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Chief rabbi of Poland to visit for annual Hornstein lecture

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JCC welcomes Rick Lefton as Director of Development

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White House aide Jonathan Greenblatt to succeed Abe Foxman as ADL chief

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Ex-Hungarian Jewish leader’s government gig sparks talk of betrayal

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Wandering Jew: Detroit, Michigan: The lowdown on Motown

World-renowned Jewish musician coming to Cincinnati One of the biggest names in contemporary Jewish music is coming to the Queen City on November 21st and 23rd.

Those already familiar with Josh Nelson and his music will tell you that they are breathlessly awaiting his arrival and they won’t be shy to add that his visit to Cincinnati is “a pretty big deal.”

Josh Nelson is a classically trained musician, equally versed in rock, jazz and world music. A bit of a wunderkind, Josh was composing on the piano by the time he was two or three. Today, he is a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter who can perform professionally on thirteen different instruments. At a relatively young age, Josh made quite a name for himself in the music world. He has taught jazz at Boston University, served as a conductor for an international symphony, played in a popular band and, in December, Josh will be starring an Off-Broadway musical about the famous “Rockstar Rabbi”, Shlomo Carlebach.

Josh’s music, sometimes slow and soulful while, at other times, joyous and high energy, brings with it an extraordinary message of hope, unity and spirituality. Interested in music from a young age and serious about his commitment to Judaism, Josh never imagined that his two loves could be combined. That was before Camp Tevye, a Jewish camp in New Hampshire that Josh worked at in his first year of college. “Kids were singing all Josh Nelson these songs I had never heard. I was completely unexposed,” music icon Debbie Friedman, z”l.

Nelson said. “To have had no idea that Josh has performed over one thouthat world of Jewish music existed, sand shows in a variety of venues and then to be dropped into it without across the globe. There are two unique having heard it growing up, well — events that will feature Josh Nelson you hear it differently.” Josh, without here in the Queen City: a doubt, did hear it differently and Josh will join Wise Temple on embraced it whole heartedly. He went November 21 at 6:15 PM for a musicon to become a part of that “world of filled Shabbat of song and soul for all Jewish music” as a protégé of Jewish ages. Dinner will be catered, followed

by dessert and a live performance from Josh. RSVPs are required for dinner.

On Sunday, November 23 the Mayerson JCC will be hosting Josh and his entire band, the Josh Nelson Project, in a FREE community concert at 6:00 PM. The night features a fun coffee and hot chocolate bar where guests can customize their own

cup of joe with flavors, toppings and whipped cream.

Many from Cincinnati’s Jewish community had the opportunity to experience Josh Nelson live during the Union for Reform Judaism’s Biennial Convention in 2011 and 2013 and were wowed by his spiritual depth, stage presence and, of course, his music. “Everyone, of every age was clapping, singing and dancing to his music” said Karen Sim, board member of the Women for Reform Judaism, who saw Josh energize a crowd of nearly 5,000 people in San Diego in 2013. “The excitement generated at the Biennial created a groundswell of support from our community for Josh and his music. Josh Nelson was the first name on everyone’s lips when we began discussing possible artists-in-residence,” said Rabbi Sydney Henning, Assistant Rabbi at Isaac M. Wise Temple. Looking forward to seeing him perform here in Cincinnati, Sue Voos, the President of Wise Temple’s Sisterhood was the first to RSVP for his Shabbat evening with Wise Temple on November 21st. “Josh's music is spiritual yet invigorating” said Voos, “His energy and enthusiasm make his performance one to remember.”

More than simply a musician, Josh captivates a crowd with sheer charisma and stage presence before playing a single note. “Josh is an incredible entertainer who keeps the audience constantly engaged with wit and humor,” said Scott Joseph, a representative of Wise Temple’s Board of Trustees and HUC’s Board of Overseers.

