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THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
Access’ Bootleggers’ Ball
25 AV, 5771
CINCINNATI, OH Candle Lighting Times Shabbat begins Fri. 8:01p Shabbat ends Sat. 9:02p
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VOL. 158 • NO. 5
The American Israelite T H E
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Sharpton quits shul’s Crown Hts. panel after riot victim’s brother...
LOCAL
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Access introduces Schmooze for Two’s
NATIONAL
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Solving the White House photo mystery over ‘Jerusalem, Israel’
DINING OUT
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Sultan’s Mediterranean Cuisine — tasty and truly Turkish
BUSINESS
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Brett Pelchovitz Stern joins Comey & Shepard
SINGLE ISSUE: $2.00 J E W I S H
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Shock, disbelief follow N.J. rabbi’s arrest on sex abuse charges
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From the Sanhedrin to Alan Greenspan, strategies to avoid...
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After terror attacks, rockets from Gaza and worries over Egypt border
92nd Street Y hosts, via Wise Temple, ‘9/11 — A Decade Later’ The 92nd Street Y is back. Via live satellite, on Thursday, Sept. 8, Wise Temple will host “9/11 — A Decade Later: Lessons Learned and Future Challenges,” with Donald Rumsfeld, Ari Fleischer, Michael Mukasey and Michael Medved. The program will begin at 8 p.m. and the doors will open at 7:30 p.m. Ten years since Sept. 11, the global war against Islamic terrorism continues. Is the United States safer today than it was 10 years ago? What went on inside the White House on that terrible day? How effective has the American response been? This program will provide unique insights and unparalleled access to some of the most important players in the War on Terror. Donald Rumsfeld served as the 21st secretary of defense from 2001 to 2006. Ari Fleischer was the White House press secretary and delivered the daily White House briefings from 2001-2003. Michael Mukasey served as United States attorney general from 2007-2009. Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and best-selling author. This event is co-presented with the Jewish Policy Center. Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural and community center serving people of all races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y’s mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit
“We believe that you don’t have to live in the major Jewish cultural center of New York to have the finest of Jewish culture at the center of your life. We believe that our lives are enriched by joining with others in conversation about ideas and ideals. The ‘Live’ series provides us with opportunities to share and ‘talk’ to the finest teachers and best known experts about matters that bring meaning and nourishment to our minds and our souls. Our congregation enjoys sharing these unique and entertaining conversations with the Greater Cincinnati community.” Rabbi Lewis Kamrass
each year — both in person and through Live from NY’s 92nd Street YTM, the Y’s satellite broadcast program. This program uses satellite technology to simultaneously broadcast the Y’s renowned educational and cultural programming to community organizations across America. “Sponsoring ‘Live from New York’ is part of Wise Temple’s vision of lifelong learning,” said Wise Temple’s senior rabbi, Lewis Kamrass. “We believe that you don’t have to live in the major Jewish cultural center of New York to have the finest of Jewish culture at the center of your life. We believe that our lives are enriched by joining with others in conversation about ideas and ideals. The ‘Live’ series provides us with opportunities to share and ‘talk’ to the finest teachers and best known experts about matters that bring meaning and nourishment to our minds and our souls. Our congregation enjoys sharing these unique and entertaining conversations with the Greater Cincinnati community.” The 92nd Street Y Series is a program of Wise Temple’s Eitz Chayim adult education program and is open to the public. There is a small fee and tickets will be available at the door beginning at 7:30 p.m. the night of the program at Wise Center. For further information and to RSVP contact Wise Temple.
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LOCAL • 3
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
JVS Cincinnati Career Network offers new workshops The JVS Cincinnati Career Network will offer five workshops in September aimed at helping jobseekers improve their job-hunting skills. All sessions will be free at JVS, located in Blue Ash. Reservations are required by contacting a CCN career consultant by phone or online. Career Huddle: Client Exchange & Strategy Session, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 1-2 p.m. This discussion group touches on various topics, including over-
coming hurdles and upgrading your materials and techniques.
to use networking to access the vast number of unadvertised jobs.
Begin the Process: Job Search Prep, Thursday, Sept. 8, 1-2 p.m. This session focuses on preparing to start a job search, including organizing, planning, setting priorities and scheduling activities.
Job Search Boot Camp Thursday, Sept. 22, 1-2:30 p.m. This workshop delves into various topics, including career options, resumes and wowing employers.
Career Huddle: Get Out & Network, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 1-2 p.m. This workshop explores how
Career Huddle: LinkedIn & You Tuesday, Sept. 27, 1-2 p.m. This is an advanced LinkedIn workshop for people who already are using LinkedIn.
JCC fall programs for adults start Sept. 6 Opportunities for fitness, learning and enrichment abound with fall programs for adults at the Mayerson JCC. Classes start Sept. 6, and advance registration is required. Most JCC programs are open to the public, and J Members pay discounted fees. Adults can have fun while staying fit with the J’s sports and recreation programs. The men’s basketball league is popular and offers great exercise during competitive games and a concluding tournament. The league is for adult males 18 and older, and meets Mondays at 6 p.m. Co-ed soccer for ages 12 and older is also available at the JCC on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Good-natured yet skilled pick-up games include diverse ages for an active and fun soccer experience. Playhouse in the Park offers
the opportunity for adults, ages 18 and older, to learn acting and improvisation skills at the JCC. Taught by theater professionals, these classes focus on learning and developing acting skills in a fun environment. Participants in Adult Acting will work on monologues and short scenes. Adult Beginner Improvisation will not only improve acting by learning to perform without a script, but also public speaking skills and selfconfidence. Adult Acting and Adult Beginner Improvisation are both on Mondays at 6:30 p.m. Monthly programs for Young Professionals, ages 21 – 35, offer great opportunities to combine fitness activities with socializing. Some of the most popular programs include Get Up & Go, early morning workouts and breakfast get-togethers, and Wednesday
Schneider family enriches youth sports From t-ball to boys’ baseball, young sports enthusiasts at the Mayerson JCC now have their own home field. Thanks to the generosity of the family of Joseph and Ellen Schneider, the JCC playfield includes a dedicated youth ball field. This gift benefits hundreds of children who are involved in youth sports and camp programs at the JCC. The Schneider family gift allows for the ball field to be graded and improved. The new youth ball field features a baseball diamond, benches and a backstop. Currently, the J’s multi-purpose playfield is used throughout the year for youth t-ball and baseball, as well as for girls’ softball. It serves as a soccer field and a field for various games and activities. It accommodates the unique Ga-Ga Pit, for the popular Israeli-
inspired dodge ball game, and is used for outdoor family programs and community gatherings. “Beginning in 1949, when Ellen and I first arrived from Europe, the JCC at Blair and Hartford Avenue played an important role in the lives of our children, Hank, Ray and Marilyn,” Joseph Schneider said. “Supporting the creation of a youth ball field at the JCC just seems a natural fit for our whole family.” The Schneider Youth Ball Field is being dedicated by the children and grandchildren of Joseph and Ellen Schneider. This generous gift also includes a fence around three-quarters of the playfield, signage, as well as initial development and continued maintenance of the ball field and grassy area. SPORTS on page 19
Night Rewind gatherings to enjoy pick-up games of dodgeball, wiffle ball and more. Senior adults, ages 60 and older, participate in a variety of programs at the JCC this fall. One such program is Tai Chi – an excellent means of increasing stability and balance. The steps and exercises demonstrated in this class will improve mobility, breathing and relaxation. Senior Tai Chi is offered Wednesdays at 1 p.m. Registration for JCC fall programs is in progress, and classes are filling up quickly. To register or for a complete list of JCC fall classes, visit the website or call the J.
4 • LOCAL / NATIONAL
WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM
Access introduces Schmooze for Two’s Now, thanks to a brand new program for young couples in the Jewish community, it’s double the fun when two become one… Introducing Schmooze for Two’s, a program of Access for couples who are married, engaged or in committed relationships who want to meet others just like them! It all kicks off with dinner and drinks at Stir in Olde Montgomery—one of the trendiest private party spots in town— on Thursday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. The event is free with advance reservations. Schmooze for Two’s offers a great way to mix and mingle and meet dozens of other young couples in the Jewish community. “My husband and I recently moved back to Cincinnati and are so excited about this new program because it will give us a chance to get to know people who are in a similar place in their lives,” says Marisa Philips, whose feedback and suggestions were instrumental in the decision to start this program. “We are very much looking forward to the Schmooze for Two’s event and know it’s going to help us grow our Cincinnati circle even more!” Schmooze for Two’s is the newest addition to Access’ growing number of Signature Programs designed to meet Jewish young professionals where they’re at. “As a consumer-driven organization we try to keep our ear to the ground in order to spot trends, identify unmet needs and create opportunities where none existed before,” explains Pam Saeks, director of Jewish Giving for The Mayerson Foundation. “This program is a perfect example of why this strategy is so critical. We started noticing that some of the people who had been attending our events for years weren’t coming as much any more. We did
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The American Israelite “LET THERE BE LIGHT” THE OLDEST ENGLISH-JEWISH WEEKLY IN AMERICA - EST. JULY 15, 1854
VOL. 158 • NO. 5 THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011 25 AV 5771 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 8:01 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 9:02 PM THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE CO., PUBLISHERS 18 WEST NINTH STREET, SUITE 2 CINCINNATI, OHIO 45202-2037 Phone: (513) 621-3145 Fax: (513) 621-3744 publisher@americanisraelite.com editor@americanisraelite.com production@americanisraelite.com RABBI ISSAC M. WISE Founder, Editor, Publisher, 1854-1900 LEO WISE Editor & Publisher, 1900-1928 RABBI JONAH B. WISE Editor & Publisher, 1928-1930 HENRY C. SEGAL Editor & Publisher, 1930-1985
Remember to attend Schmooze for Two’s — a new program to help young couples connect to one another and to the Jewish community.
some analysis and discovered that a majority of them are now in committed relationships and as a result, their social needs and interests have shifted,” she explains. “That’s when we came up with the idea to do something just for young couples. After testing it with some focus groups, we were delighted to learn that it was the perfect way to re-engage past participants and attract new ones. The RSVPs are already pouring in for our first event!” “Even though our community now offers several ways to meet young Jewish singles and families with young children, there really isn’t a formalized way to connect
with other young couples who don’t necessarily have children, or who are just in the beginning phases of their relationships when most of their other friends may still be single,” explains Rachel Plowden, Access Event coordinator. “Even this group represents a relatively small percentage of our overall Cincinnati Jewish population. The more friendships they can form here, the greater the chance they will stay and raise their families in our community.” “Andrew and I moved to Cincinnati from Chicago about two years ago and while we have a good group of other couples we socialize with, we’re really look-
ing forward to the Schmooze for Two’s event because we are excited to connect with other Jewish couples!” says Danny Cohn, a member of the Host Committee. Schmooze for Two’s is free with advance reservations. However, space is limited and will fill up. The event is open to couples in committed relationships in which one partner is Jewish and one partner is between the ages of 21-35. To RSVP by Sept. 12, or for more information about this event, please contact Rachel Plowden at Access, whose contact information can be found in the community directory in the back of this issue.
Sharpton quits shul’s Crown Hts. panel after riot victim’s brother objects By JTA Staff Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — The Rev. Al Sharpton has withdrawn from a synagogue event on the 1991 Crown Heights riots after his participation drew outcry from the brother of Yankel Rosenbaum, the Jewish scholar murdered durign the violence. Sharpton was scheduled to appear Sunday on a four-person panel titled “State of Black-Jewish Relations: Twenty Years after Crown Heights” at the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, N.Y. The synagogue’s rabbi, Marc Schneier, was to host
the event and join the panel. He said the event would be postponed until later this year. Sharpton, in an Aug. 18 letter to Schneier, said he was pulling out of the event out of respect for Norman Rosenbaum, Yankel’s brother. “Since the event has now been distorted and would cause pain to him, I, out of respect to his request, have decided to decline to participate in Sunday’s event,” Sharpton wrote. The letter also said: “Over the last twenty-hours I have been made aware of local detractors of yours and mine that want to engage in the business of division
and distortion rather than respect your work and attempt to have dialogue even among those that may disagree.” Schneier, who is also president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, praised Sharpton in a phone interview with the JTA for deferring to the feelings of Rosenbaum, but said he “regretted the missed opportunity... and that this important dialogue will not take place on Sunday.” “It was a chance to clear the air, to talk about the misunderstandings,” Schneier said. “You don’t dialogue with people with whom you agree fully.” He also argued that the forum would have
PHYLLIS R. SINGER Editor & General Manager, 1985-1999 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher BARBARA L. MORGENSTERN Senior Writer NICOLE SIMON RITA TONGPITUK Assistant Editors ALEXIA KADISH Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor STEPHANIE DAVIS-NOVAK Fashion Editor SONDRA KATKIN Dining Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM IRIS PASTOR RABBI A. JAMES RUDIN ZELL SCHULMAN RABBI AVI SHAFRAN PHYLLIS R. SINGER Contributing Columnists LEV LOKSHIN JANE KARLSBERG Staff Photographers JOSEPH D. STANGE Production Manager
focused as much on the Jewish role in the civil rights movement as on the riots. Norman Rosenbaum had told reporters in New York on Wednesday that “Rabbi Marc Schneier should take a damn good, hard look at the videos of the riots over the three-day period, look at the media reports and he’ll see there clearly the role Al Sharpton played.” “Sunday’s focus should not have been on what was said 20 years ago,” Schneier said, “but what Reverend Sharpton is saying now.” SHARPTON on page 19
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NATIONAL • 5
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
Shock, disbelief follow N.J. rabbi’s arrest on sex abuse charges By Abigail Klein Leichman N.J. Jewish Standard (N.J. Jewish Standard) — The recent arrest of a New Jersey rabbi casts doubt on the future of a scholarship fund he created for needy Israeli children. Rivlin Uzi Rivlin, 63, pleaded not guilty on Aug. 17 to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual contact and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. The charges were brought by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit, the Teaneck Police Department, and the Israeli police, with the assistance of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Through the FBI, the county unit was informed of two separate complaints of inappropriate touching lodged with the Israeli police by two 13-year-old boys who had stayed at Rivlin’s Teaneck, N.J., home, one in the summer of 2009 and the other in 2010. Maureen Parenta, spokeswoman for the Bergen County prosecutor’s office, told The Jewish Standard on Wednesday that the investigation will continue. “We’d like to determine if any other children have been victims,” she said. Rivlin founded the Scholarship Fund for the Advancement of
Children in Israel (Keren Milgot le-Kiddum Yeladim be-Yisrael) about 12 years ago, after learning of the desperate straits of families in impoverished areas in his native country. Rivlin’s efforts include monetary and material assistance to hundreds of 4- to 18-year-old children recommended by Israeli social service agencies and municipal officials. The teenagers in the fund are paired with pen-pals in Rivlin’s religious school classes at Temple Beth Abraham, located in Tarrytown, N.Y. Often, the American families support their children’s Israeli penpals and host them during the summer. Rivlin has arranged for several of the children to mark their becoming b’nai mitzvah at synagogues in and around Bergen County, including Congregation Beth Aaron and the Jewish Center of Teaneck and Fair Lawn’s Congregation Ahavat Achim. He also arranged b’nai and b’not mitzvah celebrations in Israel for indigent boys and girls under his care. People who have worked with Rivlin on both sides of the ocean expressed shock and disbelief over his arrest. “I couldn’t give you the exact number of years I’ve known him, but the accusations are inconsistent
with anything we know about Uzi Rivlin,” said Rabbi David Holtz of Temple Beth Abraham. “As far as we know, he’s spent his life taking care of kids through his scholarship organization, getting kids out of poverty, and making sure they get appropriate education.” Reached by the Standard on August 17, Holtz said that Rivlin had been teaching fifth-grade students about Israel’s history and politics. “We’ve never had a hint of a complaint about this kind of thing,” Holtz said. “He is passionate about teaching kids and the work he does in his foundation in helping kids.” Rivlin’s wife and daughter have also taught in the after-school program, according to Holtz. “I’m sure you are emphasizing the innocent till proven guilty aspect of all this,” Holtz said. Echoing the Tarrytown rabbi was Chaim Shalom, the former vice mayor of Kiryat Gat, a development town where many of the scholarship’s beneficiaries live. “I don’t believe it,” Shalom said. Shalom said several boys who have stayed at Rivlin’s home the past few summers were from particularly troubled backgrounds and that at least one of them lives in a group home.
