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THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014 18 ADAR II, 5774
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A young artist’s ‘antiBarbie’ s a runaway crowdfunding success
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Putin’s Jewish embrace: Is it love or politics?
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Rabbi Judy Chessin to speak at annual Hadassah Eduction Day Cincinnati Chapter of Hadassah invites the community to its annual Education Day on Sunday, March 30 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. in the Teller Lounge at Hebrew Union College. Rabbi Judy Chessin will lead us in "Celebrating Different Passover Seder Traditions", including a delicious Seder featuring Ashkenazic and Sephardic dishes and little-known facts about the differences in Passover observance and Seder traditions around the world. Bobbi Handwerger and Bea Goodman are Education Day Co-Chairs. Bonnie Juran Ullner is Cincinnati Chapter President of Hadassah. Rabbi Judy Chessin is well known to local Hadassah members, having been guest speaker at Hadassah Coffee Talk as well as the last two years’ Education Days. Originally from Orlando, Florida, Rabbi Chessin received her undergraduate training at the University of South Florida. After studying in Jerusalem, she went on to complete her Masters of Arts in Hebrew Letters at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati, Ohio. There she received ordination as Rabbi in June of 1984 and was awarded the Morris H. Youngerman Prize for Homiletics. During her tenure at HUC-JIR, she served pulpits in Owensboro, Kentucky, and Brookhaven, Mississippi. Chessin also directed the seminary’s Youth and College Programming for three years. In
2007, she received a Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa, from HUC-JIR at its Cincinnati Graduation ceremony on June 7, 2009 at Isaac M. Wise Temple. Rabbi Chessin also studied
graduate level psychology at the University of Cincinnati, and worked as a caseworker at both the University of Cincinnati’s Walk-in Clinic and Jewish Family Service of Cincinnati.
From 1984-1985 she received pastoral counseling training and supervision at the Pastoral Counseling Center at Miami Valley Hospital. In 1984 she was asked to guide 35 South Dayton families to create a Reform Jewish synagogue in the Centerville area. Together they created Temple Beth Or (a member congregation of the Union for Reform Judaism) which has now grown to 225 families and serves the needs of Reform Jewish families from all over the Dayton area. Along with her duties at Temple Beth Or, Rabbi Chessin speaks extensively in Dayton area universities, churches, synagogues and organizations on topics of Jewish interest. She also serves as a mentor to rabbinic students at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion who are preparing for a career in the rabbinate. Additionally, she spends a several weeks each summer teaching Jewish youth at the Goldman Union Camp Institute in Zionsville, Indiana. She is currently the President of the Synagogue Forum of Greater Dayton and was honored in 2004 as a Woman of Influence by Dayton’s Y.W.C.A. Rabbi Chessin is married to Professor Michael Cook, who teaches at the Hebrew Union College. Together they have two grown sons: Brett and Chad Chessin. RSVPs are required, and there is a cost to attend.
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THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
Live from New York: The Story of the Jews, at Wise Temple On Monday, March 24 Wise Temple presents, via satellite, a 92YLive program featuring Simon Schama and The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC – 1492 AD. You may know some of the history of the Jews, but you haven’t heard it the way Simon Schama tells it – full of rich detail and a keen sense of how people really lived. Schama’s The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words
1000 BC – 1492 AD takes us all over India, Spain, Oxford, Syria, Paris, Cairo, and beyond to show how Jews everywhere lived not as a people apart, but as a vital force in any society they joined, inspiring and being inspired by everything around them. The 92YLive series highlights prominent Jews from all aspects of American life. This series originates and is broadcast live from New York’s prestigious Jewish
cultural center, the 92nd Street Y. The broadcasts are fed into Wise Center and are viewed on a large screen. These events are exclusively a program of Wise Temple’s adult education program. The program starts at 8:00 PM (doors open at 7:30 PM). Tickets are available for purchase at the door and are open to the public. For further information and to RSVP, contact Wise Temple.
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Rockwern Academy promotes Elaine Kaplan to Assistant Principal Mrs. Elaine Kaplan has been promoted to Assistant Principal at Rockwern Academy for the next academic year, beginning August 2014. During her 17 years at Rockwern Academy (formerly Yavneh Day School), Mrs. Kaplan has been a key teacher on the faculty and has helped advance the school in many ways. Mrs. Kaplan’s responsibilities as Assistant Principal will include: providing instructional leadership and professional development for our teachers; leading the school’s continued advancement in the area of instructional technology; overseeing the accreditation process; student discipline; MAP testing and data analysis/follow up; innovative
programming; general studies curriculum review; and Student Council. “Elaine is a well-respected member of the Rockwern faculty and I look forward to her continuing to advance our program on many fronts in her new role as Assistant Principal,” said Dr. David Finell, Head of School at Rockwern Academy. “Under her capable guidance I know Rockwern will go from strength to greater strength.” Elaine Kaplan graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where she majored in American Studies. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Mrs. Kaplan has taught fifth through eighth grade Language Arts and Social Studies at Yavneh/Rockwern, has led the
school’s participation in RAVSAK’s Jewish Court of All Time program for the Middle School, and was invited to speak at their new teacher orientation at the University of Michigan in 2011. Mrs. Kaplan has also coached several of Rockwern’s award-winning Power of the Pen teams and taught after-school Creative Writing and Newspaper clubs. In 2011, Mrs. Kaplan was one of three teachers to receive the Joyce Heiman Education Excellence Award for the development and implementation of an interfaith educational program. Mrs. Kaplan and her husband Andy have three grown sons and one grandson.
Camp at the J’s CIT program helps teens gain valuable work experience “Help Wanted – Prior experience required... if you’re a young person trying to land your first job, these are all too familiar words. But what do you do? You need experience to get a job… but how can you get a job if you have no experience? It’s a frustrating “catch 22” situation that many high school students find frustrating and unfair. But now, thanks to Camp at the J’s popular CIT (Counselor in Training) program, teenagers who will be entering 9th and 10th grade this fall, will have a chance to gain valuable work experience, while meeting new friends and having fun! “Camp at the J’s CIT program is designed to introduce teenagers to the ins and outs of camp management, operations and programming, and teaches them effective leadership, teamwork and communication skills,” explains CIT Director, Freddie Wolf. “By the end of the summer, they will have lots of transferrable work experience that can be used to build their resumes, giving them a leg up in today’s competitive
job market.” The CIT program runs from June 16 – July 25. The six-week session is broken into two sections. During the first three weeks, participants will build the foundation needed to become successful counselors, learning about the big picture objectives of camp. In addition to engaging in interactive trainings on safety, inclusion, group dynamics and more, they will rotate between bunks (age specific camp groups), shadowing various counselors and activity specialists. During the second three weeks of the program, participants are assigned to a specific bunk, working side-by-side with the counselors and bonding with the children in their bunk. CITs spend a large part of every day with the campers and get to enjoy everything from archery and arts and crafts, to swimming in the J’s indoor water park and special events like Maccabi Color Wars, and Fire Truck Spray Day. This portion of the program also includes plenty of leadership training and further hands-on instruction.
“The entire Camp at the J team is invested in the success of our CITs because they have the potential to be great future staff members,” says Matt Steinberg, Camp Director. “Every CIT who is accepted into this program will receive a lot of hands-on training and attention because we want them to succeed just as much as they do. After all, what could be a better way to ensure that we continue to have the best, most highly qualified staff !” Throughout all the learning and skill development, CITs have ample opportunity to relax and make friends, striking the perfect balance between responsibility and fun. To be considered for the program, eligible teens must fill out an application, submit two references and complete an interview with Camp at the J staff. All required paperwork must be submitted to the camp office by Thursday, May 1. There is a fee for this program, so please contact Camp at the J for further details.
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New initiative helps Ohio River Valley Cohort learn skills, share ideas, and grow network for young Jewish adult engagement A cohort of professionals from around the Ohio River Valley will begin a yearlong initiative, the NEXTwork Hub, to help them better engage Birthright Israel alumni and their peers throughout the region in Jewish life. The NEXTwork Hub kicks off March 10th and will build a network of professionals in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Columbus, Dayton, and Lexington to learn new skills, build their professional capacity, and enhance their Jewish knowledge. “This will be a truly empowering and inspiring experience for this inaugural cohort of engagers—the professionals who interact directly with young Jewish adults in their communities,” says Rabbi Ari Weiss, Senior Director of Jewish Education at NEXT, who developed the curriculum for the monthly inperson seminars. “Within the Hub, they will have the opportunity to grow together and think creatively about the best ways to help shape the Jewish journeys of young adults. It will be exciting to see their evolution and the outcomes they achieve throughout the year.” NEXT sees the Hub as a way to provide sustained support and develop even stronger relationships with and among Ohio River Valley engagers. The first Hub seminar will examine “Relational Judaism” in the context of young adult engagement. Other seminars will address knowledge of Birthright Israel alumni and
Briana Landesberg is the Event Manager for Young Adult Initiatives for the Mayerson Foundation and Mayerson JCC.
their peers; experiential education; program design, marketing and branding; and how to connect Jewish young adults to Jewish community, among other areas. Experts and practitioners will lead each inperson session, working directly with the engagers to teach best practices. Beyond the monthly seminars, the Hub includes mentorship and chevruta study among the participants. The Hub’s curriculum was designed to adapt the inclusive values articulated in the TaglitBirthright Israel educational platform for local engagement. Morlie Levin, CEO of NEXT, notes that effectively training and supporting engagers is critical to
engaging the nearly 250,000 Birthright alumni in the U.S. “As the number of Birthright Israel alumni steadily increases, we understand that engagers are the crucial, direct link to these young Jewish adults,” says Levin. “By resourcing engagement leaders and creating a strong network, we can help create communities with a vibrant ecosystem of Jewish opportunities for Birthrighters and their peers. And for engagers, the Hub is an opportunity to elevate their professional skills in numerous areas— including program design and stakeholder management—which will help them greatly in their current work and throughout their professional life.” The Hub builds off of NEXT’s efforts over the last two years to develop its national network of engagers, known as the NEXTwork. Throughout the year, the NEXTwork brings together engagers from different organizations to further advance the skills, strategies, tools and careers of the people who actually make Jewish journeys happen. Weiss explains that the Hub offers a structure to go even deeper in a targeted region. “Each Hub seminar will address a different area of engagement and will help the cohort collectively advance their skills and share successes and challenges,” adds Weiss. “The idea is to create the best environment for them to learn as a team
and share their best ideas for engaging young adults. With this model, these participants have the potential to change how an entire region reaches and engages its young Jewish adults.” Adds Stacie Klein, Young Adult Division Director of the Columbus Jewish Federation, “Because Jewish communal work is still relatively new to me, I’m seeking professional development from the NEXTwork Hub to grow my skill sets. My Jewish community has continuously provided me opportunities to engage and thrive, and I’m excited about sharpening my skills as I give back through my work. Deepening my understanding of Relational Judaism and fostering conversations about big, Jewish topics are two sessions I’m particularly excited to attend!” The Hub is indicative of NEXT’s strategy to consult with communities and leaders to create more and relevant opportunities for young Jewish adults. This includes sharing information about national young adult engagement trends; best practices for creating programs and do-it-yourself opportunities for Birthrighters; and census-like data about young Jewish adults in communities. Additionally, if a pilot initiative such as the Hub achieves positive outcomes, NEXT will look to adapt the model to other regions as well.
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VOL. 160 • NO. 35 THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014 18 ADAR II 5774 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 7:32 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 8:33 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 ISAAC 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 PHYLLIS R. SINGER Editor & General Manager, 1985-1999 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher JORY EDLIN BETH KOTZIN Assistant Editors YOSEFF FRANCUS Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor ROBERT WILHELMY Dining Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM IRIS PASTOR ZELL SCHULMAN PHYLLIS R. SINGER Contributing Columnists JENNIFER CARROLL Production Manager
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Courtesy of NBA Photos
Owner Eddie Gottlieb, left, celebrating the Philadelphia Warriors winning the 1955-56 NBA championship.
Philly historian scores in bid to have NBA pioneer Eddie Gottlieb honored By Hillel Kuttler Contributing Columnist PHILADELPHIA (JTA) – Celeste Morello isn’t Jewish or a sports fan, and has never attended a professional basketball game. But a passion for history – particularly Philadelphia history – prompted her to seek recognition for the hoops pioneer Eddie Gottlieb. Morello succeeded last week when the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission approved her application for Gottlieb, a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, to be featured on an official state historical marker. The two-sided blue tablet with yellow lettering will be erected in Philadelphia, where Gottlieb lived most of his life and Morello now resides. Gottlieb, who immigrated as a boy from Kiev, Ukraine, was a founder, player and coach of one of the most important teams in basketball history: the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association club known by its acronym, the Sphas. Through the 1940s, the nearly all-Jewish Sphas won 10 championships in three leagues, out of which the National Basketball Association emerged in 1949 to become what today is a multibillion-dollar business. Post-Sphas, Gottlieb coached and owned the Philadelphia (now Golden State) Warriors from 1946 to 1962. For a quarter-century he chaired the NBA’s Rules Committee, and for many years he plotted the league’s schedule of games using pen and paper. Gottlieb died at 81 in 1979. By then he had been inducted into the Hall of Fame in Springfield,
Mass., basketball’s birthplace; the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Netanya, Israel; and the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. While a state historical marker was placed last year at the North Broad Street site of the Broadwood Hotel, where the Sphas played many home games in its ballroom, Gottlieb will “now have his own marker,” Morello said. Writing to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission last Sept. 26, the NBA’s then-commissioner, David Stern, supported the initiative for the historical marker, calling Gottlieb “a leader and innovator in the early growth and development of professional basketball in the United States.” Gottlieb’s legacy, Stern wrote, includes signing such all-time great players as Wilt Chamberlain, Joe Fulks and Paul Arizin; overseeing the adoption of the 24-second shot clock; advising three NBA commissioners – “a testament to his incomparable institutional knowledge” – and the Rookie of the Year trophy that bears Gottlieb’s name. “Few men have contributed more to basketball and, in particular, to the development of the NBA during its nascent years than Eddie Gottlieb,” Stern wrote. The marker’s possible sites, Morello said, include the corner of Broad Street and Snyder Avenue, outside South Philadelphia High School, where Gottlieb graduated in 1916; and 45th and Market streets, the site of the Warriors’ Philadelphia Arena. Creating and installing the cast-aluminum marker atop a steel NBA on page 21
Now Hiring Due to enrollment growth and teacher retirement, Rockwern Academy (est.1952) is hiring pre-school and early primary teachers and T.A.’s. for the 2014-2015 school year. Please send cover letter and resume to Dr. Susan Moore at: sumoore@rockwernacademy.org
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Will CPAC’s libertarian tone harm Republicans’ courtship of Jewish voters? By Dmitriy Shapiro//Washington Jewish Week (JNS) – In striking a more libertarian tone than in previous years, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) might be taking the constituency represented by its sponsor, the American Conservative Union (ACU), down a path that is alienating to some in the Jewish community. According to some observers, the March 6-8 conference’s apparent toning down of foreign policy concerns certainly played to the base of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (RKY), who won the annual gathering’s straw poll of presidential contenders for the second straight year, but could prove a liability in the effort to win over moderate Jewish voters for the Republican Party. “The most important thing is
Courtesy of Gage Skidmore
U.S. Sen. Rand Rand Paul (R-KY) speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC, on March 14, 2013. Paul has won the CPAC conference straw poll of presidential contenders in both 2013 and 2014.
