CJ Winter 2012-2013 Issue

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Also: Reconsidering the Holiday of Light What’s a Jewish Writer Anyway?

Jewish Books for Children

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Tradition + Transformation 2013 is the Centennial of United Synagogue.

To mark this epic moment, United Synagogue is inviting people passionate about Conservative Judaism – and the broader Jewish community – to celebrate our achievements and help create what comes next.

YOU are among the current and future leaders we invite to take part in this dynamic discussion with renowned innovators, thought leaders, rabbis, and scholars. Join us as we create the future that will transform kehillot – sacred communities.

COME TO BALTIMORE. Take a piece of the future home with you.

{ join the conversation at facebook.com/USCJ100 or www.uscj100.org }

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CJ

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

WINTER 2012-2013 / CHANUKKAH 5773

VOLUME 6 NUMBER 2

This magazine is a joint project of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, and FJMC

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LETTERS

As United Synagogue Turns 100, R I C H A R D S K O L N I K asks you to Help Us Chart the Course for the Next Decades S A R R A E C R A N E hopes that Women’s League members are Using the Gifts We’ve Been Given Can the People of the Book Become the People of the iPad, wonders FJMC’s RABBI CHARLES SIMON

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News in Brief about Conservative Judaism

CJ SHORTS:

THE JEWISH YEAR: CHANUKKAH

41 CAMP RAMAH AND FJMC: A S P E C I A L R E L AT I O N S H I P

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Three FJMC regions describe how they support their local Ramah camps

WHEN JEWS P L AY S A N TA

In this excerpt from his new book, J O S H U A E L I P L A U T looks at Jews who love to volunteer on Christmas

30 CHANUKKAH: A D A R K E R TA L E

C O N S E R VAT I V E J U D A I S M : Y E S T E R D AY, T O D AY, TOMORROW

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explains how the real story behind the holiday should strengthen our resolve to reject extremism

J O N AT H A N E N G E L

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According to R A B B I

W H AT ’ S A J E W I S H W R I T E R , A N Y WAY ?

HERBERT ROSENBLUM,

when Solomon Schechter formed United Synagogue he didn’t realize the conflicts he faced would continue for decades

Author J O S H U A H E N K I N shares his own take on being both a Jew and a writer

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Just in time for Chanukkah, B E R Y L at some new titles

C O N S E R VAT I V E O R O R T H O D O X ?

DANCING, SINGING, HUGGING, SCREAMING

THE WRITTEN WORD

THE ROCKY ROAD T O C O N S E R VAT I V E JUDAISM

Former president J O S H U A U L L reflects on how his USY experience shaped him

46 FOR YOUNG A D U LT S , ISRAEL T H E I R WAY

36 CJ REVIEWS CHILDREN’S BOOKS BRESGI

looks

For R A B B I A D A M F R A N K the question is, does the Jewish world know the difference? Do we?

20 T H E V I TA L C E N T E R I S H O L D I N G

reassures us that the reports of the demise of Conservative Judaism are greatly exaggerated

R A B B I A L A N S I LV E R S T E I N

22 U N I T E D S Y N A G O G U E AT 1 0 0

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CJ VOICES

38 CONVENTION 2012: MAKING A DIFFERENCE FOR WOMEN’S LEAGUE

A new Masa Israel Journey option lets Conservative/ Masorti participants customize their trips

48 V I S F O R VA S H T I L I S A K O G E N illustrates how Vashti has been transformed from a vilified harridan to a vindicated heroine of the Purim story thanks to a popular program from Women’s League

S H E L LY G O L D I N and M A R I LY N W I N D introduce bylaws amendments and resolutions that will transform the organization

Join us to Celebrate Our Achievements and Help Shape the Future, writes S H I R A D I C K E R

ABOUT THE COVER

Chanukkiot designed by industrial design students at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, 2011.

Cover design: Josef Tocker CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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EDITORS

Andrea Glick Rhonda Jacobs Kahn

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Letters

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Bonnie Riva Ras DESIGNER

Josef Tocker P U B L I S H I N G C O N S U LT A N T

Doug Steinberg EDITORIAL BOARD

Dr. Robert Braitman, Chair Michael Brassloff Renée Brezniak Glazier Debbi Kaner Goldich Shelly Goldin Rosalind Judd Dr. Bruce Littman Rachel Pomerance Elizabeth Pressman Evan Rumack Marjorie Shuman Saulson Allan M. Wegman ADVISORS

Dr. Stephen Garfinkel Jewish Theological Seminary Rabbi Cheryl Peretz Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies CJ: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism is a joint project of F E D E R AT I O N O F J E W I S H M E N ’ S C L U B S

Michael Mills, President Rabbi Charles E. Simon, Executive Director UNITED SYNAGOGUE OF C O N S E R VAT I V E J U D A I S M

Richard Skolnik, President Rabbi Steven C. Wernick, CEO WOMEN’S LEAGUE FOR C O N S E R VAT I V E J U D A I S M

Rita Wertlieb, President Sarrae G. Crane, Executive Director The opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the publishing organizations. Advertising in CJ does not imply editorial endorsement, nor does the magazine guarantee the kashrut of advertised products.

Members of FJMC affiliates, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism congregations, and Women’s League for Conservative Judaism affiliates receive this magazine as a benefit of membership. Subscriptions per year: $20.

Please direct all correspondence or changes of address to CJ: VOICES OF CONSERVATIVE/ MASORTI JUDAISM at Rapaport House, 820 Second Ave., 10th Floor, New York, NY 100174504. 917-668-6809. Email: aglick@uscj.org or rkahn@wlcj.org. To advertise, email ras@uscj.org or call 917-668-6809.

CJ: VOICES OF CONSERVATIVE/MASORTI JUDAISM is published quarterly by United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 820 Second Ave., 10th Floor, New York, NY 10017-4504.

Canadian Copies: Return Canadian undeliverables to 2835 Kew Dr., Windsor, ON N8T 3B7 PM 41706013.

WRITE TO US!

CJ welcomes your letters. Please address them to Andrea Glick at aglick@uscj.org or Rhonda Kahn at rkahn@wlcj.org. Letters should be no longer than 250 words and must include your full name and place of residence.

KUDOS ON THE FALL ISSUE OF CJ

The fall issue of CJ had a great variety of articles that showed changes, for the good, in the Conservative movement.

The articles about Sukkot gave readers ways to make their family observances personal, relevant, and interesting. Connecting homelessness with the temporary and fragile nature of a sukkah was very meaningful.

I was very proud that the Conservative movement is welcoming same-sex couples and equally proud that United Synagogue is supporting the socially conscious project Operation Tent of Abraham and Sarah. It was refreshing to see the current trends in experiential Jewish education. I applaud United Synagogue for re-instating a department for education. I know that the teachers here in New Jersey have sorely missed such support.

I thought it very brave to print Alex Sinclair’s article dealing with loving Israel while being able to criticize it,and brave of Rabbi Wernick to admit something so personal as stopping himself from being a “sukkah snob”!

Scattered throughout were articles about, and photos of, people of all ages. There was something for everyone! I know that the Conservative movement is going through a tough time right now. I wish that everyone – in and outside of the movement – could see all these wonderful steps in revitalization.

NITA POLAY LEVIN Edison, NJ

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NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SHUL?

Rabbi Hillel Hayyim Lavery-Yisraeli’s wish that “a synagogue should be a safe place for all” is admirable (“Should There Be a Dress Code in Our Synagogues,” Fall 2012). Equally admirable is his exhortation that “we need to learn to not objectify people…based on their appearance.”

However, I completely disagree with his conclusion that it is an imposition to call for dress codes.

Above many arks are the words, “Know before Whom you stand,” a reminder that when we walk into a synagogue we are entering – and honoring – sacred space.

I am not saying we should succumb to a fashion show mentality. Doing so would miss the point of why we attend services.

However, guidelines and dress codes are entirely appropriate – especially as they relate to tzniut (modesty). And yes, the restrictions would primarily affect women. Rabbi Lavery-Yisraeli notes that a restriction on dress would make demands of people. Doesn’t Judaism make demands of us all the time?

The answer isn’t forcing offenders to don choir robes. The answer is reminding men, women and children that they are standing in a singular place. A sensitively and respectfully worded dress code just might help elevate our encounter with the sacred – and with each other.

ELIZABETH DAVIS Seattle, Washington

I appreciate Rabbi Hillel Hayyim LaveryYisraeli’s opinion. It is quite the magnanimous and open-minded attitude that would suggest that anything goes and all is acceptable. Being afraid to take a stand, being afraid to hold a standard, and throwing in the towel rather than taking a lead, are three examples of terrible role modeling. What lessons are we teaching our children by ignoring behavior that is questionable?

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The likelihood of a man going to the boss ing at Kashrut through a Conservative Lens,” of a Wall Street firm barefoot, shirtless and Summer 2012). Perhaps the delay has been in shorts asking for a raise is probably nil. useful so that I can also relate to the negAnd why might that be? It is inappropri- ative responses in the fall issue. Weren’t there ate and unacceptable. How is it that we can any approving?

I, too, have never heard such remarks expect a man to dress according to his environment and expect any less from a woman? and reflections within the Conservative Most parents have at one time or another movement. But that is the sad thing! I admit told their kid, you can’t wear that to the that Rabbi Feld’s halakhic reasoning is party, change your clothes. People know that flawed. That doesn’t mean there are no there are places where certain dress codes means to fully support his view. Those who state, as one responder did, that the “food exist.

The amount of appropriateness that laws in the Talmud are a way of constructshould be expected and should be required ing a barrier between Jews and the larger in a synagogue is no more or less than should society...” are completely blind to the funbe considered when appearing in any other damental origins of food laws and also blind formal and official ceremony. Formal, in the to the realities of the Jewish community’s sense that there is a need to maintain a sense relationship to the world around us.

Is Shabbat meant to of decorum, of holibe a barrier between ness and of sanctity, in Jews and non-Jews? Is a house of worship. that the fundamental What is the purpose Why does the movement purpose of Shabbat? Of of a Jewish house of defer 100 percent to the worship, particularly Orthodox regarding kashrut course not! Neither is it with food. What is the on Shabbat morning? but when we want to purpose of the Jewish To pray and to trandetermine matters of community in the conscend everyday minusexuality and other things text of the world? The tia by concentrating misuse of the Shulchan on our thoughts, offer- we jettison Orthodoxy Arukh has made the goal ing prayers, is a shul’s altogether? of ultra-fundamentalforemost feature. If a person doesn’t have those feelings for the ism to fabricate a Judaism that is about withservice, it would well serve them, as an exam- drawal. That is completely foreign to the ple to our children, to honor those who ideals of Conservative Judaism.

Let’s consider again what Rabbi Feld is do. Being sensitive to others is more than commendable, it is more than admirable, it questioning. Isn’t the purpose of the Jewis what one Jew should do for another. A ish community “Tzekek, tzedek (Justice, jushouse of worship should promote behavior tice)... shall you pursue” rather than and dress that inspire prayerfulness, holi- severance from the world? This is the direcness and spirituality. Few if any distractions tion questions regarding kashrut should take. are helpful to that end.

Taking the Shulchan Arukh’s view about If we hope, at all, to pass on to our children a modicum of respect for others, it food laws in the context of Conservative behooves us to teach them that there is an Judaism is a grand hypocrisy, especially when appropriate dress code for shul. Creative, one contrasts that to the acrobatics of reaindependent, open and free choices should soning applied to issues such as homosexnot stomp on others’ sensitivities. uality, driving on Shabbat and other banner objectives in the movement. Why does the LAURIE DINERSTEIN-KURS movement defer 100 percent to the OrthoEast Windsor , New Jersey dox regarding kashrut but when we want to determine matters of sexuality and other WHAT WE EAT I had been meaning to write a response to things we jettison Orthodoxy altogether? (continued on page 52) Rabbi Feld’s article (“What We Eat: LookCJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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UNITED SYNAGOGUE IS TURNING 100 Help Us Chart the Course for the Next Decades

BY RICHARD SKOLNIK

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AVE YOU HEARD? United Synagogue is turning 100. Needless to say, we’re planning a major celebration, which you can read all about on page 22. But more than a celebration, the event in Baltimore on October

Richard Skolnik is the international president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

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11–15, 2013, will help us chart the course for the next decades of USCJ and Conservative Judaism. By “us,” I don’t mean just we at United Synagogue, I mean thought leaders, rabbis, synagogue leaders, scholars, and innovators of all stripes – everyone, in short, who cares about strengthening the authentic, living Judaism that Solomon Schechter and his colleagues envisioned when they created the then United Synagogue of America in 1913.

The Baltimore gathering will look at the extraordinary impact of Conservative/

What changes must we make to create the future we envision? How will we develop the leaders we need?

Masorti Judaism over the last 100 years and will honor the people and kehillot who have been integral to the history of United Synagogue. There will be a joyous Shabbaton, led by some of our most creative, inspiring ba’alei tefillah and musical interpreters.

The Shabbaton will be a chance for contemplation, celebration and connection.

In plenaries and workshops we will join renowned thought leaders and innovators in exploring what Jewish identity, synagogues and Conservative Judaism will look like in the next 10, 20 and 30 years. What changes must we make to create the future we envision? How will we develop the leaders we need? How do we strengthen our kehillot – our sacred communities – so they remain relevant, vibrant centers of Jewish life? The answers we formulate will be visionary and practical, inspiring and down-toearth.

Clearly, approaches that worked for our parents and grandparents need to be rethought and reimagined for the new century. But what we do next requires the active participation of Conservative Jews everywhere – and of everyone who cares about the vital Jewish center.

That’s where you come in. As we launch the next 100 years of United Synagogue, we need you to help us shape the future. Come to the Centennial in Baltimore. Join the (continued on page 51)

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USING THE GIFTS WE’VE BEEN GIVEN

BY SARRAE CRANE

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N OUR HOME WE HAVE a rule, if we own it, we use it. The fine china comes out not only for Rosh HaShanah and Thanksgiving, but for every Shabbat and holiday, even when it is only the two of us. The crystal wine goblets – and we have glasses both for red and white wine – come out as well. So do the silver and all of the pieces that are sitting in our breakfront.

It is not the same rule with which I grew up. My mother was a saver for a special occasion. She was determined that the legacy she would leave to her children would be in the best possible condition – complete sets, with no scratches or chips. I used to tell her the china, silver and crystal would mean more to me if I remembered using it with her. But she continued to save the “good stuff ” for company and holidays.

Frankly, every time we use the good stuff I think about how it came to be in our hands.

From whose home did it come, the Cranes or the Waxmans? Or when and where did we buy it? I enjoy the memories associated with each object.