Come to Wise Temple on the 21st or the Mayerson JCC on the 23rd and see what all the buzz is about. This is a unique opportunity to experience Jewish music at its very best in your own backyard.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014

JCC welcomes Rick Lefton as Director of Development The Mayerson JCC is pleased to announce that Rick Lefton has joined the JCC staff as the new Director of Development. Lefton brings a wealth of professional experience to this position, most recently as the Planned Giving Officer for the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. While remaining a part of the Federation’s Development Department team, Rick will spearhead sponsorship and fundraising opportunities for the JCC. “We are very excited to have Rick Lefton joining our team at the JCC,” said Marc Fisher, CEO of the Mayerson JCC. “As the Jewish Federation leads our communal development efforts, it is great to have a

team member on the JCC that has been trained and vetted by the Federation and its development program,” he added. “For the JCC this is a great example of how partnerships, collaboration and clarity around the roles of each of our institutions can lead to a more engaged, enriched and inspired Jewish Cincinnati.”

In his new position, Lefton will lead JCC fundraising efforts, ensuring that the organization continues to provide a diverse set of programs and services to the Jewish community and Greater Cincinnati at large. He will be responsible for managing grant requests and donor recognition and stewardship. Lefton will also coordinate the JCC Adams

Classic, the organization’s annual golf and tennis fundraising event.

“We couldn’t ask for a more qualified or enthusiastic individual to take on the important role of Director of Development,” said Debbie Brant, JCC Board President.

“Rick Lefton is truly a pillar of the community and boasts an impressive portfolio of professional and volunteer experience.”

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Lefton is a graduate of Walnut Hills High School and The Ohio State University.

Prior to his position with the Jewish Federation, he was a realtor and worked in his family’s camera shop business for 21 years. Lefton has a long

record of volunteerism, including terms on the boards of both the Mayerson JCC (1999-2002) and Jewish Family Service (2008-2010) and is currently the vice president of The Wise Temple Brotherhood.

“I am a JCC guy!” Lefton explained. “I grew up at the old JCC in Roselawn, from preschool to the men’s softball league and everything in between. I have been a volunteer at the JCC for most of my adult life, and now I get the chance to make an impact every day. I am thrilled to have this opportunity.”

Rick Lefton

Cedar Village earns top rating for its long-term nursing care unit The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have awarded Cedar Village five stars in its FiveStar rating system. It’s the first time in the rating system’s six-year history that Cedar Village has earned the top score for its long-term nursing care.

“This is an exceptional achievement by Cedar Village that required hard work and total commitment by our entire team,” said Linton Sharpnack, Cedar Village’s interim CEO and president. “We’re proud of the dedication and care that our nursing staff, rehabilitation specialists and leadership team show for our patients every day.”

CMS, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, created the easy-to-understand assessment system to help consumers, families and caregivers com-

pare nursing homes. Nursing homes with five stars, Cedar Village, are considered to have care that is “much above average quality.”

The rating system compares each nursing home – or long-term nursing care facility -- against other nursing homes in the same state as well as in the nation. The system evaluates the facilities in dozens of ways, including: How well a nursing home is caring for its residents’ physical and clinical needs; The number of hours of care provided everyday to each resident on average by the nursing staff and physical therapists; Results from the last three years of onsite health and fire safety inspections by the state.

“These scores are incredibly

hard to earn,” said Cedar Village Board Chair Barbara Reed. “We strive to provide the best care possible, and we are blessed to have some of the most caring and compassionate health care providers in all of our departments.”

CMS notes that no rating system can address all of the important factors that should be considered when choosing a nursing home for a particular person. Specialty care, such as a nursing home’s rehabilitation or dementia care programs, might be more important for one person than another.

All nursing homes certified by the CMS are included in the FiveStar system. CMS is the federal agency that runs the Medicare programs and works with the states to run the Medicaid program.

Jewish Community Relations Council creates award in honor of philanthropist, lobbyist and local icon Dick Weiland There are already 14 establishments in Cincinnati named in Cincinnatian Dick Weiland’s honor, and this spring those honors will reach 15 when the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) presents the inaugural Dick Weiland Community Relations Award at the Mayerson JCC, during the JCRC’s annual meeting in June.