to find a candidate that speaks to all these people,” said Eric Rappaport, director of PolicyHill.com. “I think a lot of Jews are Reagan Democrats who are more centrist, and what the Republicans really need instead of
rhetoric is someone who can garner those votes and bring them into the fold.” Though Jews make up a small minority of CPAC attendees, their number in recent years has been increasing. This year, the invocation at the beginning of the conference at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., was given by an Orthodox rabbi. “Everybody knows him here,” David Keene, former CPAC chairman and current opinion editor at The Washington Times, said of the choice to have Rabbi Chaim “Nate” Segal of Staten Island, NY, deliver the invocation. “Rabbi Segal is our rabbi.” Keene also mentioned how recent elections show a growing number of Jews voting Republican. “The Jewish vote has begun to shift, but it’s mostly younger people because that’s who you have to
get [to change voting trends],” he argued. “You either have to get younger people or there has to be some cataclysmic event.” Whereas in previous presidential election years, the Jewish Republican vote at the top of the ticket hovered in the 20-percent range, exit-polling data in 2012 indicated that upwards of 30 percent of Jewish voters chose Republican nominee Mitt Romney for president. Historic highs in the GOP’s share of the Jewish vote came in the 1956 reelection of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the 1988 election of then-Vice President George Bush. Since CPAC always runs Thursday through Saturday, attending each conference has traditionally been difficult for observant Jews. In 2012, the Young Jewish Conservatives began hosting a Shabbaton at or near the conference so that religious Jews could attend sessions in between
prayers and meals. This year’s Shabbaton drew about 120 attendees, who were addressed by former GOP presidential candidate and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), former U.S. Rep. Allen West of Florida, and U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ). Each speaker, in his own way, expressed support for Israel. Though Franks received the greatest response from Shabbaton attendees, Santorum came in a close second, delivering a thinly veiled attack at the conference’s prevailing message of isolationist foreign policy. But among attendees of the general CPAC conference, the momentum undoubtedly belonged to Paul and his brand of libertarianism which, until this year, has not seriously threatened the CPAC on page 19
So you’ve decided to become a rabbi… By Uriel Heilman NEW YORK (JTA) – Dear Friend, I understand you’re thinking of becoming a rabbi. Mazel tov! Getting into a seminary shouldn’t be too hard. During the decade between the mid-1990s and mid2000s, four consequential new rabbinical schools opened in America: the liberal Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in Riverdale, N.Y.; the Conservative movement’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles; and two nondenominational seminaries, at Hebrew College near Boston and at the Academy for Jewish Religion in Los Angeles. Ironically, these schools are now competing for fewer students. Between Hebrew College and the six schools affiliated with the non-Orthodox denominations, the number of incoming students has fallen by 28 percent over the last decade, according to Rabbi Amber Powers, who tracks the data as assistant vice president for enrollment at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. In 2004, those schools enrolled 118 new rabbinical students. In 2013, there were just 84. Even if you don’t make the cut this year, don’t fret: Admissions staff at most schools will work with you to find programs to enhance your Hebrew or Jewish literacy so you can get in next time. “I would like to oversupply the Reform movement with rabbis – to meet the needs of congregations but also to have other folks who have graduated and can do other things,” says Rabbi Aaron Panken, the new president of the Reform movement’s
Courtesy of Janine Spang
Newly ordained rabbis from Hebrew Union College’s class of 2013 in Cincinnati celebrate with their ordination certificates outside the historic Plum Street Temple.
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which has three campuses and accepts about 60 percent of rabbinical program applicants. Worried you won’t find a school near you? It’s true the only U.S. cities with accredited rabbinical schools are New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and Cincinnati. But now you can become a rabbi online! Aleph, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, offers a five-year distance-learning program. If what you really seek is the title, you can become a “rabbi” in just two semesters at the online Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute. Or there’s Rabbinical Seminary International, run out of a Manhattan apartment and with graduation requirements consisting of the ability to conduct services that “include Hebrew” and “familiarity with the Bible, including the main
themes of the Torah.” But let’s get serious. If you’re looking for an accredited, brick-andmortar institution, you will need to make a four- or five-year commitment, often including a year in Israel, depending on the school. Do you have cash? The Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, which is ordaining 14 rabbis this year, costs about $28,000 per year; the movement’s Ziegler school in L.A. (17 rabbis this year) costs $26,500. Hebrew College (14 rabbis) is $25,000. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College outside of Philadelphia (six rabbis) is $21,000. HUC (35 rabbis) is about $20,000. Financial aid and student loans are common. If you’re Orthodox, you can breathe a little easier. Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (graduating two rabbis this spring) has no tuition and offers students a “generous stipend”
for living expenses. Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, which ordains about 50 rabbis per year, also is free. “We’ve had a 100-year tradition of not charging for rabbinical school,” said Rabbi Menachem Penner, the acting dean of RIETS. “It’s Y.U.’s gift to the community.” Of course, attending an Orthodox school comes with its own burdens – like commitment to upholding ideological principles. (RIETS, for example, recently made clear that it would not countenance its students participating in partnership minyans.) Other schools have their own ideological commitments. JTS stresses egalitarian Jewish observance, with both men and women required to lay tefillin every day. (If you’re an Orthodox woman, your only ordination option is Yeshivat Maharat, the New York school founded in 2009 that ordains Orthodox clergywomen.) The Reconstructionist movement’s seminary is less specific in its demands. “Our requirements include deep immersion in Jewish modalities,” says Rabbi Deborah Waxman, RRC’s president. “We don’t mandate what Jewish immersion looks like.” Before you go any further, you may want to give a thought to the rabbinic job marketplace. The bestpaying jobs are pulpit positions, but those jobs, while still the singlebiggest destination for graduates, are hard to get. Outside Orthodoxy, the number of synagogues is shrinking, thanks to the lingering effects of the recession, disinterest in organized religion among younger Jews and
dwindling Jewish populations in small cities and towns. Some synagogues are merging; others are shutting down. “There’s no jobs for these kids,” says Rabbi Ed Feinstein, who teaches rabbinics at Ziegler and serves as senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif. “When I was growing up they told us this was a great field, a burgeoning market. Now it’s shutting down.” Rabbi Elliot Schoenberg, international placement director at the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, says about 100 Conservative rabbis in North America are seeking employment right now – including the 31 graduating JTS and Ziegler this year – but only 50-60 synagogue jobs are available. In the Orthodox world, most of the pulpit openings are “out of town” – that is, outside metropolitan New York. Y.U. says only 25 percent of its newly minted rabbis these days find work in congregations, though 80 percent are involved in some kind of religious or Jewish communal work. The remaining 20 percent go to secular trades – like accounting, law and medicine. If you do score a pulpit gig, don’t expect an easy ride. Many shuls can afford only part-time rabbis, so you may have to take a second or third job working as a schoolteacher or hospital chaplain. In small Reform congregations, you might serve as cantor, too. (I hope you can play guitar!) It’s helpful to be young, and not just because you’ll be working weekends. With synagogues RABBI on page 19
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THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
National Briefs
Courtesy of Nickolay Lamm
Nickolay Lamm’s cousins play with a prototype of the Lammily doll.
A young artist’s ‘anti-Barbie’ is a runaway crowdfunding success By Julie Wiener NEW YORK (JTA) – Almost exactly 55 years after Barbie made her debut at the American International Toy Fair, a more realistically proportioned alternative to the iconic fashion doll has become a crowdfunding sensation, raising more than $400,000 in a week and a half to begin production. The Lammily doll, which has joints that bend, an athletic physique and a motto of “Average is Beautiful,” is being described by some fans as the anti-Barbie. But Lammily’s creator, 25-yearold Pittsburgh artist Nickolay Lamm – who, like Barbie’s late inventor, Ruth Handler, is Jewish – insists he is not trying to pick a fight with the Mattel toy. “I was just trying to make an alternative, which hasn’t existed yet,” he told JTA. “I can see girls playing with Lammily and other toys at the same time. I’m not really a crusading feminist. I’m just a normal dude with a laptop who thinks we could use another option.” Lamm, who moved to the United States with his parents and twin brother from St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 6, dreamed up Lammily last year after designing “Real Barbie,” an image he posted online of what Barbie would look like if her measurements were reflective of real women’s bodies. The project, which garnered a great deal of media coverage, went viral, and after many people urged him to market an actual doll, Lamm created prototypes for the Lammily doll and found a manufacturer in China. Currently, the dolls are being offered exclusively to backers on Crowdtilt, the crowdfunding platform, and will not be shipped until November. But since he has already exceeded his fundraising goal fourfold – since March 5, the Lammily has raised $416,938 from 11,674 people – Lamm is pursuing plans to get Lammily into stores. The fundraising success has been a “pleasant surprise” for Lamm. “In the first hour, I thought it would completely bomb,” he said.
“There were only four backers, including my mom. Then it picked up steam in an hour and a half.” Lamm, who studied marketing at the University of Pittsburgh, has lived in the southwestern Pennsylvania city since the family immigrated to the United States almost 20 years ago. “I thought we were going on a holiday trip,” he recalled. “I didn’t know what was going on.” He attended Jewish day schools – first an Orthodox one, then a pluralistic community one – through eighth grade and describes his day school years as “one of the best times of my life.” However, he emphasized that, while he celebrated a bar mitzvah, he “was never really that religious” and is “not a very good practitioner of the holidays.” “That’s the way our family was in Russia,” he added. Ironically, Lamm never played with Barbie dolls as a child, although he remembers liking Transformers action figures. Barbie has long been criticized for her unrealistic proportions, with some feminists claiming the super thin, super busty, long-necked doll has a negative impact on girls’ body images and even causes eating disorders. But Lamm hadn’t thought much about the issue until one day when he was looking at a Barbie and “thought it looked a little weird.” “If I can sometimes feel insecure, it’s hard for me to imagine what women have to go through,” he said. “They’re subjected to much higher beauty standards than men.” One problem the Lammily faces, however, is her limited wardrobe – just a blouse, denim shorts and white sneakers. That’s no small problem for a fashion doll, especially since the obvious size differences make borrowing Barbie’s clothes out of the question. Lamm said he plans to produce more outfits in the future. In the meantime, perhaps an enterprising designer/seamstress will launch a crowdfunding campaign to clothe the Lammily.
Northeastern U. bans Students for Justice in Palestine for intimidating students (JNS) – Northeastern University’s Center for Student Involvement has banned the anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for the intimidation of students on campus. According to a letter sent to SJP by the director of the Center for Student Involvement, Jason Campbell-Foster, the group has been banned for at least one year and its board members are banned from serving on any future board within the center. Friends of the IDF raises $20 million at NY gala (JNS) – Friends of the Israel Defense Forces raised $20 million last week at its annual national gala, held in New York’s iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel. Some 1,400 guests from the U.S., Panama, and Israel attended the event. State Dept. seeking ways to keep access open to Iraqi Jewish Archive WASHINGTON (JTA) – The U.S. State Department is seeking avenues to make the Iraqi Jewish Archive continually accessible to Iraqi Jews living outside the country. A statement sent to JTA on
Monday by the State Department’s press office said the “sensitivities” surrounding the archive were spurring the department to seek alternatives. Liberal pro-Israel academics reject boycotts and bans on boycotts WASHINGTON (JTA) – More than 50 Jewish academics joined an initiative rejecting academic boycotts of Israel as well as legislative attempts to inhibit such boycotts. “Academic boycotts and blacklists are discriminatory per se and undercut the purpose of the academy: the pursuit of knowledge,” said the statement posted Monday by “The Third Narrative,” an initiative of Ameinu, a liberal Zionist group. David Brenner, observational humor royalty, dies at 78 NEW YORK (JTA) – David Brenner, a longtime standup comedian whose observational humor is credited with inspiring many top comics, has died. Brenner, a Philadelphia native, died at his home in New York City on Saturday after battling cancer. He was 78. Two Jewish schools in Atlanta merging (JTA) – Two Jewish day schools in Atlanta, Greenfield Hebrew Academy and Yeshiva Atlanta, are merging. The Katherine and Jacob Greenfield Hebrew Academy is an independent community day school for pre-kindergarten to eighth grade founded in 1953. Yeshiva Atlanta is a
modern Orthodox high school founded in 1971. Historic Cleveland temple to become arts center (JTA) – A historic Cleveland synagogue building will be turned into a performing arts center after undergoing a $64 million expansion and renovation. Case Western Reserve University will launch the project next month at the Cleveland building of TempleTifereth Israel, one of the country's largest Reform congregations. The synagogue building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, though the congregation's main home is now in suburban Beachwood, Ohio. The Cleveland City Planning Commission voted unanimously last week to approve the university’s plans for the project, the Plain Dealer of Cleveland reported. Republican defeats Democrat in key Fla. election WASHINGTON (JTA) – Republican David Jolly narrowly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a special Tampa, Fla. congressional election that drew the attention of Jewish adjuncts of both parties. Jolly, a lobbyist who was once a staffer for Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), whose death last year triggered the election, on Tuesday bested Sink, a former chief financial officer for the state, 48.5 percent to 46.6 percent, according to an Associated Press report.