I understand my mother’s concern about not using some of her pieces except on rare occasions. First of all, you have to be extra careful. We take out her crystal for Pesach and I cautiously hand wash each and every glass. But by the end of Pesach, I have had enough: I’m ready to put away that crystal for another year. And perhaps more significantly, when you use something, there is always the danger it might get broken or damaged. It does happen, but the option of never using these items is unacceptable. We don’t

Sarrae Crane is executive director of Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.

live in museums; the pieces should be part of gifts. our lives, not on permanent display Over the years, through its various proAnd come Chanukkah we will take out grams and institutes, Women’s League has a couple of beautiful Chanukkiot: they educated women and enabled them to share should be used, not just sit on a shelf gath- their skills and talents so they can enrich ering dust. themselves and their communities. Many All of us have not only physical gifts but of the women now participating in servalso intangible gifts that we dare not let ices in congregations around the country sit unused. This past summer, my hus- received their training and their impetus band and I had a chance to attend serv- from these programs. We are very proud ices in Hawaii at Congregation Sof Maarav of all of the members of the society of Kolot in Honolulu. They have no rabbi, though BiK’dushah who regularly serve as shelichot they do have a couple of semi-retired can- tzibbur (leading services) and baalot kriah tors in their midst. They are essentially a lay (reading Torah) in their congregations. led congregation. On The Women’s the Shabbat we were League Hiddur Mitzthere, seven different Undoubtedly, all of us have vah Project, intropeople read Torah and duced last year, offers talents that we can share others chanted parts of suggestions on how to the service. Members of with our communities. celebrate the events of the congregation take the Jewish calendar in turns offering divrei Torah each week. These a way that fits into our lives today. It helps are individuals who are doctors, professors, us understand that making some changes attorneys, businessmen who have discov- and modifications can enhance our obserered that they have Jewish gifts, some of vance. which have been developed only in the past Women’s League’s theme for this year Uri, few years. Forced by necessity, they share Uri! Awake, Greet the New Dawn, encourthese gifts with those around them. ages us to look forward and examine our Undoubtedly, all of us have talents that structure while renewing our commitment we can share with our communities, with to our mission. our sisterhoods, our men’s clubs, with our We should not fear that using our gifts congregations. Some of the talents are latent, will damage or break them. In fact, we some need polishing. A former congre- should remember that using them increases gant has just completed the cycle of read- their value. Museums are place to visit, but ing every single haftarah that is chanted not homes in which to live. Our beautiin the course of a year. It has taken him years ful ritual items and commitment to Judaism to achieve this goal. And having completed and the Jewish people should be part of our that task, he has decided to master read- lives, not on permanent display ing Torah, beginning with the maftir porChanukkah is a time of shedding light on tions of the haftarot he will read in the future. the world. May it also be a time to share the I have no doubt that he and his congre- light of our gifts of knowledge and synagation will be richer for his sharing these gogue skills with our communities. CJ CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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CAN THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK BECOME THE PEOPLE OF THE iPAD?

BY RABBI CHARLES SIMON

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HE EARLIEST KNOWN writing surfaces were stone, papyrus and animal hides. The papyrus reed, cultivated from the earliest times, was a major resource of ancient Egypt. It was also found in Israel in the Hula swamp and in Transjordan. The earliest reference to papyrus in Canaan is found in an Egyptian text called Rabbi Charles Simon is executive director of FJMC.

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“The Journey of Wen-Amon to Phoenicia” (1090 BCE). The text tells the story of how 500 rolls of papyrus were sent from Lower Egypt to the king of Byblos. Byblos, a city on the Mediterranean coast in Northern Lebanon, became the agent for the export of papyrus throughout the Mediterranean lands, so much so that it gave its name to the product: in Greek, biblos came to mean “book” or “papyrus” and from this word, the word “bible” was derived.

In 1436, Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and businessman from the mining

town of Mainz in southern Germany, borrowed money and invented a technology that transformed the world of printing.

He invented a printing press with replaceable/moveable wooden or metal letters. This method of printing can be credited not only for a revolution in the production of books, but also for fostering rapid development in the sciences, arts and religion.

In antiquity, all books, Jewish and nonJewish, were scrolls. The Talmud and Midrash speak mainly of scroll-books. The first mention of the printing of Jewish books occurred in Avignon, France, in 1444 and the first Hebrew books of which we are aware were printed, at most, 30 years following Gutenberg’s discovery. The first dated Hebrew book was Rashi’s commentary on the Torah in 1475.

The Jewish community understood printing as a means of realizing Isaiah’s prediction that “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord” (11:9). Of course there were some interested parties, like copyists, who feared for their livelihood and opposed this innovation. They described printing as the “work of the devil.” Innovations are always challenged.

When the printing of Bibles and prayer books began to take place it raised some interesting legal (halakhic) questions – the major ones being whether the laws and care concerning the writing of sacred books would apply to printed books as well and whether particular items, like a Torah, tefillin, mezuzot, or bills of divorce could be printed and still be considered valid or if would they be required to remain in handwritten form. (continued on page 51)

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CJS SHOR T S News in Brief about Conservative Judaism

NEW TRAINING OFFERED FOR ISRAEL ADVOCACY “We’re in an information war, but it’s an information war we can win,” says Gary Acheatel, founder and president of Advocates for Israel. In response, MERCAZ, the Conservative movement’s Israel advocacy arm (www.mercazusa.org), is training a core group of advocates to mobilize their synagogue communities at special Israel training seminars. So far two seminars have been held, in Chicago and Los Angeles. MERCAZ partnered with both the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the World Zionist Organization to produce the training seminars, at which representatives from dozens of Conservative synagogues across America participated. As participants follow up with organized activities in their home communities, the MERCAZ advocacy initiative will reach hundreds of thousands of Conservative synagogue members.

To learn more about future seminars, contact MERCAZ USA at 212-533-2061 or info@mercazusa.org.

CALLING ALL USY ALUMNI Remember USY? Regional kinnusim, swimming in the Dead Sea, late night sing-alongs with friends, spending Shabbat with a family you just met, or davening at sunrise at the Grand Canyon? This transformative Jewish program, now 60 years old, is as strong as ever, connecting thousands of young people a year to the joy and meaning of Jewish life.

You can help support these programs so that all of our teenagers can have the opportunity to enjoy the USY experience. The USY Alumni Association has launched its first annual campaign, with the goal of creating new leadership development programs and scholarship opportunities for our young people. You can support the campaign in two ways. First, you can make a donation at www.usy60.org. Second, you can share this information with other USY alums.

Your support will give more teens the chance to strengthen and celebrate their Jewish identity, acquire leadership skills and build lifelong friendships. Just like you did.

CANTORS ASSEMBLY TAKES HISTORIC TRIP TO GERMANY

An interfaith concert was held at the Berliner Dom.

Last summer, about 200 people traveled to Germany and then on to Israel with the Cantors Assembly on a trip that evoked some of the magic and majesty of the German Jewish culture that flourished before the Holocaust. The highlight of the trip was an interfaith concert at the Berliner Dom, one of Europe’s most magnificent churches. The president of Germany was among the guests, together with members of the country’s flourishing Jewish community, who enjoyed a program of Jewish and Christian music.

A haunting service and memorial program took place at Dachau, as well as a special program in memory of the Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The Germany trip is part of a long-time vision of the Cantors Assembly to take Jewish musical and religious traditions to corners of the world with interesting and especially difficult histories. “We must never forget the Holocaust and the many tragedies that have befallen our people through the centuries,” noted CA President Cantor Jack Chomsky. “But we must not lose sight of the richness of our history and culture that preceded those terrible events. We were inspired by the many Jews who have chosen to make Jewish life possible again in Germany today – and tomorrow.”

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INCLUSIVE SIMCHAT TORAH FLAGS FROM MASORTI OLAMI There is a 300-year history of Simchat Torah flags being used to celebrate the giving of the Torah. But as religious life in Israel has become dominated by the fervently Orthodox, it has become impossible to find flags that depict anything other than men and boys or male rabbis. Rabbi Tzvi Graetz, executive director of Masorti Olami, decided to change that with a new flag emphasizing the Masorti values of inclusion and Zionism.

The look of the flag reflects the values of our modern day kehillot as grandparents, parents and children dance together in a circle that represents the passing of our tradition from one generation to another. All are included regardless of race, gender or disability. On the right side, past generations witness the centrality of the State of Israel – from Moses to Herzl. Twenty countries where there are Masorti kehillot – in Europe, Latin America, North America, the FSU, and Africa – are represented by their flags.

Over 17,000 flags were sold in the first five weeks, 10,000 to North America and the rest to Israel and other communities around the world. The flags were shipped with a kit for educational activities using the flag as a trigger for discussions about Jewish identity, Am Yisrael and Jewish history. Flags for next year will go on sale at the beginning of 2013.

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CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM

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T WAS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, IN 1912, that Solomon Schechter, the architect of Conservative Judaism, announced to his supporters and colleagues that he planned to create a new congregational organization.

The group would be distinct from the two reigning – and diametrically opposed – Jewish movements of the time, Reform and Orthodoxy.

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Schechter was a renowned scholar who had come to the U.S. from England to head the still-young Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He Rabbi Herbert Rosenblum invited all of his colleagues – rabbis, academics, philanthropists, and synagogue leaders – to join him in planning this major new undertaking. The response to Schechter’s invitation, however, was decidedly mixed.

How this rocky beginning led to the formation of the Conservative movement – including the creation of what we now call the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism – is a fascinating story of passionate disagreements and difficult compromises among Jewish leaders early in the last century. These arguments ultimately forced a parting of the ways between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. What’s more, the compromises made in those early days caused tensions within the Conservative world that would recur for decades.

A surprising part of the Conservative story is that Solomon Schechter never really wanted to start a new Jewish denomination.

Indeed, it seemed to run against most of his life-long beliefs. Schechter agreed to come to America to lead the seminary mainly because he wanted to avoid the communal problems he had criticized in England,

Rabbi Herbert Rosenblum, PhD, served congregations in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and taught at Hebrew College, New York University and Tel Aviv University.

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Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor Dr. Louis Finkelstein welcomed Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Ambassador to the United States Avraham Harmon on March 16, 1960.

where he felt that a paralyzing bureaucracy stifled the creative possibilities of British Jewry. He hoped to establish a spiritual and intellectual environment that would lead to the flowering of intensive Jewish life in the United States. He believed he could surmount America’s entrenched denominational organizations, which seemed unwilling or unable to advance a higher level of strong Jewish learning and observance.

On arrival in America in 1902, Schechter received a warm welcome from many quarters – scholars, media, cultural leaders, philanthropists, Reform spokesmen, even Orthodox leaders. One could call this the Schechter honeymoon. Everyone seemed to seek his advice and to acknowledge him as the greatest Judaic scholar in the world.

The honeymoon lasted for about two

years, during which time Schechter fulfilled some of the high hopes that accompanied him. He built the JTS faculty, forged bonds with philanthropists and board members, founded the seminary library, and recruited a strong student population. Schechter believed these successful beginnings were harbingers of continued achievements and support.

Alas, by 1904, flies appeared in the ointment. Reform leaders realized that Schechter would not support the goals of their movement. They criticized his commitment to ancient texts and his unwillingness to depart from the norms of halakhah, Jewish law. The Orthodox, for their part, began to question whether some of his faculty appointees were reliably true to Jewish tradition.

Most importantly, his philanthropic backers began to wonder if Schechter had promised more than he could deliver, certainly vis-a-vis the large immigrant population pouring into the downtown ghettoes. Apparently, Schechter’s hope of intensifying the new immigrants’ Jewish learning and practice did not resonate with them in their struggle to establish themselves in America.

Schechter’s philanthropic supporters began to explore other outlets for their giving, founding groups, for instance, such as the American Jewish Committee, and bequeathing money for Jewish learning at

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like an Orthodox-Conother institutions. servative union.

In 1905, Schechter There were a host of announced his per- A surprising part of the Conservative story is that other thorny questions. sonal commitment to What kind of liturgy the new Zionist move- Solomon Schechter never ment, alienating still really wanted to start a new would the new congregational group promore of his erstwhile Jewish denomination. mote? Would it include backers. Some semiboth Hebrew and Engnary graduates, meanwhile, had begun to take jobs at Reform lish? How would it deal with halakhah?

What would be the approach to Sabbath or Orthodox congregations.

Within a few short years, Schechter was observance? From 1910 to 1913, the rabforced to consider where he would find bis and leaders debated these issues and his future support. He decided the answer more. was to create a congregational/communal body that would regard his institution – the Jewish Theological Seminary of America – as its primary concern. So, along with his school’s rabbinic alumni and other colleagues, he began to explore the creation of what was to ultimately become the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

There were differences of opinion right from the start.

The first major issue was the projected organization’s name. The JTS alumni assumed that it would be something like the Jewish Conservative Union. But this was opposed by Cyrus Adler, Schechter’s trusted adviser (and successor at the seminary). Adler was determined to maintain the participation of the modern Orthodox, who 15 years earlier had established their own Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. The leaders of this group increasingly had withdrawn their support from Schechter’s institution precisely because it seemed to be heading in non-Orthodox directions.

Another major issue was how inclusive the new organization would be. Schechter and his JTS associates wanted the new group to be as inclusive as possible. Schechter hoped to embrace all elements of the Jewish community, with the exceptions of the old-world Orthodox and the radical Reform leaders.

Then there was the issue of whether the founders wanted to establish a third movement in American Judaism. Schechter’s associates were split, with his younger colleagues supporting a new movement, and the older leadership, including Adler, Schechter and most of the academics, favoring something

Finally, at the founding meeting on February 23, 1913, the group adopted a constitution for the United Synagogue of America. It included a series of compromises. There was a commitment to traditional practice, but not a blanket acceptance of halakhah. It advocated retaining Hebrew in the liturgy and urged the strengthening of Jewish education. But perhaps most surprising from today’s standpoint, the new group opened its membership to “all elements essentially loyal to traditional Judaism,” which meant that those who rejected the idea of a separate movement

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involving marriage and divorce. He also encouraged Talmudist Saul Lieberman to formulate a new clause to be inserted into the marriage ketubah to forestall divorce complications.

By 1945, the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue had decided that the socalled Silverman prayer book, pioneered in the 1930s by Rabbi Morris Silverman of Hartford, Connecticut, and already popular in Conservative congregations, should be adopted officially by the movement. The growing split between those in the seminary and those in the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue was summed up by Aaron Blumenthal, the R.A. president, who Seminary Chancellor Dr. Louis Finkelstein congratulates Henry N. Rapaport on his installation as in 1957 told his colleagues: “The seminary president of United Synagogue in 1965. Mannye London, president of National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, Helen Fried, president of the National Women’s League, Rabbi Bernard Segal, executive has remained an Orthodox institution while director of United Synagogue, and Rabbi Max Routtenberg, president of the Rabbinical Assembly we have become a Conservative movement… look on.

Practically every member who has been added had won the day, and the Orthodox had the Use of Certain Conservative Congre- to the Talmud faculty in the last 15 to 20 won an important point: the United Syn- gations by Doctor Jacob Kohn.” In 1927, years thinks of himself as an Orthodox Jew, agogue would not endorse innovations made the Committee on Jewish Law was removed and I am afraid that some of them have litby individual congregations, such as mixed from the United Synagogue and made a tle regard for the Conservative movement.” seating, liturgical changes, and kashrut and committee of the Rabbinical Assembly in The changes in halakhic standards the hope that this group would move for- approved by the Committee on Jewish Law halakhic liberalization.