The award will be given to community leaders who exemplify Dick’s ability to promote inclusion while collaborating with leaders from diverse communities to address issue facing the Greater

Cincinnati area. Nominees will be solicited from throughout the community with an advisory board selecting the winner.

“Weiland’s namesake was in perfect alignment for this award,” said Sarah Weiss, Director of JCRC. “He played a pivotal role in the Civil Rites Movement here in Cincinnati and continues to make an impact on the local, national, and global community after more than 50 years. We hope the award will inspire others to emulate Dick’s ability to build broad coalitions to solve community challenges.”

Weiland works closely with 40 non-profits. During his many decades of advocacy he’s been recognized for securing Holocaust reparations for surviors throughout the world, and he marchedwith non-violent protestors for voting rights for African Americans. He also founded Halom House in 1982 to provide services for adults with developmental disabilities.

“I’m incredibly honored that this award will be used to give recognition to other activists in our community,” said Weiland.

Employment Opportunity Jewish Family Service in Cincinnati has an immediate opening for a Jewish Teacher Development Specialist.

Please go to www.jfscinti.org to see the complete job description.

If interested, please apply at hr@jcincy.org.

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Chief rabbi of Poland to visit Cincinnati for annual Hornstein lecture there were no Jews left in Poland except a few thousand elderly… by the mid-1990s we knew there were many more Jews than were previously believed but it was not clear if they wanted to express their Jewish identity. Today we know that some are expressing their Jewish identity and the challenge is to give them ways to express their identity in a meaningful way to themselves.”

Adath Israel’s Jarson Education Center Hebrew resource room in action to read words and even play Scrabble in Hebrew. At times this is review, and at times the learning is brand-new. Each time they enter the Resource Room, students are sure to leave with more knowledge than they had before.

Having Hannah in the room with her provides Toby with the opportunity to spend time with more children than in previous years. Hannah and Toby use the computers, magnetic letters, bingo, Jeopardy and more to make learning Hebrew fun. One student, Lilly, says, “My favorite part of the Resource Room is doing the matching letters game on the board using foam letters”.

Each year Toby leads the school in a community project,

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“There’s a rainbow of possibilities and ways to learn in the Resource Room”, says Hannah. The goal of the Resource Room is to increase students’ skill levels and to help them feel good about their ability to read Hebrew. 2nd-7th graders visit the Resource Room for about 15-20 minutes per week.

Toby Samet joined Adath Israel in 1966 and was quickly asked to teach in the school. She has taught the children for fortyeight years. Toby often marvels that she has taught many of the current students’ parents and is now starting to teach grandchildren of some of her former students.

VOL. 161 • NO. 17 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2014 20 CHESHVAN 5775 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 5:04 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 6:05 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 BETH KOTZIN SAUNI LERNER Assistant Editors

Cedar Village will again offer free memory screenings to help detect dementia Free memory screenings will be offered on Tuesday, Nov. 18 at Cedar Village Retirement Community in Mason as a way to promote early detection of memory problems, including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

The screenings will be offered to the public from 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m.

Appointments can be made by contacting Kim Bauer, Cedar Village’s director of social services. Walk-ins are welcome by going to Cedar Village’s reception desk.

The screenings are part of National Memory Screening Day, which were introduced in 2003 by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.

“Many memory problems can be treated,” Bauer said.

“The key is to detect the problem and seek medical help.”

Memory screenings make sense for people of almost any age, including those who are

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concerned about memory loss or experiencing warnings signs of dementia, such as trouble finding words, struggling to complete familiar actions or confusion about time, place or people as well as those whose relatives and friends have noticed related changes in them or who believe they are at risk due to a family history of Alzheimer’s disease or related illness.

Screenings also are appropriate for anyone who does not have a concern, but who want to see how their memory is now for future comparision.

The screenings, which take about 10 minutes, consist of a series of questions and tasks.

The screenings are not a diagnosis, but can suggest whether a medical evaluation would be helpful.

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and this year Hannah will assist.