“Uzi has done only good for kids here. No other man has done so much for these children. I’ve worked with him many years; I just spoke with him two weeks ago,” said Shalom. “He sends clothing, food for holidays, school supplies…. He takes children from very sad situations to the United States to go to camp. He arranges bar mitzvahs for them, he buys them tallit and tefillin. This must be a mistake. It is terrible for a man who has fought for so many children to have his good name tarnished in this way.” Shalom said two of Rivlin’s six children live in Israel — a daughter with several children of her own and a son serving with the paratroopers. Shalom did not hear of the arrest until informed by this reporter, and said he would try to call Rivlin’s wife, Jenny, immediately. At press time, The Jewish Standard was unable to reach Jenny Rivlin or Rabbi Moshe Yasgur of Teaneck, who until a few years ago helped Rivlin with the fund. Rabbi Yosef Adler, principal of Torah Academy of Bergen County, also expressed surprise at the news. Last year, Adler said, a 14-year-old boy from Sderot boarded with the Rivlins and
attended the all-boys high school in Teaneck through the fund. “There were no problems and no suspicions whatsoever,” said Adler. “I had contact with Rabbi Rivlin many times, and he only had the best interests of the children in mind. He gives his life for these people.” The previous year, the Rivlins had housed two boys from the scholarship fund while they attended Yeshiva University’s high school for boys for a semester. Rivlin reportedly traveled to Israel often to check on the circumstances of each child in his care. He once told the Standard that he spent many hours at home in Teaneck calling government officials in Israel to gain better housing or other social welfare assistance for the most serious cases. At his Aug. 17 arraignment, Rivlin was ordered to surrender his Israeli passport (he told the court he did not have a U.S. passport) and he was forbidden to have contact with any children under age 18, including the two alleged victims. Bail was set at $175,000, to be paid in full, meaning that the traditional 10 percent bond will not be accepted in this case. ARREST on page 19
6 • NATIONAL
WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM
The long tradition of Jewish farming in America
Courtesy of Itta Werdiger Roth
Rabbi Rafoel Franklin at his farm in Swan Lake, N.Y.
By Leah Koenig Tablet Magazine (Tablet Magazine) — Every morning before breakfast, Rabbi Rafoel Franklin, 60, an Orthodox Jew living in Swan Lake, N.Y., puts on tefillin, says his morning prayers, and then heads outside to milk his 30 cows. Three decades ago Franklin and his wife, Naomi, left Monsey, N.Y., the ultraOrthodox hamlet outside New York City, to start their farm in the Catskills. Franklin, who became religious as an adult, had spent his childhood in Montana and once worked as a wildlife biologist. He moved out of Monsey because he wanted to live a life that reflected his love of the natural world as well as his devotion to the Torah. “In Monsey I was working as a shochet” — a ritual slaughterer — “and I was dissatisfied by what I saw,” Franklin told me. His more satisfied life in Swan Lake is filled with feathers, hay and farm chores. The farm, which he runs with his son, Eliezer, houses a sustainable kosher-chicken company, Pelleh Poultry, that processes 4,000 chickens each week. (Industrial slaughterhouses,
in contrast, often handle tens of thousands of chickens every day.) And in November he launched Bethel Creamery, the country’s only organic, Chalav Yisrael (a strictly kosher designation endorsed by Hasidim) dairy— selling the milk to customers in Monsey and Brooklyn. Franklin’s move to his farm can seem prophetic. Today, the country’s growing obsession with local, traceable food has increased the demand for products like his and lured some young people away from office jobs and toward the farm. This holds true for the Jewish world as well. There are programs like Adamah, an agricultural fellowship in Connecticut, which brings together Jewish 20somethings to live on a farm, tend its eight acres of organic crops, and milk goats, make pickles, and celebrate Shabbat. This summer, Adamah’s founder, Adam Berman, launched Urban Adamah — a similar program in Berkeley, Calif., that focuses on increasing food access for low-income residents, as well as sustainable farming. Meanwhile, synagogues and JCCs across the country are launching a number of farm-to-shul initiatives,
Will the new ‘Dirty Dancing’ be Jewish?
from community-supported agriculture projects to parking-lot gardens. But with all this new interest in Jewish farming, Jewish Americans’ agricultural history remains largely unknown. In the decades prior to World War II, upstate New York was dotted with egg, dairy and produce farms owned and run by Jews. Petaluma, Calif., in Sonoma County, boasted a thriving community of chicken ranchers from the 1920s through the 1960s. Indeed, Franklin’s street in Swan Lake was once home to four Jewish farming families whose rousing post-Shabbat gatherings, he told me, routinely piqued the curiosity of non-Jewish neighbors. Many of these farms were beneficiaries of the Jewish Agricultural Society, an organization founded in New York in 1900 by a German Jewish philanthropist, Baron Maurice de Hirsch. An urban Jewish businessman with utopian, pre-industrial leanings, de Hirsch spent his fortune helping Eastern European Jews escape anti-Semitism in their home countries and settle on American pastures, far away from the cities’ tenements. The society provided loans for purchasing land, seeds and equipment and offered practical education to the settlers, many of whom had minimal prior experience as farmers. It even published a magazine in Yiddish and English called The Jewish Farmer. With the baron’s support, and the opportunity to own land in America (a privilege not consistently afforded to them in Europe), these farmers had the chance to build on Judaism’s ancient agricultural legacy — a heritage filled with agricultural tenets (“in the seventh year thou shalt let [the land] lie fallow,” Exodus tells us) and joyful harvest holidays like Shavuot and Sukkot. From its founding through the middle of the 20th century, the society helped settle nearly 5,000 Jewish farmers and their families on homesteads in New York and beyond. It also placed tens of thousands of Jewish workers on established farms throughout New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Florida. In California, the German Jewish Haas family — heirs to the Levi Strauss denim fortune— helped fund the Jewish chicken ranchers in Petaluma. In the 1920s, Yiddish plays and concerts were staged in Petaluma, and Golda Meir considered it a vital enough community to make it a fundraising stop in the 1930s. FARMING on page 22
By Dvora Meyers Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — When I first heard that Lionsgate was remaking the classic ‘80s movie “Dirty Dancing,” I had two questions: One, why won’t Hollywood leave my childhood alone? And two, will this update be as culturally Jewish as the original? While the first question is obviously rhetorical — no, they won’t leave me alone with my nostalgia — the answer to the second is unclear. What is certain is that if Kenny Ortega, who choreographed the dances in the original and was just named as the director of the remake, attempts to re-create the story in the original cultural milieu, he’s going to have to make it very Jewish because “Dirty Dancing” is one of the Jewiest movies of all time. First, you’ve got the setting — a Catskills (aka the Jewish Alps, or the Borscht Belt) resort in the ‘60s, which is where our grandparents (and some of our parents) summered. Second, you’ve got Jennifer Grey’s “Baby” Housman, with her original Semitic nose and frizzy hair, desperately seeking the approval of her honorable-yet-strict Jewish doctor father, played by the
sorely missed Jerry Orbach. You’ve also got uppity, proto-yuppie guys headed off to Yale and other topnotch universities in order to assimilate into the American upper-middle class. Baby also displays her Jewish liberal stripes by helping one of the hotel staff pay for her backalley abortion since the film was set in the pre-Roe v. Wade days. And finally you’ve got Patrick Swayze’s bad boy Johnny Castle, who proves irresistible to our Jewish heroine from the right side of the tracks as a good shaygetz is wont to do sometimes. The Jewishness of the new film will largely depend on who is selected as the new Baby. Perhaps if Lea Michele, who has been mentioned online as a possibilty for the role, or some other obviously Semitic actress wins the part, the remake will retain some of the original ethnic themes.Or perhaps the producers will aim for a younger demographic — the tweens perhaps — by selecting Selena Gomez, whose name has also been floated. The closest Gomez gets to Judaism is her boyfriend, Justin Bieber, who has “Jesus” tattooed in Hebrew on his ribs. Either way, I’ll probably stay away. After all, “Dirty Dancing” is streaming 24/7 on Netflix.
Rabbi’s app sends users on a digital ‘treyf’ odyssey By Debra Rubin New Jersey Jewish News (New Jersey Jewish News) — The ancient laws of keeping kosher have now gone digital. Rabbi Eli Garfinkel of Temple Beth El of Somerset, N.J., has gained a reputation as something of a technophile, creating videos and podcasts on Jewish rituals and a website called “askmyrabbi.” Garfinkel recently found another high-tech outlet: developing smartphone “apps,” including his latest, “Treyf Invaders!” Garfinkel described it as “a shoot-’em-up game that teaches players which animals are kosher according to Halacha (Jewish law) and which are not.” Players must battle the evil “Hazirim Dominion,” which is attacking Earth by hurling animals at its population centers. The mission is to vaporize the treyf, or unkosher, animals and rescue the kosher species. “I was trying to think of an entertaining way of teaching what makes an animal kosher or not
without reading the relevant chapter of the Torah, which can put some people to sleep,” said Garfinkel. “This makes it much more engaging.” Players learn that a lack of visible fins and scales make shellfish an enemy, birds of prey are generally off-limits, and desired animals must chew their cud and have cloven hooves. Meanwhile, dreaded “bacon bombs” can result in an automatic loss of the game. “People who like it the most are those ages 10 to 14, but really anybody can enjoy it,” said Garfinkel. “One of my friends in Texas let his son try it, and he thought it was a lot of fun.” Treyf Invaders, available from the app store through any carrier, is selling well for an unadvertised Jewish game, according to Garfinkel. Two previous apps developed last year by the rabbi, Trope Tools and Trope Tools 2, designed to teach users how to chant Torah, have been purchased by hundreds of people all over the world.