Both Schechter and Adler were satisfied ward with greater modernization. and Standards during the 1950s and ‘60s When Cyrus Adler died in 1940, Louis only intensified this ideological divide. But by these compromises. Schechter was elected the first president of the United Synagogue Finkelstein was selected to succeed him as beginning in 1974, when Finkelstein retired of America, succeeded a year later by Adler. president of the Jewish and Gerson Cohen The stage was set for the organization’s slow Theological Seminary. became seminary chanIt soon became clear but steady growth. cellor, the relationships Over the next 99 years, the early divisions that while Finkelstein When the seminary agreed between the arms of the of United Synagogue’s founding years would was interested in to accept women rabbinical movement became recur over and over. A group of young sep- expanding the hori- students in 1983, the more cooperative. aratists, including Mordecai Kaplan who zons of the seminary, departure of traditionalists Soon, however, the ultimately founded the Reconstructionist he would resist most of movement would be became inevitable. modernizing movement, continued to agitate for ideo- the roiled by another major logical and organizational change. The anti- requests of the United issue – the ordination separatists, led by Cyrus Adler and others, Synagogue and the Rabbinical Assembly. of women.

After World War II, however, a new gencontinued to seek accommodations with the By the 1980s, both the Reform and Orthodox. For instance, efforts to introduce eration of leaders began to make its pres- Reconstructionist movements were ordainliberal innovations – most notably to resolve ence felt, and many of the issues that had ing women. In the Conservative movement, the problem of agunot, chained women been debated in 1913 caused open fric- meanwhile, the issue was being intensely whose husbands would not grant a divorce tion between the seminary, on one side, and debated. When the seminary agreed to – continued to be stymied by a desire not the United Synagogue and Rabbinical accept women rabbinical students in 1983, Assembly, on the other. For instance, the the departure of traditionalists became to rupture relations with the Orthodox.

When concrete changes were made, it was Committee on Jewish Law and Standards inevitable. The renowned Talmud scholar only with great hesitancy. In 1927, for proposed halakhic innovations on issues David Weiss Halivni resigned and formed example, efforts to revise the prayer book such as marriage and divorce, Sabbath obser- a new group, the Union for Traditional Conresulted in the publication of two separate vance, and kashrut. Finkelstein tried to stem servative Judaism, later known as the Union versions, with the liberalized version iden- this tide, offering the option of a national for Traditional Judaism. tified on the title page as being “Adapted for bet din, or religious court, for resolving issues The liberalizing trend in Conservative

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Judaism reached a high water mark and then began to recede in 1983, when the Reform movement adopted its decision on patrilineal descent, which accepted as Jews the children of non-Jewish mothers and Jewish fathers who had been raised as Jews. When this idea was raised at Rabbinical Assembly conventions in the 1980s, it was rejected decisively. The boundaries of the Conservative movement both on the left – no patrilineal descent – and on the right – egalitarianism – were established for decades to come.

In retrospect, the compromises worked out by Schechter and his associates in 1913 were effective because they allowed the new United Synagogue of America to come into being without serious damage to the relationship among varying factions of Jewish leaders. But these compromises clearly papered over real theological divisions that could not be ignored and that led fairly quickly to something Schechter had originally not intended: the creation of a new Jewish movement.

Recently, some historians have expressed the conviction that the Conservative movement really did not emerge as a movement until 1950. These historians ignore, however, several major realities. Specifically, as early as the 1900s, the Orthodox and Reform each dealt with the Conservatives as a distinct, third movement. Examples of this manifested themselves in differences over mixed seating, which was abhorred by the Orthodox, and over Zionism, kashrut and Shabbat, the laws of which were rejected by the Reform until many years later.

What’s next for Conservative Judaism?

Predicting the future, of course, is completely different than analyzing the past. But as Conservative Judaism’s current leadership well knows, the realities of contemporary Jewish life contain both promise and cause for concern. Perhaps a guiding mantra should be the historic words of Solomon Schechter in 1913, who said at the inaugural meeting of the United Synagogue: “It is a real work of heaven for which I invite your attention and participation – a work on which, in my humble opinion, depends the continuance and the survival of traditional Judaism in this country.” CJ CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM

CONSERVATIVE or ORTHODOX? Does the Jewish world know the difference? Do we?

BY RABBI ADAM FRANK

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HEN AN Israeli that an observant Jew is assumed to be learns that I am a Orthodox. Conservative ideology mandates Masorti/Conser- halakhic observance no less than Orthovative rabbi the doxy. Despite legal decisions of the Coninevitable query servative movement’s Committee on Jewish soon follows: Law and Standards that reflect more aggres“What is the difference between Reform sive reconciliations of our tradition with and Conservative?” The very question con- contemporary times, the overwhelming perveys a glaring lack of knowledge about the centage of non-observant Jews labeled Conservative has given an philosophical underinaccurate face to the pinnings of those two ideological definition of streams of Judaism; it Conservative Judaism does Conservative. also speaks to the failA modified version of ure of the Conserva- not require that its Conservative ideology tive movement to adherents espouse one best reflects Judaism’s communicate clearly common, singular belief in historical tradition – the principles of its the origin of Torah. that is, the way that ideology. The more accurate question is “What is the difference Judaism developed and varied for nearly 3,000 years until the codification (sadly, between Conservative and Orthodox?”

Except for my preference for egalitar- read “ossification”) of the legal compendium ian tefillah, were someone to observe my known as the Shulchan Arukh (17th cendaily life, hear my belief about God's active tury). It offers the best model for helping presence in the world, and even my belief Judaism to follow that 3,000-year path of in the origin of the Written Torah, that per- being organic in order to help Jews and son would think that I am an Orthodox Jew. the world reach our potentials.

Conservative ideology differs from curIt is a critical commentary on the state of Conservative Judaism and its movement rent Orthodox Judaism as follows:

EMPHASIZES ACTIONS OVER A BELIEF SYSTEM Adam Frank is rabbi at Congregation Moreshet Yisrael, the Masorti/Conservative Beit Knesset in downtown Jerusalem.

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Conservative Judaism does not require that its adherents espouse one common, singular belief in the origin of Torah. Whether

it was given to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai by God’s hand, or written

by Moses, or authored by various prophets, or Divinely inspired by founding elders, or serves as the historical record of the early Israelites, or is the literary chronicle of how a small band of people attempted to be in relationship with an ineffable God…it does not matter how one finds meaning in the Torah but that one finds the Torah meaningful.

In other words, it matters most that a person is engaged and observant of Jewish practice regardless of the motivation to do so, whether it be by reason of any of the following: being commanded by God; being commanded by Jewish peoplehood; wanting to feel part of a community; believing that it helps to refine character; desiring to be part of the chain that links past to future generations; because it stimulates intellectual passions; because one finds it psychologically, emotionally and physically sensible and worthy; because it provides a vehicle for societal improvement; because one’s grandparents were observant; and so on.

Accordingly, it does not matter why one is observant but that one is observant.

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EMBRACES THE HUMAN DESIRE TO QUESTION It is not taboo to question traditional assumptions, theological claims, halakhic positions. Inquisitiveness is desired and welcomed, and challenges of assumptions and to the status quo are neither punished nor impugned nor ostracized. Halakhic decisions are decided by scholars, but the right, and even the responsibility, to raise questions belongs to the community of practitioners.

PROMOTES SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT BORDERS Traditional communities are wonderful about caring for their members’ needs, whether for food/material goods, health, education, comfort, solace, or celebration.

As the western world has changed in a way that allows a greater platform for Jews, Conservative ideology advocates channeling some of our focus in leading humanity in the pursuit of justice and a sense of responsibility toward different populations.

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ENDORSES THE HALAKHIC NEXUS BETWEEN TRADITION AND MODERNITY Conservative Judaism allows for a robust interface of Jewish tradition with modernity to utilize the elasticity of halakhah and ensure its evolving appropriateness – a flexibility that was the hallmark of Judaism until the 17th century and has nearly disappeared in the mainstream Orthodox world. This interface finds forms in areas as relevant as kashrut, the role of women, health, the environment, modern technologies, engagement with all the world’s populations, and political and social policies.

This element of Conservative ideology is grounded in the understanding that the Oral Law involves the wisdom of the sages, who employ the tools given to humans by God – intellect, emotion, psychology, wisdom, understanding, experience, precedence, skills of argumentation and of observation, the powers of analysis and of empirical evidence – and apply them to the Torah, in order to decipher what God is telling us about

how to be a Jew in the world. For this reason, unlike mainstream Orthodox colleagues, I will stand in public and proclaim that the Written Law was given by God at Mt. Sinai with the instruction that there be an accompanying Oral Law whose ongoing process remains intact for every generation (precisely in keeping with Rashi’s elucidation of Deuteronomy 17:9-11; in keeping with the Oven of Akhnai, B.Metziva 59b; in keeping with the visit of Moses to Rabbi Akiva’s class in Menachot 29b, and volumes more).

It is my belief that the most effective transformational power of Judaism on the self, family, congregation, and global community contains the synthesis of unwavering fidelity to halakhic observance and the courage to incorporate the four elements delineated above.

Curiously, neither the majority of Conservative nor modern Orthodox Jews claims this position as theirs. Perhaps the truly most appropriate question is: why not?

This article originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post. CJ

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CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM

THE VITAL CENTER IS HOLDING Reports of the demise of Conservative Judaism are greatly exaggerated B Y R A B B I A L A N S I LV E R S T E I N

M

ANY CONSERVATIVE Jews were alarmed by press accounts of the Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011. The study claims national implications, noting that “the future of American Jewry is powerfully influenced by developments” in New York.

If you didn’t read about the study, the finding that caused the most concern was this: “Over the last two decades, both Conservative and Reform household percentages have fallen, with the Conservative proportion falling even further than the Reform.”

Disturbing in a different manner was the executive summary of the Los Angeles-based Synagogue 3000’s recent nationwide survey of Reform and Conservative congregations, which concludes that “Reform congregations fare better” than Conservative counterparts in religious life, mission and morale. We are left pondering: are we witnessing the precipitous numeric and religious collapse of Conservative Judaism, the

Rabbi Alan Silverstein is religious leader of Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell, New Jersey, and chair of the Masorti Israel Foundation.

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“vital center” of the Jewish spectrum? servative congreI am relieved to report that closer exam- gations.” They ination of the data reveals a more nuanced also assessed that assessment. enhanced Shabbat First, contrary to the headlines, the New engagement in York numbers for the three large movements Conservative syndo not reflect the disappearance of Con- agogues can be servative Jews. In fact, the study found attributed in part 142,000 affiliated Modern Orthodox Jews, to greater “emphasis upon observing special 191,000 members of Conservative syna- practices … on the Sabbath or … holy day” gogues, and 160,000 members of Reform and upon “personal prayer, meditation, devosynagogues. What patterns do these num- tion or other spiritual practices.” bers represent compared to a decade ago?

Third, the study is misleading when it The study team found bundles all Jews other “approximate stability” than the Orthodox in the number of Coninto a single “nonContrary to the headlines, servative Jews claiming Orthodox” category. In synagogue membership the New York numbers for fact, the New York between 2002 and the three large movements researchers affirm that 2011, according to an do not reflect the joining a Conservative article in the New York disappearance of congregation makes a Jewish Week. huge difference in Conservative Jews.

Second, reading the terms of active Jewish actual data within the engagement.

The Synagogue 3000 study reveals not only the study consistently referred to “a familiar weaknesses but also the strengths of our con- denominational gradient, with the Orthogregations. For example, the research team dox substantially leading Conservative adherreported that on Saturday morning, “Con- ents, who in turn surpass Reform Jews on servative services are far better attended than measures of engagement and attendance,” Reform services.” This greater attendance is while all far exceed the level among the “Just “a reflection [in contrast to most Reform Jewish” respondents. temples] of there being an ongoing Shabbat While 73 percent of affiliated Conservmorning worshipping community in Con- ative Jews rate “very high” or “high” on a

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scale measuring Jewish engagement, 72 percent of the unaffiliated “Just Jewish” respondents rank either “low” or “very low.” In response to this data, Jewish Theological Seminary Professor Jack Wertheimer concluded, “it is time to put to rest the fable…that those who do not identify with a denomination are an innovative breed of intrepid pioneers intent on carving a new form of Jewish identity. Overwhelmingly, such people are progressively disengaging from every aspect of Jewish life.”

Furthermore, within the denominational gradient among the non-Orthodox, both the Synagogue 3000 and New York Federation studies identify Conservative Jews as exhibiting the highest levels of Jewish intensity. Conservative Jews not only are “substantially more likely to attend monthly services” than their fellow “non-Orthodox” Jews, they also excel in terms of participation in Shabbat meals, sustaining Jewish friends, talking about Jewish matters, accessing Jewish websites, and donating to UJA/Federation.

Affiliated Conservative Jews also are noteworthy within the non-Orthodox spectrum in their commitment to educating their children as Jews. Uniquely high percentages of Conservative-affiliated children receive some type of formal Jewish education, attend day schools, enroll in Jewish preschool or Jewish day care, and spend time in Israel.

Conservative congregations also are the most common non-Orthodox addresses in which to find a daily minyan, kosher kitchens, delegations to the AIPAC Policy conference, Israel Bonds campaigns, and so much more.

If many factors point to a high quality of Jewish engagement within Conservative ranks, why does survey data frequently reveal a numeric decline? This important question merits careful analysis. Here are but a few factors to be explored: First, sons and daughters of Conservative Jews are marrying and having children later and later. During these odyssey years (their 20s and 30s), single adults cluster into urban singles scenes. This does not mean that they necessarily will be lost to the movement of their youth. Instead, they temporarily self-identify as “Just Jewish” until their marital and household paths have been deter-

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mined. At that point, young married couples with tots ready for preschool routinely re-enter the world of synagogue membership and movement identification.

Second, the populations of certain American neighborhoods have aged or have changed their ethnic and/or religious composition. Unfortunately, the Conservative movement has been far too slow in balancing these predictable membership losses with the seeding of congregations in emerging areas of residence. An entrepreneurial approach to synagogue growth has become a priority for the re-organized United Syn-

agogue of Conservative Judaism. The USCJ’s strategic plan also focuses on enhancing the vitality of local Conservative synagogues.

The goal is to make congregations more skilled in their retention of empty-nesters, while simultaneously providing more energetic outreach to prospective members.

In sum, a careful reading of the current surveys ought not to discourage the Conservative movement. Embedded within the sometimes difficult findings is a context that is considerably less ominous. The data point to the possibility and hope for a much brighter future. CJ

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100 YEARS OF UNITED SYNAGOGUE Join Us to Celebrate Our Achievements and Help Shape the Future Clear your calendars for a remarkable event that promises to be a watershed moment in Conservative Jewish life – the much anticipated Centennial Celebration of United Synagogue.

BY SHIRA DICKER

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The sound of children’s voices: Top, second graders at the United Synagogue Day School, Toronto in 1962, and bottom, at the USCJ Biennial in 2009.

