which of two philosophies one is drawn.

The more conservative members of the Supreme Court—led, arguably, by Justice Scalia—believe in “Originalism,” i.e., that this binding document must be interpreted with an orthodox approach to the framers’ original intent. More liberal justices would argue for an “evolving” or “living” document whose meaning(s) can change, limitedly, with time.

In October of 2006, Justice Scalia and Nadine Strossen of the ACLU (representing the conservative and liberal sides respectively) sat for a public debate.

Bringing up the Eighth Amendment as an example, Ms. Strossen sought to demonstrate that we must read this clause as evolving, for certainly no one would accept today the types of punishments that the founders would have been comfortable with. Then, if we agree that our definition of “cruel and unusual punishment” has changed, we see that the Constitution changes with time.

Checkmate!

Regardless of one’s views on this matter, Justice Scalia’s response should give one pause: “…The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights was to guard against future generations that they feared would not be as wise or as virtuous… Do you believe that

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people only evolve to get better? Sometimes we evolve to get worse. And this document is to prevent that.”

In discussing issues such as bas mitzvah celebrations, where some argue that the times demand a new outlook and new actions (e.g., Seridei Eish, Rav Ovadia Yosef), we mustn’t be too convenient with how we interpret their words so as to only say that these new developments will only lead to more openness for, say, women; the flip-side must also be true: Should we allow such modifications due to the nature of modern changes, then perhaps there will be instances where changing to greater stringency would be apt.

Now, all poskim agree that Halachah must consider the ethos of the time and many other circumstances when deciding whether we shall embrace stare decisis (legal precedent) or find another, although also established, precedent.

Indeed, there are views that on the Day of Judgment, each person will be judged by a panel made up of gedolim who lived during the same tekufah (period) and who will therefore be better suited to understand the challenges faced (Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Derech Sichah, etc.).

Yet progression—evolving—must work in both directions if it is authentic. Does today’s culture scream “It is now, and will always be, safe to adapt!”? Will culture really allow us to stop at one small step?

I don’t know. But progression, by its

BY RABBI MOSHE TAUB

Progression, by its very definition, does not naturally stop on its own, and it is not always guaranteed to be good and virtuous.

Jewish boys with their teacher in Samarkand

very definition, does not naturally stop on its own, and it is not always guaranteed to be good and virtuous.

It has always troubled me that Rashi waits to tell us “Eisav sonei es Yaakov— Eisav hates Jacob,” until Yaakov and Eisav embrace. Why, their embracing flies in the face of that very principle! Why not share this idea with us when Yaakov expresses fear at meeting Eisav, or when Eisav vows (in Toldos) to murder Yaakov?

The answer, I think, is critical for anyone who demands changes in psak and pragmatism in hashkafah: When Yaakov is afraid of Eisav or when Eisav makes an unveiled threat, it is obvious that he hates Yaakov and there is no need to teach us of his loathing of us. It is, however, when we embrace—when, due to pragmatism, a different tack is taken—that we mustn’t

fool ourselves; it is precisely then that we must remind ourselves that we are doing this not because everything is copacetic but because this is what is needed in the moment in order to survive.

Whenever we seek to alter something from the past, it mustn’t be to change from the past but rather to preserve it.

Rav Schwab would compare this to a child who needs to be vaccinated. Vaccination is the giving, in small doses, of the very disease one is trying to prevent! And a parent is well aware of the dangers of vaccination without precise measurements.

Former Chief Rabbi Lau, in his brilliant six-volume work on Pirkei Avos, brings a wonderful insight: The opening mishnah teaches us that Moshe kibel Torah from Sinai. Moshe in turn transmitted it (massar) to Yehoshua, and Yehoshua

massar to the Zekeinim, etc.

There is a difference between giving someone something (nassan) and lending someone something (mesirah/pikadon).

Moshe was given a gift from Hashem, a gift for all of Israel that he was to transmit.

But we do not own it.

It is given to each generation on loan (massur). And like any pikadon, we must make sure that it is returned in the exact same state in which it was received.