Usually it is a tzedakah project benefitting a variety of organizations. This year’s project is entitled “We Are All Stars at Adath Israel.” Using different colored kippot, made from different fabrics, which have been donated by congregants, students will choose a variety of triangles cut from these kippot and will put them together to fabricate colorful, beautiful Jewish stars (Magen David.) These will be hung up in the school for a while, then taken home as a reminder to the student that they are always stars at Adath Toby and Hannah work with approximately twenty-five students on Sundays, and approximately ten on Wednesdays.

The American Israelite

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The Resource Room, a Hebrew Enrichment classroom at Adath Israel’s Jarson Education Center, is an important part of our learning experience: it’s where the students come to work on their Hebrew language and reading skills. Veteran teacher Toby Samet is one of the Hebrew enrichment teachers. She makes sure the children have a large variety of learning adventures. There is always something new and fun and exciting happening.

The Resource Room is where 2nd through 7th grade students practice their Hebrew with Toby, and Madricha (teaching assistant) Hannah. They use their time there to learn to read the letters, recognize the vowels, put them together

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the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and in 2000 was named the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw and Lodz. He has held the position of Chief Rabbi of Poland since 2004.

At the lecture, Schudrich will share his reflections on the Jewish community of Poland which before the Holocaust had one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. As Schudrich said: “In 1973, it was believed that

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travels to Eastern Europe in the 1970s as a student during which his view of Poland was “multiple shades of gray, rain and gloom.”

From 1983-1989 he was the Chief Rabbi of Japan and worked to recognize the heroism of Chiune Suighara, a Japanese diplomat who before World War II helped Jewish refuges find safety in Japanese territory. In the 1990s, Schudrich returned to Poland with

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On Sunday, November 16th at 10:00 am The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education (CHHE) and Isaac M. Wise Temple will welcome Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland to Cincinnati for the Annual Hornstein Program in Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Human Spirit at Isaac M. Wise Temple.

Rabbi Schudrich began his

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The views and opinions expressed by the columnists of The American Israelite do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the newspaper.

LOCAL / NATIONAL • 5

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Get your holiday shopping done at ‘Bagels and Boutiques’ at Rockwern Academy Looking for a one-stop shopping experience for your holiday needs this year? Look no further than Rockwern Academy’s “Bagels and Boutiques” event.

Held this year on Friday, November 21 from 7:30-11:30am, you are sure to find a gift for

everyone on your shopping list.

The Bagels and Boutiques event is free and open to the public, so bring friends and enjoy coffee and a nosh while browing through the wide variety of booths in Eden Hall at Rockwern Academy.

Everything from

clothes, toys and jewelry to unique baby gifts, books, and Judaica will be available for purchase.

There will also be a raffle at this event. Tickets can be purchased that morning and prizes include a spa gift card, a birthday

party package, exercise sessions and gift cards for makeup, jewelery, clothes, books and food items.

A local men’s clothing store will be sponsoring a coffee bar for attendees to enjoy.

Bagels & Boutiques co-chairs Amy Fisher and Rachel Callif are

looking forward to another successful event. “By partnering with local businesses, we get to support our community and in turn, raise money for our wonderful ParentTeacher Organization,” said Fisher and Callif.

Women ‘Renew, Refresh and Recharge’ at upcoming retreat Local women will have an opportunity to escape their hectic routines and enjoy a relaxing, yet stimulating Sunday morning together. The second annual Cincy Jewish Women’s Retreat is designed to allow women of all ages and backgrounds a chance to “Renew, Refresh, and Recharge.”

The venue for the retreat is the Embassy Suites and Conference Center in Blue Ash. A gourmet lunch, babysitting, and children’s programming will make it easier for participants to enjoy the programming and spending time with each other in a relaxed, comfort-

able setting. This retreat will run Sunday morning through early afternoon. Classes and workshops are all kept to under an hour, and the themes are varied to provide something for every taste and personality type.