F

ROM OCTOBER 11–15, 2013, a broad representation of the leadership and laity of Conservative/Masorti Judaism will converge on the beautiful Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel for a gala celebration that marks the beginning of United Synagogue’s second century of life The program-packed event will feature addresses, plenary sessions, lectures, and workshops led by luminaries of religious life, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, well-known authors, pundits, heads of organizations, and public figures. Many presentations will be in the syle of Limmud, the international Jewish learning and culture initiative whose events have energized the Jewish world. The spirit of collaborative learning will pervade the convention hall.

Organizers hope to draw a multi-generational audience from across the broad spectrum of Jewish life, especially from the numerous kehillot that United Synagogue serves and the various institutions under the rubric of Conservative Judaism.

“The milestone mark of 100 years is a catalyst for committed Conservative Jews to own the privilege and responsibility of standing at the epicenter of contemporary Jewish life,” said Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of USCJ. “Our Centennial Celebration is a step directly into the future of Conservative Judaism at this critical moment in time.

Everyone and anyone who has a stake in building and sustaining a strong and vibrant Jewish identity – personal, institutional and otherwise – will want to be at this gather-

ing to learn, connect, share ideas and skills, and be inspired.”

United Synagogue’s Centennial Celebration will honor the impact of Conservative Judaism in its first 100 years and launch the next phase of growth for United Synagogue as those gathered envision the future of Conservative Judaism.

For those come on Friday, October 11, the Centennial Celebration will begin with a Shabbaton filled with reunions and ruach.

Keynote events on Sunday will honor the people and kehillot who are integral to the history of United Synagogue.

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munity – now and in the future. The sessions will pose questions about the implications of reaching the 100-year milestone – on an organizations level – and the manner in which individuals connect with one another in our modern age.

In addition, there will be opportunities for consultations with United Synagogue specialists and selected consultants, a launch of new projects and cohorts for the next phase of United Synagogue’s strategic plan, and programs to highlight the innovation and creativity of kehillot around the continent.

Workshops that follow the plenary sessions will deepen the conversations and ques-

Mezuzah hanging through the years: In 1974, JTS Chancellor Gerson Cohen and United Synagogue staff gathered to hang the mezuzah at the new offices at 155 Fifth Avenue in New York City. In 2007,USCJ’s congregational schools consultant Wendy Light, left, affixed a mezuzah with her husband, Ivan, and daughter-in-law, Rabbi Sharon Brous.

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Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly; Hazzan Steven Stein, executive vice president of the Cantors Assembly; Rabbi Steven Wernick, chief executive officer of USCJ; and Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies participated in a panel discussion at United Synagogue’s 2009 biennial.

tions that come from the plenaries.

There are three major topics for workshops: Identity Formation – People and

Peoplehood; Identity Formation – Organizational; and Conservative Kehillot (Sacred Communities) 2020. Conference organizers anticipate that participants will discuss such pivotal questions as: • What will it mean to be a Conservative Jew in the 21st century?

• Where will Conservative Jews be – in Israel and around the world?

• What will Conservative kehillot look like in the next hundred years?

• What will be the hallmarks of being “visionary” in the future?

• 100 years is too far to forecast. How do we envision the next seven years?

To attract a broad audience, the Centennial Celebration planners are doing targeted outreach to the various branches and organizations of Conservative Judaism as well as to alumni of the iconic institutions of the movement such as the Solomon Schechter Day School Network, USY, Camp Ramah, the various Israel programs, KOACH, and others.

Margo Dix Gold and Jack (Jacob) Finkelstein are serving as co-chairs of the Centennial Celebration committee. Members of the United Synagogue board, they both bring passion, vision and well-articulated goals to the table.

As a committee chair, Gold said that she cherishes “the license to be bold” and looks forward to groundbreaking programming and atmosphere at the Centennial Celebration. Having just concluded her presidency at Ahavath Achim in Atlanta, Gold was greatly inspired by the intrepid attitude of her kehilla as it implemented an ambitious strategic plan.

At Ahavath Achim, “No one put their

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One of the common goals was the creation of a watershed Centennial Celebration to bring together the leadership and laity of United Synagogue and the contemporary Conservative Jewish world. hands on their hips and said, ‘we don’t it that way.’ We had a lot of fun. People knew things had to be different,” she said. “Also, when people asked me at the end of my presidency what I accomplished, I said that I had helped to change the tone of the congregation.”

Changing the tone of Conservative Judaism – which is all-too-often self-deprecating – is one of Gold’s core goals through the planning of the Centennial Celebration.

For Finkelstein, his previous work as United Synagogue’s vice president for strategic planning and co-chair of the USCJ-HaYom Strategic Planning Commission, in addition to other organizational leadership positions, inspired him to work on the Centennial Celebration. “Being on that commission was a transformational moment for me,” he said.

“A group of brilliant people sat for 18 months and deliberated. We formed a group mind, like what we’re doing now with the Centennial. We had a common goal.”

One of the common goals was the creation of a watershed Centennial Celebration to bring together the leadership and laity of United Synagogue and the contemporary Conservative Jewish world. “We discussed the fact that in 2013, United Synagogue would be 100 years old. This was the perfect opportunity to turn the corner, to embrace a new plan and the future,” he said.

Finkelstein envisions the Centennial Celebration as a “memorable, meaningful ingathering of kehillot. In my wild vision of all of this, we will create a mega-network where someone from Savannah, Georgia, meets someone from San Jose, California. The Centennial can be where we create sister kehillot, where we truly con-

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nect by building bridges across the continent,” he said.

As a scientist, he sees unrelated tracks and makes them coherent, he explained. Though United Synagogue is implementing a farreaching strategic plan, there are people out in the rest of North America who are not living it, or even seeing it. The Centennial is a chance for them to live it and to see it.

“Steve [Wernick] and the board are really committed to excellence,” said Gold. This gives her confidence that the Centennial Celebration will be a stellar event. “You bring

people to a gathering to be inspired not just by what they’re hearing but by the people around them. My goal is that when they leave, they will have learned something valuable, not just for their kehilla but also for themselves; they will have learned something, met someone, heard something that makes them feel uplifted, that will serve as personal inspiration to them long after the celebration,” she said.

“We’re on a boat sailing to the future and United Synagogue is the navigator or lighthouse, illuminating the way forward,” quipped Finkelstein. CJ

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WHEN JEWS PLAY SANTA

In this excerpt from his new book, a prominent scholar looks at Jews who love to volunteer on Christmas, just one of the many ways we have adapted to a holiday that’s hard to ignore.

BY JOSHUA ELI PLAUT

P

ERHAPS THE MOST interesting and ironic form of Jewish volunteerism during Christmas-time is the phenomenon of the Jewish Santa Claus. In a limited sense, this title is bestowed on Jewish volunteers who act generously, very much like Santa Claus would. More commonly, this description refers to Jews who volunteer to wear Santa garb and act in character. A Massachusetts Needham Times newspaper article refers to the performance of these two aspects of Santa’s persona: “Santa takes on different forms. For the needy in Needham this year, as with every other year, Santa is more than one person.”

The Patriot Ledger newspaper of Quincy, Massachusetts, portrays the Lamb family as acting Santa-like when volunteering: “The Lamb family has no experience playing Santa Claus,” the Ledger writes. “But it doesn’t take long for the Jewish foursome to spread

Joshua Eli Plaut, an ordained rabbi, holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He is the author of Greek Jewry in the Twentieth Century, 1913–1983 and has documented Jewish life and popular culture through photography, oral history and ethnography.

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In addition to Jews acting generously like Santa, some have donned Santa outfits and played the role of Santa at retail businesses, hospitals, shelters, and private homes.

Christmas cheer. In little more than an hour, Susan, Paul, and their two daughters completed what has become their personal holiday tradition, delivering hot dinners and warm wishes to elderly people alone in their homes.”

Beginning in 1969 and ending in 1996, Albert Rosen of Milwaukee volunteered annually to replace workers on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. After a chance encounter with a man who bemoaned that he had to work on Christmas, Rosen called a local radio station and asked the disc jockey to announce that “a Jewish man wanted to work for a Christian on Christmas.”

Rosen, substituting for Christian strangers at work, performed their duties on Christmas. He volunteered as a police dispatcher, bellman, switchboard operator, television reporter, chef, convenience store clerk, radio disc jockey, and gas station attendant. To be most productive, he trained for each position in advance of Christmas. While not directly referred to as Santa, an Associated Press story dubbed Albert Rosen a “Jewish elf,” as if he were one of Santa’s helpers.

Albert Rosen was eulogized on December 2, 1998, as acting “Christ-like” because of what he did for others. His story served as inspiration because Wesley Davis, an African American friend of Rosen’s, took his place several weeks later to fulfill a promise Al had made to answer telephones at a home for the blind on Christmas Day. “Al would have wanted that,” said Davis.

A celebrated case of acting like Santa Claus was the response of Aaron Feuerstein, the Jewish owner of the large textile factory Malden Mills in Methuen, Massachusetts.

His factory burned to the ground in 1995, two weeks before Christmas. Aaron Feuerstein decided to continue to pay salaries CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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to and health benefits for his twenty-five hundred employees until partial production resumed at the mill. He also gave them Christmas bonuses. When asked where he obtained strength and inspiration after the devastation, Feuerstein cited an ancient Jewish quotation that served as his motto: “When all is moral chaos, this is the time for you to be a mensch.”

For his exemplary efforts, Feuerstein was labeled by the news media as the “Mensch who saved Christmas” for his employees.

In addition to Jews acting generously like Santa, some have donned Santa outfits and played the role of Santa at retail businesses, hospitals, shelters, and private homes.

Beginning with the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Jewish-owned Brickman’s Department Store in the small community of Vineyard Haven on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts began to invite people to serve as Santa during the Christmas season. At that time, Brickman’s was the only store on the island to sport a Santa Claus for children to visit during

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the month of December. Dorothy Brick- dressed up as Santa Claus until he identiman, the daughter of the store’s founders, fied himself. From that moment on, the two explained that her family felt it a civic duty neighbors were on friendly terms. In this to have a Santa represented in town. small way, a small town Jew dressed as Santa One year, Bernie Issokson, a friend of the helped to promote good Christian-Jewish Brickman family and a Jewish resident of relationships. the island, dressed up The main motivaas Santa Claus. tions for playing the role According to Dorothy, of Santa are to make Jews who act out the part Bernie agreed to dress children happy and to up as Santa on the very of Santa do so for altruistic spread holiday cheer same day that his wife reasons, some for evoking and goodwill. Harvey and daughter were pleasure and others because Katz, a Glastonbury, attending a Hanukkah Christmas was part of Connecticut, lawyer party at the only syn- their holiday celebration enjoyed dressing up as agogue on Martha’s Santa Claus. In the early growing up.

Vineyard. Upon reach1900s, Harvey’s parents ing his home, the Jewwere the first Jewish resish Santa Claus discovered that he had idents to settle in Glastonbury, a town hisforgotten his key and was locked out of torically identified with New England his house. He knocked on the door of an farmers. Harvey’s parents opened Katz’s elderly neighbor who had made it clear on Hardware Store on Main Street. Eventually, previous occasions that he did not like liv- Harvey became a lawyer with a welling next to a Jewish family. respected legal practice in town. He became Having answered the knock at his door, the first Jewish member of a local bank’s the neighbor did not recognize Bernie board of trustees. As a gesture of goodwill, every year during the 1970s and 1980s, Harvey dressed up as Santa Claus for one afternoon and spread good cheer throughout the bank because of, as he explained, “his love for kids and creating a joyous mood during the holiday season.”

Toward the end of his life, comedian Alan King satirically described his encounter with a Yiddish-speaking Santa Claus at the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street in Manhattan.

The Jewish immigrant from Ukraine justifies to Alan King his “ho-ho-ho” get-up by quipping in Yiddish: “Men makht a lebn” – a man has to make a living. A paycheck, however, is not the main reason Jews volunteer to dress up as Santa. Jews who act out the part of Santa do so for altruistic reasons, some for evoking pleasure and others because Christmas was part of their holiday celebration growing up. For people raised from childhood with a Santa tradition, the transition to playing Santa Claus in public may be a natural progression. A 1978 Los Angeles Times article “Memoirs of a Jewish Santa” reported the story of a man named Jay Frankston who dressed up as Santa Claus in New York for twelve years,

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from 1960 to 1972. His decision to put on Santa’s clothing came after an experience in 1958 of decorating a Christmas tree with his family. For two successive years he played Santa for his Jewish children. The Santa outfit gave Frankston a joyous persona. Wearing a mask, complete with whiskers and flowing white hair, the Santa outfit, buttressed by inflatable pillows, transformed him into “a child’s dream of Saint Nick.”

“My posture changed,” he admitted. “I leaned back and pushed out my false stomach, my head tilted to the side, and my voice got deeper and richer: ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE.’”

The main motivations for playing the role of Santa are to make children happy and to spread holiday cheer and goodwill.

Jay so enjoyed dressing up as Santa that he volunteered to answer letters sent to Santa Claus that were deposited at the main post office in New York City. He discovered that its third floor was swamped with letters addressed to Santa Claus at the North Pole.

He responded to eight of the letters he had read and spent $150 of his own money to send telegrams to each of the eight children.

The telegrams announced that Santa was answering their wishes and would deliver the gifts personally. And so he did. By 1972, Jay was reading ten thousand letters and bringing gifts to 150 children each Christmas. Publicity about Frankston’s good deeds attracted donations, which he then passed on to charitable organizations to use at Christmastime. Echoing the sentiments of many Jews who have become involved in bringing cheer to others on Christmas, Frankston admitted that Christmas belonged to him and had brought him much happiness through his charity.

This article is excerpted from Joshua Eli Plaut’s new book A Kosher Christmas: ’Tis the Season to Be Jewish (Rutgers University Press. $22.95). CJ CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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CHANUKKAH: A DARKER TALE The real story behind the holiday should strengthen our resolve to reject extremism B Y J O N AT H A N E N G E L

T

HE HISTORY OF Chanukkah in the United States is one of deliberate misunderstanding. Most of us were introduced to the holiday as a children’s parable: the underdog Jews led by the brave Hasmonean Maccabee brothers overcome the tyrannical Assyrian Greeks to re-establish their independence and purify their Temple. God expresses his pleasure by performing the miracle in which a one-day supply of purified olive oil is transformed into the necessary eight-day supply. This version has the added benefit of justifying a healthy consumption of oily foods – latkes, sufganiyot – to commemorate the miracle. What could be better?

When you look a little deeper into the historical sources in the books of the Maccabees, however, you discover that the mir-

Jonathan Engel is professor of Public Affairs at Baruch College, CUNY. He is the past president of Congregation B’nai Israel in Millburn, New Jersey.

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acle of the oil never happened. The eight- For one, the Hasmoneans turned out to day celebration most likely began as a late be terrible civil governors, evolving quickly observance of Sukkot in the year in which to despotism, nepotism and corruption after the Jews had been unable to celebrate it forcing out the Syrians. Their dynasty lasted because the Syrians controlled Jerusalem. a scant 100 years before civil war engulfed While Sukkot soon returned to its right- the country and the Roman army was disful place in the calendar (it is a harvest fes- patched to restore order. The Hasmoneans tival, after all), the solstice celebration launched several wars against their neighremained and morphed into our modern bors in an effort to expand the boundaries festival of Chanukkah. The miraculous oil, of the Israelite kingdom, and periodically by the way, is absent from the Mishnah, and turned to forced conversions reminiscent of does not make an appearance until the the atrocities which had precipitated their Gemarrah was codified some 700 years later. original revolt.