8 • INTERNATIONAL
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Move to repatriate Spanish Jews prompts frenzy, but excitement may be premature By Cnaan Liphshiz
Courtesy of Fuenta Latina
Spanish Minister of Justice Alberto Ruíz-Gallardón (left) met with Malcolm Hoenlein (center) and Robert Sugarman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at Madrid’s Intercontinental Hotel on Feb. 12.
MADRID, Spain (JTA) – News that Spain is proposing to offer citizenship to the descendants of Jews expelled in the 15th and 16th centuries spread like wildfire in Israel. Within hours of the Spanish government’s announcement last month, the Israeli website Ynet published a list of family names supposedly eligible for citizenship that contained some obviously Ashkenazi surnames. Another news site reprinted the list, falsely claiming it had come from the Spanish government. Other Israeli outlets erroneously reported that the bill had already
become law, prompting thousands of calls to the Israeli embassy in Madrid, as well as the Spanish embassies in Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires and Caracas. “It’s a frenzy,” Hamutal Fuchs, the spokesperson for Israel’s embassy in Spain, told JTA last month in Madrid. “The phone won’t stop ringing.” The frenzy, which some Israeli media have taken to calling Israel’s “Spanish fever,” appears to be a result of the bill’s dramatic liberalization of standards for securing a passport. A similar but more restrictive measure passed last year in neighboring Portugal failed to gen-
erate any discernible hype. Under current Spanish legislation from 1924, Jews may apply for citizenship if they reside in Spain for more than two years and can prove family ties to expelled Spaniards. Each request is evaluated individually and approved or rejected by a senior Interior Ministry official. Under the newly proposed standards, Spain would naturalize any applicant, Jewish or not, who meets one of four criteria: proven links to Sephardic culture; certification testifying to Sephardic heritage from a recognized Spanish-Jewish SPANISH on page 22
Putin’s Jewish embrace: Is it love or politics? By Cnaan Liphshiz and Talia Lavin
Courtesy of Mark Neyman/GPO/FLASH90
Vladimir Putin with Israeli President Shimon Peres during Peres’ official visit to Moscow in 2012.
International Briefs Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical partners with U.K. on dementia research (JNS) – The Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has announced a joint $21 million deal with the United Kingdom to fund research on dementia. The announcement of the deal came on a tour of the company’s facilities by British Prime Minister David Cameron. Teva will team with the U.K.’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) on the project. Crimea votes to join Russia days after attack on Kiev rabbi (JNS) – Results of the Crimea referendum held Sunday show that 95.7 percent of the voters in the Ukrainian peninsula support annexation of the area by Russia. The vote comes in the wake of an ongoing campaign by Russia to brand the new government of Ukraine as fascist, ultra-nationalist, and anti-Semitic.
(JTA) – When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID. Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin’s office. But since the event was on Shabbat, Lazar initially declined the invitation, explaining he was prevented from carrying documents, among other religious restrictions. Last week, a Kiev rabbi who runs the Ukrainian branch of the Jewish relief organization Hatzalah was attacked in a possible anti-Semitic incident. Rabbi Hillel Cohen was stabbed by two men who also shouted antiSemitic slurs before leaving in a vehicle, Ukrainian police said. Christian-Jewish aid group increases support for beleaguered Ukrainian Jews (JNS) – The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) announced an increase in support to $10 million for Ukraine’s beleaguered Jewish community amid the violence and political upheaval. Former Lebanese president: Mideast Christian exodus ‘approaching biblical proportions’ (JNS) – Former Lebanese President Amine Gemayel warned that the Middle East is experiencing a “crisis of religious pluralism” driven by the “rise of religious extremists” against religious and ethnic minorities in the region. Gemayel, a Maronite Christian who served as president from 1982-1988 said at a speech sponsored by Christian Solidarity
So Putin ordered his staff to prepare an alternative entrance and security-free route just for the rabbi, according to one of Lazar’s top associates, Rabbi Boruch Gorin. “It is unusual, but the security detail acted like kosher supervisors so Rabbi Lazar could attend,” Gorin said. To him, the Sochi anecdote illustrates Putin’s positive attitude toward Russian Jewry – an attitude Gorin says is sincere, unprecedented in Russian history and hugely beneficial for Jewish life in the country. Others, however, see more cynical motives behind Putin’s embrace of Russian Jewry. “Putin has been facing interna-
tional criticism for a long time now over human rights issues,” said Roman Bronfman, a former Israeli Knesset member who was born in the Soviet Union. “He needs a shield, and that’s the Jews. His warm relations with Russia’s so-called official Jews are instrumental.” In recent weeks, Putin has positioned himself as a defender of Jews as part of his effort to discredit the revolution that ousted his ally, former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych. During a March 4 news conference, Putin called the anti-Yanukovych protesters “reactionary, nationalist and anti-Semitic forces.” While right-wing Ukrainian fac-
International that Middle East Christians are fleeing the region “in an exodus approaching biblical proportions.”
Obama pressed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to end a standoff with Israel on the ongoing peace negotiations before a U.S.-imposed April deadline. “We’re going to have to take some tough political decisions and risks if we’re to move it forward,” Obama said Monday at a White House meeting with Abbas. “My hope is that we can continue to see progress in the coming days and weeks.”
Israel and Ghana explore agricultural and hi-tech partnership (JNS) – Israeli officials and agricultural companies attended an Israeli-Ghanaian agricultural conference in Accra aimed at exploring trade and investment opportunity in the agricultural sector in Ghana and future collaboration between the two nations. Jordanian boy has successful kidney transplant in Israel (JNS) – While the Jordanian street has expressed a great deal of animosity toward Israel over the killing of a judge who attacked an Israeli soldier at a border crossing, last week a 7-year-old PalestinianJordanian boy underwent a successful kidney transplant at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. His mother was the donor. The complicated procedure was not possible in Jordanian hospitals. Obama presses Abbas on Mideast peace at White House meeting (JNS) – U.S. President Barack
Thousands of Jordanians protest outside Israeli Embassy over killing of attacker (JNS) – Thousands of Jordanians protested outside the Israeli Embassy in Amman on Friday, demanding Jordan sever ties with Israel over the death of Palestinian-Jordanian judge Raed Zueter, who was recently fatally shot after attacking an Israeli soldier at a border crossing. “We will not accept less than the annulment of the peace treaty and deportation of the Israeli ambassador and to announce that Jews are enemies for our nation,” Hammam Saeed, the general secretary of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, told The Associated Press.
tions – including some that have embraced anti-Semitic rhetoric in the past – played a prominent role in the opposition movement, Ukrainian Jewish leaders have sharply disputed Putin’s characterization and condemned Russian incursions into Crimea. Some individual Jews, however, have told JTA that they agree with Putin’s analysis and welcomed the intervention by Russia. Few would dispute that Putin has been friendly to Jewish institutional life in Russia – especially to organizations and leaders that belong to the Chabad Hasidic movement. PUTIN on page 22 Hezbollah terror group? There’s an app for that (JNS) – The Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, through its satellite news station, Al-Manar, has launched a news app in Apple’s iTunes store, according to a press release. The free app, called LCG, claims that it is an “application that brings news from all around the world” and is available for download on the iPhone and iPad in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish. The U.S. Department of Treasury has designated Al-Manar as a “specially designated global terrorist entity television station” and an “arm of the Hezbollah terrorist network.” As such, the station is banned from being broadcast in America as well as in France, Spain, and Germany. Requests for Jewish state recognition a ‘mistake,’ Kerry says (JNS) – Secretary of State John Kerry called it a “mistake” to continue to ask for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state in efforts to reach a peace agreement, marking a reversal of his position on the issue.
ISRAEL • 9
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
Wadi Atir: A Negev oasis of sustainability and Jewish-Bedouin collaboration By Maayan Jaffe Ozone depletion, climate change, soil erosion, poverty, starvation, and disease. Those are the issues tackled by Michael Ben-Eli, with Israel’s Negev as his base. “The list of issues is long,” said Ben-Eli, citing “an endemic failure of our social and economic institutions to address these issues effectively and in a timely matter.” Ben-Eli is the initiator of project Wadi Atir, launched jointly by the Sustainability Laboratory, of which he is the founder, and the Hura Municipal Council, the governing body of a local Bedouin township. The lab itself was set up to demonstrate breakthrough approaches to sustainability practices, expanding prospects and
producing life-affirming impacts on people and eco-systems in all parts of the world. For now, though, Ben-Eli is focused on the desert. And his partners are a motivated combination of Muslim Bedouin and Israeli scientists. The concept for the project was born in 2007 when Ben-Eli visited Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and its Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research with his colleague Josh Arnow. During that visit he witnessed breakthrough technologies and world-class research that related to living in arid zones. Simultaneously, he was exposed to the harsh circumstances of the ever-increasing Bedouin community, which was suffering from being a nomadic people living in a land of Western and urban
sprawl. The conditions, said BenEli, were untenable. “It did not seem right that full citizens in a country like Israel would live in desperate circumstances when there were such incredible technologies being developed nearby,” Ben-Eli said. Ben-Eli met Dr. Mohammed Alnabari, mayor of Hura, a Bedouin town of 15,000 people. Forward-thinking and originally a chemist by profession, Alnabari immediately bought into BenEli’s vision of developing a model project that would showcase the integration of many development issues in one microcosm. The philanthropic support of Arnow and his father Robert allowed Ben-Eli to get started. WADI ATIR on page 21
Trauma from Palestinian rocket attacks inflicts deepening wounds on Israeli society By Maayan Jaffe (JNS) – Fifteen seconds. That’s how long a resident of Sderot has from the time a Code Red alert is announced until a Palestinian rocket strikes the town or is intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. In other southern Israeli communities, one might have 30 seconds, maybe even a minute. But it’s never very long. Israelis fell asleep to sirens March 12 and awoke to sirens March 13 while enduring a barrage of at least 60 rockets launched by the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, the largest rocket attack emanating from Gaza since late 2012. Over and over, Israelis ran into the bomb shelters, taking cover from the threat. They know the drill. Gaza rockets have been raining down on southern Israel since 2000. But what Israelis are just beginning to understand is the long-term impact of these rockets on their society. Working in conjunction with Georgia State University’s Dr. Christopher C. Henrich, Professor Golan Shahar, a clinical/community psychologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, followed 362 adolescents from southern Israel between 2008 and 2011. They measured four times per year the adolescents’ exposure to rocket attacks and their levels of anxiety, depression, aggression, and violence. Strikingly, longitudinal results evinced only modest effects of rocket exposure on anxiety and depression, and no effects on aggression, but robust effects on violence commission. In other words, explained Shahar, by the fourth year of the study, a sizeable portion of the youths had “gotten used” to the rockets from the point of view of becoming distressed and anx-
Courtesy of Flash90
Israelis stand near a hole caused by a Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza into the southern Israeli city of Sdeort on March 12, 2014. At least 60 Islamic Jihad rockets were launched from Gaza at Israel from March 12-13.
ious. But a sizeable number had become more violent – and seriously so. “These findings were something that made us feel gratified as scientists, but made me alarmed as an Israeli citizen,” Shahar told JNS. “Kids who at the beginning of the four-year study had been seriously traumatized, who had been exposed intensely to missile attacks, became extremely violent four years later. And I am not talking pushing and shoving, I am talking carrying weapons, carrying knives.” “This is the first longitudinal study attesting to the prospective longitudinal effect of exposure to terrorism on adolescent violence,” he said. “These findings should serve as a red flag for healthcare practitioners working in civil areas afflicted by terrorism and political violence.” Shahar said scientists know that chronic stress (as opposed to smaller bursts or more isolated stressors) changes the brain by causing the part
of the brain that controls impulsive behavior, the prefrontal cortex, to mature more slowly. “We are programming the next generation neuropsychologically to become impulsive and dangerous,” said Shahar. “And we are doing this on both sides of the border; there is no reason to expect the kids in Gaza are not becoming more violent from what they have to endure. … Unless this conflict is contained, unless it is resolved, the worst is yet to come.” According to Shahar, the impact of rocket-induced trauma is likely to be most acute among the next generation of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers. While a study released in September 2013 by the IDF Medical Corps Mental Health Department revealed that reported cases of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Israeli soldiers are among the lowest in militaries worldwide, Shahar’s research raises the possibility that the situation might shift as TRAUMA on page 20
Courtesy of Project Wadi Atir
Dr. Michael Ben-Eli, founder of the Sustainability Laboratory, and Wadi Atir team member Ali Alhawashleh (left) with earth-moving equipment from Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (Jewish National Fund).
10 • ISRAEL
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Women of the Wall take on tefillin in Tel Aviv By Ben Sales
Courtesy of Ben Sales
A woman lays tefillin at the entrance to Tel Aviv's Carmel Market. Women of the Wall offered women in Tel Aviv the chance to put on a tallit or tefillin on Friday.
TEL AVIV (JTA) – They were standing in a public square in a major Israeli city, laying tefillin on women amid shouts of protest and quizzical looks from nearby men in black hats. It has become an occasional morning routine for Women of the Wall. Except this time, they weren’t at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. They were at the entrance to Shuk HaCarmel, the boisterous central market in Tel Aviv. The women’s prayer group achieved something of a coup this year when a district court legalized their monthly services at the Western Wall, effectively ending years of
periodic arrests and detentions of its members. Women of the Wall isn’t allowed to bring a Torah into the Kotel’s women’s section, and it’s still negotiating with the government over the expansion of a pluralistic prayer site at the Robinson’s Arch section of the wall. But the court ruling and ensuing police protection have allowed the group to pray in relative peace in recent months, without fear of prison or counter-protest. So, in advance of International Women’s Day on Saturday, the group came to Tel Aviv Friday morning and set up a small stand at Star of David Square, so named because crowded, noisy streets shoot out of it in six directions.