For today’s very busy women, a chance to focus on their intellectual, spiritual and physical needs can be a rare treat. A session called “Everyday is Thanksgiving” will help participants develop greater gratitude and thereby greater quality of life.

Physical fitness will be the focus of a session led by certified per-

sonal trainer, Lindsay Frankel.

Stimulating intellectual classes will be led by UC Judaic instructor Arna Poupko Fisher, and by talented educator and Registered Nurse, Elyssa Goldschmidt.

Women with an affection for Israel are likely to find a presentation on Israel advocacy, led by Jewish Federation shlicha (Israel emissary) Maia Morag, especially meaningful.

Some sessions will be “handson”, as in the case of a Journaling class led by Julie Torem and “the Art and Heart” of Challah, led by Aviva Minster. Others will be tex-

EmpowerU presents a community discussion on Israel’s positive impact EmpowerU is pleased to present a community discussion on the BDS Movement (boycott / divest / sanction) that is often directed against Israel.

Representatives from the Office of the Emissary from Israel (Emissary) and the Jewish Community Relations C o u n c i l (JCRC) will be onsite to discuss the background of the movement as well as the dishonesty and impossibility of it. Sarah Weiss, director of JCRC, will provide a general overview of the movement and discuss the local impact of its implementation. The keynote speaker, Amit Morag, is an expert in Israeli technology and engagement and will discuss the global impact of implementing BDS. Full divestment from Israel would mean no cell phones, no internet search engines, no back-up cameras in autos, fewer generic drugs, fewer snack foods, fewer green energy options (Israel is a global pioneer in solar, wind, and biodiesel), less effective electric cars, or flash memory (including

usb). Additionally it would mean a reduction in medical findings for spine victims, SIDS/crib risk, and hands-free nursing would also be gone.

Further, military achievements in helicopters and ballistic defense, used by the USA, would also be prohibited under this approach.

If BDS is implemented on a move-forward basis we would risk future innovation in these fields.

Ironically for the BDS movement; BDS would, in itself, be impossible without Israel’s contributions to search engines, social media, and solid-state storage (USB).

“Israel has provided many gifts to the world – technologically, medically, and militarily.

The technology needed for this course, in fact, is partially designed in Israel. Our contributions in medicine include support to reduce infant mortality, increase mobility in the paralyzed, and – recently – treat diseases such as Ebola. I look forward to showcasing some of our global achievements,” said Amit Morag, Expert, Office of the

Emissary from Israel This event will be held on Tuesday, November 18, from 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. at Rockwern Academy (please use Montgomery Road entrance).

tual, and some simply “easy-listening.”

A highlight of he retreat will be meeting and hearing dynamic motivational speaker Kaila Lasky, known as Holly Scott when she co-starred in the film “The Shopping Bag Lady.” Aside from her lunchtime presentation, Kaila Lasky will also lead a breakout

session entitled “The Secret of Happiness” and share her unique perspectives on achieving happier lives.

All sessions, refreshments, and lunch are included in the admission price which can be paid in advance or at the door. Childcare requires advance registration.

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Lee Zeldin becomes Congress’ sole Jewish Republican as GOP retakes Senate

By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) – Results late Tuesday showed Republicans winning control of the United States Senate as well as wins for fresh faces with close Jewish and pro-Israel ties.

In Long Island, Lee Zeldin, a state senator, was set to become the sole Jewish Republican in Congress, ending a short drought that commenced with the defeat of Rep. Eric Cantor in the Republican primary in June.

As of 11:45 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, Republicans were projected to pick up seven Senate seats, one more than the six they need to win control of the upper chamber.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),

the minority leader who handily beat back a challenge from Alison Lundergan Grimes, spoke in his victory speech as if he was ready to lead the Senate.

“Friends, this experiment in big government has lasted long enough,” he said, alluding to Republican claims that President Obama overreached with his signature health care reform. “It is time to go in a new direction. It is time to turn this country around.”

As of late Tuesday, two other Jewish House candidates had come up short, while the two Jewish senators up for reelection both kept their seats.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) lost to Robert Dold in Illinois' 10th

District after serving just one term in Congress. And in Colorado, Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff failed in his bid to unseat incumbent Republican Mike Coffman.