More important is the suggestion of sevThe real story of Chanukkah is quite a bit different, and darker, than the one we eral contemporary scholars that the learned as children. At the same time, it Chanukkah story is a misrepresentation of what was, in fact, holds an important and a Jewish civil war. A highly relevant message split in the Israelite for Jews today, one that More important is the community between warns against extremsuggestion of several Hellenized and Hebraiism and should contemporary scholars that cized Jews had created strengthen our resolve a power struggle into to remain the vital Jew- the Chanukkah story is a misrepresentation of what which Antiochus was ish center. unwittingly drawn.

Chanukkah began as was, in fact, a Jewish The Seleucid dynasty a holiday of dedication. civil war. A split in the (over which Antiochus The name comes from Israelite community ruled) permitted free the Hebrew lechanech, between Hellenized and worship in its conto dedicate, which quered regions, so its really meant purifica- Hebraicized Jews had anti-Jewish policies in tion. The leader of the created a power struggle into which Antiochus was Israel only make sense Syrians, Antiochus III, when seen as part of a meeting strong resist- unwittingly drawn. broader effort to restore ance from Jerusalembased zealots, not only forbade the practice political stability to the region. In this view, of Judaism but also defiled Jewish holy sites the Maccabees were not a ragtag group of with sadistic glee. He erected a statue of Zeus freedom fighters but rather regional leaders in the Temple and sacrificed pigs on the altar. fighting for the restoration of clerical His soldiers demanded that Jews consume Judaism. The Pharissee/ Saducee split, in pork, bow to idols, and vow allegiance to whose shadow Jesus preached, was really the the pantheon of Greek gods. The horrific projection of this tension two centuries later. story of Hannah, who refused to eat pork We may demonize the Assyrian Greeks for and was forced to watch as her sons were their violence and crudeness, but they only dismembered, flayed alive and burned at were responding to calls for help from their the stake, may be a composite, but it is almost Hellenized Judaic brethren.

What are we to make of this portrait of certainly drawn from actual events. Having experienced two years of desecration and some of our favorite heroes? First, we might defilement, the Jews’ first inclination after ask why we care at all. This theologically their military victory was not so much to trivial holiday (it carries none of the restriccelebrate as to clean the place up. Thus, tions of Shabbat or other holidays) has gained importance as part of a secularizthe importance of the oil.

Explore the story a bit more deeply and ing impulse to create a Jewish Christmas. more cracks emerge in the popular image. But given that Chanukkah has such a cenCJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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tral place in our experience, we ought to make some effort to understand its deeper lessons.

The divide between Hellenists and Judaists has been replicated many times over the course of history, as some Jews have aggressively sought to assimilate. The struggle to reconcile Jewish practice with an American lifestyle, is dividing our community. Traditional Shabbat and holiday observance, keeping kosher, abiding by the laws of family purity, or even raising our children as Jews fall victim to the desire to participate in the American experience,

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forcing both the Conservative and Reform rabbinates to accept ever more lax standards of community behavior. At the same time, rabbinical Orthodoxy is growing in strength, raising its halakhic standards to ever more rigid positions. The middle is falling out.

How should we respond? In ancient Israel, a political core was re-established only through civil war, revolt, occupation, and despotism. Indeed, the end came with Roman occupation and 2,000 years of diaspora. In North America, we don’t fear armed conflict between disparate branches of the Jewish people, but we might fear a

When parts of the Jewish community drift too far from the center, and can no longer accommodate each other, we invite tragedy. If we are to preserve a vital Jewish center, we can afford to be neither Hellenists nor Maccabees. time when our assimilating and traditionalist sects can no longer accommodate each other’s beliefs.

This Chanukkah, let us sing and party and celebrate the miracle, however we understand it. But let us also make an effort to understand its underlying, darker context.

When parts of the Jewish community drift too far from the center, and can no longer accommodate each other, we invite tragedy.

If we are to preserve a vital Jewish center, we can afford to be neither Hellenists nor Maccabees. CJ

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Y LATE FATHER liked to tell a joke about the Jewish parents who named their son Shlomo after his grandfather Scott.

The joke was being played out all around him and by the time my wife and I named our daughters Orly and Tamar, he was long used to this sort of befuddlement. The joke captured for my father one of the central perplexities of contemporary American Jewish life.

The son of a well-known Orthodox rabbi, my father had been born in Belarus, and when he was five the family immigrated to the Lower East Side. Thus began the process of Americanization for my father, whose Hebrew name was Eliezer and who

Joshua Henkin is the author of the novels Swimming Across the Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book; Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book, and The World Without You, published in June. He directs the MFA Program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College. This essay was adapted from work originally published in the Jewish Book Council Visiting Scribe Series and Myjewishlearning.com.

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was called “Lazer.” When he arrived for kindergarten at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, he was greeted by a principal who said, “Lazer? That’s not a real name. From now on, you’ll be called Louis.” And Louis my father would be until the day he died, a month short of his 93rd birthday.

My father eventually left the world of the yeshiva. He went to Harvard Law School, fought in World War II, and made a career for himself, first at the State Department and United Nations, and then in academia.

He taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia law schools for a total of 50 years. He remained Orthodox until he died, yet he had hardly any Orthodox friends, hardly any observant Jewish friends at all, and I suspect many of the people whom he spent time with didn’t know or were only dimly aware of the fact that he was observant.

There are, I believe, many reasons for this.

The woman my father married, my mother, is Jewish, but she was raised in a nonobservant home. Though she compromised in raising my brothers and me (keeping a kosher home and observing Shabbat for the sake of the family, sending my brothers and me to day school and Camp Ramah) she never became personally observant. The world in which my mother lived – the sec-

ular world – had already, in fact, become my father’s world by the time he met her. And my father was a private, modest man. He wasn’t someone to flaunt his religious observance or anything else about himself. When he was saying Kaddish for his father and he convened a daily minchah minyan at his office at Columbia, I, who was only nine at the time, understood that this was unusual for him to be so openly, publicly Jewish. My father liked to quote Moses Mendelssohn: be a Jew at home, a human being on the street. It’s only now, looking back, that I find something noteworthy in an Orthodox Jew using the words of the father of Reform Judaism as his motto.

I was thinking about this a couple of months ago when I received an invitation to participate in an authors panel at Hunter College. I would describe my own relationship to Jewish practice as idiosyncratically observant. Among these idiosyncrasies is the fact that I don’t travel on Shabbat, but if I can get myself somewhere without traveling, I’m happy to engage in conduct that, while not technically Shabbat-violating, isn’t, as they say, shabbesdik. The panel was held on a Saturday, and shabbesdik or not, it isn’t particularly sane to walk eight miles from Brooklyn to Hunter College and CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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eight miles back, all to participate in an authors panel. But my new novel was coming out in less than two weeks, and under such circumstances you tend to do a lot of things that are neither shabbesdik nor sane.

As I was walking through the rain to Hunter, I remembered another such incident more than 25 years ago when I, a rising college junior, spent the summer in Washington, DC. One Friday night I was invited to a party in suburban Maryland, and I prevailed upon a friend, who was not Jewish let alone Shabbat-observant, to walk with me to the party. It was a sevenmile walk if we followed the directions correctly, but we didn’t, and thanks to a wrong turn and a three-mile detour, we got to the party at one in the morning.

We didn’t even know the host (the party was being held by a friend of a friend) and we ended up having to ask strangers whether we could spend the night on their living room floor.

What lesson can be drawn from this other than that I, at age 20, was willing to go to

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ridiculous lengths to attend a party? Perhaps he took the exam. not much. But it occurs to me that in cerNearly 50 years later, when I was an undertain ways I am my father’s son – my father graduate at Harvard and graduation was who never would have done what I had done scheduled for Shavuot, many Orthodox Jews (he didn’t like parties), but who was of a gen- (and a good number of non-Orthodox Jews, eration that, for better too) staged a protest to or worse, didn’t wear get the date changed. its Jewishness on its When I told my father sleeve. My father wore My father liked to quote about this protest, he a yarmulke only in Moses Mendelssohn: be a was mystified. Ask synagogue. When he Harvard to change gradJew at home, a human clerked on the uation because of being on the street. It’s only Shavuot? You didn’t Supreme Court for Felix Frankfurter, on now, looking back, that I ask for special treatFriday nights he find something noteworthy ment. The world did as would secretly sleep on in an Orthodox Jew using it did, and you accomFrankfurter’s office the words of the father of modated it. couch because he Reform Judaism as his What does this have couldn’t travel home to do with being a Jewmotto. on Shabbat. He’d ish writer? A lot, it seems acted similarly a few to me. My father, if he years earlier when, at Harvard Law School, were alive, would have been similarly myshe had a final scheduled for Shavuot and he tified by the fact that every June, under hired a proctor to follow him around for 48 the auspices of the Jewish Book Council, hours, and then, when the holiday was over, hundreds of writers gather in a room at Hebrew Union College to make two-minute presentations to representatives from JCCs across the country. These writers (most of them Jewish, though not all) of novels and political manifestos and biographies and cookbooks stand before the assembled and to one degree or another trot out their Jewish bona fides in the hope of securing invitations to Jewish book fairs, invitations that have helped launch careers.

The critic Adam Kirsch, writing about Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander’s New American Haggadah, captures this cultural shift well: “[J]ust try to imagine a Haggadah created in 1970 by, say, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth. It’s not just unthinkable, it sounds like the punch line to a joke. That’s because, for the MailerRoth generation of American Jewish writers, Jewishness was preeminently a social fact, the name of a parochial, prudish, petitbourgeois milieu that had to be humiliated if it was to be escaped…. You could imagine a Roth character scribbling obscenities in his parents’ Haggadah, or perhaps masturbating to it, but not trying earnestly to rewrite it.”

In the same vein, it’s hard to imagine Roth

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or Mailer speaking at the Jewish Book Council event or participating in a symposium such as the one that appeared recently in Moment Magazine, which asked a number of authors whether and how they consider themselves Jewish writers. By and large, the answers were animated by pride and anxiety and prickliness, all of which I understand. I’m often asked the same question myself, and I end up being tongue-tied. Am I a Jewish writer? I’m a Jew, and I’m proud to be one, so on some level by definition I’m a Jewish writer, just as I’m a Jewish father, a Jewish New Yorker, a Jewish eldest child, a Jewish basketball fan, and a Jewish watcher of “Friday Night Lights” (though not, as it so happens, on Friday night itself ).

But I’m not generally asked whether I’m a Jewish eldest child or a Jewish basketball fan or a Jewish watcher of “Friday Night Lights,” and therein lies the rub. Because when a writer gets asked the Jewish writer question, something more seems to be going

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on, something having to do with the writer’s own relationship to Judaism or whether the book he has written qualifies as Jewish based on the number of Yiddish phrases contained in it or the amount of whitefish consumed by his characters.

To take my own work as a case in point, my first novel, Swimming Across the Hudson, had lots of Jewish subject matter; my second novel, Matrimony, had very little Jewish subject matter; and my most recent novel, The World Without You, has lots of Jewish subject matter again. Does that mean I was more of a Jewish writer for the first novel, less of a Jewish writer for the second novel, and more of a Jewish writer again for the third? That’s just silly. I’d also add that these kinds of questions serve to ghettoize a writer when good fiction is good fiction and should reach as broad an audience as possible. No one asked Cheever whether he considered himself a male writer. No one asked Updike whether he considered him-

self a WASP writer.

And now, in good Jewish tradition, I’m going to contradict myself. I’m very interested in time in fiction, and I think this interest comes in large part from my own relationship to Judaism. Matrimony took place over the course of 20 years, and when I started to write The World Without You I wanted to write a book with a very different relationship to time, so I set the book in compressed time, over the course of just 72 hours.

Might I have been interested in doing this if I weren’t Jewish? Of course. But I do know that my own interest in time is directly connected to what time was like for me as a child – Shabbat starts at 6:32 this week, it ends at 7:35, there are two Adars this year so Passover is later. The story goes that when I was five and my parents were moving the clock forward for daylight savings time, I asked them, “Do non-Jews switch their clocks forward, too?” CJ

JEWISH FICTION FROM AROUND THE WORLD AT THE CLICK OF A MOUSE Dr. Nora Gold loves Jewish fiction. Gold, for ten years a professor of social work, is a full-time fiction writer who won a Canadian Jewish Book Award for her short story collection Marrow and Other Stories. Worried that there were fewer and fewer places for contemporary Jewish writers to publish their work, she decided to do something about it. JewishFiction.net was her answer.

With an impressive advisory council that includes, among others, Alice Shalvi, Ellen Frankel and Thane Rosenbaum, the online journal’s inaugural issue was published in September 2010. JewishFiction.net publishes fiction never before published in English by well-known writers as well as by a host of not-yet-well-known contemporary Jewish authors. The stories and novel excerpts have been written on five continents and in ten languages: English, French, Spanish, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, Turkish, Croatian, Yiddish, and Hebrew.

Having grown up in a Conservative shul in Montreal founded by her father, Gold is passionate about Judaism and is deeply concerned about the divisions and polarizations prevalent within the Jewish world. Gold sees JewishFiction.net as a way to bring Jews together in spite of their differences. “Jewish literature belongs to all Jews, to all of us,” she says. “Whatever the differences in perspective or orientation dividing us, we still all have a common language.” This inclusive attitude is reflected in JewishFiction.net’s authors, who are secular and religious, Ashkenazi and Mizrachi, female and male, LGBTI and straight, and from Israel and the diaspora.

JewishFiction.net is available at www.jewishfiction.net without charge.

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Children’s Books

CJReviews

BY BERYL BRESGI

EMANUEL AND THE HANUKKAH RESCUE

By Heidi Smith Hyde. Illustrated by Jamel Akib. 32pp. Kar-Ben, 2012 This daring adventure set in Colonial America is a welcome addition to the collection of Jewish historical fiction for young readers. Set in New Bedford, Massachusetts, during the 18th century, it tells the story of the religious freedom that Portuguese-Jewish immigrant families found in the New World.

Emanuel’s father is a storekeeper who supplies the whalers who seem to be brave and strong, and whom Emanuel would like to emulate. Emanuel loves listening to Captain Henshaw’s stories of daring and adventure at

Beryl Bresgi is librarian of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford, New Jersey, and a member of Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey.

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sea. His father, however, is more cautious, fearful of the open seas and whaling as well as of practicing his Judaism openly. This frustrates Emanuel, leading him to stow away on a whaling ship, hoping to show his father that he is in fact brave and strong.

When a storm overtakes the boat, Emanuel comes to appreciate his father’s fears, thinking, “so this is what fear feels like.” And his father is able to gain perspective about the freedom to practice religion afforded him in his new country. He realizes that “it is not good to be ruled by fear” and boldly encourages all the Jewish families in the town to light the menorah on the eighth day of Hanukkah to guide the distressed ship home.