Then they started asking women if they wanted to put on tallit and tefillin. Most ignored the offer or politely refused, but a handful said yes to one or the other, repeating the blessing word for word along with a Women of the Wall member. Men who walk through the square get the same offer every day from Chabad Hasidim. When the women started wrapping willing passersby in a tallit, though, it elicited an outcry. American Orthodox day schools like SAR and Ramaz may allow women to don the prayer shawl and leather straps, but at least some Israelis apparently think the same behavior should not take place WOMEN on page 19
Hadassah crisis opens divisions between the hospital and women’s organization By Ben Sales JERUSALEM (JTA) – The Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower stretches 223 feet skyward, welcoming visitors in a bright, expansive lobby strung with banners celebrating both the State of Israel and its premier hospital, the Hadassah Medical Organization. Opened in late 2012 at a total cost of $363 million, the tower is the largest building project undertaken at Hadassah in 50 years and a symbol of the hospital’s ambitions for the future. Now that future is in peril as the hospital, saddled with nearly $370
Israel Briefs Facebook names new CEO in Israel (Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS) – Facebook announced Monday that it has appointed Adi Soffer-Teeni as the company’s CEO in Israel. The current executive chairman of the grammar and spell-checking program Ginger Software, SofferTeeni will head Facebook’s commercial operations in Israel and help clients and agencies develop their marketing strategies at the social network. She will focus on building up the company’s team at its Ramat Gan offices, and will work closely with Facebook’s Israeli team in Dublin. Israeli Navy and Palestinians exchange gunfire on Gaza coast (JNS) – Israeli naval forces exchanged gunfire with Palestinians in Gaza on Monday after the navy prevented a boat from leaving for Egypt, Israel Hayom reported. The Israeli Navy detected a
million in debt and an annual deficit exceeding $85 million, struggles to chart a course back to solvency. Last month, Hadassah hospital declared bankruptcy after two large Israeli banks cut off its credit lines. The Jerusalem District Court gave the hospital a 90-day stay of protection from creditors, after which the medical organization will be restructured or liquidated. Both the Israeli government and the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America, which built the hospital and partially funds it, have agreed to provide $14 million in emergency funding to help weather the crisis. Amid the finan-
cial tumult, the hospital staff went on strike for two weeks. “This is a crisis that had its origins a long time ago,” said Avigdor Kaplan, who became the hospital’s director-general last year. “Now it’s gotten to a point where it can’t go on.” Founded in 1939, Hadassah is widely regarded as one of Israel’s finest health care facilities, pushing the boundaries of medical research while providing first-rate treatment not only for Israelis, but often for patients from around the Middle East, including citizens of countries technically in a state of war with the Jewish state.
The institution, which employs 6,000 people and doubles as the main teaching hospital for the Hebrew University medical school, is a symbol of both the best in Israeli medicine and the American Jewish contribution to building the state. But with the budgetary woes impossible to ignore any longer, rifts have opened among the hospital, the Israeli government and the women’s organization. All the parties agree that the hospital must change the way it does business, but they remain deeply divided on the source of the crisis, who is at fault and how best to move forward. The government has pointed to
employee salaries, which it says are “significantly higher” than typical pay at Israeli hospitals. The women’s organization blames longterm financial mismanagement, describing hospital administrators as children who expect that someone will always be there to bail them out. Hospital officials blame government regulations that they say penalize them for providing the country’s best care. Diagnosing the problem will be critical to the hospital’s recovery, but no explanation has been complete. Soon after a Feb. 11 Knesset
small boat attempting to make its way to Egypt and forced it back to Gaza. Following protocol, the soldiers opened fire at the boat. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that the target was hit.
tion in recent years, a new survey shows. According to the survey, 67 percent of respondents said homes in the Negev will appreciate and 62 percent believe it is worthwhile to invest in the region.
est Jewish warrior since Bar Kochba,” has died at 80. Born in Herzliya in 1934, HarZion rose to fame in the 1950s as a leader in Israel’s first elite commando force, Unit 101, which was created by future Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to halt cross-border raids by Arab terrorists.
Jewish National Fund (JNF) and Israeli Green Construction Council, intends to raise awareness for ecofriendly construction among the Israeli public and to train planners and architects to think green when starting new projects.
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight spurs Israel to tighten aviation security (JNS) – After the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Israel has decided to tighten security standards for any flights that enter its territory. Since current suspicions on the fate of the missing Malaysian plane center heavily on a potential hijacking, Israeli security and aviation officials decided to require all foreign airlines approaching the Jewish state to identify themselves much earlier than what was previously required, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. The officials also came up with other new security regulations that remain classified, according to Reuters. Survey: Israelis see business booming in Negev (Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS) – More than 75 percent of Israelis believe that there have been positive changes for the Negev Desert region in terms of development, construction, and transporta-
Ya’alon says Abbas ‘not a partner’ for permanent peace deal with Israel (JNS) – Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Saturday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “is not a partner for a permanent peace agreement” with Israel. “Abbas has resorted to the Oslo trick, no recognition and no promises,” Ya’alon told Israel’s Channel 2 network. “Abbas is a partner who takes, not a partner who gives. He is not a partner for a permanent peace agreement that includes recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. He just takes back prisoners.” Israel has so far freed 78 Palestinian terrorist prisoners as part of the American-brokered peace talks. Legendary IDF commander Meir Har-Zion dies at 80 (JNS) – Legendary Israel Defense Forces commander Meir Har-Zion, who was once dubbed by General Moshe Dayan as “the great-
Israeli ministers say retaking Gaza is only way to stop rockets (JNS) – After the largest Gaza rocket attack on Israel since late 2012, some Israeli ministers criticized former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza, in which Israel relinquished control of that territory to the Palestinian Authority before it was eventually seized by Hamas. In addition to Hamas, several smaller Islamist terror groups are present in Gaza today, including Islamic Jihad, which was behind the latest rocket barrage. Israel to hold its first ecofriendly building contest (JNS) – Israel is holding its first eco-friendly architecture competition, in which two winners will have their designs constructed and showcased to the general public, Israel Hayom reported. The contest, hosted by the
HADASSAH on page 22
Aliyah up 6.7% in early 2014 (JNS) – January 2014 saw a 6.7percent rise in the number of new immigrants to Israel compared to the same month in 2013, data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) shows. A total of 1,218 immigrants arrived in Israel in January 2014, compared to 1,141 in January 2013. Haredi conscription becomes law in Israel (JNS) – The Equal Sharing of the Burden Bill, which applies Israel’s mandatory national service requirement to haredim, was passed with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset last week. Sixty-five Members of Knesset voted in favor of the bill, with one opposed. The Israeli opposition parties, including several haredi parties, boycotted the vote because they believed the government had abused Knesset procedure to ensure its passage.
12 • CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE
ANNOUNCEMENTS BIRTH r. and Mrs. Kevin Brinn announce the birth of their daughter, Lorelei Anya, on February 6, 2014 in Los Angeles, CA. Grandparents are Stuart & Debbie Brinn and Ritva & the late Dan Hackle. Great grandparents are Deanne & the late Joe Wren and Elaine and the late Arnold “Ace” Brinn.
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OVERNIGHT JEWISH CAMPING AND ISRAEL TRAVEL FAIR On November 24, 2013 prospective campers and travelers and their families met with representatives from a variety of camps and trip providers, applied for generous grants funded by the Jewish Foundation, and experienced a taste of Israel.
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE • 13
14 • DINING OUT
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Baba India gives Jewish diners many choices, convenient location By Bob Wilhelmy Of the several dozen Indian restaurants in the Greater Cincinnati area, you’ll likely find some stark quality differences, one to another. There are three of the most popular that offer relatively equal, high-level food quality, according to Preet Atwal, the manager of Baba India restaurant on Madison Road in Oakley. All are owned by and are spin-offs from the original, Ambar India, which has been serving the dining public for more than 20 years. At Baba India, lunchtime is time for the 7-day-a-week buffet. The buffet has some added characteristics I do not see in other Indian restaurants featuring buffets. First, the buffet is longer, and more footage means more dishes from which to choose for diners. The buffet is also rotational, according to Atwal, meaning that the food selection changes from day to day retaining some staples, such as the chicken tikka (seen in the photos). And the kicker in my book is that the food trays are filled with fresh, appetizing food specialties. The fresh, appealing food in the buffet is the big deal for me. How often does a diner go to a restaurant where there is a buffet and the food is picked over, dried out, and “cooked” out, so that the color and vibrancy of the food is gone. Unappealing food ruins an appetite, to my way of thinking. A buffet is an excellent way to enjoy Indian food. The buffet is especially good for those unfamiliar with Indian food, or who appreciate the option of eating a wider variety of items than a menu order would provide. But the menu entrée selections are numerous, and I particularly delight in some of the ones found at Baba. During a recent dining experience, we ordered the chicken tikka and the chicken jalfrezi from the chicken specialty section of the menu. The first dish is the one pictured, only in an entrée presentation. The plate includes the reddish-hued chicken that is roasted on a skewer that stands upright in a tandoor oven. Before the chicken is skewered, it is marinated in a special herb and spice based sauce. The flavor of the chicken is special, and the chicken pieces are moist and tasty. My entrée came to the table sizzling, and the chicken was accompanied with sautéed onions, peppers and tomatoes, with lemon wedges to squeeze over the food. The second dish, the jalfrezi, featured a piquant sauce of orange-red color that delivers a little delayed spiciness. The sauce is on the order of thick gravy, and adds a good dimension to the dish. This dish is a great meal when eaten with the garlic nan to sop up and wipe clean the plate—which is how the plate looked when we had finished the meal. Food served at Baba India is of
A portion of the luncheon buffet at Baba India.
the type found in the Indian Punjab, according to Atwal. The Punjab area is more westerly, and historically, was less affected by the push of Afghani and European influences that shaped the culinary habits of the north region. These influences came into the North of India and never really went beyond that area of the country. “That area” is primarily farmland that produces a cornucopia of fresh vegetables, including baby eggplant, squash, spinach, potatoes, okra, and a wide variety of other less-wellknown vegetables indigenous to India. The food (of the north) is richer in content, with more cream and butter used in its preparation. In the south, there is more fish and the food is coconut based. There are more rice dishes and wheat breads in the north and the flavors of that region of India are more subtle. The menu offers the usual wide range of choices, with about 60 entrée selections from which to choose. There are more than 20 vegetarian selections alone, including mater paneer, the cheese, peas and spices combo; and saag paneer, the ubiquitous Indian spinach dish cooked with cheese cubes and cream, and the NAV rattan korma, which is a mixed veggie dish, with
nuts and raisins. In the chicken specialties section, there is chicken curry, mildly spiced and in sauce. In addition, two of the most popular dishes in the restaurant are the chicken tikka masala, and the chicken makhani. The former features broiled chicken, cooked further in a savory tomato and onion sauce. And the latter is chicken pieces cooked in a marinade and smothered in onions and tomatoes, with nuts and raisins added as well. For those of us who prefer lamb dishes, there are eight from which to choose, and my favorite of the lot is the lamb curry, although the lamb do piaza is a close second. The curry features the lamb chunks cooked slowly, at a simmer, in the thick curry sauce that is fairly mild. The do piaza features the lamb, but smothered in onions tomatoes and peppers, and spiced according to the diner’s wants. Of course, if you want a hot one in the lamb category, vindaloo, which is a specialty of Goa, is the answer. It features chunks of lamb and potato, cooked in a thick, hot curry. See you at Baba India! A diner having the chicken tikka
Baba India 3120 Madison Rd. 321-1600
DINING OUT • 15
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
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16 • OPINION
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Samuel Lewis and Israel’s dream of peace By Abraham H. Foxman NEW YORK (JTA) – The last time Ambassador Samuel Lewis was at an AntiDefamation League podium was in April 2008 as part of a roundtable celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary. The speakers were each asked to share their most vivid and representative recollections of Israel. Sam, a distinguished State Department veteran, served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1977 to 1985, and had engaged in tough battles with Israel’s leaders over the negotiations with Egypt and particularly over the Lebanon War. Yet, what he chose to recall, so poignantly, was what it was like to stand on the tarmac alongside Israel’s political and security elite waiting for Anwar Sadat’s plane to land for the Egyptian president’s breakthrough visit to Jerusalem on Nov. 19, 1977. Sam described that Saturday evening, standing on a red carpet alongside Menachem Begin, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and dozens of others, all figures who had been present at Israel’s creation, who had dedicated their lives to the survival and security of the Jewish state. These political and military leaders had spent four decades combating the menacing threat posed by the Egyptian army, and its potential to eradicate the State of Israel. On that day, no one was quite sure what Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem would mean, and there was an air of nervous excitement. In Sam’s telling, when Sadat finally emerged from the plane and began making his way to meet the assembled dignitaries, these hardened, cynical, war-weary leaders, experiencing this game-changing gesture of reconciliation from Israel’s leading Arab foe, had tears in their eyes. Sam Lewis passed away this week at the age of 83. While we didn’t always see eye-to-eye, he was an American who “got” Israel, made significant contributions to the strengthening of U.S.Israel relations and was someone who always recognized how desperately Israel yearns for peace. As American ambassador to Israel during a critical period in Israel’s history, Sam engendered trust in Israeli
leaders so that he could talk honestly with them at sensitive moments. He was the perfect example of a diplomat who, by virtue of his personality and professionalism, could ease the way through sometimes treacherous waters to make solutions possible. It happens that March 26 will mark the 35th anniversary of the signing of the IsraelEgypt peace agreement – of which Sadat’s visit to Israel was a harbinger and which Sam played an important role in helping facilitate. After decades of a “cold peace” and the insecurity brought on by the Arab Spring and the ongoing turmoil in Egypt, it is easy to gloss over how historically momentous this first ArabIsraeli peace agreement was, and continues to be. Peace with an Arab neighbor was something Israelis had only dreamed of for decades, and while flawed, on the most practical level it meant that young Israeli men were no longer being killed on Egypt’s battlefields. Today, the idealism and hope of peace can seem very far away. Israelis are abuzz speculating over the details of Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. While poll after poll shows support for negotiations, they also demonstrate an ingrained Israeli skepticism about the Palestinian commitment to reconciliation and willingness to make hard decisions for peace. At the same time, there are renewed worries over a new wave of Gaza rockets raining down on southern Israel and persistent fears about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. And yet, amid the very legitimate doubt and uncertainty, Sam Lewis’ passing is a moment to remember that we cannot allow ourselves to lose the idealism and promise of peace – a peace which ensures the security and well- being of the Jewish state, and whose realization will surely be difficult and imperfect. Yet, a peace whose promise, as Sam described, can bring tears to the eye of even to the most hardened Israeli. Abraham H. Foxman is the national director of the AntiDefamation League.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Do you have something to say? E-mail your letter to editor@americanisraelite.com
To all our our subscribers and readers, Once again, we need to point out that pages 12-13 of the March 13, 2014 issue of the Israelite, Vol. 160, #34, is our annual Purim parody pages of humor. They are strictly made up stories, none are real. The Cincinnati Community Kollel is not going on sabbatical; in fact, they are thriving and doing well. The new Shaa’rei Torah building is not becoming a thrift shop,
and will remain a synagogue. The American Israelite is not being sold to Al Jazeera-America; in fact, The American Israelite is thriving and doing well, with no plans on selling to anyone. All “headlines and stories we are working “ were made up jokes and humorous blurbs that we have no intention of following through on. All letters on Page 13 were actual emails sent to us, but we don’t reommend responding to them or taking them seriously.