In Minnesota, Sen. Al Franken defeated Republican Mike McFadden to win a second term.

And in Hawaii, Brian Schatz defeated Republican Cam Cavasso to hold the seat he was appointed to when Daniel Inouye died in 2012.

In New York's 3rd District, Zeldin defeated Democratic State Sen. Tim Bishop. Zeldin had campaigned in part by saying he would revive the Jewish GOP presence in Congress after Cantor's defeat.

Dave Brat, the Tea Party candi-

date who defeated Cantor, also won the general election on Tuesday.

Jack Moline, who directs the National Jewish Democratic Council, said the Democratic defeats in the sixth year of Barack Obama’s presidency demonstrated a frustration with gridlock.

“Results produce results,” Moline told JTA. “For whatever reason, and I would attribute it to the obstinacy of Republicans in Congress, the president hasn’t been able to accomplish what he wants to accomplish.”

Matthew Brooks, the director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, agreed that the election was a referendum on Obama's inability to get results.

"The Republicans have made significant gains and the American people have clearly spoken and clearly want a different direction for the country." he said.

Brooks predicted early action on Iran in the next congressional session. The current majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), has been able to head off GOP bids to intensify sanctions against the Islamic Republic, which the Obama administration opposes while negotiations are underway to reach a long-term deal over the country's nuclear program.

"Obama is going to have real tsuris because he won't have Harry ZELDIN on page 19

White House aide Jonathan Greenblatt to succeed Abe Foxman as ADL chief

By Uriel Heilman NEW YORK (JTA) – The AntiDefamation League’s new national director will be social entrepreneur Jonathan Greenblatt — a special assistant to President Obama who earlier in his career co-founded the bottled water brand Ethos.

Greenblatt, 43, will succeed Abraham Foxman, who announced in February that he would be stepping down effective July 2015. Foxman, 74, has been the ADL’s national director since 1987.

The news was first reported by JTA on Thursday and followed shortly afterward by a formal announcement at the ADL’s annual meeting in Los Angeles.

The ADL said the unanimous selection of Greenblatt by the 16member succession committee was the culmination of a two-year nation-

Courtesy of Anti-Defamation League)

Jonathan Greenblatt

wide search led by the Atlanta-based executive search firm BoardWalk Consulting. The firm reviewed hundreds of prospective candidates from

the fields of business, law, academic and nonprofit management, according to an ADL news release.

Greenblatt, a grandson of a Holocaust survivor who escaped Nazi Germany but lost nearly all his family in the war, interned for the ADL while in college at Tufts University and later participated in an ADL professional leadership program.

His wife, Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, an Iranian-American Jewish immigrant, worked as an associate director at ADL’s Los Angeles office for about eight years. Until last December, she was acting director of the Israel on Campus Coalition. She went on to co-found the new nonprofit Alliance for Rights of All Minorities, which promotes women’s and minority rights in Iran, and serves as its director.

“Marjan herself escaped from her native Iran after the Islamic

Revolution when this ancient country that once championed tolerance instead forged a political ideology in the toxin of anti-Semitism,” Greenblatt said Thursday in a speech delivered after the announcement, according to a transcript of remarks provided by the ADL. “Like my grandfather decades earlier, my wife had to flee the land of her birth and came to this country with the help of HIAS as a political refugee because of her Jewish identity. And so our lives and those of our children are shaped by this pernicious force, this longest hatred.”

At the White House, Greenblatt serves as director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the Domestic Policy Council, where his portfolio includes national service, civic engagement, impact investing and social enterprise.

A veteran of the Clinton adminis-

tration, Greenblatt has been a serial social entrepreneur. Ethos, the bottled water company he and a business school classmate launched in 2003, donated a portion of its profits to finance water programs in developing countries. After Starbucks bought the company, Greenblatt continued to promote clean-water funding in the developing world as the coffee company’s vice president of global consumer products. He went on to serve on the board of the nonprofit Water, which was co-founded by the actor Matt Damon.