As the saying goes: “Chazal only tell us to be kovea ittim l’Torah, and not to be kovea Torah l’itim.”  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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My Journey Back

HOW THE CHILD OF A RADICAL COUNTERCULTURIST FOUND HIS WAY BACK TO YIDDISHKEIT

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now know that my family tree is adorned with rabbis and Hebrew novelists, Yiddish auctioneers and shtetl folk healers. But as a kid, I had no idea. I didn’t even know that I was Jewish. My mother, who had taught me to call her Claudia, pulled up her roots as a teenager and came west to San Francisco during the Summer of Love (1967), searching for a new family that was based on a shared vision of communitarian love rather than tribal bloodlines or ancient texts.

I was born into a coven of witches in a commune in Haight-Ashbury in 1975.

Claudia and her pagan sisters saw themselves as reclaiming culture and religion from the domineering hands of men. They were changing history to her story and worshiping a whole pantheon of female spirits with the help of psychedelic mushrooms and LSD. They’d stay up all night dancing, chanting and meditating. I never had a relationship with my father.

In 1980 we left San Francisco and the coven behind, and took to the road in search of a rural utopia where egalitarian cooperation would replace capitalist competition. Claudia and I hitchhiked for thousands of miles, and befriended hundreds of exceptionally strange people. We danced around bonfires and lived off-thegrid in vans, buses, half-built cabins and an ice cream truck. Some nights we slumbered blissfully under the stars; others, I lay awake paralyzed by the howling of wolves.

Life wasn’t easy. We often ran low on basic supplies, like food and firewood, and generally lived without electricity, running water, toilets, or a refrigerator. But I never lacked for freedom. There were no rules: no bedtime, no brushing of teeth, homework or school. My mother believed that

Joshua Safran

school was no place for children, since it was a government brainwashing tool to teach capitalism, violence, and competition.

I experimented with attending a local redneck school in the first grade, but couldn’t have been more alien if I were from outer space. The other kids spoke the language of church, sports and television, while I could only communicate in feminism, environmentalism and Marxism.

In my tie-dyed thrift store get-ups, I was soon labeled a freak, and Claudia gladly accepted my resignation from school. She took the opportunity to teach me how to be a warlock, training me to use my third eye (the hidden one that Society didn’t want us to know about), ESP, and clairvoyance.

I didn’t attend public school again regularly until I was ten, when I finally became convinced that school was going

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to be my only way out of poverty. We had been living in extremely remote areas, and I spent many days alone in the woods, escaping the boredom by playing games in my mind, reliving a fun day that had happened many months before and going over every minute detail in real time. I also kept journals. My correspondence with myself was often my only form of friendship, and my only mechanism for processing the chaos around me.

By the time I entered sixth grade, my mother had married a former Central American guerilla fighter named Leopoldo who brought with him demons from the Salvadoran civil war and a serious drinking problem. He passed himself off as a shaman, poet and healer. My mother was convinced he was the messianic revolutionary hero she had foretold in clairvoyant visions. I was pretty sure he was going to kill us. At the time we were sleeping on the forest floor on wooden pallets that Leopoldo and Claudia had salvaged from behind a dumpster. Leopoldo was supposedly building a wooden pyramid for us to live in, to channel the occult magic of ancient Egypt, but we were essentially sleeping on a sea of mud. As Leopoldo increasingly took to drink, our makeshift home was filled with an escalating cycle of violence.

In 1986, I emerged from the wall of forest and walked into middle school covered in tree sap, pine needles and a spider or two. I didn’t own a hairbrush, toothbrush or mirror, and was immediately beaten down by the kids at school. While I was conversant in feminist theory and US foreign policy, and was reading at adult levels, I didn’t know that I was supposed to raise my hand in class and couldn’t do math or decipher cursive. My stepfather thwarted every effort I made to succeed

BY JOSHUA SAFRAN

in school, turning the kerosene lantern off early so I couldn’t do my homework or throwing the assignments I had just completed into the fire as “kindling.” After Leopoldo threatened to kill the family on whose land we were living, we took shelter in a dilapidated little apartment in the Norwegian dairy farming town of Stanwood, on Washington State’s mainland. Although the place was moldy and infested with rats, I couldn’t complain about the novelty of running water and electricity. Now that I no longer had to rely on the school bus for transportation, I could stay after school to be tutored by a sympathetic teacher who offered to help me catch up.