We have received several calls and emails from people. We understand your concerns and where you are coming from but you must understand they are made up and meant to be humorous. Don’t be offended if your favorite organization was listed; it was all done in fun for Purim, with a sense of playfullness and humor. Sincerely, Netanel (Ted) Deutsch Publisher
Beating back the assault on Israel’s legitimacy By Jerry Silverman and Steve Gutow NEW YORK (JTA) – Leaders of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) say they are protesting Israel’s policies in the West Bank. They are doing far more than that. BDS advocates routinely oppose a two-state solution and seek to delegitimize the sovereign, Jewish State of Israel. In some cases, BDS becomes the latest form of antiSemitism. The BDS movement aims to isolate and punish Israel, using the same techniques applied to apartheid South Africa. Not hesitating to misrepresent facts and ignore context, these Israel bashers take advantage of ignorance and naïveté within civil society circles, mostly in Western Europe, to advance their anti-Israel agenda. BDS advocates view the situation in the West Bank through a oneway lens, seeing only a single perspective. They cite, for example, the security checkpoints that make life difficult for Palestinians but conveniently overlook the reasons for those checkpoints. They ignore the fact that hurting Israel’s economy would also hurt Palestinians who earn their livelihoods from Israeliowned businesses. BDS backers don’t bother to protest the many countries that have horrific human rights records, instead singling out the world’s only Jewish state, often based on false or misrepresented information. A tipping point for the Jewish community’s response to BDS came in 2009 when a number of anti-Israel groups called for a boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival because one of its themes was Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary. The Toronto and Los Angeles Jewish federations joined forces and, with the involvement of major figures in the entertainment industry, fashioned an effective response. With calls for BDS escalating in the mainline Protestant churches, on
college campuses and elsewhere, Jewish community leaders realize that the situation calls for more than an ad hoc approach: Local communities need a strategic approach with national support and coordination. In 2010, the Jewish Federations of North America, representing more than 150 local federations, allocated significant resources so that the Israel Action Network could serve this purpose. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs – with its 16 national member organizations, including all four of the religious movements, and 125 Jewish community relations councils, which work with non-Jewish coalition partners on a range of international and domestic concerns – was the JFNA’s obvious partner. One principle that guides this work is that we should understand our audiences. And when we speak with others, we should do so with a respect for the sensitivities of that constituency so that our important messages are authentically heard. Whether on a campus, in a church or speaking with an LGBT group, we should always be clear that we stand as partners, sharing the goal of a future with peace and security – not one of conflict and BDS. Experience and research demonstrate that what works best with these audiences – mostly made up of political and religious progressives – is not an all-good-vs.-all-bad characterization of Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, a more nuanced narrative is the one that is likely to defeat the one-sided and hostile stance of those seeking to delegitimize Israel. This means honestly conveying the situation’s complexity, expressing empathy for suffering on both sides (without implying moral equivalency) and offering a constructive pathway to helping the parties move toward peace and reconciliation based on two states for two peoples. Whether we are dealing with a boycott of Israeli academic institutions adopted by the American
Studies Association or an attempt to remove Israeli products from a Brooklyn food co-op, the most effective opponents of these initiatives are the people who travel in those circles. While we in the organized Jewish community should not remain silent in the face of Israel’s delegitimization, we should strongly support and accentuate the efforts of these third-party validators who share our values and viewpoints. The 247 (and counting) universities and colleges that have denounced academic boycotts generally – and academic boycotts of Israel specifically – are just such validators. It is not enough to only expose the true goals of the boycotters and their allies. Israel’s supporters must also go on the offensive and drain the swamps of ignorance that allow the poisonous ideas of the Jewish state’s opponents to incubate. Thus, we are taking the initiative to inoculate vulnerable politically progressive sectors, presenting a more factual perspective on Israel and taking prominent leaders to the region to see the real situation firsthand. The Israel Action Network, of course, does not work alone in this arena. On a daily basis, numerous organizations stand up for Israel. Through the IAN, JFNA and JCPA are working together to convene around a common strategic planning table not only our affiliates but also a range of other North American, Israeli and European groups in order to share best practices and coordinate our collective resources in confronting this global danger. There is no imminent threat to the critical and broad North American support for Israel. But American support for Israel is not something to be taken for granted in light of the organized campaign we now face. While we should not be panicked, we cannot be complacent either. We pledge to continue to work hard to prevent any erosion of that support.
JEWISH LIFE • 17
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
Sedra of the Week
SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT SHEMINI LEVITICUS 9:1-11:47
What G-d is setting down at the very dawn of creation is the fundamental axiom of a religious lifestyle... Commandments are not merely options. Religious commitment demands humility of the individual who is required to bend his knee before a higher Divine power, both in terms of our ethical and ritual lives as well as in terms of our acceptance of tragedy which often seems absurd and illogical. Aaron the High Priest stood at the zenith of success with the consecration of the Sanctuary in the desert. Then, his two sons performed an unsolicited religious act which expressed their profound appreciation of the Divine “And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them” – inexplicably and even absurdly (Lev. 10:2 and Rashi ad loc.). The Bible records Aaron’s response in two Hebrew words: “And Aaron was silent” (ibid, 10:3). Apparently, we learn from this that when one individual acts unjustly towards another, we must speak out and act. But when a tragedy occurs which is not of human making – and when a Divine law insists upon human discipline – we must submit to the ultimate will of a G-d whom our Bible guarantees is “A G-d of compassion and loving kindness” even though it may be beyond our subjective understanding.
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T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: SHMINI (VAYIKRA 9:1—11:43) 1. What did Nadav and Avihu do wrong? a.) Ate meat and milk together b.) Offer a strange sacrifice c.) Drank liquor in the Mishkan 2. How did they die? a.) Died suddenly in the Mishkan b.) Fine of 50 shekels c.) 39 lashes 3. What halachot of kashrut are listed in the parsha? a.) Which animals are kosher/not kosher to eat?
b.) Laws of meat and milk c.) Laws of slaughter (Schita) 4. What law applies to an animal after it is dead? a.) Can not eat it b.) It is ritually unclean c.) Its hide may not be eaten 5. Were Nadav and Avihu mourned after their death? a.) Yes b.) No
on. A heavenly fire entered their bodies and killed them. Rashi 3. Chaper 11 4. A,B 11:39 An animal that has not been properly slaughtered can not been eaten, and can convey ritual impurity by touch or carrying.
5. A 10:6 Nadav and Avihu were righteous people who made a mistake (like drinking wine during the service in the Mishkan) therefore the whole nation mourned their passing.
EFRAT, Israel – “Speak to the children of Israel saying, ‘these are the creatures which you may eat from all of the animals upon the earth: any animal that has split hoofs with clefts through the hoofs and that chews its cud – such you may eat’” (Lev. 11:23) The two main subjects dealt with in this week’s Torah portion of Shemini seem to be totally removed one from the other. First, we read of the tragic death of the two sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, on the eighth day of the consecration of the Sanctuary and then we read all of the details of the laws of kashrut including detailed lists of animals, fowl and fish which are forbidden. It seems to me, however, that there is a powerful connection between these two issues as well as a crucial message – especially for our post-modern age. Let us begin with kashrut. The Bible itself concludes its food prohibitions by declaring the following rationale: “Because I am the Lord your G-d and you shall sanctify yourselves and you shall be holy because I am holy.” (Lev. 11:44) Most of our commentaries define holiness as the ability to separate oneself from one’s physical instincts and drives, an inner discipline which enables the individual to rise above the physical and to come closer to the spiritual. However, the roots of kashrut express an even deeper idea and ideal. The introduction to the Five Books of Moses is the story of the Garden of Eden and the first sin of Adam and Eve. This transgression of the first two human beings was a breach of the laws of kashrut. The Almighty commanded Adam, “From every tree of the garden you are free to eat, but as for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat of it” (Gen. 2:16-17). Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and were banished from the Garden of Eden. But why was that fruit forbidden? After all, the Bible itself testifies that the fruit was “good for food” which probably meant low in calories and devoid of cholesterol, “a delight to the eyes” which suggests a beautiful color and an appealing texture, and “desirable as a source for wisdom” (Gen. 3:6) which testifies that it activated the brain cells. So if the fruit was so desirable, why was it prohibited? Strangely enough, it is the serpent who explains the reason: “Because Gd knows that on the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you
will be like G-d, knowing what is good and what is evil” (Gen. 3:5). The serpent, symbolizing the forces of evil within the world, is expressing the fundamental struggle which takes place within the heart of every individual: who decides what is good and what is evil. What is right and what is wrong. Is it the subjective individual or is it a more objective outside system or Being whom we call G-d. What G-d is setting down at the very dawn of creation is the fundamental axiom of a religious lifestyle: the final arbiter in the realm of good and evil must be the Divine Will rather than individual desire. The forbidden fruit is evil because G-d calls it evil. The ultimate source of morality must be a system which is higher than any individual. Many years ago, I was told by a congregant – whose husband had been considered a pillar of their community and whose children were all studying in day schools – that her husband had established a second residence with another woman several miles away with whom he had even fathered a child. When I confronted the husband, he didn’t even blink an eyelash. He confirmed the facts of the case, but insisted that he was acting out of the highest standards of morality. The only way he could continue his marriage to his wife – who he insisted could not live if she was a divorcee – was if he was simultaneously receiving satisfaction from this other woman, and that he had rescued this “second wife” from committing suicide. Not only did he not consider his act of adultery a transgression; he truly believed that he had rescued two women’s lives by having this extramarital relationship. Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and its Discontents, maintains that when it comes to rationalization and self-justification, every human being is a genius. We can always find cogent reasons justifying to ourselves acts that we would readily condemn in others. It is for this reason, that the subjective individual can never be the ultimate arbiter as to what is proper and what is improper. Our Bible gives the Divine imprimatur to what is right and what is wrong. Although many of the laws of Kashrut are guided by ethical sensitivity and the basic moral ambiguity involved in eating the flesh of creatures that were once alive, these laws are basically the paradigm for our deference to G-d in the realm of morality. Hence, despite the fact that post-modernism questions any absolute position, our Ten
Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise
ANSWERS 1. B 10:1 One opinion in the Midrash, they drank wine during the service in the Mishkan 2. A 10:1-4 The verse does not say explicitly they died suddenly, however they were carried out of the Mishkan with their priestly garments
by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ
JEWZ
IN THE
By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist At the Movies: Opening Friday “Enemy” promises to smartly revive the somewhat overused dramatic device of the doppelganger, i.e., two unrelated people discover they have a physical twin and when they meet, great complications ensue. This thriller stars JAKE GYLLENHAAL, 33, as Adam Bell, a history professor in such a funk he’s even uninterested in his pretty girlfriend (played by MELANIE LAURENT, 31, of “Inglourious Basterds” fame). Then Bell spots his double, a bitpart actor, while watching a movie and decides to track him down. They meet and, as I said, complications ensue. “Blood Ties” co-stars JAMES CAAN, 73, as the father of two sons, one a cop (Billy Crudup) and one a newly-released criminal trying to go straight (Clive Owen). MILA KUNIS, 30, co-stars as Owen’s love interest, with NOAH EMMERICH, 49, as a police lieutenant. JAMES GRAY, 45, co-wrote the flick, which is based on a French film. “Ties” is familiar material for Gray, whose previous films included “Little Odessa,” in which one son of a Brooklyn Jewish family is a hit-man whose profession doesn’t exactly please most of his family – and “We Own the Night,” in which one (nonJewish) family member is involved with New York-based Russian gangsters and the rest are police officers. “Cheap Thrills” (limited release) is a graphic black comedy about a down-on-his luck guy who wanders into a bar and meets a rich couple who offer him, and a buddy, money for tasks that grow increasingly violent. SARA PAXTON, 25, who began in sweet teen roles on the Disney channel, plays the female half of the rich couple. “Muppets Most Wanted” takes the puppet gang on a European tour and they unwittingly get involved in a big crime caper. Tina Fey has the biggest “real person” role. The script was co-written by NICHOLAS STOLLER, 33, who also co-wrote the hit 2008 film, “The Muppets”. The success of that film revived then-waning interest in the Muppets. Kosher Bachelorette ANDI DORFMAN, 26, the Atlanta attorney who dramatically verbally trashed Juan Pablo Galvais on the latest season of “The Bachelor,” has been named the titular star of the upcoming season “The Bachelorette.” She’ll be the first Jewish woman to be “the Bachelorette.”