NATIONAL • 7
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
National Briefs
From the Sanhedrin to Alan Greenspan, strategies to avoid the perils of groupthink By Ben Harris Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Drive aiming to attract young Jews to Detroit NEW YORK (JTA) — The Detroit Jewish community is launching a nationwide campaign to raise money to bring 25 young Jews to live in the city. Do It for Detroit is hosting events through August held by Detroit residents and former residents, as well as supporters in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, to raise $100,000 to revitalize the Michigan city’s Jewish community. A program of the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit, it will offer subsidies of $3,000 a year to live in the city, and the recipient will host at least one community event a month to help strengthen the Jewish and Detroit-area communities. The first event will take place Wednesday at a high school softball field in suburban Detroit, followed the next day by a fundraiser in Chicago by exDetroiters. Charity kickball tournaments in Los Angeles and baseball events in New York also are planned. The effort is part of a larger campaign to attract young people back to Detroit, which despite a growing cultural life has been suffering a brain drain due to Michigan’s high unemployment. Detroit once was a major Jewish hub, with 44 synagogues and a rich cultural life. Now only one synagogue remains there — the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue. As the city declined, most of the Jewish population moved to the northern suburbs. A 2010 study conducted by the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit found that 67,000 Jews live in Oakland, Wayne and Macomb counties, a decline of 5,000 since 2005. However, over the same period the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue has increased from 50 households to 175 households. If the money is raised, the program will start accepting applications in October. As of Wednesday morning, the campaign had raised $9,702. Obama vacation reading includes Israeli novel NEW YORK (JTA) — President Obama’s vacation reading list includes the bestselling Israeli novel “To the End of the Land” by David Grossman. NATIONAL on page 22
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (JTA) — When Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve, he reportedly conducted meetings of the Fed’s Open Market Committee by going around the table and asking the 17 members for their opinions. Only after the others had spoken would Greenspan, a towering figure in American economic policy, render his own judgment. With the U.S. economy currently in shambles, one can easily question the wisdom of the decisions Greenspan presided over during his 19 years at the Fed. But his practice of having junior group members speak before their seniors is an excellent way to avoid the sort of myopia to which elite groups, operating under high pressure, often succumb. That, at any rate, is the argument advanced in a paper presented this month to the American Psychological Association by Eliezer Schnall, a clinical assistant professor of psychology at Yeshiva University, who finds a precedent for Greenspan’s format in the Sanhedrin – the 70-member rabbinic court of ancient Israel. The crux of Schnall’s thesis is that this format, practiced by Greenspan in the boardroom and the Sanhedrin in adjudicating capital cases – can offer valuable lessons in countering the psychological phenomenon known as groupthink. In groupthink, a group’s desire for unanimity trumps its interest in dispassionately weighing all potential options. “The rabbis, through their study of the Torah and their insight into human nature, had some intriguingly insightful methods,” Schnall told JTA in a recent interview. Among those methods was the Sanhedrin’s requirement that matters of capital crimes be discussed separately in small groups before a final verdict was reached. Schnall also cites several procedures aimed at ensuring that divergent views were given a fair hearing, including the requirement that outside experts be summoned in certain situations, and that a “devil’s advocate” be appointed to argue on behalf of the accused if the accused declined to do so. “Remember, this is not taking place in the United States in the 21st century, but in the Middle East almost 2,000 years ago,” Schnall said. “There are places in the world today, areas of the Middle East and elsewhere, where free expression is taboo. The idea that they had those kinds of
approaches to leadership 2,000 years ago is something truly extraordinary. And that point can be missed if it's not underlined.” Perhaps most striking of all was the Sanhedrin’s automatic rejection of a decision in capital cases in which all of its members agreed. That practice flies in the face of American judicial practice, where many state trials, and all federal trials, require a jury to render a unanimous verdict in a criminal case. Irving Janis, a researcher at Yale University pioneered the notion of groupthink in the 1970s. Janis’ central contention was that the greater the homogeneity and cohesiveness among a group of decision-makers, the greater the danger that independent thinking would suffer and irrational outcomes would result. The idea turned out to be enormously influential, and it has been applied over the years to a wide range of real-world situations, from political decisions to corporate failures. Famous studies have used groupthink models to explain disasters such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, in which the United States unsuccessfully sought to overthrow the government of Cuba, and the nation’s lack of preparedness when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Similarly, Schnall believes that his findings are more than a histor-
ical oddity, providing real, practical guidance to decision-makers seeking to avoid the perils of groupthink in both the private and public sectors. Schnall submitted a ver-
Courtesy of YU
Eliezer Schnall, a professor of clinical psychology at Yeshiva University, says the model of the Sanhedrin holds lessons for how to avoid groupthink.
sion of his paper to a journal on business management precisely because of his belief in its value to business and governmental leaders. “There really are a lot of links now between spirituality and the business world,” said Crystal Park, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Management,
Spirituality and Religion. Park also served as a discussant during the session in which Schnall presented his paper to the APA. “This is a big and growing area,” Park said. “And it’s a place where psychologists really have a lot to say about how psychology fits into the business world.” An ordained rabbi, Schnall appears to be carving out a niche for himself with his research demonstrating the value of traditional Jewish practices in light of contemporary psychological theorizing. Major media outlets reported on a seven-year study of 90,000 women Schnall published in 2008 which found that those who attended religious services at least once a week were one-fifth less likely to die during the course of the study than those who did not. In 2010, he produced a study showing that Orthodox marriages are happier, on average, than secular ones. The confluence of Jewish wisdom and modern social science in his research is, Schnall says, a result of his efforts to fuse Torah with secular wisdom, or Torah U’madda, the Y.U. motto. In his courses, he regularly seeks out examples from Jewish literature of the psychological concepts he is teaching, something he finds helpful to students who spend a large portion of their time studying religious texts.
8 • NATIONAL
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Solving the White House photo mystery over ‘Jerusalem, Israel’
Top gymnast gives ‘Hava Nagila’ a perfect 10
By Adam Kredo Jewish Telegraphic Agency
By Dvora Meyers Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON (JTA/Wash. Jewish Week) — Jerusalem: To be or not to be part of Israel. That’s the question that White House administrations have tiptoed around for decades. The State Department neither recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital nor views the eastern part of the city — captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed — as part of Israel. But Congress passed a law in 2002 that effectively recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Presidents have been caught in the middle, cautiously balancing their pro-Israel rhetoric against longstanding U.S. policy. That’s exactly where the Obama administration found itself last week after news reports revealed that the White House quietly had removed all references to Jerusalem as being part of Israel from a collection of photos on its website. The Weekly Standard reported Aug. 9 about a set of White House photos from Jerusalem that had been scrubbed of all explicit references to Israel. Whereas a caption for a shot of Vice President Joe Biden once said that he was dining at the “David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, Israel,” for instance, the photo was altered to read just “Jerusalem.” Some pro-Israel activists were incensed by the change, charging a White House whitewash and claiming definitive proof that President Obama disdains Israel. To others it appeared that the president was kowtowing to pressure from the State Department, which recently had reiterated its policy against recognizing Jerusalem as part of Israel. But the White House upon discovering the captions referring to “Jerusalem, Israel” — and with the Obama administration’s policy on Jerusalem being no different than those of his predecessors in the Oval Office — corrected them to reflect longstanding U.S. policy. “U.S. policy for more than 40 years has been that the status of Jerusalem should be decided in final-status negotiations between the parties,” a White House official said last week in response to an inquiry about the matter. “As in prior administrations, the White House photo captions should reflect that policy.” For the White House, Jerusalem is just Jerusalem until the Israelis
NEW YORK (JTA) — Places you expect to hear “Hava Nagila”: weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs, every pop culture depiction of traditional Jews and … gymnastics competitions? In fact, the answer is all of the above. Alexandra Raisman, 17, one of the top elite gymnasts in the United States and a member of the 2010 U.S. World Championships team that took the silver medal last year in Rotterdam, will perform her floor exercise routine this weekend to a string-heavy version of the classic Chasidic niggun, or wordless melody. And if she succeeds in making it to London for the Olympic Games in 2012, she plans to perform the routine on the sport’s biggest stage. Raisman, of Needham, Mass., is trained by the Romanian couple, Mihai and Sylvia Brestyan, who coached the Israeli national team in the early 1990s and also is training world vault champion Alicia Sacramone. The coaches and Raisman’s mother selected “Hava Nagila” after several exhaustive late-night online searches. Raisman, a recipient of the Pearl D. Mazor Outstanding Female Jewish High School Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award given out by the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in New York, says she is proud to be using the Jewish song “because there aren’t too many Jewish elites out there.” Even more important to Raisman than the tune’s Jewish connotations, however, is the quality it shares with similar folk tunes — it inspires audience participation. “I like how the crowd can clap to it,” she says. It is this characteristic that has likely inspired other international elites, such as the 1996 Olympic champion Lilia Podkopayeva and the 2008 victor on floor exercise, Sandra Izbasa, to use “Hava Nagila” in their floor routines. “It implicitly invites the crowd into the performance,” says James Loeffler, who teaches Jewish and European history at the University of Virginia and is the author of the “The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire.” He adds, “It almost takes the focus off the gymnast as a solo performer.” That probably comes as a relief to Raisman, who is known for her powerful tumbling and high degree of difficulty, but has admitted to not being as comfortable with the artistic aspects of the sport. “I’m not as good a dancer,” she concedes. Loeffler isn’t surprised that the song has been favored by gymnasts. What both the sport of gym-
Official White House photo by David Lienemann
The White House said it deleted the reference to Israel in a photo caption on its website of Vice President Joe Biden having breakfast with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem in March 2010 to reflect a longstanding U.S. policy on the city’s status.
and Palestinians ink a peace deal. A virtual tour of the White House’s online archives shows that President George W. Bush had a similar photo rule: pictures of him in Jerusalem do not denote that the city is in Israel. During one such trip to the Jewish state in 2008, for instance, Bush visited “Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, in Jerusalem,” according to the caption written by the Bush administration. “The status of Jerusalem will be ultimately determined by the interested parties,” Bush said in 2001. Former Bush administration official Elliot Abrams recalls matters differently. He told the Washington Post last week that “the Bush administration did not have a hard-and-fast rule that prohibited referring to Jerusalem that way at all times and in all statements and press releases.” If nothing substantial had changed from Bush to Obama, why did the photo snafu receive so much attention? First there was the public relations gaffe: Jerusalem’s status is a highly charged political issue, and the Obama administration was caught red-handed fixing an embarrassing mistake. Perhaps more significant, however, the error came just as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to examine the constitutionality of the State Department’s policy on Jerusalem. The litigants in a case scheduled to be heard by the court in the fall session want their Jerusalem-born son to have his birthplace listed as “Jerusalem, Israel” on his passport, as is permitted by a 2002 federal law. But the State Department has
not implemented that law (under either Obama or Bush) because it says the law violates the department’s ability to set foreign policy. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is so sensitive, the State Department maintains, that it is critical that U.S. passports only say “Jerusalem.” Presidents often have found themselves at odds with Congress over Jerusalem. President Truman favored an “international regime for Jerusalem,” while Presidents Carter, Reagan and Clinton all believed that negotiation should resolve the status of Jerusalem. Congress has been more hawkish on the issue. In 1995, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandated the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from its current location in Tel Aviv. But since 1998, every sitting president has suspended the relocation via an executive order that is reissued every six months that says the delay is “necessary in order to protect the national security interests of the United States.” Long-needed renovations at the U.S. Embassy building in Tel Aviv have not been carried out due to uncertainty over how long the embassy opposite the beachfront will be located there. While the U.S. Congress has already made up its mind about the embassy and Jerusalem, U.S. policy as set by the president is waiting for something else: the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to agreement. With the stalemate between the two parties showing no signs of ending, that could take a very long time.
John Cheng
Alexandra “Aly” Raisman does a leap on beam at the 2010 World Championships.
nastics and the song have in common is kitsch. Gymnastics, like its sister sport figure skating, is relatively free of irony. While the acrobatics may be cutting edge, everything else seems stuck in the over-the-top 1980s, a world where scrunchies, eye glitter and iridescent spandex were popular. In the gymnastics-verse, those things are still commonplace “In gymnastics,” Loeffler says, “you still have a certain appeal of things that in other places might seem sort of silly or even cheesy.” This works well with a song like “Hava Nagila.” “It’s a song, depending on how you play it, that can be very powerful and spiritual, or it can be glitzy, bombastic and over the top,” he says, noting that many klezmer bands refuse to play the song, which they consider old fashioned and outmoded. The bands that do play it do so to parody themselves. “Hava Nagila” wasn’t always considered a cliche of traditional Judaism. The song originated as a niggun among the Sadigorer Chasidim in what is now Ukraine and brought to Palestine in the late 19th century, where Avraham Zvi Idelsohn, the father of Jewish musicology, gave the tune its now famously happy lyrics. Since then the song has become an enduring shorthand for Jewish in Hollywood films and other pop culture venues. It has received similar treatment in Eastern Europe and Russia, where “it fits into a tradition of kitschy popular style folk songs” and is one of three things people in the region know about Jews, Loeffler says. “They know about Israel, they know about the Holocaust and they know about ‘Hava Nagila,’” he says. The international familiarity with the song bodes well for Raisman. Should she make it to London in 2012, it’s a safe bet everyone will be clapping along.
INTERNATIONAL • 9
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
In summer, Jewish studies flowers in Eastern Europe By Ruth Ellen Gruber Jewish Telegraphic Agency KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — In Austria and Poland recently, I couldn’t seem to get away from students, scholars and just plain interested folks who were taking or teaching summer programs in Jewish studies. I myself spoke at a three-day “summer academy” in Vienna where more than 100 members of the general public turned up for lectures by international experts on Eastern European Jewish history. In both Vienna and Krakow, I met informally with some of the 71 teachers from Jewish and public schools in North America and Israel attending a nine-day summer academy of lectures, travel and workshops organized by the Viennabased Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation. The programs reflected the remarkable resurgence of both Jewish informal learning and academic studies that has taken place in Europe since the fall of communism. This process has opened up opportunities and fields of scholarship to new generations of students and researchers. It also has gone some way toward repairing the damage wrought by the Holocaust. About 750 institutions of European Jewish learning were “lost forever” in the war, according to the European Association of Jewish Studies, with many cities experiencing a “near total devastation of their Jewish studies resources.” In postwar communist
International Briefs U.K. Libyan-Jewish leader: I was invited to run for office in Libya (JTA) — The leader of the Libyan Jewish community in Britain said he has been invited to run for political office in postMuammar Gadhafi Libya. Raphael Luzon told the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, a day after the fall of the Libyan capital to rebel forces, that opposition leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil had invited him to return to Libya and run in free elections. Jalil is a former Libyan justice minister and now chairman of the rebel council in Benghazi. Luzon told the newspaper that he was invited to take part in the elections “because they would like it to be open to all people, including women and Jews.” Luzon, whose family fled Libya in 1967, met Gadhafi twice in recent years. He said he would await further developments in the country before making a decision.