Akib’s chalk pastel illustrations reflect the tension of the story. Using dark colors to offset the welcome lights at the end, he succeeds in creating an excellent compliment to this tale of courage and freedom.

THE SHEMA IN THE MEZUZAH: Listening to Each Other

By Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso. Illustrated

by Joani Keller Rothenberg. 32 pp. Jewish Lights, 2012 Based on a 12-century rabbinic debate between Rashi and his grandson, this vibrant picture book explores the idea of successful conflict resolution. The story’s townspeople cannot agree on the correct way to affix their mezuzot to their doorways. They are unable to come to an agreement about whether they should be placed vertically –

as the Shema states, “when we get up in the morning,” or horizontally – as the Shema states, “when we lie down at night.”

After arguing and shouting and not listening to each other, the rabbi takes the opportunity to teach his people how to listen to one another, compromise, and value harmony and unity.

This inspirational story is beautifully packaged, the art skillfully illustrating the disagreement. As emotions get stronger, the font becomes larger, allowing even the youngest of readers to realize how “loud” and unpleasant the argument feels. When the rabbi suggests compromise, the colors are restful and the rabbi’s demeanor peaceful.

This is a valuable addition to any home or school library for teaching both adults and children the value of cooperation and listening to each other.

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BE LIKE GOD: GOD’S TO-DO LIST FOR KIDS

THE SECRET OF THE VILLAGE FOOL

By Rebecca Upjohn. Illustrated by Renne Benoit. 32 pp. Second Story Press, 2012 Basing her book on actual events, Upjohn retells the story of a “village fool,” Anton Suchinski, to create a powerful tale of resistance and rescue. While the story has been fictionalized, the final pages include archival photographs of the characters during World War II and details of what happened to them after the war.

Brothers Milek and Munio live in the quiet Polish village of Zborow where their mother shows particular kindness to the local village fool, encouraging the boys to bring him food and clothing. Anton is a kind and gentle man who is sneered at by the locals because of his strange habits and behaviors.

As anti-Semitic sentiments begin to pervade, Anton is warned not to befriend the Jewish boys, but he defies this warning and finds a way to help his Jewish friends. When the Nazi soldiers invade the town, they round up the Jewish families and take away all the boys.

Anton comes up with a plan to disguise the boys and to hide the whole family in his house, contradicting the image of a fool. Munio observes, “Why does everyone call Anton a fool, he’s smart. And he’s brave.”

The real Anton Suchinski hid the entire Zeiger family, as well as Eva Adler and Zipora Stock, until 1944 when the Nazis left Zborow.

He continued to care for the survivors until the war ended in 1945. He was honored by both the Polish government and Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for his acts of bravery.

While the publisher recommends this excellent picture book for ages 7-9, it would be more effective for older children. Readers need some background in which to place the events in the story, and to appreciate the extraordinary courage and bravery of the protagonist.

SPEAK UP, TOMMY!

By Jacqueline Dembar Greene. Illustrated

by Deborah Melmon. 32pp. Kar-Ben, 2012 Inspired by a newspaper article about Sgt. Fasket of the Helena, Montana police department and his Israeli trained dog Miky, Greene has created an important book about immigrants. Speak Up, Tommy addresses issues that English language learners struggle with in their attempts to integrate into new settings.

Tomer, or Tommy as he is known in America, is from Israel and speaks English haltingly and with an accent. He is wary of speaking up because the other students make fun of his accent and his inability to read English properly. When a special visitor from the police department is invited to speak at the school, the officer arrives with his dog, a yellow lab who reminds Tommy of his own dog whom he left behind in Israel. The dog is attracted to a tennis ball sticking out of Tommy’s pocket and begins to bark loudly.

The officer is unable to control the dog until Tommy, forgetting that he is not supposed to speak Hebrew, shouts the word “sheket” and the dog calms down. Tommy’s knowledge of a different language is valued and he is invited to help the officer train the dog, making him feel included.

Greene has fictionalized this true story, making it relevant to children and highlighting a wonderful organization called Pups for Peace. Melmon’s simple drawings beautifully capture the setting and Tommy’s dilemma.

By Dr. Ron Wolfson. 138 pp. Jewish Lights, 2012 It’s a challenge to explain theological concepts to children in a way that’s accessible yet not overly simplistic. But in this adaptation of a book he wrote for adults, Dr. Ron Wolfson succeeds in doing just that, for kids between the ages of eight and 12. Like God’s To-Do List for adults, Wolfson bases his teaching on the Jewish notion that human beings are God’s partners in the ongoing work of creation. With his warm, lighthearted voice, Wolfson nudges children beyond the notion of God as all-powerful king in the sky, toward considering what it might mean to be created “in the image of God.” The rabbis who explained this concept “did not mean we look like God,” Wolfson writes.

Rather, they taught that we should act like God. “When we act like God, we become God’s partner on earth: by continuing the work of creating it, repairing it, loving it.” In a series of chapters exploring examples of what God does, Wolfson shows how people can imitate God’s ways, for instance by creating, resting, blessing, caring, and yes, even wrestling with God. Children will see the power they have to use their God-given talents to shape the world for good. They can definitely read this on their own, but with its questions and invitation to create one’s own to-do lists, it’s a great text for families, or teachers and students, to read and work on together.

– Andrea Glick

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE FOR WOMEN’S LEAGUE CONVENTION 2012 B Y S H E L LY G O L D I N A N D M A R I LY N W I N D

Women’s League for Conservative Judaism is embarking on a period of transformative change and innovation as it opens its biennial convention on December 2 in Las Vegas. Two of the items on the agenda that will impact the organization at its core are the passage of resolutions focusing on social action and public policy and the implementation of a radically new strategic plan.

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STRATEGIC PLAN Women’s League is at a very exciting crossroad, ready to improve the way we do things, provide new membership opportunities and build a track for new leadership. Here are some of the highlights of the new strategic plan.

Individual memberships will open a new port of entry so that all Conservative Jewish women can be involved, even if they choose not to join a sisterhood. Products and services will be designed for individual members as well as for sisterhood members. Efforts to support and help grow sisterhoods will include improved marketing tools. Intergenerational training will support individual and sisterhood members, as well.

Increasing the rotation of leaders is a top priority. Redefined volunteer opportunities will encourage women to pursue their interests; new skills will allow them to flourish in whatever capacity they choose. Playing a

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leadership role should be rewarding for all those who say yes to being a part of Women’s League.

Products and services will reflect the needs of all Conservative Jewish women. By disseminating new materials online, sisterhoods will have the tools necessary to keeping their groups fresh and their members engaged.

A pilot program is already in place to bring new materials to the regions.

A communications plan to address women of every age includes the website (www.wlcj.org), with information, products and administrative tools. It is updated on a regular basis with interesting and relevant materials. An active Facebook presence has been added, as well as BaOlam, the world affairs blog.

The strategic implementation plan also includes changes on the international level. Convention delegates will be voting to move convention from every two to every three years. The professional and lay leaders will define different causes and issues that both individual and sisterhood members can embrace and work on together.

This implementation plan is the result of many hours of work by a committee that represents the entire membership. Focus groups, surveys and input from past and present leaders were essential to getting a broad perspective of what changes were necessary to make the organization vital and responsive.

These efforts will bring about a new network for all Conservative women, an organization that will evolve as its members’ needs and interests evolve.

RESOLUTIONS It is an anticipated rite of convention that delegates discuss and vote on resolutions dealing with issues in our communities and the world at large.

Women’s League relies on its body of resolutions when asked to take a position or to call for an action. In addition, the resolutions recommend specific actions for sisterhoods and their members. This year’s resolutions have been distributed to sisterhoods and are on the website (www.wlcj.org). We invite you to review them carefully and make your views known by emailing resolutions@wlcj.org. In a change of tradition, this year resolutions will be discussed briefly and voted on by ballot during the course of convention. The following introduces the goals of the 2012 resolutions.

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ISRAEL The straightforward Support for Israel resolution underscores Women’s League’s commitment to Israel and resolves to work with the larger community to end efforts to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel.

The resolution commends MERCAZ’s Israel Advocacy work and encourages MERCAZ membership.

Gender Equality in Public Secular Spaces addresses segregation on sidewalks, public buildings and public buses. It advocates for laws that forbid gender segregation and asks members of the government for support.

Equality of Treatment in Israeli Hotels, written by the Masorti movement and adopted by most Conservative movement organizations, asks that Israeli hotels treat all denominations equally and that Conservative/Masorti groups patronize hotels that follow a non-discrimination policy.

Some Israeli hotels have refused to let Masorti groups use their Torah scrolls or have asked for additional fees to bring in a Torah.

GLBT JEWS The resolution on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) Jews discusses “Rituals and Documents of Marriage and Divorce for Same Sex Couples,” the 2012 appendix to the 2006 teshuvah by Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Daniel Nevins and Avram Reisner that normalizes the communal status of gay and lesbian Jews. It updates previous resolutions and calls on sisterhoods to advocate against laws that discriminate against GLBT individuals.

HUNGER According to Jewish tradition, it is our responsibility to feed the hungry. The resolution calls on sisterhoods to ask officials to insure hunger programs; to support Mazon, the Jewish response to hunger; to collect for food banks; and to take the Food Stamp Challenge and spend $31.50 for a week’s worth of food.

HYDROFRACKING Hydrofracking is the extraction of natural gas from previously impermeable shale,

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a complex issue that has potential health consequences. The Women’s League resolution is based on resolutions passed by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), of which Women’s League is a member, and the Rabbinical Assembly. It calls for laws requiring companies to disclose all materials used during fracking, for ongoing monitoring and for safeguards to protect the public health and the environment.

WOMEN’S BODIES The resolution on women’s bodily autonomy presents the Conservative movement’s definition of when life begins and the status of the fetus. It discusses attempts on the Federal, state and local levels to define “personhood” as starting at conception. Women’s League is calling on members to study the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards’ teshuvot on the subject and to support access to the entire spectrum of reproductive health care, and to oppose personhood legislation.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE The resolution on separation of Church and State reinforces the legal requirements that a non-profit in the United States not intervene in elections and it discusses the different definition of Church and State issues in Canada.

All the women of the Conservative movement are invited to come to Convention 2012 and have their voices heard as we look forward to a new dawn for Women’s League and the entire movement! For information, or to register, go to www.wlcj.org. CJ

If you’ve ever participated in a Women’s League training seminar or spent time at a conference or convention you know the value of our directed, single-topic workshops. Now, for the third year, Women’s League is offering members needsdriven in-service conference call training experiences that will help you and your sisterhood now. While you enhance your personal leadership skills, your sisterhood will benefit from practical, proven advice from our veteran volunteers and able professional staff.

2012-2013 SCHEDULE [1] August 15, 2012 [7] February 27, 2013 Membership in Motion Merged Sisterhoods=Healthier Sisterhoods [2] August 29, 2012 Going the Distance: [8] March 13, 2013 Sisterhood Presidents Year 2 Conflict Resolution: Getting Along with Your Sisters [3] September 12, 2012 New Presidents 101 [9] April 17, 2013 Sisterhoods with Purpose: [4] October 23, 2012 Set Goals and Commit to a Plan Focus on Fundraising [5] November 8, 2012 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Email but Were Afraid to Ask

[10] May 22, 2013 WLCJ “Apps” – Using Women’s League Materials

[6] January 9, 2013 Nominating Challenges – Creatively Filling the Void

[11] June 12, 2013 Go for the Gold: Bring in Younger Women

Sessions begin at 8:30 PM eastern time and are free-of-charge.

To register, go to www.wlcj.org

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CAMP RAMAH AND FJMC A Special Relationship In addition to supporting the Darkness into Light scholarship program administered by USY, FJMC clubs and regions recognize the importance of our youth and have chosen to support them in many ways. Here are reports from three of the FJMC regions that support Ramah Camps.

together men’s clubs from such a wide geographic area. Serendipitously, during the convention, they were introduced to National Ramah Commission Director Rabbi Sheldon Dorph. As a result of this meeting, they recognized the need for a Camp Ramah in the southeast and proceeded to spend the next month on the phone urging fellow men’s club members and regional leaders of all branches of the Conservative movement to support such a momentous endeavor.

In November 1993 a meeting was held

in Charlotte, attended by Eric Singer (whose father Sol, z’l, had spearheaded efforts in the 1960s to create a Ramah Camp in the south), as well as members of the FJMC, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Rabbinical Assembly, National Ramah Commission, and numerous other lay leaders. A matching grant of $40,000 was pledged by three generous leaders and this grant was matched over the next several months by organizations and individuals. A feasibility study determined that there was a tremendous amount of support and a founding

ANSHEI DAROM ANSHEI DAROM There had been strong interest in creating a southern Ramah Camp for decades.

However, it wasn’t until 1993 that the process was initiated. At the Federation of Jewish Men’s Club convention that year, FJMC Executive Director Rabbi Charles Simon suggested to Alan Sussman of Temple Israel’s men’s club in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Gene Sacks of West End Synagogue’s Men’s Club in Nashville, Tennessee, that the time was ripe for the creation of a new FJMC region in the southeast, outside of Florida.

Sussman and Sacks were flattered by the opportunity, but felt strongly that some type of meaningful project was needed to bring

Sailboats at Camp Ramah in New England purchased by leaders of the New England Region, FJMC. CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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board was established, a site for the camp near Clayton, Georgia was proposed, and Ramah Darom was born.

The partnership between Ramah Darom and Anshei Darom (the southeastern region of FJMC) continues to this day. Regional retreats for members of men’s clubs throughout the region have taken place at Camp Ramah Darom every since 1998, and the donation of gifts and scholarships to the camp from men’s club members is ongoing From its inception, members of men’s clubs from Anshei Darom have given financial support and have provided leadership to this outstanding institution. This partnership represents a wonderful model for committed Jewish men to emulate.

– Dr. Eugene Saks, past president of Ramah Darom and the Anshei Darom Region

MIDDLE ATLANTIC MIDDLE ATLANTIC REGION REGION In 1980, Lee Linder, president of the Middle Atlantic Region, proposed a regional event to support Camp Ramah in the Poconos. It was decided to create an annual concert of well-known entertainers, held in different region synagogues. Since the region’s kippah color was gold, the concert was originally named the Golden Yarmulka Youth Campaign Concert. In 2002 it was changed to the Golden Kippah Youth Campaign Concert. As a result of the untiring and determined efforts of Lee Linder, who led the project for 19 years, and his successors, the concerts raised approximately $1,250,000 over 29 years (1980-2008).