That winter brought wild storms howling in from the Puget Sound, followed suddenly by calm and open skies. Like the alternating rhythms of rain and sun, I accepted the rounds of family violence and reconciliation as normal. Not ideal, not pleasant, but predictable and certain— the steady cadence of Leopoldo and Claudia marching grimly together as husband and wife. Home was bearable in times of peace, but in times of war I sought political asylum at the Stanwood Library. There I took to cruising the Dewey Decimal System for meaning and inspiration. But I didn’t just leap into the tall metal stacks with my eyes closed. I had a destination in mind—the vicinity of call number 296, Judaism. Whatever that was.

This was the fulfillment of a promise I’d made to myself out in the wilderness a year before, when I discovered I was Jewish. Climbing the trail one evening back to our one-room cabin on the side of a mountain, we passed by our neighbor Ray’s hut and stopped in to say hello, as he was rarely there. Ray looked like a Mediterranean fisherman from the front of a National Geographic magazine. He welcomed us in with one of those thick, Back East accents that vaguely reminded me of my Grandma Harriette. He was originally

from New York, he told us, and wanted to know where we were from.

“The Bay Area,” replied Claudia.

“No way,” Ray said. “I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?”

“You’re Jews, right? Ain’t no lantzmen from San Francisco.”

Claudia laughed. “Yeah, we’re Jews.

How did you know?”

“Your kid has a rabbi’s nose.”

They laughed and spoke of ancient times, places and people east of the Mississippi, and chicken soup and strange holidays. Ray concluded his story with, “So I was the only non-Jewish Italian kid in Brooklyn who had not only one but two bar mitzvahs.”

As Claudia and I stepped back into the mist, a faint light of recognition flared in my mind. We weren’t totally alone in the universe! There was a name for us—a reason why Grandma Harriette had said, “Who really knows?” when I asked her where we were from; and a name for being Russian, Lithuanian and German, but cringing at the memory of the Russians,

Lithuanians and Germans. That explained why my grandfather had been blacklisted

by McCarthy and forced to drag his family from place to place. And it must also be the reason we continued to wander, avoiding Christians, reading books and gesticulating wildly with our hands. There was one word that explained it all. But I’d forgotten what it was.

“Claudia, what was that thing he said we were?”

“What thing?”

“There was something he knew we were.

Because of my nose.”

“Oh, Jews?”

“Yeah. What’s that?”

“I never told you we’re Jewish?”

“No. What is it?”

“Jews, you know. Like Einstein, Freud, Marx.”

I knew who those men were, but I didn’t see the connection. “Like we’re related to them?”

“Sort of.” Then she gave me a very Jewish answer: “You know, Joshy, I don’t exactly know what it means to be Jewish.

Joshua plays a fife in the New Mexico desert

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Joshua Safran at the age of six on Mount Lassen, California preparing to take to the open road again

In a way, my mother was seeking the Promised Land herself. My whole childhood was her ‘exodus’ from Egypt or Babylon, places she thought were morally bankrupt.

We’ll have to go to the library and look it up.”

And so I found myself in the library, riding the reading room through space and time, discovering that I was part of something. As an only child of a single welfare mother wandering around from place to place, it was incredible to realize that not only was I from somewhere, but I was part of something profound. I was the descendant of an ancient tribe that had emerged from the mists of prehistory to introduce G-d to the world and shine unto the nations like a beacon of righteous-

ness. We had been scattered to the wind, driven to the four corners of the Earth.

Oppressed and demeaned time and time again we continued on, excelling in isolation wherever we went. We didn’t need to be “normal” like everyone else; we were Jews. When the library closed I walked through the darkness, an only child no more. Now I knew I was descended from the seed of Jacob, and somewhere out there were a million brethren.