Europe, teaching and research in Jewish and Holocaust studies was virtually taboo. The pace of reconstruction has varied from country to country. But today the European Association of Jewish Studies lists nearly 450 academic institutions and universities in two dozen European countries where Jewish studies courses or classes are taught. Many other programs are associated with non-academic bodies. Summer programs have a special place in this scheme, as they often are geared specifically to visiting foreign participants. Some of them, such as the 5-year-old Leo Baeck Summer University at Humboldt Unviersity in Berlin, are organized in partnership with North American or Israeli institutions. The benefits of study abroad programs are well known: exposure to other cultures and languages, contact with new ideas, the opportunity to forge international connections. Looking back, my own days on a university study abroad program in Europe set the course of my life. I spent the first semester of my senior year studying art and art history on an American university program in Rome. I returned to the States to complete my degree and graduate, but within a few months I had moved back to Europe. I have lived here ever since. So it was revealing to meet people who had chosen to spend part of their vacations this summer delving into Jewish history or Holocaust studies — and to hear about the Reconstruction of the wartorn country and the restitution of Jewish assets confiscated by the Libyan regime would top his political agenda if he ran, Luzon told the Jerusalem Post. Fighting continued in the Libyan capital on Tuesday, centered around Gadhafi’s fortified compound. Warsaw Ghetto expert Ruta Sakowska dies ROME (JTA) — Historian Ruta Sakowska, one of the world’s leading experts on the Warsaw Ghetto, died Monday in Warsaw at age 89. Sakowska, who was born in Vilnius in 1922, served as director of the Ringelblum Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. The archives, established clandestinely in the Warsaw Ghetto by the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum and his secret Oneg Shabbat resistance team, document every facet of life and death in the ghetto as well as the fate of many other Polish Jewish communities. The documentation was hidden in milk cans and metal boxes on the INTERNATIONAL on page 22
Courtesy of Ruth Ellen Gruber
Visitors to the Auschwitz Museum Memorial in Oswiecim, Poland, enter the Arbeit Macht Frei gate on a rainy day.
often-unexpected impact of such on-site experience. That was the case especially in Poland, the prewar Jewish heartland that turned into the main Nazi killing ground. “These are seriously motivated people,” Annamaria OrlaBukowska, a professor at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, told me about the more than 20 students from the United States, Latin America, Israel and elsewhere who had enrolled in the first international Summer Academy organized by the memorial museum at the former Auschwitz death camp. Held in July, it focused on Auschwitz and the Holocaust as well as on postwar history, PolishGerman relations during the war
and the educational challenges facing the Auschwitz Museum. “You can imagine that it is physically and geographically and psychologically not easy to decide to take courses that will not only take up weekends and holiday time, but will actually be held at Auschwitz,” said Orla-Bukowska, who has taught Jewish and Holocaust courses in several summer programs in Poland.
Hailey Dilman, a Jewish studies graduate student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was one of 10 U.S. and Canadian students who took part in the annual fellows program for graduate students offered by the Auschwitz Jewish Center. The center is an independent institution affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and is located in Oswiecim, the town where the Auschwitz camp is sited. The three-week fellowship combined travel to Holocaust and Jewish heritage sites with courses and archival work on Polish Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life. Though much of the focus of her graduate and undergraduate work had been on the Holocaust, Dilman had never visited Poland or the Nazi death camps. She said that studying the impact of the Holocaust where it actually took place had been a revelation. “It was amazing for me to learn that even though the Jews basically disappeared from Poland, they left such a strong imprint on Polish society that is still felt today,” said Dilman, who is from Toronto. “Before the trip, I theoretically knew this was so, but I had to experience it to actually learn of it.”
10 • ISRAEL
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After terror attacks, rockets from Gaza and worries over Egypt border
Shay Levy/Flash 90
Israeli soldiers carry an injured person on a stretcher at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba following a Palestinian terrorist attack near the Egyptian border, Aug. 18, 2011.
By Marcy Oster Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM (JTA) – After deadly terrorist attacks in southern Israel, officials in Jerusalem are on alert for how Egyptian instability may be opening up more avenues for terrorists intent on attacking Israel. Last Thursday’s coordinated attacks north of Eilat by terrorists who crossed over the border from Egypt left eight Israelis dead — six of them civilians. More than 30 people were reportedly injured in the attacks. The attacks “demonstrate the weakening of Egypt’s control over the Sinai Peninsula and the expansion of terrorist activity there,” Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said. He added that Israel’s military will retaliate against the attacks, which he said “originate in Gaza.” The attacks led to Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and Palestinian rocket attacks that continued into Friday. On early Saturday morning Hamas announced an end to its truce with Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported. Since the fall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, the Sinai has become an increasingly lawless place. Saboteurs have repeatedly attacked and disabled the gas pipeline that runs from Egypt to Israel, and smugglers run a brisk trade along the border between Egypt and both Israel and Hamascontrolled Gaza. The attacks came on a portion of the border with Egypt protected only by a wire fence. Israel said it would accelerate efforts to complete construction of a high-tech security fence along the Egyptian border. Israel said that the terrorists came from Gaza and infiltrated Israel via Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Armed with guns, grenades and explosive vests, the terrorists ambushed two Israeli buses and several private cars traveling north of the southern resort city of Eilat just after noon Thursday. When Israeli troops arrived, the terrorists detonated roadside bombs they had planted. Israeli security forces killed five of the terrorists, and the Egyptian army reportedly killed two others. It is not known precisely how many terrorists participated in the attacks, and some are believed to have escaped. Three Egyptian police officers were also killed in the fighting, apparently mistakenly by Israeli aircraft trying to attack suspected terrorists. Egypt registered a complaint with Israel and demanded an investigation into the incident. Following the attacks on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike on a site in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, killed the military commander of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, the group that Israel believes was behind the attacks. The airstrike also killed five others, three identified by the Popular Resistance Committees as the commander's assistants and one as a 3-year-old boy, according to The New York Times. “We have a policy of extracting a very high price from anyone who causes us harm, and this policy is acted upon,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday as he visited soldiers hurt in the attacks. Israeli officials also said that Hamas would be held responsible. Hamas and Popular Resistance Committee officials have been quoted denying responsibility for the attacks, even as they praised them. Israeli airstrikes also hit Popular Resistance Committee members trying to carry out rocket strikes,
Hamas facilities in Gaza and a Gaza power plant. According to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, 11 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes and shelling since Thursday’s attacks. The Israeli military reported that some 22 Grad and Qassam rockets had been fired at Israel from Gaza on Thursday and Friday. One person was seriously injured and another moderately hurt after a Grad rocket landed Friday in a yeshiva’s courtyard in the Israeli city of Ashdod, with four others treated for shock, The Jerusalem Post reported. Thursday’s attacks began with an attack on a car and the ambush of Egged bus No. 392, which runs between Beersheba and Eilat and was loaded with soldiers. The driver of the car, who survived the attack, tried to warn the bus driver of the ambush. The bus’s driver managed to keep the bus on the road during the attack and drove to the nearest Israeli army checkpoint while soldiers riding the bus reportedly exchanged fire with the attackers. Passengers suffered light to moderate injuries, according to Haaretz. Shortly thereafter, a terrorist blew himself up using an explosive belt by another bus, killing its driver, though no passengers were aboard. The terrorists also killed four occupants in a car, as well as the driver of another car. When Israeli soldiers arrived on the scene, Staff Sgt. Moshe Naftali, 22, was killed in the ensuing firefight. Around 6:45 p.m. terrorists killed an Israeli counterterrorism police officer, 49-yearold Pascal Avrahami, who was patrolling the border near the scene of the original fighting. The names of five of the six civilians killed in the attacks were released on Friday: They are sisters Flora Gez, 52, and Shula Karlitzky, 54, and their husbands, Moshe, 53, and Dov, 58, who were headed to Eilat for a vacation, as well as Yosef Levi, 52, the driver of another car. Levi’s wife, Etie, was injured by a bullet in the shoulder and survived by playing dead in the car next to her husband’s body, Haaretz reported. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni called for retaliation and said that her Kadima Party “will support the government when it comes to anti-terrorism operations and closing the border.” The White House condemned the attacks. “The U.S. and Israel stand united aganst terror, and we hope that those behind this attack will be brought to justice swiftly,” the White House said in a statement.
Courtesy of Hallelujah
The 12 finalists, pictured here, in the Hallelujah Global Jewish Singing Contest will face off August 25 in the Israeli city of Ramat HaSharon.
Song contest searches Diaspora for ‘the next Jewish star’ By Marcy Oster Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Israeli music producer-to-the-stars Eitan Gafni put on a global song contest for Jews nearly 20 years ago, finding contestants was difficult. At the time, he called on Jewish Agency shlichim, or emissaries, residing in capitals around the world to find young Jews with musical talent and ask them to send in an audition tape, a process that took months. Gafni’s Hallelujah global Jewish singing contest ran for three years, beginning in 1992, but a lack of funds led to its cancellation. Seven months ago, Gafni decided to put his song contest out there again, after a friend of his son’s — who was a teenager at the time of the original contest — returned home to Israel from an extended stay in Australia and encouraged him to help young Jews in the Diaspora reconnect to Israel through song. Though there was a comparatively short lead-time in the run-up to the contest — the finals will be held August 25 in Israel — it was considerably easier to find contestants this time around. Gafni and his partners got the word out through Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites, as well as through the myriad of organizations that work with young Jewish adults. Contestants sent in their audition videos by e-mail or posted them on YouTube. Although nearly all of the participants in the Hallelujah contest 20 years ago were affiliated with the Jewish community, many of the 260 Jewish singing-sensation wannabes vying to participate in 2011 are not affiliated with any Jewish organizations in their home communities.
“These are the people we want to reach,” said Gafni, who has been a producer for the last 40 years for such Israeli music stars as Shlomo Artzi, Motti Caspi and Ruthi Navon. The contest’s slogan is “Who’s going to be the next Jewish star?” A panel of judges, including veteran singer and actor Yehoram Gaon and other Israeli musicians, viewed the auditions and chose 30 semifinalists to come to Israel to continue competing. The contestants came from around the globe, including the United States, Canada, South America, Russia, Turkey and Belgium, and they include one Israeli contestant currently serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Nearly all of the contestants, ages 16 to 26, already had a music background and had performed before audiences, which will make the final more professional, Gafni said. Adam Dahan, a 17-year-old singer and piano player from Quebec, uploaded an audition just days before the deadline, after reading in The Canadian Jewish News about two women from his community who had entered the contest. While they didn’t make the cut, he did. Dahan, who said he practices music between two and seven hours daily, including time spent with his vocal coach, attended music school in Los Angeles. Recently, he noted, a record label got in touch with him. “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to connect to the rest of the world through my music,” said Dahan, who is a sometime hazan, or cantor, in his synagogue in his hometown of Cote St. Luke. CONTEST on page 22
SOCIAL LIFE • 11
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
ACCESS’ BOOTLEGGERS’ BALL On Saturday, July 9th, about 250 young professionals attended Access’ Bootleggers’ Ball, the biggest soiree of the summer at the Green Acres Estate in Indian Hill. It was a flapper-style fling right out of the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel where guests got to come in costume and enjoy an evening of mixing and mingling on the magnificent grounds, which featured beautiful gardens, fountains and terraces. In a nod to the days of prohibition, participants had to locate the “X” which marked the spot where a gangster met them with an envelope containing the password “the Bee’s Knees” giving them entry to the party. Guests enjoyed jazz music, drinks, desserts and a chance to pose in their own old-fashioned Framester photo shoot. PHOTOS CONTINUED ON P.12
Valerie Plowden, Rachel Plowden
Jen and Dan Lader
Laura Rose, Stu Solomon, and Miriam Desatnik
Josh Rothstein, Hillary Hirsh, and Matt Feigelson
ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE FREE! BIRTHS • BAT/BAR MITZVAHS • ENGAGEMENTS WEDDINGS • BIRTHDAYS • ANNIVERSARIES Place your FREE announcement in The American Israelite newspaper and website by sending an e-mail to articles@americanisraelite.com Caryn Ben-Hur, Sarah Jarnicki, and David Solomon
Tristan Browne and Marie Krulewitch
AI
The American Israelite
12 • CINCINNATI SOCIAL LIFE
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ACCESS’ BOOTLEGGERS’ BALL
Drew DePenning, Michelle Goldfarb, Kathryn McGovern, and Allison Rogers
Andrea Newman, Julie Kursh, and Bernie Jacobson
Devin Blais, Jen Spaeth, Gil Palmon, and Zachary Fleischman
Erica Smith, Hillary Hirsch, Stacey Wolfe, Erica Efron, Kacie Liederbach, Jamie Dalin
Chad and Jessica Rosenthal, Jason Levine, and Rachel and Marc Kasten
Zach Weprin, Loren Brook, Eric Schickli, Aaron Dubas, Jed Siegel, Halli Levy, Jessica Waterman, Michael Israel, Stacy Wolfe, Lauren Dubas, and Elyse Skerker
CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE • 13
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
Bernie Jacobson and Katie Uhle
Rachel Rothstein, Erica Efron, and Kacie Liederbach
Bernie Jacobson and Katie Uhle
14 • DINING OUT
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Sultan’s Mediterranean Cuisine — tasty and truly Turkish By Sondra Katkin Dining Editor Mehmet Coskun, co-owner of Sultan’s Mediterranean Cuisine looked behind him then whispered, “He talks to his food. He’ll say, ‘not yet honey; be patient, you need more time.’” He was describing his chef and partner Mustafa Koylu’s dedication to getting each dish exactly the way it should be according to Ottoman tradition. Full disclosure: I am also guilty of this miniscule, aberrant anomaly. Food is a good listener. Coskun emphasized that they serve original Turkish cuisine from recipes passed down over generations. “If you ‘google,’ you’ll find the same ingredients and recipes we use here. Koylu learned from his chefs who learned from their chefs. He learned from the ‘root,’” Coskun added. To maintain their authenticity and quality, Coskun travels to Turkish suppliers in New York and to Turkey every other month. Some friends recently joined me at Sultan’s for lunch to check if this restaurant was going to be a Turkish delight, and we were not disappointed. One of my companions, who spent several years in Turkey, enjoyed the nostalgia of the tasty food and the pleasure of chatting in Turkish with our attentive waiter. She complimented the authentic preparation. My other friend, who hails from the Middle East, ordered the baked eggplant stuffed with ground beef, ground lamb, chopped tomatoes, green peppers and herbs. The look on her face as she tasted her entree spoke volumes. “This is just right; the taste I was hoping for,” she said. She felt the same way about the shepherd salad with tomato, parsley, cucumber, onions, scallions, vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil. I couldn’t resist ordering this salad and heartily concurred with her. “Fresh and light, clean and bright (tasting),” sounds like “Edelweiss” from the “Sound of Music.” Sultan’s signature entree, the shish kabob, consists of “halal” (the Moslem kosher process) chicken, beef or lamb, marinated for 30 hours with spices and herbs that come from Turkey, chosen for their intense flavor. The chicken kabob “take out” filled my car with pungent aromas. Waiting to get home to eat it, and yes, share it North/South Indians Indo Chinese
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(Clockwise) Fresh and crunchy shepherd salad with pita; Bright and light okra stew; Hearty baked eggplant; Heavenly duo, baklava and almond pudding; The dark, aromatic Turkish coffee; Co-owners, Mehmet Coskun and Mustafa Koylu.