SANCTUARY DESIGN SYNAGOGUE FURNISHINGS DONOR RECOGNITION WALLS ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

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ARKS MENORAHS DONOR WALLS TREES OF LIFE TORAH HOLDERS TORAH TABLES BIMAH FURNITURE ETERNAL LIGHTS YAHRZEIT WALLS HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS STAINED GLASS BIMAH ACCESSIBILITY

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PRESENTATIONS SYNAGOGUE ARTS & FURNISHINGS 229 WASHINGTON ST. ◆ MT. VERNON, NY 10553 ◆ Tel: 914•668•8181 ◆ Fax: 914•668•4044 E-mail: S YNAG F URN @ AOL . COM Website: WWW.SYNAGOGUEFURNISHINGS.COM

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The first funded project was an indoor sport activities center, which was named for Lee on visiting day 2003. The next was the refurbishment of all 30 camper bunks.

When the refurbishing was completed the bunks were renamed the “Condos.” Financial-need scholarships were the next project supported by the concerts.

Throughout the concert years, there was no paid staff, and all proceeds went to Camp Ramah in the Poconos.

After a short hiatus, a new era in regional support for Camp Ramah in the Poconos has begun. All monies raised through the Tour de Shuls PA-NJ Ride are earmarked to fund the new softball field and tennis courts. Thus the region helps Ramah continue to nurture and develop our youth, enhancing the future of the Jewish community.

– Mike Brassloff based on information provided by Michael Weingram, both past region presidents

NEW ENGLAND NEW ENGLAND REGION REGION Since 1970, Camp Ramah in New England has offered a special program to meet the social and religious needs of developmentally challenged Jewish adolescents. The Tikvah (hope) Program provides the full Ramah experience – swimming, boating, sports, the arts, dance, dramatics, and more – under the supervision of specially trained staff. Like all Ramah campers, Tikvah campers receive intensive Jewish education that includes Judaic classes, daily religious services, Hebrew language, and bar and bat mitzvah training.

The New England Region of FJMC has been sponsoring events in support of the Tikvah Program at Camp Ramah, located in Palmer, Massachusetts, since the early 1990s. The events have included a raffle, a concert and most recently, the region’s Tour de Shuls. Several Tikvah leaders and Tikvah campers participate as riders and/or helpers in the annual event.

Since the relationship began, the region has given the camp over $100,000. In addi-

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tion to a hand-scribed scroll of Lamentations donated to the camp, region leaders personally purchased three sailboats which are named for FJMC activities: World Wide Wrap, Yellow Candle and Art of Jewish Living.

In 2001, the region relocated its annual retreat to Camp Ramah in New England.

The retreat, formerly named the Laymen’s Institute, celebrated its 66th year in June 2012. The retreat of NER (New England

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Region, FJMC), held every year since its inception in 1945, is the oldest continuous men’s Jewish retreat in the United States.

Camp Ramah in New England has placed a permanent plaque of appreciation in honor of the region’s support of the camp and its Tikvah Program.

– Arnold Miller, region president

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DANCING, SINGING, HUGGING, SCREAMING A young man reflects on how his USY experience shaped him

BY JOSHUA ULL

I

T IS A FEELING I CANNOT forget. My heart beats out of my chest; my feet tap as they anxiously await the signal; and my ears explode with the cheers of those around me. It’s a moment of anticipation that far surpasses New Year’s Eve or even a presidential election. It is the moment when hundreds of Jewish teens converge in one grand ballroom to dance, sing, jump, hug, scream, and celebrate our time as the leaders of tomorrow. It is none other than USY’s lnternational Convention, or IC, as it’s popularly known.

I never saw myself as one to love adrenaline. I am scared of heights, dislike spiders, and will never ride a crazy rollercoaster.

Yet this one event, this one week and one family have the ability to instill in me an amazing rush of enthusiasm, and I love it.

IC is held annually in locations throughout North America, and with more than 800 attendees, it serves as one of the largest gatherings of Conservative Jews in the world.

This monumental occasion brings together our movement’s top educators, leaders and supporters who work hard to ensure the future of Conservative Judaism. As an involved teen who has spent time with so

Joshua Ull was the 2012 USY international president. To find out more about USY, or sign up for IC Boston 2012 later this month, go to www.usy.org.

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many young leaders, I can say wholeheartedly that the coming years look very bright.

I am constantly impressed by the passion evoked by my peers. Whether they are conversing in kittot (study sessions) or playing in our Shacharit Live Band, USYers are drawn to being Jewish.

My own journey started in the Hagalil Region, made up of Central and Northern New Jersey. I attended my first Kadima event in sixth grade, not knowing what to expect. I had the time of my life. The Shabbaton was youthful, filled with ruach, and loaded with food! I’ll never forget eating Shabbat dinner surrounded by tons of kids my age. There were no parents, no phones and no distractions. For the first time, our special day of Shabbat came alive from my Hebrew school textbooks. I walked away from that weekend with so many new friends, and the rest is history.

Throughout my tenure in USCJ’s youth programs, I have been exposed to life changing opportunities – from travelling the country on USY on Wheels to exploring Eastern Europe and Israel with Israel Pilgrimage.

I’ve attended leadership training retreats, monthly chapter events and regional programming. All of them bring Jewish teens together throughout the year.

What makes USY special is the quality of its programs, and the fact that there is no single focus. Together we explore a multitude of Jewish values such as Israel awareness and advocacy, social action /

tikkun olam, religion, education, socialization, and leadership development. What’s special, as well, is the quality of our professional staff and volunteers, many of whom are USY alumni themselves who continue to support the organization.

This school year, I am proud to be a participant on the 32nd NATIV Leadership Gap Year Program in Israel offered by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Coming from a public school system, I am thrilled to have an educational experience dedicated to Judaic studies. While it is sad that my USY journey has come to an end, I believe this is just the beginning. It is my chance, my time, and the right moment to start applying everything USY has taught me. From observing Shabbat to planning programs, I move on toward adulthood prepared to tackle any challenge.

As I venture off and continue to explore my Jewish identity, I will never forget the feeling I got from USY. I encourage all those reading this article to take action. Speak to your children, your grandchildren, and everyone you know. Get those who are eligible to join USY and become part of something special. Sign up for IC Boston 2012, spend a summer with us, and come find the moment that you will never forget. CJ

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Reach more than

200,000 HOUSEHOLDS of affiliated North American Conservative Jews for less than two-tenths of a penny per home Advertise in CJ / Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism Call 917-668-6809 or email ras@uscj.org

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FOR YOUNG ADULTS, ISRAEL THEIR WAY A new Masa option lets participants create custom trips

BY BONNIE RIVA RAS

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ITH MORE THAN 200 different options, MASA Israel Journey helps provide young adults with an abundance of ways to immerse themselves in Israeli life through study, internships, volunteer programs, and more. You can do a gap-year program like Nativ or a semester abroad at an Israeli university; study in a kibbutz ulpan or in the year program of the Conservative Yeshiva. Despite this embarrassment of riches, if you wanted to do several things in multiple locations for short time-spans, there wasn’t a MASA

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provider for you.

To fill the vacuum, a company called Israel Experience teamed up with Marom Olami – the worldwide youth movement for Conservative/Masorti Jews – to create yet another MASA program. But instead of offering a pre-packaged experience for five to 10 months, this program, Israel By Design, lets young people create a tailor-made journey based on where they want to be and what they want to do in Israel.

For those who are interested, the group also offers a Conservative/Masorti track that lets participants do the exact kind of vol-

unteering, interning and study they want, but in a Conservative/Masorti environment.

The Conservative track includes weekend and holiday seminars at the Conservative Yeshiva or Schechter Institute in Jerusalem; visits to Conservative/Masorti kibbutzim; spending time with a host Masorti family; and meeting other Conservative/Masorti young adults. If they’d like, students can volunteer with a Tali school – Israel’s version of pluralistic Jewish schools – or a Masorti kehilla.

So far 20 students from Europe and South America have participated in the Israel By

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Design Conservative/Masorti track, and it opened this year to young people from North America.

Israel By Design’s first Masorti-track participant was Shlomo Perarnaud, 30, from France. “I told them what I wanted to do: study Hebrew and Yiddish and Judaism.

And I wanted to live in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. They put it together,” said Perarnaud.

His 10-month program included studying Hebrew at an ulpan, Yiddish in Tel Aviv and a semester at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He finished by studying Hebrew in Haifa. Perarnaud also spent Shabbatot in Beersheva, at Kibbutz Hanatan, and at Masorti kehillot in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Perarnaud converted to Judaism when he was 25 and became active in a Marom group in Paris. “I wanted to connect to my Jewish identity and to Israel,” he said. “The Masorti track helped me understand what it is to be a Conservative Jew and how to define myself.”

Next summer, Israel by Design will offer a two-month summer program specifically for college students, including graduates of gap-year programs who have already used all of their MASA benefits. CJ

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omenSpeak V IS FOR VASHTI An increasingly popular program transforms Vashti from vilified to vindicated

BY LISA KOGEN

ONCE UPON A TIME – not so long ago – early in the month of Adar little Jewish girls would eagerly await Purim when they could dress up in glittery costumes and crowns, dripping in their mothers’ jewelry. Each envisioned herself as the ravishing Queen Esther whose unparalleled courage saved the Jews of Persia from annihilation. At the reading of the Megillah, they joined in drowning out the name of the wicked, wicked Haman and cheered for the noble Mordechai.

Esther’s presence was felt only through the colorful and glittery array of her young acolytes.

Little girls know the story well.

Queen Vashti refuses to appear before the drunken king and his court. The biblical text reports sparingly about this episode except that the king, spurred on by his courtiers, is outraged by his wife’s defiance. Vashti is either expelled or killed (the text does not say which) and the king commences a search for a more docile wife. Esther, concealing her Jewish identity, becomes queen.

Notwithstanding the king’s fury, the text offers no value judgment about Vashti as queen or wife.

Esther – clever, pious, charming, and beautiful – ascends the throne,

Lisa Kogen is program/education director of Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.

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Over 180 women, tots to their grandmothers, enjoyed the Vashti’s Banquet at Temple Beth Sholom, Las Vegas, Nevada.

enshrined forever as the female hero of the Purim story. Vashti, whose behavior might be viewed as equally heroic, does not enjoy the same fate. On the contrary. Hundreds of years later, when the rabbis begin to spin their own versions of the story, Vashti joins Haman as a villain of the Purim story. She becomes Esther’s evil counterpart. As Esther is beautiful, Vashti is leprous and has donkey ears and a tail. As Esther is compassionate, Vashti is mean-spirited. And worst of all, as Esther is Torah true and pious, Vashti delights in blasphemy.

And thus Vashti remained – the leprous, conniving, Shabbat-defiling harridan – whose only crime was her refusal to be humiliated publicly. Her rehabilitation came only (and finally!) with

the rise of Jewish feminism in the latter half of the 20th century. An initial salvo was fired in a provocative essay

by Mary Gendler in Response (Summer, 1973), a counter-culture journal of the 1970s. In “The Vindication of Vashti,” Gendler suggests “women begin to identify also with Vashti … to discover [their] own sources of dignity, pride and independence.” More recently, Ma’ayan, the Jewish feminist resource center, created Esther/Vashti flags – vividly colored and decorated with bells – to be waved whenever Esther and Vashti’s names are heard during the reading of the Megillah.

As women redefined their roles in both the synagogue and communal life, they also began to seek new and imag-

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inative ways to create meaningful rituals and celebrations. Among some of the most prominent and popular are the baby naming ceremony for girls, rosh chodesh study groups and the women’s seder.

Historically, the Purim celebration has centered around men. Graggers drown out Haman’s name, we cheer for Mordecai, Purim delicacies are hamentaschen, or for Sephardim ‘oznei Haman. Even during the reading of the Megillah, the Talmud prescribes that a person is to drink ad lo yada, until he doesn’t know the difference between “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordechai.” It is unlikely that this mitzvah was intended for women. The only opportunity for women was to make the hamentaschen and mishloach manot. The holiday cried out for a more appropriate women’s observance.

And so Women’s League for Conservative Judaism created the female-centered Purim celebration we call Vashti’s Banquet.

The first banquet was held in New York City in March of 2008 with 240 participants.

A second took place in 2010 at the biennial convention in Baltimore with more than 500 women enjoying dancing, Middle East-

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ern foods, music, crafts, and more.

Our Vashti’s Banquet was designed to capture the joyful and triumphal atmosphere of Purim, as well as to allow women to experience a taste of the sisterhood within an imagined Persian harem of long ago. The harem is one of the great institutional enigmas of antiquity. We all harbor our own

fantasies about the exotic and mysterious harem – with images popularized by The Arabian Nights and the films of Cecile B. DeMille. While there are accounts of life in the harem from as early as the 18th century, there is no written account from the ancient world of life in the segregated women’s quarters. In designing the Vashti’s Banquet,

Middle Eastern delicacies were served at Temple Beth Sholom.

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Quantity discounts are available.

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Women’s League chose to present the harem as the quintessential woman’s space, where they lived together, mourned together and danced together, rather than a vestige of women’s subjugation by men.

Vashti’s Banquet included activities that we know of from anthropology and literature: the foods, music, belly (and other) dancing, storytelling, and, of course, all manner of beautifying secrets such as cosmetics, perfumes and henna. Not to lose sight of the religious importance of the holiday, a short study session highlighted the relevant parts of the Esther story in the Bible and some of the later, more colorful midrashim.

(Not all that different from the fantasies of Cecil B. DeMille!) The first Vashti’s Banquet featured special guest Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who offered sterling advice about you-know-what.

Then, like the women’s seder that grew exponentially after the first one at Ma’ayan, Vashti’s Banquets have taken root in communities across the continent, offering workshops and activities reflecting the communities that host them.

Nearly 100 women in sisterhoods from East and North Brunswick, New Jersey, attended a Vashti’s Banquet at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth, which included aroma therapy and mask making. At the banquet in Jacksonville, Florida, the chazzan, day school principal and ritual director vied for the title of Queen Vashti. Each displayed “her” own talent and answered provocative questions

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– no swimsuits. The winner was crowned by the assistant rabbi.

The Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale, New York, established the appropriate mood with extravagant decorations of billowing fabrics, pillows, and tables draped with runners, sparkles, and colorful strings of beads.

The Vashti’s Banquet in Las Vegas (Temple Beth Shalom) raised an enormous amount of money for the synagogue while three co-sponsoring Philadelphia area sisterhoods (Tifereth Israel of Lower Bucks County, Beth El, Yardley, and Ohev Shalom, Bucks County) donated their profits to Gilda’s Club, which houses men, women and children battling cancer.

Over 150 women attended a banquet in West Hartford, Connecticut, where four sisterhoods joined together and offered study sessions by female rabbis, zumba and yoga lessons.

It is clear that Vashti’s Banquet’s entertaining female-centered celebration of a Jewish holiday has struck a chord. As women recover their experiences and voices from the past, we continue to create new forms of celebration, bonding with each other in the very real present. CJ Want to create your own Vashti’s banquet? You can find inspiration and ideas on the Women’s League website at www.wlcj.org.

The Jacksonville Jewish Center’s banquet included costumes, henna designs and a beauty contest featuring the synagogue’s chazzan, principal and ritual director, among others.