That night, my mother whispered to me about our family. My great-great-grandmother Rivkah had been a folk healer

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in the forests of Russia. My great-grandmother Eta called the mounted police “Cossacks.” Then Claudia told me that I had a half-brother. She’d given the baby up for adoption in New Jersey and had never seen him again. It was now 1987, so that would make him 23. My mother shook her head and shrugged. It was all part of an old world she’d forgotten about long ago.

But it was a brand new world for me.

I lay in bed that night still immersed in my voyage of self-discovery. Though I sojourned at the very ends of the Earth, the blood of Abraham coursed through my veins. And beyond the horizon, in the wilds of far-off New Jersey, that same blood coursed through the veins of my brother as well. Maybe someday he would find me, grasp me by the arm and pull me up out of my broken universe where screaming and violence were considered normal. Maybe I’d finally go home, wherever that was.

Public libraries continued to be my fount of inspiration, as I slowly continued to teach myself whatever I could about Judaism, including first attempts to grapple with the 22 inscrutable letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The language of Judaism provided me a vocabulary for what I had already intuited. As a young boy, I had had a number of near-death experiences when I felt an otherworldly, G-d-like presence hovering over me, protecting me.

Once the heaviness of an ethereal arm wrapped around my shoulder and guided my unhurt but trembling form away from a horrific automobile accident I was in when the brakes of our old car failed.

Another time, as a five-year-old left alone on the beach, I felt a calming voice speak to me as I began to panic, pulled underwater by the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

This same voice had promised me I would survive when I fell out of a cedar tree a year later. I now had a name and a context for this spirit. It was the G-d of my ancestors.

Ironically, reggae music helped intro-

duce me to the spirituality of Jewish texts, including a Bob Marley song with lyrics that spoke directly to me: “The stone that the builder refused shall be the head cornerstone.” I listened and thought, I’m the stone that the builder refused.

My mother told me that the words were from Psalms and showed me the book she had on her shelf called the Tanach. (I called it the “Tanatch” because I had never heard it pronounced). Leafing through the pages of this strange book, I felt King David reach out to me from across the millennia.

He too had been a young man, crying out in the wilderness.

I then turned to the front of the book and began to read “In the beginning...” I saw myself in the patriarchs of the Torah: Avraham, who grew up with idol-worshiping parents only to discover that there is only one G-d; or Moshe, who was raised among the goyim and then went out into the wilderness, destined to encounter G-d in the natural world and to return to his ancestral people. Even though he couldn’t speak Hebrew properly, he became a leader.

More than anything, it was the authenticity of the Jewish tradition that appealed to me. My mother and her sister witches were literally making up their religion as they went along. I wanted roots, an unbroken ancient tradition that stood the tests of time. When I said a prayer, I wanted it to be the same one that my ancestors had uttered. Later, when I was in yeshivah, I counted the brachos in the Shemoneh Esrei and realized that are actually 19, not 18 as its name implied. The rosh yeshivah told me: “The 19th one was only added a couple of thousand years ago. It’s so new we haven’t gotten a chance to change the name yet.” That’s what I was talking about!

As my mother began to anticipate my theological progression into Orthodoxy, she cautioned me: “Do you realize that you’re subscribing to a rule-based, patriarchal religion?” I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but it made perfect sense.

For a kid who grew up without rules and

without a father, could there be anything better?

In a way, my mother didn’t realize it, but she was seeking the Promised Land herself. My whole childhood was her “exodus” from Egypt and Babylon, places she thought were morally bankrupt, as she looked for a utopian, spiritual place where we could work the land and be around others who wanted to build a new society together. She received those ideas from her own Jewish parents who transmitted them through the strange lens of Marxism, but the ideal was the same—working to create a land that could be a light unto the nations.

Because it was ultimately the landbased spirituality of the Land of Israel that inspired me, I was determined get there as soon as I could. When I was 18, I earned money for my plane ticket by driving a giant combine on the night shift in the pea fields of Washington State. I began by studying at Aish HaTorah in the Old City of Jerusalem, after I showed up at the Kotel and a man asked me if I had a place for Shabbos.