Greenblatt also started an opensource platform for volunteers called All for Good, served as CEO of the media company GOOD Worldwide and founded the Impact Economy Initiative at The Aspen Institute. He has a master’s degree in business from GREENBLATT on page 19

In Jerusalem passport case, justices consider congressional role in foreign policy

By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) – A lawyer for a boy born in Jerusalem whose parents want Israel listed as the birthplace on his U.S. passport tried mightily this week to make a Supreme Court hearing mainly about their wish, but the justices kept upping the ante.

That might mean bad news not just for 12-year-old Menachem Zivotofsky and his folks. It could also present a problem for the prospects of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital should the court defer to the Obama administration’s argument that a 2002 law allowing the Israel listing infringes on the president’s prerogative to set foreign policy.

Alyza Lewin, the lawyer who represented Zivotofsky in oral arguments at the court Monday, acknowledged that the tenor of questioning indicated support among the justices for the idea that the case hinges on the separation of powers

between the executive and legislative branches.

But in gamely parrying some tough questions in her first appearance before the nation’s highest court, Lewin sought to downplay the significance of recognizing Zivotofsky’s birthplace as Israel, saying it was an issue of personal choice and not an attempt to interfere with the president’s right to recognize foreign governments.

“We gave the court alternative arguments, that what you put on a passport does not amount to recognition,” Lewin told JTA. Monday marks the second time that the Supreme Court has heard arguments on the constitutionality of the 2002 law, which allows U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their birthplace on their passports.

The measure was enacted by President George W. Bush, but both he and Obama have declined to enforce it. The Zivotofskys filed suit after the State Department refused

their request to list Menachem’s birthplace as Israel.

In 2009, an appeals court ruled that the passport question was a political issue beyond the scope of the the judiciary to decide. Three years later, the Supreme Court overruled that finding and ordered the lower court to rehear the case. Last year, the appeals court ruled that the executive branch prevailed on matters of foreign policy, prompting Zivotofsky to appeal again.

The justices seemed skeptical of Lewin’s claim that the Zivotofskys’ bid did not challenge the presidential recognition prerogative.

“What is the effect of this statute other than something that goes to recognition?” Justice Elena Kagan asked.

“This statute is a statute that was created to give individuals the right to self-identify as they choose that they were born in Israel,” Lewin replied.

Kagan said that if that were true, “this is a very selective vanity plate

law,” noting that Americans born in Northern Ireland could not identify as being born in Ireland. “And for that matter, Kagan said, "if you are an American born in Jerusalem today, you can’t get the right to say Palestine.”

Anthony Kennedy, often a swing justice on the nine-member court who more often than not sides with the conservative wing, also seemed skeptical of Lewin’s claim.

“Do you want us to say in our opinion that this is not a political declaration?” he asked.

Lewin answered in the affirmative.

“Well then,” Kennedy said. “I’m not sure why that Congress passed it then.”

Like Bush before him, Obama maintains that changing the wording on passports would damage the American role as a peace broker in the Middle East by favoring an Israeli claim to Jerusalem. Since Israel declared independence in 1948, the United States has main-

tained that no country has sovereignty over Jerusalem and that the city’s status must be determined by negotiations.

A win for the Obama administration would inhibit Congress’ ability to affect foreign policy, said Marc Stern, the general counsel for the American Jewish Committee, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of Zivotofsky. Such an outcome could have an immediate impact by, for example, limiting congressional ability to restrict the dimensions of a nuclear deal with Iran, Stern said.

“It won’t be just a decision on presidential power around the world, it will also be understood as undercutting Israeli claims to Jerusalem,” Stern told JTA. “In the real world it will have impact and we’ll have to figure out what to say at that point.

What does that mean for what the administration says about a final settlement, and is west Jerusalem up for grabs?”