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The 2014 Olympics Finale – Help the Review Jewish Sports Review magazine comes out six times a year. It is the painstaking, time-consuming, ‘no-profit’ work of two retired public employees and it is the most accurate source, by far, on who is Jewish in high school, college, and pro sports. So much of the Jewish media gets it wrong on “who is Jewish?” or they just never check. Without the Review, this situation would be even worse. So, I urge you to keep this pure “labor-oflove” alive by subscribing to this print-only publication. Also, if you know a local athlete to be Jewish – let them know. Trust me, it is really ‘cool’ to find out who is Jewish on your local high school teams – and whether any Jews are now playing for a college that you, or somebody in your family went to. For years, the Review and this writer have shared info, with one exception: the Review editors won’t tell anyone in advance which athletes at an Olympic Games are Jewish. They save that info for the first Review issue after the Games. The March/April issue of the Review lists the following Jewish Olympic athletes from countries other than Israel. (Olympic athletes marked with an asterisk were previously identified in this column as Jewish athletes at the Games.) AUSTRALIA: ANNA SEGAL, 27. She finished 4th in the finals of Ski Slope style (freestyle) skiing; Canada: DYLAN MOSCOVITCH*, 29, won a team silver medal in team pairs free-skating. He and his partner, Kristen Moore-Towers, finished fifth in the individual pairs’ competition. United States: JASON BROWN*;19, won a bronze medal in team figure skating. He finished 9th in the individual figure skating competition; SIMON SHNAPIR*, 26, was also awarded a bronze medal in team figure skating. He, and his partner, Marissa Castelli, took 9th place in the individual pairs competition; TAYLOR GOLD, 20, placed 8th in the snowboard half-pipe competition; Taylor’s sister, ARIELLE GOLD, 17, suffered an injury while practicing at Sochi and didn’t compete in the snowboarding halfpipe, as scheduled; JARED GOLDBERG*, 22, finished 15th in the men’s Super Combined Downhill skiing event; NOAH HOFFMAN, 24, finished 31st in the 15KM Cross-Country ski event; and JESSICA JEROME, 27, of Jacksonville, FL, placed 10th in the finals of the ski jumping (“normal hill”) competition.
FROM THE PAGES 150 Y EARS A GO We passed through the business establishment of Benjamin Simon, Jr., and were agreeably satisfied in seeing how far a business can be perfected. Mr. Simon has on hand a stock of ready made clothing, which is as fine and neat in workmanship, style, and material as any custom tailor can furnish. He must be splendidly successful if he proceeds in this style of manufacturing. It is Young America inthe clothing trade. Boarding house by Mrs. H. Harris, formerly of Nashville, TN.No. 109 Fifth Street, between Vine and Race Streets, Cincinnati, OH. Superior accommodations offered to transient and permanent boarders. – April 15, 1864
125 Y EARS A GO Bernhard Adler, one of the early Jewish settlers in Cincinnati was called to his eternal rest at the ripe old age of 85 years, at 3:15pm on Friday, March 15. He was an honorable and useful man, and as long as his strength permitted an active and useful member of the Jeiwsh community. He leaves a large family of children and grandchildren to cherish his memory. Several of our well known Jewish young people (masked) went calling on their friends in carriages Purim eve. Their costumes were all very neat and novel, and the evening was pleasantly spent as well by those on whom they called as by themselves. Rabbi Davidson united in marriage this week, on March 19, Mr. Edward Rind and Miss Rachael Blattner, and on March 20, Jacob C. Harris and Miss Sarah Tuch. Mr. May Fechheimer has been asked to become a candidate for Mayor, but he has declined, as he has no ambition to enter the political arena – March 21, 1889
100 Y EARS A GO Miss Esther Ransohoff, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Ransohoff, has been chosen as one of the twenty-four members of the sophomore class who will carry the “Vassar daisy chain” at the commencement exercises in June. By the will of the late Behr Manischewitz, his five sons are commanded to give ten percent of their annual income to charity, the 10 percent to come out of the profits of the matzos bakery; forty percent of this amount is to be distributed to Cincinnati charities and 60 percent to charities and schools in Palestine. The value of Manischewitz’s estate is estimated at $150,000, created out of the manufacture of matzos in 22 years. Manischewitz leaves outright to
charity $15,000, of which $9,000 goes to Palestine and $6,000 to Cincinnati organizations. The Hebrew Free School of Cincinnati receives $3,000. A $3000 bequest is made to a rabbinical school in Palestine. Mr. and Mrs. J.C. Harris of The Daleford, 3318 Reading Rd., Avondale, Cincinnati, will be at home, Sunday, March 22, 1914, in honor of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. No cards. –
75 Y EARS A GO March 19, 1914 The wedding of Miss Geraldine Miroff, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Miroff, to Mr. Hyman B. Klayman, took place Sunday, March 19th at the Hotel Sinton. They are honeymooning in Pensacola, FL. For the sixth straight semester, Sigma Alpha Mu has won the O.D.K. scholarhship cup at the University of Cincinnati, leading eligible fraternities with an average grade of 4.060. Phi Beta Delta was third. Mrs. Meyer Oettinger regrets that she will not be at home to her friends on the occasion of her 86th birthday, Tuesday, March 28th. Miss Nora Ettlinger, 65, of 3615 Clifton Ave., retired teacher, passed away Thursday, March 16th at the Good Samaritan Hospital, following a lingering illness. For approximately 20 years, Miss Ettlinger was a teacher of Latin and English at Hughes High School. She is survived by three brothers, Isaac, Max, and Sam Ettlinger, and two sisters, Clara and Selma, all of Cincinnati. Services were held Friday at the Weil Funeral Home. Interment was in United Jewish Cemetary. –
50 Y EARS A GO March 23, 1939 Mr. and Mrs. Irvin Schwartz (Ida Perry), 8081 Debonair Ct., welcome a daughter, Beth Ann, Friday, March 6. The infant has a brother, Barry, and two sisters, Frances and Julie. The grandparents are Mr. and Sam Schwartz and Mrs. Ruth Perry. Mr. and Mrs. Sylvan (Beryl Kaplan) Reisenfeld, 3680 Jeffrey Ct., welcome a son, Bradley Aaron, Sunday, March 15. The infant has a brother, Douglas Michael. The grandparents are Dr. and Mrs. Albert Kaplan and Mr. and Mrs. David A. Reisenfeld. The paternal great grandparents are Mr. Max Shone and Mrs. Edith Greenstein. Mr. Louis Weiner, 1947 Seymour Avenue, wishes to thank Rabbi Greenfield, his family and
friends for their good wishes, cards and gifts during his recent stay in the hospital. He now is recuperating at home. – March 19,
25 Y EARS A GO 1964 Dr. Richard and Beth (Holtman) Goldfarb announce the birth of a son, Micah Bryan, Feb. 16. Micah has a brother, Jared Loryn. Maternal grandparents are Roz and Marty Holtzman. Paternal grandparents are Teri and Lee Goldfarb. Great grandmothers are Miriam Libby and Ida Eckman. Jean and Robert Shokler are pleased to announce the Bar Mitzvah of their son, Eric Leon, on Saturday, March 25, at 10:45am at Rockdale Temple. Eric is the grandson of Miriam Newstate and the late Norvin Newstate, and Fred Skokler and Sylvia Shokler. About 250 grandparents, guests, and students celebrated Shabbat together at a breakfast event for Yavneh’s preschool recently. Grandparents were treated to a special preschool musical presentation as well as the lighting of the candles and the kiddush by the youngsters. As one grandparent said, “This is no greater nachas than the one of seeing your grandchildren learn, enjoy themselves, and follow the traditions of our people.” The children were prepared for the presentation by the preschool teachers and assistants: Marianne Niditch, Judith Clark, Mary Lee Sirkin, Joan Baggs, Renee Frankel, Salley Loftspring, LeeAnn Varon, Karen Rozzi and
10 Y EARS A GO Lois Goodman. – March 23, 1989 Sarah Schneider, daughter of Dr. Thomas and Sally Schneider, will celebrate becoming a Bat Mitzvah Saturday, March 27 at Adath Israel Congregation. Ray Marcus Cook, age 87, died March 19, 2004 (26 Adar, 5764). She is predeceased by her husband, Rabbi Samuel Cook. She is survived by her children, Rabbis Michael and Judith Chessin Cook, and Joel D. and Christine Cook. Evan Schwartz, son of Jamie and Brian Schwartz, will celebrate becoming a Bar Mitzvah Saturday, March 27 at Rockdale Temple. Benjamin Kushner, son of Dr. Jon and Gail Kushner, will celebrate becoming a Bar Mitzvah Saturday, March 27 at Plum Street Temple. March 25, 2004
COMMUNITY DIRECTORY / CLASSIFIEDS • 19
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
COMMUNITY DIRECTORY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS ORGANIZATIONS Access (513) 373-0300 • jypaccess.org Big Brothers/Big Sisters Assoc. (513) 761-3200 • bigbrobigsis.org Camp Ashreinu (513) 702-1513 Camp at the J (513) 722-7258 • mayersonjcc.org Camp Chabad (513) 731-5111 • campchabad.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 •camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 754-3100 • cedarvillage.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Cincinnati Community Kollel (513) 631-1118 • kollel.shul.net Cincinnati Community Mikveh (513) 351-0609 •cincinnatimikveh.org Eruv Hotline (513) 351-3788 Fusion Family (513) 703-3343 • fusionnati.org Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (Miami) (513) 523-5190 • muhillel.org Hillel Jewish Student Center (UC) (513) 221-6728 • hillelcincinnati.org Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati 513-961-0178 • jcemcin.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) 214-1200 Jewish Information Network (513) 985-1514 JVS Career Services (513) 936-WORK (9675) • www.jvscinti.org Plum Street Temple Historic Preservation Fund (513) 793-2556 Shalom Family (513) 703-3343 • myshalomfamily.org
CPAC from page 6 loyalty of the GOP elite on the boards of organizations like the ACU that project a mainstream mix of conservative fiscal and social policies. Paul’s speech was the best attended and best received by attendees – especially among college students – than any during the entire conference, which also included a keynote address by former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who read from a “Dr. Seuss” book to rail against Democrats. Key points in Paul’s address focused on the ideals of liberty and freedom, referencing National Security Agency wire-tapping programs to military drone strikes, an issue on which he conducted a filibuster on the Senate floor last year. “Will we sit idly by and let our rights be trampled on?” he asked. “Will we be like lemmings, rushing to the comfort of Big Brother’s crushing embrace, or will we stand like men and women
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 CONGREGATIONS Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 984-3393 • btzbc.com Beth Israel Congregation (513) 868-2049 • bethisraelcongregation.net B’nai Tikvah Chavurah (513) 284-5845 • rabbibruce.com Congregation Beth Adam (513) 985-0400 • bethadam.org Congregation B’nai Tzedek (513) 984-3393 • btzbc.com Congregation Ohav Shalom (513) 489-3399 • ohavshalom.org Congregation Sha’arei Torah (513) 620-8080 • shaareitorahcincy.org Congregation Shevet Achim (513) 426-8613 • shevetachimohio.com Congregation Zichron Eliezer 513-631-4900 • czecincinnati.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 Shevet Achim, (513) 602-7801 • shevetachimohio.com Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com
(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 Kulanu (Reform Jewish High School) (513) 262-8849 • kulanucincy.org Regional Institute Torah & Secular Studies (513) 631-0083 Rockwern Academy (513) 984-3770 • rockwernacademy.org Sarah’s Place (513) 531-3151 • sarahsplacecincy.com Yeshivas Lubavitch High School of Cincinnati (513) 631-2452 • ylcincinnati.com ORGANIZATIONS 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 BBYO (513) 722-7244 • mayersonjcc.org 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 (937) 886-9566 • jwv.org NA’AMAT (513) 984-3805 • naamat.org National Council of Jewish Women (513) 891-9583 • ncjw.org ORT America (216) 464-3022 • ortamerica.org State of Israel Bonds (513) 793-4440 • israelbonds.com
EDUCA EDUCATION Chai Tots Early Childhood Center
of character and say, ‘We are free and no man, no matter how wellintentioned, will take our freedom from us?’” Among Jewish attendees backing Paul was Joseph Strauss, 24. “I think that his message is the most refined message that traditionally isn’t reached by the Republican Party,” said Strauss, a consultant and native of Washington, DC, who spends half the year in West Virginia. “I think it’s the most expansive message of liberty and freedom. I think that that’s attractive to everyone and I think that the outreach would provide for a larger voter base than we normally have access to.” Strauss said that although Paul raised eyebrows back in September by apparently suggesting in an interview that hawkish Republicans were backing military action because of concern for Israel and the Jewish people, he could tolerate the senator’s isolationist approach. In Strauss’s view, presidential intervention in conflicts around the globe has only led to mistakes.
“I’ve watched president after president – whether on the right or the left – stumble in foreign policy,” he said. “They’re always supposed to be these experts and they hire all these academia types and consistently they underperform.” Rabbi Yitzhok Tendler, cofounder of the Young Jewish Conservatives, acknowledged a divide in the part of the Jewish community that hews close to conservative politics, saying that those who tend to identify as Zionist side more with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) – who finished a distant second in last weekend’s straw poll – but that Paul appeals to the younger generation. “Young people in general identify with those [libertarian] ideas and typically identify with people who express their beliefs in an articulate and unambiguous fashion,” said Tendler. “Though the more strongly Zionist young Jews identify, the more likely they will have questions about Rand Paul’s foreign policy.”
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business@ americanisraelite.com or call 513-621-3145 RABBI from page 6 desperate to attract the under-40 set, many congregations eschew hiring older rabbis. “Age discrimination starts earlier than it ever has before,” Schoenberg says. “The assumption is, if I hire someone who’s 30, all those who are 30 and live in the neighborhood will come to the synagogue. But it might very well be that what a synagogue needs is a rabbi who is a good educator, and a good educator might be 45 years old.” You’re open to a job outside the pulpit? Terrific, because by choice or compulsion, more rabbis than ever are working in day schools, on college campuses, as hospital and military chaplains, in Jewish organizations, even at Jewish community centers. The bad news is job growth in those areas has stalled. Blame the Great Recession. Now, let’s talk about why you want to be a rabbi. Is it the pursuit of scholarship? If so, you might not get what being a rabbi is all about: Most American rabbinical schools are placing more emphasis on leadership and professional training, not just Talmud and Torah study. “A rabbi is not just a religious leader, but CEO of the synagogue,” says Rabbi Ronald Schwarzberg, Y.U.’s director of rabbinic placement. “So much of their job is working with people, being available to people, responding to people,” says Rabbi Dan Judson, director of professional development and placement at Hebrew College. “It’s not necessarily about the best piece of Torah learning they can come up with.” At JTS, half of the program’s
WOMEN from page 10 on the streets of Tel Aviv. A crowd formed as one young man in a white shirt and large, black, knit kippah began to scream. “Really? What else do you want to do, have a circumcision?” he yelled before two friends pulled him away. “Maybe you’ll
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(513) 531-9600 final three years is devoted to professional and pastoral skills, including communications and nonprofit management. You’ll also have to get a master’s degree. Wherever you go, expect to intern – and not just at synagogues. "Over the last 20 years, the movement has been toward field education," says Rabbi Daniel Nevins, dean of the rabbinical school at JTS. "That’s more time out in the community, whether doing critical pastoral education in hospitals or internships in synagogues and schools and camps and agencies." I don’t want to sound like your dad, but have you thought about your long-term future? Rabbinic tenure has fallen by the wayside, making rabbi jobs far less secure than in the past, according to Jonathan Sarna, a historian of American Judaism at Brandeis University. Still want to be a rabbi? Fantastic! It’s really a calling, isn’t it? That’s how Sam Taylor feels. “Early on in college I discovered I have a love of teaching, of people, of Judaism and Torah. I don’t think I’d be satisfied with accounting,” says Taylor, who will be graduating Y.U.’s rabbinical program this June. Was Taylor nervous about finding a job? You bet. That’s why he did rabbinic internships, summer programs and fellowships. It paid off: He’s accepted a position in his native London, as an assistant rabbi at Western Marble Arch Synagogue. “A lot of it is you just got to have faith in the hand of God,” Taylor says. “Faith counts for a lot.”
do that one day.” By time the women were ready to close up, the Chabad tables had opened, flanking Women of the Wall’s booth on either side. Each side, for the most part, left the other alone, but perhaps the Chabadniks were a bit jealous. Never in recent memory had a tefillin table in central Tel Aviv gotten so much attention.