with my husband, was challenging. The chef is from Gaziantep, Turkey, a city famous for kabobs. He began cooking at 14 and has 30 years of experience. Coskun said the chef taught him everything and now he also “pitches in on the line.” Previously he hated eggplant which devastated his mother since 95 percent of Turkish food is eggplant based. After watching Koylu prepare so many delicious dishes with this formerly maligned vegetable, he began tasting it and now he enjoys it. It takes a talented chef to tempt a recalcitrant diner. Another very popular specialty is the lamb shank, also marinated for 30 hours, then slowly roasted for four hours until, according to Coskun, “you don’t need a knife.” It’s covered with a generous slice of roasted eggplant. “We have lots of fans for this dish. We serve people from all over, Russians, Middle Easterners, Indians. A large party, 50 or more Persians are coming tonight. Last week we had that number of Pakistanis. We don’t have a corporate budget. We owe our success to word of mouth. Yesterday, students from the Midwest Culinary Institute came to interview me. We are the only truly Turkish Mediterranean
restaurant in the area and people are noticing.” In a recent article about Turkish food, the “New York Times” praises “...crisp cooked vegetables. Barely more than blanched, full of snap and bright flavor...” It could have been a description of Sultan’s okra stew. Okra is a funny vegetable that people stay away from in droves. It is difficult to cook without “sliminess” and can taste furry on the tongue. When I lived in the South, I began to love it, especially in spicy gumbos. Sultan’s does okra so well. When I sampled it, the okra almost popped in my mouth and was enhanced with the accompanying flavors of green pepper, carrots, tomatoes and garbanzos. It tasted as good as it looked. Keep your eyes open in this restaurant. Our meals came with rice pilaf combined with fried noodles giving it a more complex texture that I found very appealing. Other vegetarian choices include falafel with an admirable crunch factor and fresh herbal taste, various eggplant selections, hummus, baba ghanoush and couscous with vegetables. A bonus, served with our selections, is the pita. No ordinary grocery store pita is this. It’s thick-
er, a bit chewy and lightly grilled to create a smoky highlight. It won’t get lost in the midst of a tasty dip. The menu choices offer a variety of starters including chicken soup and red lentil soup. I tried the latter and at first admired it for its lovely deep pink color and lemon fragrance. When I tasted it, the creamy texture and lemon lentil flavors were worth savoring slowly to allow time for all my taste buds to be indulged (I think I may have more than I need). It’s gluten free (my husband is gluten intolerant) so I brought two servings home, knowing that this was a dish I wouldn’t share. He liked it very much. He couldn’t share the fabulous baklava, but I brought him the almond pudding that I had tasted for lunch. He loved it as much as I had. The creamy almond flavor and crunch of toasted almonds and pistachios with the perfect balance of sweetness made this dessert irresistible. The delectable baklava was different from what I’m used to. Less syrupy, more buttery with a perfect flakiness factor. This is a specialty I used to make frequently from a recipe given to me by a Greek gourmet who introduced himself as a Lesbian because his
parents came from the island of Lesbos. He is my hero both for his cooking and his sense of humor. Speaking of heroes, Coskun told me that they make their gyros (pronounced heroes), a sandwich made with spiced meat cooked on a spit, from “scratch” rather than the pressed meat usually available elsewhere. Sultan’s occupies the former space of Encore and retains the elegance diners associated with that dining establishment but with added warmth in its colors, comfortable booths and red and white separate tablecloths on each table. They have a full bar with cocktails, five wines from Turkey along with other domestic and international choices, Turkish, domestic and imported beers (around 16 choices including draft beers) and offer half-price bottles of wine on Tuesday. There is plenty of offstreet parking and they are open seven days a week, Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Sultan’s Mediterranean Cuisine 7305 Tyler’s Corner Dr. West Chester, OH 45069 513-847-1535
DINING OUT • 15
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
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16 • OPINION
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After all, isn’t a Jew who faithfully follows his clergyman’s prescription of social activism as the essential Jewish mandate… observant? Words are mangled with disturbing regularity in the Jewish world. Jewish “observance,” once a clear and descriptive term, has become relegated to relativity. After all, isn’t a Jew who faithfully follows his clergyman’s prescription of social activism as the essential Jewish mandate…observant? He or she would certainly say so. Adding the word “Torah” before “observance” doesn’t help much either. A Reform leader, after all, once famously proclaimed his movement’s wholehearted embrace of “Torah, Torah, Torah!” — undermining in six syllables more than 3,000 years of a word’s synonymity with the very concept of revealed law that Reform theology unabashedly renounces. “Mitzvah” has been turned on its head too. The Hebrew word for “commandment” has degenerated in many circles to mean “good deed” or even “what any particular person happens to think is a good deed.” The same aforementioned Reform rabbi once advised that every Jew “must examine each mitzvah [in the Torah] and ask the question: ‘do I feel commanded in this instance…?’” Now, feeling commanded and being commanded may not be mutually exclusive, but they are hardly one and the same. Rounding out the abuse of words are chimeras like Conservative “halacha” and a Reform “Kollel.” The word “Orthodox” has always been a lexical haven for Jews who affirm the divine origin of Torah and are committed to the entirety of our mesorah — tradi-
Rabbi Shafran is an editor at large and columnist for Ami Magazine. This column is reproduced with permission from Ami Magazine.
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T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: REAH (DEVARIM 11:26-16:16) 1. In the Haftorah, what does the prophet compare the Jewish people to? a.) A boat tossed at sea b.) A poor person c.) A wanderer 2. What gift will Hashem give the Jewish people? a.) Jewels b.) Land without boundaries c.) Torah knowledge 3. The prophet exhorts the people to distance themselves from which sin? a.) Lack of Sabbath observance 5. C 16:9 After Passover, we count 49 days from the time of the harvesting of the “Omer”. The Omer was a sacrifice done on the 16th of Nissan. Barley was harvested and sacrificed in the Temple.
The recent suggestion by the rabbi of a West Coast Orthodox congregation that one of the birchos hashachar (morning blessings) recited each day by Torahobservant Jews be eliminated—he sees it as insufficiently enlightened — is a reminder of an unpleasant but pressing task facing the Jewish community: To define the word “Orthodox.”
tional Jewish religious beliefs and practices — and the integrity of the halachic process as it has existed for millennia. Although the “O” word was originally imposed on believing Jews by others, we have worn the label proudly; it implies faithfulness to the past and willingness to stand against the winds of societal change. And it has allowed us to set ourselves apart from all the contemporary parallels to the Second Temple period’s Sadducean movement — to borrow a comparison from Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, zt”l. In recent years, though, even “Orthodox” has been subjected to the Silly Putty treatment. People with ordinations from Orthodox institutions have invoked the imagined power of their pieces of paper to render “kosher” whatever the Zeitgeist or their own overly open minds have inspired them to embrace. Thus we have an “Orthodox rabbi” who prides himself on exemplifying what the Torah forbids as toeiva (“repugnant”); another who deigns to “ordain” women; now one who self-righteously declares that he can no longer “take G-d’s name in the context” of one of the birchos hashachar, and who “suspect[s], at this point in history, that it constitutes a Desecration of the Name.” There is desecration here, yes, but not where the rabbi sees it. Many Orthodox Jews, understandably, are reluctant to focus on attention-seeking rabbis seeking to boldly go, so to speak, where no Orthodox rabbi has gone before. But we ignore such things at our peril. Or, better, at the peril of forfeiting the last adjective signifying commitment to the Jewish mesorah. Laying precise boundaries between unorthodox and unOrthodox is not simple. There have been Jewish innovations that were endorsed, in fact impelled, by Gedolei Yisrael — the Bais Yaakov movement perhaps the most striking one. But when a contemporary rabbi, particularly one who has not yet garnered the wisdom that comes with many years of living and learning, proposes to reject an element — any element — of the Jewish mandate, there can be no question about his having relinquished the right to call himself Orthodox. And no question, either, that any Orthodox rabbinic group to which he may belong, and any Orthodox congregational body with which his synagogue is affiliated, has an obligation to defend the word Orthodox, and to summon the courage to do what it has to do.
b.) Not separating tithes c.) Theft 4. Passover falls in which month? a.) Nissan b.) Ripening of grains c.) Month of redemption d.) First month 5. Which farming tool is mentioned with the 49 days between Passover and Shavuout? a.) Plow b.) Hoe c.) Sickle d.) Donkey
4. A,B,D 16:1 “Aviv” means ripening of crops. The Torah also calls it the first month. Nissan was the name of the month when the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile.
By Rabbi Avi Shafran Contributing Columnist
Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise
ANSWERS 1. B Isaiah 54:11 2. A Isaiah 54:11,12 3. C Isaiah 54:14
The ‘O’ word
JEWISH LIFE • 17
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
Sedra of the Week
SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT RE’EH DEUTERONOMY 11:26-16:17
Additionally, Israel’s Law of Return, a fundamental statute of the Jewish by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Efrat, Israel - “Behold, I give before you this day a blessing and a curse…” (Deuteronomy 11:26). This portion opens with the third Covenant that God establishes with the Israelites just as they are about to enter the Promised Land of Israel. This is a re-emphasis of the earlier national Covenant with Abraham whereby God committed to make his seed into a nation with a national homeland. It also re-emphasizes the religious Covenant expressed to all of Israel at Mount Sinai. The Almighty is defining the dual relationship He has with Israel, a unique nation as well as a unique religion. On the one hand, herein lies a great strength: “Lapsed” and even atheist Jews with strong Jewish national ties and feelings remain Jews. In the words of the Sages of the Talmud, “A Jew even though he has sinned (wandered astray from Jewish religious practice and values) still remains a Jew.” On the other hand, despite close to 2,000 years of exile from our national homeland, we continued to mourn its loss within our religious traditions, keeping alive our desire to return, and – against every rule of history and sociology – we managed to return to it. However, this unique and hybrid dual role makes any clearcut division between religion and state in Israel, similar to the church-state division in America, a virtual impossibility. While it is perfectly logical to forbid teaching the Christian Gospels in American public schools, it would be inconceivable not to teach the Bible – the matrix of our national culture – in Israeli secular schools. Undoubtedly, the most knotty conundrum to emerge from this complex, hybrid status is “Who is a Jew?” Traditional Jewish law considers one to be Jewish only if he has either been born to a Jewish mother or has converted to Judaism before a religious court of three Orthodox rabbis. These three religious judges oversee a process comprising circumcision for males (entering into the Covenant of
state, grants automatic citizenship to any individual who would have been considered Jewish enough to be sent to Auschwitz under the Nazi regime: anyone who had one Jewish great-grandparent, even from a paternal line. Abraham), a general acceptance of the commandments (the religious covenant) and ritual immersion in a mikveh (the national covenant) for both males and females. Additionally, Israel’s Law of Return, a fundamental statute of the Jewish state, grants automatic citizenship to any individual who would have been considered Jewish enough to be sent to Auschwitz under the Nazi regime: anyone who had one Jewish greatgrandparent, even from a paternal line. Miraculously 1.5 million people from the former Soviet Union were freed to seek haven in Israel, including more than 350,000 who are not halachically Jewish but whose children study in Jewish schools, and serve in the IDF, even risking their lives for the Jewish state. If allowed to remain demographically as is, our intermarriage rate in Israel will rival the intermarriage rate in the Diaspora in only one more generation. As a result of Israel’s coalition democracy, the religious high court of the Chief Rabbinate in Israel has been “taken over” by haredi religious judges. These judges are generally not “user-friendly” to would-be converts and many of them are strict constructionalists regarding the criterion of “acceptance of the commandments.” As a result, only a paltry number of these Israeli citizens have succeeded in converting over the last five years. Enter Rotem, last year, with a conversion bill which will enable every “city rabbi” to open religious courts of conversion and facilitate the marriage of the suc-
cessful converts. Several of these city rabbis will be more userfriendly and more lenient in their interpretation of the law, and their conversions will not be subject to annulment by external courts. Indeed, the only grounds for annulment would be if it is proven that the conversion was made on the basis of fraudulent or deceptive information. This bill certainly appears to open the door for a more sensitive and responsible conversion policy which will give a more welcoming face to the laws of conversion. So what caused the international storm of protest? The Conservative and Reform leadership in America objected vociferously to the “Rotem Bill” because it would place within the corpus of Israeli law the fact that conversions within the State of Israel are to be conducted under the aegis of the Chief Rabbinate. Here, however, nothing has changed; the chief rabbinate has been the de-facto imprimatur for conversions since the founding of the state. This was done to ensure the ability of every Jew to marry any other Jew within the State of Israel. David Rotem’s conversion bill will ameliorate a tragic situation for the 350,000 Israelis from the FSU, without worsening the situation for Diaspora Jewry. I do not believe the objection of Diaspora Jewry is fair to those Israeli citizens whose situation will only be helped by the Rotem Bill. Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone Chief Rabbi - Efrat Israel
18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ
JEWZ
IN THE
By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist Vicarious Thrills If you have seen “Taken,” the 2008 thriller about a retired CIAtype agent (Liam Neeson) desperately trying to recover his kidnapped teenage daughter, you have a good idea about what to expect from “Columbiana,” which opens on Friday, August 26. The director of “Taken” (Luc Bresson) and its screenwriter (ROBERT MARK KAMEN, 63), have teamed again for this film. (Kamen is still probably most famous for penning the original “Karate Kid.”) “Taken” had a lot of improbable parts. Still, it was a huge “guilty pleasure” hit because the action never stopped, many scenes were genuinely exciting, and it didn’t give you a chance to ponder the improbable. “Columbiana” promises to be very similar. “Columbiana” begins with a young girl, Cataleya, witnessing the murder of her parents in Columbia. She is smuggled into the United States and hooks up with her uncle in Chicago. Fast forward to the present—and the adult Cataleya (Zoe Saldana), is working as a hit man for her uncle, while she also hunts down her parents’ killers. The FBI is on her trail and her boyfriend (MICHAEL VARTAN, 42) only gradually learns who he is dating. Vartan is a nice looking guy who co-starred on TV’s “Alias” and now is the co-star of the TNT series, “Hawthorne.” His mother is an American Jew of Polish origin and Vartan identifies as Jewish. He may also have a Hungarian Jewish paternal grandmother. The rest of his father’s ancestry is Armenian and Bulgarian. PERETZ’S KIDS MAKE A MOVIE “Our Idiot Brother,” which opens on Aug. 25, stars PAUL RUDD, 42, as an idealistic organic farmer who has just been released from jail for selling pot. In succession, each of his three sisters (played by ELIZABETH BANKS, 37; Zooey Deschanel, and Emily Mortimer) takes him into their homes—and he manages to upend their lives in interesting and unexpected ways. RASHIDA JONES, 35, has a big part as the girlfriend of the sister played by Mortimer. The film is directed by JESSE PERETZ, 43, and was co-written by him and his sister, EVEGENIA PERETZ. They are the children of MARTIN PERETZ, 72, the former publisher of “The New Republic” and a famously strong