One of my most powerful experiences from that time occurred during High Holiday services at Aish. It was time, the rabbis told us, for the blessing from the priests of Israel. The esteemed rabbis in their stately black coats and beards asked, “Are there any kohanim present?” They were met by silence. Finally, a guy with orange dreadlocks, a huge nose ring and a disintegrating leather jacket got up and said, in a British accent, “Ay, Rabbi. I’m a kohen.” I was positive that someone was going to call security and have the guy escorted out of the building. There was no way they were going to recognize this gutter punk as a priest of Israel. But, to my surprise and to their great credit, the rabbis brought him up, took his shoes off and put a sacred prayer shawl around his shoulders. The next thing I knew, those rabbis and the entire congregation were accepting his priestly blessings. I remember thinking, These people are amazing! In

every other tradition in the world, you start off as a nobody and have to agree to believe in some charismatic leader. But as a Jew, it is possible walk in off the street and assume a place of respect. It doesn’t matter what you look like. And I felt nothing but a similar warmth, acceptance and unconditional love in the different holy communities I visited in Israel.

Later, I studied at Yeshiva Shalom Rav in Tsfat with Rabbi Rafael Weingot, who was a student of the late Rav Shlomo Freifeld, zt”l, of Yeshiva Sha’ar Yashuv. Rabbi Weingot told me that back in the day Rabbi Freifeld would seek out guys who were falling off the derech, greasers with switchblades, and bring them to the yeshivah so they could get a free meal and start learning. I found this approach very inspiring. In fact, it’s my response to the recent Pew Research study that seems to imply that half of all Jews will disappear from the face of the Earth within 40 years. If we uphold the “Freifeld derech” we won’t have anything to worry about because there will always be Jews coming back. Instead of wringing our hands about all the Jews who are assimilating, we should worry about conducting ourselves appropriately. When we stick to mitzvos the way they’re designed, Judaism is an extremely attractive choice.

Today I know a number of Orthodox Jews who operate on autopilot or are observant from a place of guilt. This is hard for me to relate to because I enthusiastically chose to be an involved Jew. The fact that I’m here voluntarily is a testament to the amazing tradition we have.

In between my time in yeshivos, I finished college on a full scholarship and then went to law school. I stepped into the world as a lawyer with every blessing I could have asked for: my life partner and wife, Leah; a house in trendy North Berkeley; and a job at a top corporate law firm.

Over time, I was also blessed with three delightful daughters. I had finally overcome the adversity of my childhood, burying the many hardships of my past under the bounty of the American Dream.

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Given these many blessings, I did my best to give back, regularly taking advantage of pro bono opportunities to advocate for the less fortunate. One of these projects—the case of Deborah Peagler— changed my life and gave me the courage to write my own story in Free Spirit: Growing Up On the Road and Off the Grid. That courage was born in a maximum security prison for women. Deborah, an AfricanAmerican woman from South Central Los Angeles was serving a life sentence for murdering the man who had tortured and battered her for years. When I took on her case, I naively thought that obtaining her release would be easy. Under a new law, essentially all she had to do was tell her story of abuse. But not surprisingly, Deborah didn’t feel comfortable talking about all the horrible things that had ever happened to her. Not in a public document, not in front of a judge, not even with me.

She didn’t trust me; I was, after all, a man.

When I asked if there was anything she was willing to talk about, she mentioned that when her abuser was done whipping her, her would take raw steaks out of the refrigerator and put them on her welts to bring down the swelling.

I had a visceral reaction to that, a memory of my own that caused me to drop the attorney-client relationship. “I

forgot about the raw meat!” I said aloud, thinking back to my stepfather doing the same thing after he beat my mother.

She looked at me with an expression that said, “You’re not just my lawyer anymore.

You’re like me.”

We began to talk about our experiences and compared our scars—figurative and literal. When the San Francisco Chronicle wanted to do a profile on me and I declined, Deborah said, “Are you kidding me? I told my story, you have to tell yours! It’s important for people to hear how even a militant feminist like your mother can end up a victim of domestic violence.” So I started to speak publicly about my experiences.