20 • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT / BOOK REVIEW
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Diogenes Theatre Klezmer takes Kiev: Bringing Jewish Company presents “BIBI” music to revolutionary ears at the Aronoff Center Telegenic and media savvy, an impeccable and eloquent English speaker who has become a familiar face on U.S. television and an effective advocate of the Israeli cause, Benjamin Netanyahu – Bibi – was elected Prime Minister in 2013 for a third time, after becoming, in 1996, the youngest person to hold the post. Time magazine crowned him “KING BIBI.” He conquered Israel. But will Netanyahu now make peace – or war? Bibi was written by Kalman Kivkovich. Kalman is a retired architect, artist, author and playwright. Born in Kazakhstan in 1945, Kalman lived in Poland, Israel, Italy, and – since 1973, in the U.S. He and his wife, Sandi, reside in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Bibi is directed by Drew Francher. Drew is a freelance director, fight arranger and actor, serving as a Fight Master with the Society of American Fight Directors. Bibi is played by Robert Pavlovich. A father, actor, teacher, and voice-over artist, Robert has appeared on stage in over 60 Regional, New Orleans, and Cincinnati productions. Of all is accomplishments, he is proudest of his sons, Robert, Jr, Brett, and Jason, and his partner and wife, Diane Lala. “BIBI” a one-man show, will be performed at the Aronoff Center, Jarson-Kaplan Theater, on April 29, 2014 at 7:30 pm. You’ll love him or you’ll hate him...
TRAUMA from page 9
ready for the next occasion”). According to Fruchter, the IDF borrowed aspects of the debriefing process from the U.S. and European armies, but the major shift is that rather than relying on top commanders to debrief with soldiers, officers are trained to debrief with one another, making the process immediate and accessible even in the midst of a battleground. “We will probably have a mental health gym soon in every basic training camp that will have an aspect of this neurofeedback/attention bias modification program and training in the main debriefing process to make people more resilient,” Fruchter said. Joe Goldman served in the U.S. army for 14 years and was stationed in the Middle East. He said emotion should stay off the battlefield and thinks this aspect of Fruchter’s plans make sense. But he said once a person leaves the army, if there is not an emotional debriefing, it can lead to emotional instability – something he has seen firsthand. Scott Claster, who served as an IDF platoon commander in the last Lebanon War, during which several of his comrades fell in battle, expressed similar sentiments. “It hits you after the fact,” he said, adding that the army should do better not only at making people effective in battle, but at helping them transition back into civilian life. Yehoshua Boncheck, a reservist in the Golani Brigades, said not talking about emotion plays into the testosterone of the Israeli army and translates into a macho, impatient, and nervous Israeli society. Is Fruchter worried that additional desensitization to violence, coupled with an often already traumatic army experience, may lead to increased violence among the Israeli public? “I’ve heard this claim several times before,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
Israeli youths are exposed to consistent rocket attacks. Some 1.6 percent of regular IDF troops and 0.7 percent of reservists were diagnosed with PTSD, and such diagnoses in other militaries worldwide ranged from 2 percent to 17 percent, according to last year’s IDF study. Col. Dr. Eyal Fruchter, head of the IDF Mental Health Department, said he does not see increased violent tendencies among members of the army, but his recent work in attention bias modification supports Shahar’s research about desensitization. Fruchter began testing strategies designed to prevent and ameliorate PTSD symptoms in soldiers after he saw that military deployment to combat zones involved exposure to trauma at a higher-than-average rate and was leading to an increasing number of PTSD cases. Most recently, Fruchter translated cognitive-neuroscience knowledge and attention bias modification research into a novel computerized training tool that helps make soldiers more attuned to words like death, battle and gun. The test, easily delivered to soldiers during different stages of the deployment cycle, is now being used during basic training. Fruchter told JNS that soldiers who are desensitized to trauma are less prone to PTSD or anxiety and more prone to action in the field. Similarly, Fruchter has revamped the army’s debriefing process to focus more on action than emotion. There are three parts to the process. First, the soldiers discuss what they have seen (for example: “I was sitting on the roof and I saw a bomber come from the right side”), then what they did (“I was on the roof and I was trying to connect with Moses on the radio”), and finally what they will do next (“Now I am going to clean my machine gun to get
(JTA) – Kiev’s Maidan, or Independence Square, has been the heart of the Ukrainian protest movement that last week brought about President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster after deadly street battles. Russian officials and other Yanukovych supporters have accused the Maidan protesters of being fascists and neoNazis. But while Ukrainian ultranationalists, including some who espouse anti-Semitism, have been a presence at the Maidan, Jews also participated in the politically diverse protest movement. Earlier this week, Tablet Magazine reported that the Pushkin Klezmer Band played late last year in the Maidan to a crowd of protesters. JTA tracked down the band’s clarinetist and vocalist, Dmitry Gerasimov, and asked him to share his experience at the Maidan. The following are his words, translated from the Russian by JTA’s Talia Lavin. KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) – At the Maidan, your clothes quickly start smelling like a campfire; in the metro, you can figure out who has been there right away by the smell. We played at the Maidan on Dec. 23, on a Monday. Before, I hadn’t been able to get to the stage for two weeks, until I found the phone number of the coordinator for an organization called The Last Barricade. We were supposed to start at 6 p.m., but we were forced to stand in a cold dressing-room tent under the stage for more than two hours while other musicians, members of parliament and activists spoke. There were only a few people in the square in front of the stage; I felt that the joyous, carnival time on the Maidan had passed. The mood was anxious. What was happening on the stage seemed unimportant; I don’t remember what the speakers talked about. I had already played at the Maidan with different musicians, and playing with the Pushkin Klezmer Band there was my idea. There were a few reasons: I am a citizen of Russia, but I have lived in Kiev for five years already, and I love this city. What happens here is very close to my heart. Naturally, I am on the side of people who have rebelled against indignity, police brutality and total corruption. I had gone many times to the Maidan and tried to help as I could. I have many friends there, and the majority of my Jewish acquaintances actively support the movement. So first of all, I wanted to cheer up and warm the tired, frozen people – we play wedding-style, very cheerful dance music.
Courtesy of Vadym Yunyk
Dmitry Gerasimov raises his clarinet as he plays with the Pushkin Klezmer Band.
“Very soon everyone was dancing, shouting “Great job!” People didn’t want to let us off the stage. In the end, we sang an old song from the Bund in Yiddish: “Down With the Police.” It was great – the Maidan received us very well.” And then the Jewish theme: Many members of the mass media are cultivating a myth that the people standing at the Maidan are neo-Nazis, Russophobes and Judeophobes. This is untrue, and a Jewish ensemble onstage at the Maidan is the best way to refute these rumors. And for that part of the public that actually doesn’t love Jews very much, this is an excellent inoculation against anti-Semitism. Some of the musicians shared my views, some of them came to play just because I asked. And there was, of course, also a desire to play in front of a massive new audience. When we went onto the stage and I said into the microphone that we were going to play Jewish music, a murmur of dissatisfaction passed through the crowd. And when we began to play, people didn’t know how to react; it’s noticeable on the YouTube video of the performance. The people standing closest to the stage were primarily people who, judging by their faces and clothes, had arrived from the villages. There were many elderly women and men, and there were
also youths. They were shifting from foot to foot. But after the second song, they began to smile and applaud. We played a few klezmer songs, a pair of songs in Romanian and Romani – the language of Gypsies – and we sang an Odessan Jewish song in Russian. Very soon everyone was dancing, shouting “Great job!” People didn’t want to let us off the stage. In the end, we sang an old song from the Bund in Yiddish: “Down With the Police.” It was great – the Maidan received us very well. It’s hard for me to describe my feelings. There was a lot of adrenalin. In the beginning, I was a bit frightened that they wouldn’t accept us. And we had to overcome an initial rejection. But when our music turned out to be relevant and real, I was very happy about it! While we played, the leader of the Svoboda party, Oleh Tyahnybok – who was famous, earlier, for his anti-Semitic statements – was waiting backstage. He appeared right after us.
FIRST PERSON • 21
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
Tree care as a metaphor for self care Incidentally Iris
by Iris Ruth Pastor The days drag on. My husband remains in convalescent mode. Well-meaning friends pull me aside to tell me I look tired. Bone tired. No kidding? I try to distract myself from the weariness. I branch out of my normal pattern of recreational reading and delve into the mystery genre. After one week of re-reading the first three chapters of my new mystery book four times, I abandon it for chic lit. A health crisis calls for fantasy and romance, not noir themes of drugs, betrayal and murder. To distract me from my husband’s grueling days of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy, I delve headfirst into my own form of therapy: retail therapy via the internet - a perfect fit for a care giver with time and travel constraints. A few taps to the keyboard and Converse upright sneakers - one pair in black and one pair in red – will soon be appearing on my front porch. I spend an afternoon by my husband’s bedside occupying myself with creatively imagining the most bohemian outfits I can conjure up to complement my new sneakers. This works wonders for my creative juices but all NBA from page 5 pole costs an estimated $2,600, she said. Mike Bass, the NBA’s executive vice president for communications, said Thursday that the league will help underwrite the cost. The NBA is “pleased that [Gottlieb] is being recognized with an historical marker,” Bass said, adding that “any time we can be involved with recognizing the great contributions to our game, we appreciate and welcome the opportunity.” Harvey Pollack, director of statistical information for the Philadelphia 76ers and someone who knew Gottlieb well from their Warriors’ days, had approached the 76ers and the NBA to recommend honoring Gottlieb with the marker.
those funky tops, bottoms, belts and scarves I order wreak havoc on my dwindling check book balance. Reluctantly I desist from this activity. My next foray into escapism involves skin care. I figure maybe I can allay the rampant ravages of stress attacking my blotchy face and regain some rosiness. My daughter-in-law’s friend - a bona fide skin care specialist - recommends an array of actions to preserve what is left of my quickly fading bloom: exfoliating daily. Eating plenty of avocados. Juicing. Staying hydrated. Professional facials. And checking out skin care websites such as Dermalogica.com. Information overload strikes quickly - the whole skin care scene is simply too daunting to navigate at this point. Forgoing my nightly diet Sun Kist soda and instead gulping down 8 oz of bottled water is all I can manage at this point. Diversion and direction come from an unexpected source: a tall, middle-aged husky fellow with a full beard, attired in flannel shirt, ripped jeans, combat boots and a straw cowboy hat which is perched precariously on his head. While his crew spends six hours re-invigorating my trees pruning, trimming, cutting, and fertilizing - he educates me on the proper care of these living organisms. He points out a tree trunk with a lost limb. “Long ago,” he notes, “this limb had been removed properly,” he remarks. “It was causing undue stress on the rest of the tree. Because this limb has been removed properly, the tree will completely heal and close around the wound. If the scar does not heal properly, water sets in the cavity and, after a time, will slowly rot the inside of the trunk.”
He looks at me intently. “It's ok to have scars. They just must heal properly.” “Look up at the canopy of limbs overhead,” he instructs me. “It's important to clean out the sucker limbs so that the wind can blow freely through and the tree won't topple when in the eye of a storm. Suckers catch the wind and take nutrients from the rest of the tree, especially the tree tops.” He looks at me intently. “It’s okay to allow for some hangerson, but too many suckers use up the nutrients and then the tree begins to die from the top down.” “One more thing,” he tosses over his shoulder as he climbs into the cab of his truck. “The size of the canopy gives a suggestion of the size of the tree’s surface roots. Take care of the roots – they are reputed to hold all the tree’s strength.” I head back to my husband’s rehab room refreshed, energized and more hopeful than I have felt in days. Trees are living organisms who naturally know how to survive. We humans should take a few clues and cues from them: allow ourselves to heal from within, not with a quick outer fix shed the excess baggage to lighten our load honor and draw strength from our roots - the part of us that holds our power and potency And don't be reluctant to take advice from a weathered, bearded arborist who draws beautiful metaphors between caring for trees and surviving life’s perils.
The woman who made it happen, Morello, is a historian who has written books and articles on organized crime. Of the approximately 40 historical markers Morello said her work has yielded, Gottlieb’s will be the third Jewish-American (following Revolutionary War patriot Haym Solomon and Rabbi Israel Goldstein) and the fifth in sports (the others are Connie Mack, Roy Campanella, Shibe Park and AfricanAmerican baseball). “What it means to me is that [Gottlieb is] a Jewish-American who’s getting this marker, and Jewish-Americans are underrepresented with historical markers in Philadelphia,” said Morello, a Catholic. “I believe in my heart that Jews who have achieved what Eddie Gottlieb did should be on historical
markers. When you’re talking about Gottlieb, you’re talking about achievement. I’m happy he got it.” Morello has traced her roots to 17th-century Sicily, and said her family research indicates that her ancestors were Jewish before being forced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition. “I’m not of the Jewish faith, but I’m of the Jewish bloodline,” she said. As to more contemporary history, Morello sees historical markers in her state, and generally, as bringing the valued past to anyone willing to gaze at them. “These markers are a form of public history,” Morello said. “It doesn’t take anything to learn what these markers show.”