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NEWZ
defender of Israel. Jesse began his career as a moderately successful rock musician and moved on to directing music videos. “Brother” is his first feature film. By the way, Banks and her husband, sportswriter MAX HANDELMAN, welcomed their first child, a boy, last March. The couple started dating in 1992, wed in 2003, and before the wedding, Banks converted to Judaism. Banks has also “stuck by” Paul Rudd—this is the fifth movie they have made together. The first was “Wet Hot American Summer” (2001), and the biggest hit, to date, was “40-Year-Old-Virgin” (2005). WEDDING CORNER In a recent column, I said that DYLAN LAUREN, 37, the daughter of famous designer RALPH LAUREN, 71, had a rabbi preside over her July 2011 wedding to hedge fund manager PAUL ARROUET. I said that I didn’t know if Arrouet was Jewish. More checking has revealed that Arrouet’s mother is Jewish. I still don’t know about his father’s background. (Lauren Bush, the niece of President George W. Bush, and the recent fiancée of Ralph’s son, DAVID, 39, is “clearly” not Jewish). In another recent column, I said that actor JAKE GYLLENHAAL (brother of actress MAGGIE) was the best man at the wedding of actress MARLA SOKOLOFF to musician ALEC PURO. This is an error—JAKE PALTROW, the filmmaker brother of actress GWYNETH PALTROW, was the best man. HOWARD STERN V. ANDY DICK By now, you probably read about comedian/actor Andy Dick’s anti-Semitic remarks about radio host HOWARD STERN. Dick appeared on a radio podcast broadcast on Aug. 15 and kept on calling Stern “a money-grubbing, hooknosed Jew.” (Dick is an alcoholic and drug addict who is facing trial next year for sexually abusing people in a bar.)You can read summaries of what Dick said and part of Stern’s response in many articles that can be found online. However, I urge you to listen to Stern’s complete on-air (Sirius Satellite radio) response to Dick. Ignore Stern’s use of some profanity and concentrate on his articulate explanation of how many people, whose lives and/or careers have reached rock-bottom (like Dick), turn to anti-Semitism to justify their failure. As I write this, the complete audio can be found on the Huffingtonpost website. Just search with Stern’s name after you log on and you’ll easily find it.
FROM THE PAGES 100 Y EARS A GO Mr. and Mrs. Herman Grossman and son, Ralph, have returned from Ottawa Beach, (Mich). Mrs. Emma Isaac of Frankfort, A.M., Germany, is now making her home with Mr. and Mrs. Morris Isaac, of 2856 May street. Miss Henriette May, 311 Goodman street, Avondale, has returned from a lengthy visit with relatives and friends at Chattanooga (Tenn). Mr. and Mrs. L.S. Mode and son, Arthur, of 884 Lexington avenue, Avondale, have left for a four-week trip, during which time they will tour Michigan. Mr. Morris Lichtenstern, an old time resident of Urbana (Ill.), is in the city on a visit to his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Alsfelder, 3114 Reading Road. The betrothal of Hattie B., daughter of Mr. and Mrs. M.H. Lampe, of 932 West Court street, to Mr. Isidore Zeff, of Washington, Pa., has been announced. They will be at home on Sunday, August 27th. Mrs. S.B. Sachs, of Lenox place, Avondale, gave a mammoth theater party Wednesday afternoon, entertaining 175 young girls of the Plum Street Temple Industrial School at one of the largest downtown theaters, and each was presented with a box of candy and had a royal time. — August 24, 1911
75 Y EARS A GO The Misses Shirley and Janet Blumenthal have retuned to the city after a delightful summer at Camp Pinemere, Minocqua, Wis. Mrs. Max Immerman, of Mitchell Avenue, entertained 24 guests at her home Tuesday, Aug. 25th, at a kitchen shower honoring Miss Miriam Morris, fiance of Mr. Morton Solomon. Mr. and Mrs. Fred H. Roth left this week for New York, where they will greet Mr. and Mrs. Jack L. Roth, who are returning from a European trip. Mr. and Mrs. Roth took with them their little daughter, Patsy, and Jackie Roth, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Aaron T. Grad and Dr. and Mrs. William Wertheim left Tuesday, Aug. 25th for a boat trip aboard the Gordon C. Greene to Pittsburgh. They will return next week. On Sunday, Aug. 23rd, Miss Belle Hurwitz, of Ft. Wayne, Ind., and Dr. Leon Goldman, of Cincinnati, were married at Ft. Wayne, Rev. Hurwitz, father of the bride, officiating at the ceremony. The bride was graduated from the University of Cincinnati with high honors and is a member of Phi Sigma Sigma. She was active in campus affairs and has many friends in this city and in Ft. Wayne.
Dr. Goldman is a son of Mrs. A. H. Goldman, of Hallwood Place. He received his medical training at the University of Cincinnati Medical College, and later did research work in skin disease in London and Zurich. He is a Phi Beta Kappa, a member of Sigma Alpha Mu and several honorary medical fraternities. At the University and Medical College he received highest scholastic awards. — August 27, 1936
50 Y EARS A GO Jewish Hospital births include: Mr. and Mrs. Friedlander (Susan Steinharter), 449 Hidden Valley Lane, a daughter, Aug. 17. The grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Friedlander. Mrs. Alfred J. Friedlander, Sr. is the great-grandmother. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Wertheimer (Patsy Gendel), 7505 Montgomery Road, a son, Glen Edward, Wednesday Aug. 16. The grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Edward Wertheimer, Jr., and Mrs. Elka Gendel. Rabbi and Mrs. Jack Stern, Jr., (Priscilla Rudin) of Westfield, N.J., announce the birth of a son, David Ely, on Tuesday, Aug. 8. The infant has a brother Jonathan. The grandparents are Rabbi Jacob Rudin of Great Neck, N.Y. and Mr. and Mrs. Jack Stern of Cincinnati. Edward A. Fullman, 1837 Section rd., passed away Thursday, Aug. 17. Survivors include his wife, Helen, two daughters, Mrs. Barbara Cutler of Canada and Mrs. Joan Levy of Cincinnati; two sons, William H. and Robert S. Fullman, both of Cincinnati; three grandchildren; and a brother, Ben, of California. Funeral services were held at the Weil Funeral Home Sunday, Aug. 20, Rabbi Dr. Stanley R. Brav officiating. Interment was in Hersch Hoffert cemetery. — August 24, 1961
25 Y EARS A GO The installation of Dr. S. Marcus Wigser, as 130th president of the Academy of Medicine of Cincinnati will take place Tuesday evening, September 16, at the Academy’s 1986 annual meeeting. Dr. Wigser, a neurosurgeon, has practiced with the Mayfield Neurological Institute of Cincinnati since 1968. He is chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Jewish Hospital, a position he has held since 1977, and chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Hospital. The marriage of Lisa Beth Campbell to Steven Robert Frankel
took place June 29 at the Omni Netherland Plaza and dinner followed. Rabbi Sidney Zimelman of Adath Israel and Rabbi Reuven Frankel of Deerfield, Ill., officiated. Cantor Avram Davis of New York, uncle of the bridegroom, also participated. Lisa is the daughter of Professor Richard and Alice Campbell of Columbus. Steven is the son of Naftali and Penina Frankel and the grandson of Dr. Morris and Ruth Schulzinger and Rabbi Joshua Frankel and the late Pearl Frankel. Sidney C. Brant of 3501 Section Road passed away Aug. 22. He was 73. He is survived by his wife, Roselyn Eppstein Brant; a daughter, Susan Brant Christie of Miami; two sons, Joseph A. Brant and Robert E. Brant; two sisters, Blanche Sharon and Marion Brotman; seven grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews. — August 28, 1986
10 Y EARS A GO Michael Elfenbaum, director of planning and operations at the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati will leave the city to take a new position Oct. 15. The native Cincinnatian will assume responsibilities as the chief operating officer of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla. Elfenbaum came to the Federation seven years ago as a campaign associate after practicing law for three years. He left the practice of law because he was “more interested in pursuing management career options” and found that Jewish communal service gave him the opportunity to combine these with his lifelong involvement in the Jewish community. The Cincinnati chapter of Alpha Omega International Dental fraternity installed its new officers for 2001-02 May 5 at the Waterfront in Covington, Ky. International past president Sanford Scheingold, a Cincinnatian, swore in the new officers: Michael Carl, president; Randy Sandow, vice president; Benjamin Kaseff, secretary, and Rick Silverman, treasurer. The installation dinner also included a check presentation to Judy Morhaus of Cedar Village, which will be used to help fund the Cedar Village dental clinic. Jonathan Andrew Levine, 46 passed away August 14, 2001. He was born in Hamilton, Bermuda. Mr. Levine is survived by his wife of 21 years, Nancy Goldberg Levine, and his father and stepmother, Aaron and Nancy Goldstein Levine. His mother, Estelle Levine predeceased him. — August 23, 2001
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
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COMMUNITY DIRECTORY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS Access (513) 373-0300 • www.jypaccess.org Big Brothers/Big Sisters Assoc. (513) 761-3200 • bigbrobigsis.org Beth Tevilah Mikveh Society (513) 821-6679 Camp Ashreinu (513) 702-1513 Camp at the J (513) 722-7226 • mayersonjcc.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 • camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 754-3100 • cedarvillage.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Fusion Family (513) 703-3343 • www.fusionnati.org Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (513) 221-6728 • hillelcincinnati.org Jewish Community Center (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org Jewish Community Relations Council (513) 985-1501 Jewish Family Service (513) 469-1188 • jfscinti.org Jewish Federation of Cincinnati (513) 985-1500 • shalomcincy.org Jewish Foundation (513) 792-2715 Jewish Information Network (513) 985-1514 Jewish Vocational Service (513) 985-0515 • jvscinti.org Kesher (513) 766-3348 Plum Street Temple Historic Preservation Fund (513) 793-2556 Shalom Family (513) 703-3343 • www.myshalomfamily.org The Center for Holocaust & Humanity Education (513) 487-3055 • holocaustandhumanity.org Vaad Hoier (513) 731-4671 Workum Fund (513) 899-1836 • workum.org YPs at the JCC (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org
CONGREGATIONS Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 984-3393 Beth Israel Congregation (513) 868-2049 • bethisraelcongregation.net Congregation Beth Adam (513) 985-0400 • bethadam.org Congregation B’nai Tikvah (513) 759-5356 • bnai-tikvah.org Congregation B’nai Tzedek (513) 984-3393 • bnaitzedek.us Congregation Ohav Shalom (513) 489-3399 • ohavshalom.org
Congregation Ohr Chadash (513) 252-7267 • ohrchadashcincinnati.com Congregation Sha’arei Torah shaareitorahcincy.org Golf Manor Synagogue (513) 531-6654 • golfmanorsynagogue.org Isaac M. Wise Temple (513) 793-2556 • wisetemple.org Kehilas B’nai Israel (513) 761-0769 Northern Hills Synagogue (513) 931-6038 • nhs-cba.org Rockdale Temple (513) 891-9900 • rockdaletemple.org Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com
EDUCATION Chai Tots Early Childhood Center (513) 234.0600 • chaitots.com Chabad Blue Ash (513) 793-5200 • chabadba.com Cincinnati Hebrew Day School (513) 351-7777 • chds.shul.net HUC-JIR (513) 221-1875 • huc.edu JCC Early Childhood School (513) 793-2122 • mayersonjcc.org Kehilla - School for Creative Jewish Education (513) 489-3399 • kehilla-cincy.com Mercaz High School (513) 792-5082 x104 • mercazhs.org Reform Jewish High School (513) 469-6406 • crjhs.org Regional Institute Torah & Secular Studies (513) 631-0083 Rockwern Academy (513) 984-3770 • rockwernacademy.org
ORGANIZATIONS American Jewish Committee (513) 621-4020 • ajc.org American Friends of Magen David Adom (513) 521-1197 • afmda.org B’nai B’rith (513) 984-1999 Hadassah (513) 821-6157 • cincinnati-hadassah.org Jewish Discovery Center (513) 234.0777 • jdiscovery.com Jewish National Fund (513) 794-1300 • jnf.org Jewish War Veterans (513) 204-5594 • jwv.org NA’AMAT (513) 984-3805 • naamat.org National Council of Jewish Women (513) 891-9583 • ncjw.org State of Israel Bonds (513) 793-4440 • israelbonds.com Women’s American ORT (513) 985-1512 • ortamerica.org.org
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production@ americanisraelite.com SPORTS from page 3 “Giving families, such as the Schneiders, truly enhance the offerings available to the children of the JCC,” said Jeff Baden, JCC executive director. “Support for the JCC is support for the community.” The creation of a baseball diamond on the JCC playfield carries on the softball tradition – a defining sport associated with the J for generations. New fencing around the perimeter of the entire playfield protects people from an embankSHARPTON from page 4 The riots started after Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, was struck and killed by a car in the motorcade of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Scheerson, in August 1991. Rosenbaum, who was visiting from Australia, was fatally stabbed later that night. Sharpton was accused of fueling the three days of riots with his actions and remarks. He led a protest march of hundreds shouting “No justice, no peace” through the streets of Crown Heights to the Lubavitcher movement’s world headquarters. After the riots had subsided, at Cato’s funeral, Sharpton referred to ARREST from page 5 Since suffering a stroke this spring that left him unable to travel, Rivlin had turned some of his responsibilities over to 19-year-old Daniel Vaks of Kiryat Gat, an orphan who lives with his grandmother and is one of the fund’s first beneficiaries. In 2006, when he was 14 1/2, Vaks marked his becoming a bar mitzvah at Teaneck’s Congregation Beth Aaron. Rivlin also arranged for a party at a nowdefunct Hackensack hotel. An accounting and economics major at Bar-Ilan University, in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, as part of an army program for gifted students, Vaks was to have returned to Bergen County in September to accompany two of the fund’s current recipients, one from Eilat and one from Kiryat Gat, on a vacation break before the school year begins. A week before Rivlin’s arrest, the Standard spoke with Vaks about his then-upcoming trip and how the scholarship fund (“keren”) had helped him. “I really think I
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(513) 531-9600 ment and also prevents balls from traveling out of the field. Schneider Ball Field is expected to open before the summer ends. The children and grandchildren of Joseph and Ellen Schneider include: Children: Hank (wife: Anita), Ray (wife: Patti), Marilyn (husband: Tom). Grandchildren: Ben (wife: Ronna), Stephan, Stefanie, Lauren, Emily, Justin (wife: Joanna), Danielle, Eric, Micah (wife: Jessica). Greatgrandchildren: Abby, Emma, Will, Lucy, Avi. the neighborhood’s Chasidic Jews as “diamond merchants.” Rosenbaum told the New York Post that Sharpton “did absolutely nothing then to improve blackJewish relations — and nothing since.” Schneier told JTA that the forum will be rescheduled later this year, once the anniversary has passed. “African-American and Jewish relationships are not a onetime event,” he said. “It is an ongoing commitment.” He said that Sharpton has confirmed that he would participate in a rescheduled event. “Not to have one of the most preeminent African-American leaders would not meet our standards for discussion,” Schneier said. would be in a much worse place now if I didn’t have the keren helping me,” he said. Now supporting himself, Vaks has been counseling younger fund participants, helping to distribute money and items sent from the United States and advising Rivlin on the most efficient use of donations earmarked for such necessities as clothing, shoes, and bedding. Rivlin said in early August that he was short of money to buy the school supplies that the parents of at least half the children in the fund could not afford. In Israel on Aug. 18, Vaks said that he had not heard about Rivlin’s arrest until contacted by The Jewish Standard and was “totally in shock” over the news. He said he did not stay at the Rivlin’s during the two summers in question, but he had been a houseguest during Passover and two other summers, and had never experienced any inappropriate behavior toward himself or other Israeli teenagers who stayed there with him.