For much of the seven years I represented Deborah, a film crew was embedded with us. In 2011, Crime After Crime, the subsequent documentary that was made about the case, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and on the Oprah Winfrey Network. It went on to win 25 awards. Suddenly, domestic violence organizations, including a number of Jewish ones, were asking me to speak on behalf of the cause.

But I still wasn’t completely comfortable sharing my personal story until one evening a muscular, tattooed 45-year-old man came up to me after my talk and said, “I’m in an abusive relationship.” I wondered

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who could be abusing this guy. Then he told me that he was the abuser. “I didn’t think that what I was doing affected the kids, but now I know it does. I’m going to try to get help and get back into AA.” At that point I realized that telling my story was going to help break through the wall of silence that surrounds family violence and, maybe, start ending the cycle of crazy that passes from generation to generation.

My mother has joined me in speaking out too, as a domestic violence counselor with a Jewish organization. She summarizes the wild years when I was a child: “I turned on, tuned in, dropped out, and finally crawled back.” Ultimately, we grew up together. When I went to college, she went to college. When I started my career, she started hers. As I began to reengage with Judaism so did she, to a certain degree. She spent a Pesach with me in Eretz Yisrael and was very moved by the experience.

There has historically been a reluctance in the Jewish community to talk about violence and abuse within families. Many Jews still cling to the antiquated idea that family violence is a private matter and don’t want to hear about it.

But we all have an obligation to stop the abuse and help those in need, regardless of the excuses—halachic and otherwise— that people put forward to shield perpetrators. People who see it or suspect it’s happening should speak to a rav or other community leaders, and not let up until the problem has been adequately resolved.

Our leadership needs to lead on this issue and take a stand. One in four Jewish women experiences domestic violence, regardless of background and socioeconomic levels. The health of our children is at stake. No community is immune.

•

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

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Tagging Along MEMORIES OF A DIFFERENT THANKSGIVING WEEKEND IN A DIFFERENT ATLANTIC CITY

I

remember, back in the ’70s, when I was a teenager, going with my grandparents to Atlantic City to a hotel for Thanksgiving, where turkey was served.

No. That really doesn’t seem right.

Atlantic City? Thanksgiving? Turkey? By now you are probably looking at the cover of this magazine and wondering if this is Ami or the Reader’s Digest. Then you are probably looking at the byline and wondering: Isn’t this supposed to be a true-life column? Which of this writer’s grandparents would ever have spent Thanksgiving in Atlantic City? Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky and his rebbetzin? Or was it the OstroveKalushiner Rebbe?

Read on, dear reader, and remain calm.

You are reading the right magazine, and the author indeed is your weekly pontificator. Yes, on occasion he did accompany his grandparents to Atlantic City on

Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky and Rav Ruderman at an Agudah convention circa 1975

the last weekend in November. To a hotel where they served turkey. At least he tried to tag along.

But do not be alarmed. It was not much of a Thanksgiving, and it was not much of an Atlantic City, and his grandparents did not even eat the turkey. As you must have deduced by now, Atlantic City at that time was not the mecca of hedonism it is today, a place where none of my grandparents, their children and hopefully grandchildren would spend a weekend.

It was, indeed, a different world, a different time and a different Atlantic City. This trip was to the Agudah convention, the highlight of the year held in Atlantic City.

It was perhaps one of the few events where Torah-observant Jews could take a break, where they could relax and enjoy, basking in the presence of the greatest sages of the generation. And there was turkey, a food that my zeide Rav Yaakov never ate on any

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day of the year, because of a family mesorah (tradition).

At the convention was a mix of people from many walks of life: Holocaust survivors along with born and bred Yankees.

The topics and discussions forged the future we experience today, some 40 years later.