Keep Coping, Iris Ruth Pastor PS: My husband is recovering from two back surgeries involving an epidural abscess and is expected to make a full recovery.
WADI ATIR from page 9 The Arnow family, which funds the Robert H. Arnow Center for Bedouin Studies and Development, has continued to support the project; the government of Israel has heavily invested in the project too, as has the Jewish National Fund and other foundations and private donors. The total cost of actually implementing the project is an estimated $6 million. The building process has not been without obstacles, said Alnabari, noting that only now, seven years later, are all of Wadi Atir’s permits secured and the land prepared for building. He said the bureaucracy was challenging on all fronts. There are issues of mistrust between the Bedouin communities and the Israeli government, and there are deep tribal divides among the Negev’s 200,000 Bedouin people. “This is very politically and culturally sensitive,” said Arnow. “The climate in the Negev is extremely tense. But this project is one of its brightest spots.” Why? Nothing like the developing Wadi Atir exists in the world, according to BenEli. While there are “fabulous sustainable projects around the world,” he said, those initiatives tend to focus on one aspect of sustainability. Wadi Atir is systemic and holistic in that it will bring together the Sustainability Lab’s five principles of sustainability related to the material domain, the economic domain, the social domain, the spiritual domain, and the domain of life. Additionally, the village is aimed at building an economic future for the Bedouin. At Wadi Atir, infrastructure is being built to leverage Bedouin traditional values, experience, and aspirations. In the farm, Bedouin workers will grow a mixed herd of goats and sheep organically for the production of a range of dairy products, including unique Bedouin cheeses that don’t require refrigeration. Another area will harness Bedouin medicinal wisdom, by cultivating medicinal plants and herbs and developing a line of health products for sale on the mainstream market. Wadi Atir will reintroduce nutritious, indigenous vegetables and create a hub for ecotourism, and Ben-Eli also hopes it will offer a graduate level certificate program. Most of the Bedouins could not handle the paperwork to market their products in Israel to people outside their immediate area, to obtain health certificates and, potentially, even
kosher certifications. Through Wadi Atir, said Alnabari, all of this will be possible. Additionally, Wadi Atir will serve as a model for IsraelBedouin collaboration. “It is good for the people,” said Alnabari. “It makes them feel good as citizens. It makes them proud to be part of Israel.” On a recent Tuesday in March, Wadi Atir director Yunis Nbarey unlocked the gate to the village. The land, gorgeous and expansive, spreads for 400 dunams (99 acres). Nbarey became involved as a volunteer when the project was in its infancy. He said that at that stage he clocked dozens of hours to rally the community and move the initiative forward. He doesn’t have a high school degree, and before this he has never served in a leadership role. Nbarey said his family became frustrated with the time he was spending working on Wadi Atir in its infancy, but Nbarey persisted. He smiles quietly at the fruits of his labor, at land cultivated, planted, and prepared to hold the soon-to-be physical structures that will open project Wadi Atir. “I saw the influence it could have on the children. They see Wadi Atir and they know that if they have a plan, if they work hard, then they can make their dreams happen,” said Nbarey. “First the idea was just a raindrop,” Alnabari said. “Now it is raining.” Alnabari said the team, which consists of 12 staff and as many as 50 or 60 contract workers, should complete the building phase by the end of 2014. After that, the ecosystem will truly come alive and could reach as many as 70,000 Bedouin in some capacity. “Everyone thoughts this was a complete pipe dream. Most people said it would take 10 years to get through the bureaucracy. It took us half that time. … Ben-Eli, Dr. Alnabari and the Bedouin community have put in blood, sweat and tears, and we’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us,” said Arnow. “We know there are problems,” Nbarey said. “There will be more challenges. But we aren’t interested in the people who will look at Wadi Atir from the outside and judge us. We don’t care about those who say, ‘I am on the government’s side,’ or ‘I side with the Bedouin.’ … We want to go beyond the arguments. We simply want to have the tools to fix the community. The tools are in Wadi Atir.”
22 • NEWS PUTIN from page 8 Gorin, a Chabad rabbi and chairman of Moscow’s $50 million Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, credits Putin personally for providing state funding for the institution, which opened in 2012. Putin also donated a month’s wages to the museum. “Putin has facilitated the opening of synagogues and Jewish community centers across Russia, at the Jewish community’s request. This has had a profound effect on Jewish life, especially outside Moscow,” Gorin said. “He instituted annual meetings with Jewish community leaders and attends community events. His friendship with the Jewish community has given it much prestige and set the tone for local leaders.” Putin’s relationship with the Jewish community is consistent with his larger strategy for governing Russia. His brand of Russian nationalism extends beyond just ethnic Russians to include the country’s many minorities. Putin has carefully cultivated relationships with Russia’s many subgroups and regions as a means of projecting his government’s authority. Mikhail Chlenov, secretary general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, says Putin’s pro-Jewish tendencies are part of the reason that anti-Semitic incidents are relatively rare in Russia. In 2013, the Russian Jewish Congress documented only 10 anti-Jewish SPANISH from page 8 community; other rabbinical certification of Sephardic ancestry; or knowledge of Ladino, the JudeoSpanish language. “Spanish nationality is a right, not a privilege,” said Spain’s Justice Minister, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, in a speech last month in Madrid to a visiting delegation of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “The government will have no discretion in conferring citizenship once the law is passed.” In both Spain and Portugal, officials have said that recent moves to grant citizenship to Sephardic Jews stem from regret for the murder,
HADASSAH from page 10 committee hearing on the crisis, the health and finance ministries appointed a joint panel to investigate. Recommendations are expected to be released this month. In Kaplan’s view, the hospital’s problems stem from a bad deal the hospital was pressured into reaching with Israel’s government-funded health insurance companies. Israeli hospitals typically give volume discounts to the companies in an effort to attract more business, but Hadassah’s appear to be larger than the average. In 2013, the hospital gave the insurance companies an average discount of 26 percent. A 2010 govern-
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attacks and acts of vandalism, compared to dozens in France. Under Putin, harsh laws have led to a crackdown on ultranationalist groups that once had flourished in Russia. At the same time, anti-extremism legislation has been used as well to prosecute political protesters, including the punk rock collective Pussy Riot. Some Russian Jews recoil at Putin’s authoritarian tendencies. Freedom of expression has been severely restricted and politically motivated prosecutions remain widespread under Putin, according to Amnesty International’s 2013 report on Russia. “Putin may be good for Jews, but he’s bad for Russia,” said Michael Edelstein, a lecturer at Moscow State University and a journalist for the L’chaim Jewish newspaper. Putin traces his earliest connection to Judaism back to his early childhood in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, when he befriended a Jewish family that lived in his apartment block. In his 2000 autobiography, Putin wrote that the unnamed family loved him and that he used to seek its company. “They were observant Jews who did not work on Saturdays and the man would study the Bible and Talmud all day long,” Putin wrote. “Once I even asked him what he was muttering. He explained to me what this book was and I was immediately interested.”
Another influential Jewish figure for Putin was his wrestling coach, Anatoly Rakhlin, who sparked the young Putin’s interest in sports and got him off the rough streets of Leningrad, where Putin would get into fights while his parents worked. At Rakhlin’s funeral last year, Putin, reportedly overcome by emotion, ditched his security detail and went on a short, solitary walk. Bronfman calls Putin’s childhood accounts “a smokescreen” and likens them to the Russian leader’s friendly gestures toward Israel, which he last visited in 2012. Putin, who already led Russia to sign a visa waiver program with Israel in 2008, said during his visit to Israel that he “would not let a million Russians live under threat,” referring sympathetically to the regional dangers facing Israel and its Russianspeaking immigrant population. But at the same time Russia has criticized European sanctions on Iran, a major Russian trading partner, and negotiated the sale of the advanced S-300 air defense system to Syria. “It’s all pragmatic with Putin," Bronfman said. "He says he regards the million Russian speakers living in Israel as a bridge connecting Russia to Israel, but when it comes to Russian interests in Syria or Iran, this friendship counts for very little.” In Israel, Putin received a guided tour of the Western Wall from Lazar, who joined Putin’s entourage – vivid-
ly illustrating the president’s close ties to the Russian branch of the Chabad movement. Zvi Gitelman, a professor of Judaic studies at the University of Michigan who studies the relationship between ethnicity and politics in the former Soviet Union, said the relationship between Putin and the Chabad organization in Russia is one of mutual convenience. Shortly after taking office, the Putin government clashed with several prominent Jewish business moguls, including Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, both of whom went into self-imposed exile. “When he went after these oligarchs, Putin sensed that this could be interpreted as anti-Semitism," Gitelman said. "He immediately, publicly, demonstratively and dramatically embraced Chabad.” Chabad, meanwhile, has expanded throughout Russia. “Chabad, with the help of Putin, is now the dominant religious expression of Judaism in a mostly nonreligious population,” Gitelman said. Putin has not been shy about using his good relations with Chabad to his advantage. Last year, he moved a collection of books known as the Schneerson Library into Gorin’s Jewish museum in an attempt to defuse a battle with the global Chabad movement. Chabad’s New York-based leaders had demanded the library’s return,
which had belonged to one of its previous grand rabbis, but Russia has refused to surrender it. The compromise was rejected by the Hasidic movement’s headquarters but defended by its Russian branch. “Putin’s suggestion came as a surprise to us, and not a very pleasant one,” Gorin recalled. “We very much wanted to stay out of the dispute.” But, he added, “when the president of Russia makes a suggestion, it is usually accepted.” Other Jewish groups, however, have had less cozy relations with the Putin government. In 2005, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the chief rabbi of Moscow, was suddenly denied entry into Russia for several weeks before he was allowed back into the country, where he has resided since 1989. No official explanation was given, but it was rumored that his banning was part of a power struggle that saw Chabad-affiliated rabbis emerge on top. Goldschmidt declined to comment on his brief exile, saying “Google has the whole story.” The preferential treatment of Chabad by Putin’s government “is creating a monolithic Jewish institutional life and preventing grass-roots development, which is the real key for Jewish rejuvenation,” said Michael Oshtrakh, a leader of the Jewish community of Yekaterinburg.
forced conversions and mass expulsions of Jews during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. Last year, Portugal passed an amendment to its citizenship law recognizing the rights of some Sephardim to apply for citizenship. Under the amendment, applicants are limited to Jews with demonstrable ties to a Portuguese Jewish community. Portuguese authorities granted the local Portuguese Jewish community sole authority to certify the Jewishness of applicants and retained full governmental discretion over whether to approve individual applications. “The government’s interlocutor needs to be as clear as possible,” said Jose Ribeiro e Castro, the
Portuguese lawmaker who coauthored the law. “Here it is the Portuguese Jewish community. Period. If they certify, we certify. It’s a matter of trust. No reason for introducing other parties because it complicates matters.” Sahar Arian, an Israeli lawyer who obtained Spanish citizenship under the 1924 law and now helps other Sephardic Jews seeking to do the same, said Spain’s existing procedures for Sephardic return have yielded few passports. To obtain her citizenship, Arian had to prove she is related to Spanish citizens who are descended from Jews who converted to Christianity. Even though Arian had relatives in Spain and could firmly establish her
lineage, her application took several years to process. Though the new legislation would simplify the process, Arian is doubtful proving such ties will be easy for most applicants. “The language of the bill is impressive,” Arian said. “But from my experience, implementation is very long and complicated.” Currently, neither Spain nor Portugal has procedures in place to handle applications. The Spanish bill still has to pass congress before it becomes law, while in Portugal officials are still working on regulations. Still, the uncertainty that surrounds the bill and warnings by knowledgeable insiders such as Arian have done little to curb the
enthusiasm of some aspirants. “We have no documentation, but I think we have a strong case, so I believe we will receive the Spanish nationality,” said Liliana Benveniste, an Argentine performer of Ladino music who, along with her husband Marcelo, plans to apply for citizenship if the law passes. Benveniste’s grandparents always considered themselves Spanish and spoke Ladino at home, which under the new law is sufficient to qualify. “When someone asked them where the family was from originally,” she said of her grandparents, “they would say, ‘We are from Cordoba.’”
ment report found that the nationwide average that year was 18 percent. According to Kaplan, the arrangement effectively penalizes Hadassah for performing more complex and expensive procedures. As a private hospital, Kaplan said Hadassah also covers employee pensions and malpractice insurance that at public hospitals are paid for by the government. “The government didn’t take care of us as it should have,” Kaplan said. “They gave overly large discounts to the providers, even though we give the same kind of service to Israelis.” The Hadassah women’s organization first noted the hospital’s dete-
riorating finances in 2008 and asked administrators to make changes. At the time, the executive vice president of the women’s organization, Barbara Goldstein, said the hospital had no idea which departments were making money and which were losing. The women’s organization funds nearly all of the hospital’s research and development budget, including $250 million toward the construction of the Davidson tower. It funds 4 percent of the hospital’s daily operations budget, and over the years also has stepped in to cover deficits in the $570 million operating budget. From 2000 to 2012, the organization gave $885 million to the hospital.
The 2008 recession and the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, which cost the women’s organization tens of millions of dollars, hurt the group’s ability to funnel large sums to the hospital. Goldstein told JTA that the women’s organization has appointed a representative to attend hospital board meetings in an effort to exercise greater oversight. But she also acknowledged that the organization’s willingness to make up for past budgetary shortfalls contributed to the current crisis. “They always think we’ll always come through,” Goldstein said. “There were many times when a director-general called and said, ‘Maccabi owes us 20 million, can we
borrow it from you?’ It’s like loaning money to kids.” Unlike his predecessors, Kaplan is not a physician. He holds a doctorate in medical administration and previously served as the CEO of Israel Aircraft Industries. He told JTA that the key to resolving the crisis is cutting staff and salaries. Goldstein predicted that Kaplan will have the hospital on a sound financial footing within five years. Hospital staffers understand that cuts will be a necessary part of the restructuring, she said. “I don’t think they’ll strike again,” Goldstein said. “Either they’re going to survive and move forward, or there’s going to be nothing.”
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