20 • BUSINESS
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Kosher products: Wolfgang Puck iced coffee, Taaka liquors Wolfgang Puck has launched a new line of organic, kosher iced coffee drinks that live up to the gourmet name of Wolgang Puck. The new “culinary iced coffee”
comes in four different varieties: “Cafe au Lait,” a lowfat silky blend of brewed espresso and organic milk; “Creme Caramel”, espresso and organic milk with notes of vanil-
la and toasted caramel; “Double Mocha Blend,” with espresso and Viennese chocolate; and “Vanilla Fusion,” espresso, organic milk and aromatic Tahitian vanilla.
The gourmet offerings are made with the finest coffee and only contain 120 calories per bottle. They are best served chilled and over ice. Coming out of Buffalo Trace
Distillery in Frankfort, Ky., two new brands of Taaka liquors are now kosher. Taaka Vodka and Gin. They are available at most major retailers.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), one of the ‘Jewish’ diseases
New store on Montgomery Rd.
Antonio Violins moves to new location After 20 years in Roselawn, Antonio Violins has moved. Now located on Montgomery Road—one traffic light south of Kenwood Road—directly across from McAlisters Deli, Antonio Violins is a supplier of violins, violas, cellos and basses to students in Greater Cincinnati. The new store features an assortment of printed music as well as accessories from strings and rosins to bows and cases and
shoulder rests. On display are a variety of price points of instruments as well. If you are in the market for a rental instrument for your child starting in a string program or in the need for strings, rosin or a new shoulder rest, please stop by. Hours are Monday and Wednesday 12-7 p.m., Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. and Saturday 10 .m.-4 p.m. Please visit the website for more information.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is an increasingly prevalent problem, especially among Ashkenazi Jews. There are approximately 2 million people in the United States with IBD. The two main variants of IBD, Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, are chronic inflammatory conditions of the gastrointestinal tract. Ulcerative Colitis involves only the large intestine (colon) and Crohn’s Disease can affect anywhere in the GI tract. They are chronic conditions causing diarrhea that can be bloody, abdominal pain and often significant fatigue and weight loss. The cause of IBD is not known but appears related in part to genetic influence. Many patients with IBD also have family members with IBD and it is more prevalent in Ashkenazi Jews than in the general population. In recent years we have developed new and more effective treatments for IBD. Traditionally, steroids have been helpful to reduce acute symptoms but the side effects of steroids are significant and newer medicines can often be used instead. Oral and rectally administered forms of gut-specific anti-inflammatory medications (mesalamine) can be
effective and safe. Immune modulators (6-MP and azathioprine) can help correct the imbalance of immune cells that lead to the inflammation. Biologic agents (Remicade, Humira, and Cimzia) given by IV infusion or by injection can put the disease into remission and then maintain health with ongoing use. Important research is underway to find better and safer treatments and ultimately the cure for IBD. Exciting developments in antibiotics (to kill harmful immune stimulating bacteria) and probiotics (prescribing active “healthy” bacteria) as well as a variety of new “high tech” biologic therapies is ongoing. The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) is a national organization whose goal is to cure IBD. The organization funds the research that has led to many of the recent breakthroughs in therapy. In Cincinnati, the CCFA chapter is a thriving organization that provides education, support groups and raises funds to support research. The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of Southwest Ohio will hold its 5th Annual Wine Tasting and Silent Auction on
Saturday, Aug. 27, 2011, from 7:30-11:30 p.m. at the Newport Aquarium in Newport, Ky. Sip wine and enjoy wonderful appetizers from Funky’s Catering, including a Risotto Station, while you take in the exotic undersea adventure the Aquarium has to offer. Be one of the first to see the new Penguin exhibit, purchase your tickets to your very own Penguin Encounter, pet a shark and more. CCFA will also host the 1st Annual—The Run To End All Runs 5K on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2011, at 8:30 a.m,. at Niederman Family Farm in Liberty Township. This cross country trail run is one of a kind. Enjoy the picturesque views of this quiet family farm while running or walking in the cool fall morning. Afterward, enjoy all of the fun fall festivities that the farm has to offer. The trail consists of grass and gravel through wooded scenery. All proceeds will be donated to The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America where 80 cents of every dollar goes directly to research to find a cure for Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. To purchase tickets or find out more information, please contact the CCFA Office.
UC Neuroscience Local biz maximizes IT budgets holds art benefit event The UC Neuroscience Institute Stroke Team, part of UC Health, is proud to present the artwork of Bonnie Mitsui, Saturday Aug. 27, from 5-8 p.m. Complete with dinner, drinks and silent auction, the event will be held at Turner Farm in Indian Hill. Proceeds from the event benefit stroke treatment and research. Strokes are the third leading cause of death in the U.S., with 137,000 Americans losing their lives from strokes annually. In addition, strokes are the leading cause of serious, long-term disability. On average, every 40 seconds someone in the U.S. has a stroke, with high blood pressure being the most important risk factor for having a stroke. UC Neuroscience Institute is a collaborative effort between physi-
cians trained in all areas involving the brain (Stroke, Epilepsy, Parkinson’s, MS, Concussion, Brain Cancer, Memory Disorders, etc.) coming together to address a patient’s needs using a multi-disciplinary approach. All of our physicians are also on faculty at the University College of Medicine so their clinical care is truly integrated with research-driven solutions. These physicians train the clinicians of tomorrow, many of whom remain in this area of the country. The research director of the UC Neuroscience Institute, Dr. Joseph Broderick, is one of the nation’s leading experts on strokes and recently became the vice-chair of the American Heart Association (AHA) Stroke Council. For more information please visit UC Neuroscience Institute online.
As the economy struggles toward recovery, many companies are finding that they need to upgrade their current computer and technology equipment to maintain their competitive edge. This is raising some questions in many IT departments as well as comptroller offices as to how to do it cost effectively. One local Cincinnati company is building a solid reputation of replacing, upgrading, servicing and problem solving to identify a business’ critical technology needs. Budget Business Computers (BBC) founder Michael Sutter is working with many companies and organizations to help them find ways to stretch their IT dollars. “Most companies buy new equipment only to find they are not using anywhere near the capability built into [it]. Additionally, companies pay for software they never use, and in turn spend more money than necessary to get the job done,” Sutter commented.
BBC has built a model of working with a company to identify its technology needs, and make businesses aware of options that are more cost effective. When looking for a low-cost IT solution, Fujitec America turned to BBC, which found innovative ways to work within Fujitec’s budget. BBC devised a more cost-effective solution by equipping Fujitec service technicians with the laptops needed to do their work successfully. BBC had the ability to provide them with pre-owned businessclass laptops, and gave them the additional quantity needed to fit both their requirements and budget. By proactively identifying their needs from a hardware and application perspective, BBC was able to help Fujitec America make an educated purchase that addressed their operational needs. “Planning is critical. If a company has a solid plan in place for what they need their equipment to do, pre-owned equipment can be prepared ahead of
time, helping to make as seamless a transition as possible once the upgrade is complete. In certain cases computers can even be preimaged, saving the company even more time and money,” said Sutter. In an era of data mining and privacy issues, companies are justifiably cautious about their old machines falling into the wrong hands. BBC works with companies to complete their previous IT equipment’s lifecycle with a full security plan designed to remove data or sensitive information from old machines. Additionally, companies can turn old IT assets into cash via BBC’s buyback program. In many cases, BBC can purchase a company’s old machines and resell them, which keeps those machines from ending up in landfills or creating an environmental issue. “We pride ourselves on our ability to work closely with our clients to provide customized solutions and help them achieve a better bottom line,” added Sutter.
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
Jewish Hospital marks Bone Marrow program success The region’s only adult Blood and Marrow Transplant Center (BMTC) recently celebrated milestones and record growth during a special ceremony at The Jewish Hospital on Aug. 12, 2011. The ceremony included many past patients whose lives had been saved by the treatment received through the BMTC. Patients highlighted their experiences with the BMTC and how their transplant changed their lives. The BMTC continues to experience record growth in the number of transplants performed as physicians continue to find new ways to expand the donor pool. The BMTC performed 138 transplants in 2010, the most in one year, and recently marked the 1,500th transplant since the
program’s inception. The BMTC offers life-saving care for patients across Greater Cincinnati, the nation and even the world who suffer from life-threatening conditions that include leukemia, Hodgkins Lymphoma, non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and Multiple Myloma. “We have developed one of the premier blood and marrow transplant programs in the world, right here in Cincinnati,” said Randy Broun, M.D., medical director of the BMTC. “We wanted to take this opportunity to thank our patients, donors, staff and everyone else who help make the program a success and who help save lives.” The BMTC is also treating more Leukemia patients than ever before, becoming a regional refer-
ral center and offering the latest advancements in treatment options for patients diagnosed with various forms of Leukemia (more than 20 sub-types). Mercy Health Partners is a premiere healthcare provider that has been serving Greater Cincinnati for more than 150 years. Mercy provides an integrated network of leading physicians, compassionate caregivers, comprehensive services, and exceptional care at more than 80 locations across the region. The Mercy network of care includes six award-winninghospitals, eight senior living communities, primary and specialty care physician practices, outpatient centers, social service agencies, fitness centers and a variety of outreach programs.