In a hotel filled with hundreds of Jews, grateful Americans whose close relatives had been slaughtered only 30 years prior, there were far more important matters to be dealt with than turkey on Thanksgiving For me, a high school kid in Yeshiva of Philadelphia, going to the Agudah convention was the ultimate escape. But despite the clout of my last name, and trying to convince myself that I was needed to take care of my zeide, I was not granted a free room. And even if I could have afforded one, the hotel was booked solid. Unlike today, when there are so many different

Photos Agudah archives

Speaking, Rav Pinchas Menachem Alter, the Pnei Menachem of Ger; seated to the right, Rabbi Moshe Sherer and Rav Moshe Feinstein

RABBI MORDECHAI KAMENETZKY

Torah-filled weekends and retreats, at that time the Agudah convention was the only Torah getaway of its kind, where virtually every great gaon of the Lithuanian Torah world—and many of the chasidishe world as well—gathered together.

In an era where roshei yeshivah, even those as distinguished as my zeide, did not have attendants, I could not pretend I was needed. (Although, unbeknownst to my zeide, my grandmother offered me a cot near their room. I certainly did not feel comfortable accepting it.) A friend and I rented a hotel room not far from the main hotel where the convention actually was held (I think it was the Sheraton-Deauville).

Unlike today—when hordes of photographers, well-wishers and brachah- and eitzah-seekers crowd around roshei yeshivah snapping pictures, asking questions and beseeching blessings—though many approached my zeide, the discussions were brief and orderly. Indeed, my grandfather, save for a designated meeting or so, was virtually unbothered during the course of the convention.

In those days people respected the privacy of others, even if they were icons. I dare venture to say that, in some ways, the old expression, “Vi es chritalzach azoi Yiddishzach—like the Christian world, that’s how the Jewish world goes,” has proven to be true in our society and the flashbulbs of intrusion snap today’s great Torah scholars, like the pictures of the paparazzi in the face of celebrities.

But at the Agudah convention of those days, I was not needed as gatekeeper. I was almost just an afterthought; everything was somehow sorted out by itself without walkie-talkies and sadranim.

Of course there were always the one or two nudniks who showed up to the convention to shove papers beneath the noses of gedolei Yisrael, asking them to sign onto this declaration or that. But my zeide was wary. Even without today’s self-appointed,

ever-faithful, zealously guarding gatekeeper, he managed, just fine, to protect himself.

As a teenager at an adult convention, I was somewhat in limbo; I was too connected to feel like a nobody, but I was too young and insignificant to be part of the scene. Still in all, it was truly worth it.

Every year, my grandfather’s shalosh seudos

be entitled to the airspace and floor-space of their room and the ballroom. Though I, and some of the friends who chipped in for the motel room, brought some food for Shabbos, she still made sure I had something else to eat later, food they had brought along, probably with me in mind.

But I’m not the only one who has to thank my grandmother. Every year, with

Read on, dear reader, and remain calm.You are reading the right magazine, and the author indeed is your weekly pontificator. drashah, spoken in his even-keel manner with brilliant Torah insights and subtle witticisms, stirred the crowd. They could not tape it, and so it became the talk of the town, with everyone who wasn’t there asking throughout the next few weeks for a recap of “Rav Yaakov’s drashah” (highlights of which will have to wait until another week).

There was another fringe benefit.

Although he was adopted by klal Yisrael, Rav Yaakov and his rebbetzin were still my grandparents, and although I was not an official conventioneer, my zeide did allow me, thanks to the invitation of my grandmother, to hang around the room, accompany him there, and share some of his behind-the-door thoughts of speeches and activities.

Truth be told, my grandmother watched out for me during those Agudah days. She knew that I did not have a room in the hotel proper and she was not sure whether I was even allowed to eat a meal together with them in the hotel’s dining room.

I don’t think they wanted to ever take advantage of their position, and if I was a non-paying freeloader, then I would only

enough time to plan before the convention, its brilliant orchestrator, Rabbi Moshe Sherer, zt”l, would call the rebbetzin to personally invite her and the rosh yeshivah to the convention. My zeide was a big anav, and was not a limelight seeker. I’m not sure if Rav Yaakov would have gone were it not for my grandmother who pushed him to attend.

Rabbi Sherer would assure the rebbetzin, and of course ensure, that they would have the most amenable accommodations; all the arrangements would be taken care of. And indeed they were.

Though I knew that it would never happen, somehow I still felt bad that they never asked for an official family gabbai, and never asked whether I (and some of my friends) could get a room as well. 

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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