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Charles Simon

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conversation we’ll be having online, in person and in print over the next months. Be part of the work we’re doing to strengthen our synagogues and communities so they can continue to enrich the lives of Jews and be a force for good in the world around us. To share your thoughts, go to our Centennial Facebook page at facebook.com/ USCJ100 and check out our web site at www.uscj100.org.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Margo Gold and Jack Finkelstein, Centennial co-chairs and USCJ board members, for the incredible time and dedication they are giving to planning this event. Margo and Jack are devoted to making the Centennial Celebration a time of learning and inspiration, a unique experience that can only be appreciated when we gather together.

I am truly grateful to them for their hard work.

Finally, I’d like to wish all of you and your families a happy Chanukkah filled with light and joy. CJ

I think it is important to understand that the people who wrestled with this new innovation from a Jewish legal perspective were able to harmonize the two. As a result, it is our custom today to read from the Torah in its scroll form and to treat it with the utmost respect. At the same time, prayer books and chumashim (Five Books of Moses) have less sanctity than a Torah scroll, but are still treated with special care We take for granted the innovations that are a result of printing. Prior to the acceptance of the printing press the order and division of the books of the Bible and its division into chapters, as well as the standardization of pagination, did not exist.

My research failed to produce any record of people who actually opposed the printing of prayer books and chumashim because they feared that the owning of actual books might result in people carrying them on Shabbat or violating a current religious practice. However, I imagine that objections did occur; after all, the introduction of printed

prayer books clearly transformed the culture of the synagogue and the culture of the Jewish community.

The creation of the printing press was perhaps the most dramatic innovation to promote literacy up until the invention of e-readers. E-readers, like the printing press, are transforming our culture. The quantity of printed magazines, newspapers and books is dramatically diminishing and being replaced by easier to read electronic material. I suspect that within a decade the only books emerging adults will ever see will be in their grandparents’ homes, occasional libraries and, perhaps, in their synagogues.

This concerns me.

My phone has an app which contains a siddur. Clear, easily readable representations of the Torah complete with commentaries are available on iPads. I wonder what future generations will think when they enter a synagogue and see books made out of paper in the pews. Will they naturally gravitate toward them or will they view them as just one more artifact to which they cannot relate?

The question of whether or not e-books should be permissible on Shabbat according to Jewish law was recently raised in a legal paper (teshuvah) devoted to the permissibility of electrical appliances on Shabbat. The paper was presented to and accepted by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly. It clearly stated that the only deterrent for not using an electronic reader on Shabbat was that it could (under certain conditions) violate the spirit of Shabbat. Conversely, under other conditions one assumes it could enhance it.

If we desire future generations of modern Jews to attend and become more learned and comfortable on Shabbat and holiday in our sanctuaries we need to recognize that the definition of a book is changing from one which is printed on paper to one composed of pixels, and we need to respond proactively.

We have to figure out how we can incorporate this technology and at the same time maintain a sense of the holy. The culture of the Jewish community is changing. Our challenge is to learn how to retain our core values and, at the same time, make this technology work in a Jewish context. CJ CJ — W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

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RABBI FELD RESPONDS

Frank H. Dondershine (Letters, Fall 2012) (continued from page 7) forthrightly responds to a central question Is there anything between Orthodoxy on raised in my article: given that through one extreme and the complete abandon- the ages the rabbinic attitudes to kashrut ment by liberal secularism on the other? Of were shaped by their relationship to the surcourse there is. The ideal is what Rabbi Feld rounding society, should our practice of hinted at. The Conservative movement kashrut now change? Is the situation of Jews should reassert authentic kashrut principles, in America the same as that of Medieval which are not about excluding the non-Jew- Jewry? Mr. Dondershine’s response is that ish world. Rather, kashrut principles should the need to separate ourselves and differreflect the principle of tzedek. How jus- entiate ourselves from the surrounding socitice applies to the food world is obvious. ety remains the same. I firmly disagree. The Orthodoxy does not take into account the question for us is not how do we distance safety and health value of the food or how ourselves from our non-Jewish neighbors, the animals are raised. Ours is a very dif- but how do we integrate ourselves in sociferent world than that of the Talmud when ety yet maintain a distinct Jewish confarming and animal husbandry were entirely sciousness. I argued that not limiting kashrut to supervised situations but thinking about natural.

The Torah principle is clear regarding ani- what one is eating, checking ingredients, constituted our Amermal rights. Using feeds ican form of kashrut. that are unnatural is I added that ethical grounds to render an considerations should animal treyf. In fact, Despite their success, be a critical part of our the non-Jewish world the rabbis cannot consider practice of kashrut. Dishas superseded us in this commitment turbingly, this is a matthe values of animal document/ceremony ter that has become husbandry. a kiddushin, or controversial among The Conservative those who supervise movement should use sanctification. kashrut. a different kashrut parRegarding the latter issue, Mr. Chernin adigm. The food products in most kosher supermarket sections are the worst qual- remarks that one of the practices that I menity in the store, containing ingredients, such tioned regarding animal feed has now been as MSG, that have been abandoned by other outlawed. However the point I was making manufacturers. The Conservative move- regarding unnatural feeding of animals ment could connect local farmers, dairy pro- remains an issue. Here is part of a statement ducers, farmers markets, and local suppliers, by the Union of Concerned Scientists using the well-established paradigm of food acknowledging that federal law has outlawed the practice of feeding blood to animals: cooperatives.

“However, most animals are still We can be a force to promote greater digallowed to eat meat from their own nity for the world we live in, or we can withspecies. Pig carcasses can be rendered and draw in a dwindling enclave of self-exclusion. fed back to pigs, chicken carcasses can be We should observe Shabbat and eat food rendered and fed back to chickens, and with the same coherent principles. We are turkey carcasses can be rendered and fed here to repair the world not depart from back to turkeys. Even cattle can still be it. If we aspire to rights of gender, sexualfed cow blood and some other cow parts. ity, race, and religion, we will never achieve Under current law, pigs, chickens and anything if we can’t establish dignity for turkeys that have been fed rendered catdomestic creatures. tle can be rendered and fed back to catOLIVER WELLINGTON tle, a loophole that may allow mad cow Norwalk, Connecticut agents to infect healthy cattle.

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Animal feed legally can contain rendered road kill, dead horses and euthanized cats and dogs.

Rendered feathers, hair, skin, hooves, blood and intestines can also be found in feed, often under catch-all categories like “animal protein products.”

RABBI EDWARD FELD DEFENDING ISRAEL

So Alex Sinclair (“Critical Loyalty: Defending Israel Should Be Complex,” Fall 2012) believes Israel should be held to higher standards. But what are his expectations of the Palestinians? Given the history of the Israel/Arab conflict, it’s not enough for them to say that they accept Israel’s right to exist.

Israel has made concrete efforts to achieve peace, dismantling Yamit and ceding the Sinai to Egypt, pulling settlements out of Gaza. The results: a cold peace (which may be falling apart) with Egypt, smuggling tunnels bringing munitions to Hamas through Sinai, and thousands of rockets lobbed at civilian population centers in southern Israel.

Israel has also proposed several plans outlining the basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The response has always been outright rejection, followed by demands that the rejected proposals be the starting point for any future negotiations.

The fact is that there is no possibility of a two state solution unless the Palestinians stop the anti-Israel incitement that spews from their schools, mosques, and mass media outlets. The descendants of the Arabs who fled the 1948 Arab-initiated war need to be told their future is in the Palestinian state, not in Israel. Jews who wish to remain in areas of religious and historic significance to them, even if those areas fall under Palestinian rule, should be allowed to do so, as full citizens, just as 1,000,000 Arabs have full citizenship in Israel.

Sinclair’s suggestion for handling the complexities of the Arab/Israel conflict amounts to accepting the Palestinian narrative. We should be educating our students about the Israeli side of the story.

TOBY F. BLOCK Atlanta, Georgia

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I share Dr. Sinclair’s view that we should be honest on the subject of what we say about Israel, whether positive or negative.

What bothers me is that his article is written in a spirit that sees disparagement of Israel as a given in any discussion on the subject. It goes without saying that there is no country on earth that could not be criticized in some way. But Israel is the only one that, upon its mere mention, evokes kneejerk censure. The writer is apparently posing the question as to the most appropriate way to do so. We should start, he says, with “a candid and frank acknowledgement of Israel’s imperfections.” Why? Is that what we do when discussing any other country?

Sinclair says “…critique of particular policies or positions that is responsible and reasonable … should be defended as absolutely legitimate.” That may be so, but one wonders whether the same applies to critiques of other countries.

He goes on to defend holding Israel to a higher standard than that used for any other country. Whatever we may believe about Israel’s obligation to have high standards for itself, we must never accept the world’s judging Israel by a higher standard than what is used to judge the rest of the world. We want our children to live by high standards, but would never accept others requiring them to meet higher standards than other children.

GERTRUDE DONCHIN CHITYAT Boca Raton, Florida

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END GUN VIOLENCE

In “Operation Tent of Abraham and Sarah” (Fall 2012), Rabbi Steven Wernick discusses efforts to end gun violence. Building bridges between Jews and Blacks is obviously important, and I applaud Rabbi Wernick’s efforts.

I recognize that making peace is part of tikkun olam. However, the article attempts to create a link between gun violence and the pro-gun lobby. That nexus simply does not exist.

First, the Supreme Court has decided that the Second Amendment is an individual right. Your article attributes an intent to the gun lobby that is now settled law.

There is nothing more fundamental, whether under the U.S. Constitution or under Jewish law, than the right of an individual to protect him or herself. Each of us has an affirmative obligation to save our own life, and to save the life of another (Leviticus 19:16). The purpose of bearing arms, in a Jewish sense, requires Jews to protect a person who is being pursued and whose life is in danger (Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Rotzeach 1:6-7). That right is not absolute, and clearly anticipates that if the attacker can be disabled, then this should be done. But what if you are at risk of serious bodily harm, death or sexual assault?

The risk of loss of property does not justify taking a life. But, if I had to make a choice when my life is at risk, I would choose life.

It is our obligation to pursue peace, and the gains in Black/Jewish dialogue and solidarity from the 1950s and ‘60s have stalled,

but Rabbi Wernick’s efforts may well restart this important goal. But disarming law-abiding citizens is not the answer. Rather, as Jews, we need to maintain the tools that allow us to protect ourselves and our community (Talmud, Sanhedrin 73A). We are shepherds, the guardians of ourselves and our community. Vigilance comes at a price. I do not choose to be lumped in with the socalled gun lobby, but I will not put myself

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or my family in a position where I cannot protect them.

My right to carry a firearm in Ohio does not make me a cowboy, and the notion of a “Wild West-type of society” simply has not proved true, despite the hollow protestations of anti-gun advocates. I maintain my competencies through education and training. God willing, I will never be in a position where I need to draw my gun in defense of myself or my family. Notwithstanding this unlikelihood, I train and encourage others to do so as well – just in case.

As a Jewish community, we cannot confuse the very real need to end gun violence with the fundamental right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms to confront those who choose to threaten lives with death or sexual assault.

MARK C. ABRAMSON Toledo, Ohio SAME SEX MARRIAGE RITES

As a male to female transsexual I was excited to learn that there could be a non-sexist religious ceremony (“Same-Sex Ceremonies See the Light of Day,” Fall 2012). However, I believe you have taken the guts out of this ketubah for gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples.

There is no mention of giving of the ring, as implied in Deuteronomy 24:1. The ketubah is the second of four ways to be married. The other two are vows and the sex. Just one of these four makes them married according to Jewish law. I suggest there should be an option of giving two, one or no rings.

In the event of divorce there is no mention in this ketubah as to who gets what or who contributed what, nor is there a Lieberman clause. These marriages are legal in some jurisdictions. In the event of death what does the surviving partner get? Furthermore, children, a possibility both biological and adopted, are not mentioned.

If the goal is a stable Jewish household that is fair, I suggest the committee that drafted the Covenant of Loving Partners rewrite this ketubah to have some Jewish legal status. As it is, this document says

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little and is worthless.

SHELLY LEWIN Indianapolis, Indiana

Rabbi Avram Reisner’s article was simultaneously inspiring and troubling. On the one hand, it demonstrated the vitality and creativity of the Conservative movement as it attempts to address the challenges of modern Jewish life. On the other, it also demonstrates how the Conservative movement’s slavish commitment to halakhah prevents it from making the changes demanded by advances in scientific knowledge and evolving societal norms and sensibilities.

Rabbi Reisner and his colleagues have devised for same-sex couples a beautiful alternative to the traditional ketubah. Their Covenant of Loving Partners is a masterpiece which reflects the finest Jewish spiritual values and aspirations, as it binds together two souls. Fully egalitarian, applicable to the union of either two men or two women, it is an agreement of equal partners.

Moreover, maximizing flexibility, the rabbis have designed two alternative ceremonies to celebrate same-sex unions, allowing officiating rabbis and participants either to closely mimic the traditional marriage ceremony or to strike out in a different direction. Finally, freed from halakhic strictures which apply to man-woman marriages, a same-sex union – a shitufut, or true partnership formed by mutual agreement – may be dissolved by either party, and does not require either a bet din or a get. To put it in stark terms, Rabbi Reisner and his colleagues have produced for same-sex unions a commitment document and ceremony that are far superior to those used for heterosexual marriages!

But, as the article reveals, despite their success, the rabbis cannot consider this commitment document/ceremony a kiddushin, or sanctification. In other words, a same-sex union is not really holy. A samesex partnership still retains its second-class, unholy status. Homosexual Jews are still in some way inferior, and their unions, however committed, loving and faithful, are still not really Jewishly sanctioned. The rabbis’ efforts, however creative, thus

ring hollow.

The article also reminds us, in passing, that the traditional Conservative wedding ceremony and its accompanying ketubah still mark a union of unequal partners, where the male is the dominant partner. Only the male partner can initiate the dissolution of the partnership, by issuing a get. We have managed to mask this inequality with double-ring ceremonies and cosmetic English translations of the ketubah, but the bottomline reality is a marriage of unequals. Our claim to be an egalitarian movement is thus, ultimately, a pretension, and also rings hollow.

It is time for the Conservative movement to bite the bullet and make the necessary corrections of halakhah, as we have done before, so that same-sex unions are also holy and women in heterosexual marriages are equal.

DAVID M. COHEN Chevy Chase, Maryland SUKKOT STORIES

In the Fall 2012 issue Meryl Greenwald Gordon writes on “How to Have a Cool Family Sukkot.” She has my special appreciation for including the website I created, www.ushpizot.org to encourage women’s participation in Sukkah rituals.

There is an error in the article which requires correction. Under the heading ‘Invite lots of guests’, Gordon states, “If you’d like to be innovative and egalitarian, invite the seven prophetesses of Israel as suggested by medieval Italian kabbalist Menachem Azariah of Fano (so it’s really not that new).”

Nowhere in his writings does Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano suggest that the seven prophetesses of Israel be invited as guests to the sukkah. His commentary on the passage in the Talmud (Megillah 14a-b) was a kabbalistic interpretation or elucidation of the holy traits of these women as compared to these same traits in the seven male Ushpizin.

The suggestion to invite the Ushpizot to the sukkah is very recent, in line with the modern trend toward the inclusion of women in our religious ceremonies.

SURI EDELL GREENBERG Eilat, Israel

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