Mathnasium in Blue Ash opens kids’ minds to math We have all had our share of trouble with math. A snapshot of our country in relation to the rest of the world shows that our kids are continuing to have that trouble. For many families, the words “math homework” strike fear into hearts of children and their parents alike. For those students who are ahead, most schools can only challenge them a little bit more due to policies and the logistical problems created by the difficulty of getting the child into another class. It is not until students reach high school when more classes and options are available to push students to reach their full potential. “In eighth grade I took Algebra 1, and math was nearly ruined for me” says Chip Kostic, owner of Mathnasium of Blue Ash. “The teacher did not know how to teach the concepts in a way that made sense; then was incredibly unapproachable and set students up for future math failure.” That is the reason Chip and his wife Abby, along with his father Bud, opened Mathnasium in Blue Ash earlier this year. “Mathnasium offers an environment that is fun and conducive to learning, and a method of instruction that gives each child the time and attention necessary to fully understand and learn concepts,” says Chip. The program is geared for kids in 1st-12th grade, covering everything from addition and subtraction to PreCalculus and SAT/ACT prep. And the success stories have been coming in constantly. “In the end of the last school year we had several parents saying that in the few weeks of working with us they
saw their children boost their math grades by as much as a letter grade to a letter grade and a half” remarks Chip. “And one of the neatest things is that we see kids wanting to come in every day that we’re open and seeing them actually wanting to get their work done. I never thought I would see the day when math had that kind of effect on kids!” The unique approach by Mathnasium acknowledges that every child has different abilities and backgrounds in math, and recognizes that nobody hates math, they hate being confused. And when someone is made to feel intimidated or confused by a subject then they will naturally develop an aversion. “We take the time to learn what each student is having difficulties with, then work to fill in those gaps and keep them going. And by giving every child individualized instruction and teaching math in a way that makes sense to them, they learn that anyone can learn and enjoy math” says Bud. And with understanding comes confidence and the lifelong ability to continue learning. “Other children work for math, our kids make math work for them,” says Chip. Since opening its doors for business on Feb. 23, 2011, Mathnasium of Blue Ash has helped over 70 children boost their math abilities. “As a part of establishing a relationship with the community we have been offering to help out with math nights and similar activities at local schools for no cost, and we are going to be offering several scholarships for our program to
local schools. It’s not that teachers are failing to teach their students; it’s just that our system of education is so one-size-fits-all and there are so many limitations put on teachers that many times prevent them from actually being able to teach,” says Chip. “It is important that teachers know that we support them 100 percent; and our success really is their success. If they have students come to us who then perform better on standardized tests, it reflects entirely on them. And if teachers cannot be there every day after school to help every child that needs help, we are there for that; thus prepping kids to come in and make the most of their class time,” adds Abby. “And with the coming school year we will be in communication with the teachers of our students, that way we are sure their kids are meeting their standards and learning things the way the teacher would like,” says Abby. In addition to their normal program, Mathnasium will be offering a free program on Sunday afternoons from 3-4 p.m. on 8/21, 8/28, 9/11, and 9/18 called Multiplication Madness. This will be a 100 percent free program for kids in 2nd-5th grade to get them geared up for school and brush up on those multiplication facts, all while having fun. Seating is limited to 20 children per session and subject to first-come-first-serve, and kids are welcome to come to each session if they would like. Parents should contact Chip Kostic if they would like to sign their children up or learn more about the program.
Brett Pelchovitz Stern
Brett Pelchovitz Stern joins Comey & Shepard Long-time Symmes Township resident, Brett Pelchovitz Stern, has joined Comey & Shepard Realtors as an associate specializing in residential sales. Before Comey & Shepard, Stern attended Indiana University, where she graduated in 1998 with a B.A. in Sociology and Jewish Studies. She received her M.A. in both Jewish Communal Services and Non-Profit Management from Brandeis University (2000). More
recently, Stern has worked professionally in the Jewish community for 11 years. She is the former director of Mercaz Conservative Jewish High School (2005-08) and also taught at Rockwern Academy (2011). Additionally, she currently serves as the Director of The Workum Fund, a post she began in 2010. Stern is affiliated with Comey & Shepard’s Montgomery office and can be contacted there.
Film Club offers best in Jewish cinema The Jewish Film Club is a subscription-based service, which gives its members access to the utmost in contemporary Jewish cinema. These films — hailing from Israel to Europe to the Americas and beyond — illuminate Jewish themes of history, identity and culture. The films selected are intended for both affiliated and unaffiliated Jews, as well as people of other faiths and cultures. Every other month, an awardwinning Jewish-themed feature film and bonus short film is made available to members before the feature is released to the general public. The films are available to own on DVD or to view via online streaming. Each movie is selected by the The Jewish Film Club’s staff, who travel the world’s film festivals to discover the best in current Jewish cinema. Members also receive a bi-monthly newsletter featuring interviews, behindthe-scenes extras and more. Some of the proceeds will go to Chai
Lifeline, an organization that helps the families of children with serious illness. The Jewish Film Club was launched by Film Movement, the 10 year old North American distributor of award-winning independent and foreign films. The Jewish Film Club’s initial release was Eran Riklis’ “The Human Resources Manager,” which was Israel’s Official Submission to the 83rd Academy Awards as Best Foreign Language Film. The serio-comic story is about the unnamed Human Resources Manager of Jerusalem’s largest bakery. When one of his employees, a foreign worker, is killed in a suicide bombing, the bakery is accused of indifference, and the HR manager is sent to the victim’s hometown in Romania to make amends. The film was the Official Selection of the Toronto International Film Festival as well as other awards. For more information regarding The Jewish Film Club offerings,
22 • OBITUARIES D EATH N OTICES WHITT, Blanche Yosafat, age 90, died on August 19, 2011; 19 Av 5771. MARCUS, Ina, age 96, died on August 19, 2011; 20 Av 5771. TUNICK, Sara “Curly”, age 99, died on August 20, 2011; 20 Av 5771. GRAD, Sylvia, age 90, died August 21, 2011; 21 Av 5771. FARMING from page 6 It’s no coincidence that the wealthy, assimilated, urban philanthropists moved to assist their less-fortunate brethren by helping them set up shop far away from the cities. “Very rich German NATIONAL from page 7 According to a White House statement, the novel is one of three that Obama took to his 10-day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. Since arriving on the island he has bought two more books, according to reports. Published in 2008 in Israel to enthusiastic reviews, “To The End of The Land” became a bestseller in the United States and Germany. Finished after the death of Grossman’s son in the 2006 Lebanon War, it tells the story of an Israeli mother to a soldier who leaves home on an extended trip so as not receive the possible news of her son’s death. Federal jury says casino worker fired for being Jewish NEW YORK (JTA) — A federINTERNATIONAL from page 9 eve of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Some 25,000 pages of material were recovered from the ruins of the ghetto after the war. Ringelblum himself was killed by the Gestapo in 1944. In 1997, Sakowska received the Jan Karski and Pola Nirenska Award for her work on the archives. CONTEST from page 10 Dahan added that he has thoroughly enjoyed the Hallelujah experience, including traveling throughout Israel with the other semifinalists. (Dahan was eliminated in the contest’s Aug. 18 semifinals.) Tzachi Gavriel, a co-founder of the MASA Israel Journey program, which brings young Diaspora Jews to study, volunteer and work in Israel, collaborated with Gafni to
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Jews, they always wanted the Russian Jews should be farmers,” Petaluma resident Hymie Golden says in Kenneth Kann’s “Comrades and Chicken Ranchers.” “They wanted to prove that not all are merchants or bankers like them.” In 1938 Time reported that there were nearly 100,000 Jewish farmers working in the United States, including Max Yasgur, the amicable dairyman who would famously allow Woodstock to erupt on his fields in Bethel, NY. Many of these mid-century farm families enjoyed modest success, while raising their children on hard work, socialist politics, and fresh country air. While not overtly religious, the communities maintained Jewish lives that were built around a synagogue, Hebrew or Yiddish schools, and organizations like Hadassah and B’nai Brith. “The local synagogue
migrated to the country along with us,” Sonny Whynman, whose family moved from the Bronx to start an egg farm in Toms River, N.J., in the mid-1940s, when he was 7, told me. Many people from his old Bronx neighborhood decided to settle in rural New Jersey, too, he said. But as the years passed and farming in America declined, the Jewish farms became increasingly harder to maintain. In the early 1960s, the Jewish Agricultural Society surveyed Jewish American farmers. “In the beginning farming was very good, but now [it’s] in very bad shape,” wrote farmer Aron Bakal, from Wurstboro, N.Y. Asked for his thoughts on the future, he wrote, “Time will show everything.” The Jewish Agricultural Society closed up shop in 1972, and soon the once-vibrant Jewish farming communities were gone.
By the late 20th century, when Franklin started his farm, the established notion was that American Jews belonged in cities or suburbs, working as professionals. Farming — aside from the occasional stint on an Israeli kibbutz — seemed antithetical to Jewish American identity. In 2003, Slate ran an article headlined “Why Jews Don’t Farm,” arguing that Jews’ preoccupation with literacy and education had lifted them above manual labor toward more academic pursuits. Adamah was launched in the Connecticut Berkshires that same year. The program has thrived and inspired spinoff projects like Philadelphia’s Jewish Farm School and Chicago’s The Gan Project. Other Jews, like Franklin, found their own way to farming. Tanya Tolchin — a niece of Sonny Whynman, the onetime Toms Rivers egg farmer — and her hus-
band, Scott Hertzberg, started a farm in Upper Marlboro, Md., that provides fresh produce to CSA members, and they recently launched a Jewish Farmers of America Wiki. Jewish farmers “are pretty much falling from the trees these days,” Hertzberg joked. Farming remains grueling work, both physically and emotionally. Demographically speaking, the Jewish farmer is still rare (and can sound like a punch line). But farming, like religion, can come down to faith. “I never expected I would farm full-time, I just wanted to live as far away from cities as possible,” Franklin told me. “But baruch Hashem, if you do it properly, farming is the most fulfilling life I could imagine.”
al jury found that a Mississippi man was fired from his casino job because he’s Jewish. Marc Silverberg was fired from his job as food and beverage director at Sam’s Town Casino in August 2008 because of what his former employer claimed was poor performance. Silverberg disagreed and sued. The jury found for Silverberg, awarding him $102,000 in back pay, $76,500 for mental anxiety and $400,000 in punitive damages. “I didn’t do anything wrong. They put together a concerted effort to get rid of me because of my Jewish heritage,” Silverberg told The Clarion-Ledger. “The jury vindicated me.” He now teaches at a culinary school in Memphis, where he said he makes 60 percent less than he did at the casino.
Silverberg said in his lawsuit that the trouble started when a new general manager was hired at the Tunica, Miss. casino. The manager apparently was prejudiced against people who didn’t share his ethnicity, and particularly “despised Silverberg because he was Jewish,” according to the lawsuit. Two former casino employees testified they heard the man refer to Silverberg as a goddamn “Jewish slug.” Human rights leader Jerome Shestack dies (JTA) — Jerome Shestack, a human rights leader and Jewish activist, has died. Shestack, also a prominent lawyer, died at his home Aug. 18 of kidney failure; he was 86. He was chairman of the American Jewish Committee’s
Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights from 1989 to 1992, but remained involved in the institute until his death, according to the AJC. Shestack was president of the American Bar Association in the late 1990s. He was also the chairman of the International League for Human Rights and was appointed by President Carter as the U.S. representative on the U.N. Human Rights Council in 1979-1980. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Shestack “a committed public servant and a dogged defender of human rights.” A prominent lawyer with the Philadelphia firm Schnader, Harrison, Segal, and Lewis, Shestack served as chair of the Committee on Conscience at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum. For 20 years before that, Shestack was president of the International League for Human Rights, the oldest international non-governmental organization active in defending rights globally, where he led initiatives protesting abuses in the Soviet Union, Latin America and South Africa. Shestack was born in Atlantic City, N.J. Both of his grandfathers were rabbis, and he spoke Hebrew and Yiddish before he spoke English, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and was wounded in an attack on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga. The Philadelphia Daily News reported that he escaped serious injury because he did not go to lunch that day since they were serving pork on the deck that was hit hardest.
Australia withdraws from Durban III over Israel-bashing fears SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) – Australia has withdrawn from the upcoming United Nations conference on racism over concerns of Israel-bashing. The government was not convinced that “unbalanced criticism of Israel and the airing of anti-Semitic views” would be avoided, and therefore withdrew, it announced.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Julia Gillard confirmed Tuesday that Australia had decided not to attend the meeting in New York next month. It has been dubbed “Durban III” after the original anti-racism conference in the South African city in 2001 that was marred by anti-Semitism, prompting Australia, among other western countries, to walk out. The Labor government subsequently boy-
cotted the second conference in 2009, during which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unleashed a vitriolic attack on Israel and the Jews. Gillard’s spokesperson said Australia remained involved in early consultations “to oppose attempts to endorse extreme language or explicit references to the text of the Durban Declaration.” But Australia would not be able to “support a meeting that chooses
to reaffirm the original Durban Declaration, as appears likely,” the spokesperson said. Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Dr. Danny Lamm welcomed the decision, which he had been urging since last November. “We have said that Australia should take no part in a process that remains irredeemably corrupted by racism and by attacks on Israel’s legitimacy as the State of the Jewish people,” he said.
shepherd the song contest along for the past seven months. He said the contest is an “unconventional” way to reach Jewish young people “through the back door.” Gavriel, who has volunteered his time and expertise — until two months ago he was a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — marveled at the combined power of a singing contest and Facebook to reach the young generation, saying, “You can probably reach the computer of
every young Jew in the world.” The Israeli government has recognized the power of reaching young Diaspora Jews through song, and four government ministries, including the Ministry of Culture and Sport, provided about $350,000 to get the contest off the ground. Other funders include Keren Nadav, the foundation established by Russian tycoon and philanthropist Leonid Nevzlin; and the city of Ramat Hasharon, where the finals will take place.
The winner of Thursday’s finals, in which contestants will be performing popular Hebrew songs, will receive an $8,000 cash prize and the opportunity to record a duet with an Israeli artist that will be broadcast on local radio stations and Jewish radio stations worldwide. The winner will also give a concert tour in Jewish communities around the world. A DVD of the contest is also being put together for distribution
in Jewish venues around the world. Contest plans for next year include holding auditions and semifinals in Jewish communities in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and London. Gavriel predicts that the number of people vying to participate will increase exponentially by next year. “We’re not just talking about what it means to be Jewish,” he said. “We’re taking them on an adventure.”
This article originally appeared on Tablet Magazine, tabletmag.com.
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