PASSPORT on page 19

NATIONAL • 7

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014

For some Orthodox converts, biggest challenges come after mikvah

By Uriel Heilman NEW YORK (JTA) – There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriend’s rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only he’d dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter she’d be going to hell because she became a Jew. The road to conversion can be long and difficult for many prospective converts to Orthodox Judaism, filled with uncertainties and fear about gaining final rabbinic approval. Yet even once they emerge from the mikvah as newly minted American Jews, many find the challenges hardly end.

“Most of my negative experiences were after the conversion,” said Aliza Hausman, a 34-year-old writer and former public school teacher in Los Angeles.

“I was really excited about [attending] my first bar mitzvah. But when I got there the rabbi’s shtick was that he would tell the most derogatory jokes about goyim he could think of,” Hausman recalled.

“My first Pesach was listening to someone whose daughter was in a matchmaking situation, and out of nowhere she starts talking about shiksas,” a derogatory word for nonJewish women.

One Yom Kippur, Hausman, who is of mixed-race parentage, said

National Briefs Obama sent letter on Islamic State to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (JNS) U.S. President Barack Obama reportedly sent a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in mid-October expressing their shared interest in the fight against Islamic State jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the letter—which left Israel and America’s Arab allies out of the loop—was aimed at strengthening the campaign against Islamic State and urging Iran to sign a nuclear deal.

In the letter, Obama stressed to Khamenei that any cooperation on combating Islamic State terror would be contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive nuclear deal with the P5+1 powers (U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China, and Germany) by the Nov. 24 deadline for an agreement.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) expressed concern over Obama’s letter to Khamenei.

she was stopped at the door of her in-laws’ synagogue by people who assumed she couldn’t possibly be Jewish. She ran back to her in-laws’ home in tears.

Many Orthodox converts contend that the Orthodox community is less accepting of Jews by choice than the more liberal Jewish denominations, where converts are far more numerous.

In the first couple of days after the arrest last month of Rabbi Barry Freundel on charges that he installed a secret camera in the mikvah at his Orthodox shul in Washington, Kesher Israel, many of Freundel’s converts expressed concern that the legitimacy of their conversions would be challenged. The Rabbinical Council of America, the nation’s main centrist Orthodox rabbinical group, quickly announced that it would stand by Freundel’s conversions, and Israel’s Chief Rabbinate eventually offered similar indications.

Orthodox converts say it’s not unusual to be asked to produce their conversion papers – either by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, if they seek to marry in Israel, or by a Jewish institution, potential matchmaker or prospective in-law.

One woman who asked to be identified only as Sarah due to the personal nature of her experience said that when she became involved in a serious relationship with a man

from a Chabad family, his father demanded to see her conversion papers and decided her conversion wasn’t kosher. Thus began a long odyssey to convince her future inlaws that hers was a bona fide conversion. (Sarah did not convert through the RCA system, whose certified conversions are broadly accepted, because she said RCA rabbis refused to meet her or respond to her inquiries.) Eventually her future father-in-law’s concerns were assuaged.

Back when she was studying for conversion, a rabbi offered Sarah an early indication that finding a mate would not be easy.

“The rabbi said to me, ‘We don’t have much to offer you in the way of husbands. The only thing we would have to offer is the bottom of the barrel,’ “ she recalled.

Rabbi Yosef Blau, a Yeshiva University spiritual adviser who is among the 15 or so rabbinic volunteers who staff the RCA’s conversion courts in New York, says the courts are very cognizant of the challenges of integrating converts into the Orthodox community – and wary of converting those unlikely to succeed. That’s partly why the conversion courts require that every convert have a sponsoring rabbi, he said.

“There has to be a sponsoring rabbi so there’s someone who is gong to take responsibility to keep

up with that person after the conversion takes place – making sure the community accepts that individual fully as Jewish, has a place to go to holidays, for example,” he said. “It’s hard enough for a single person to function in the Orthodox community, which is family oriented. The convert doesn’t have any of these support mechanisms.”

Unmarried converts often are fixed up with the community’s least desirables, converts say. Non-white converts say they are frequently fixed up only with members of the same race, even if they have nothing else in common.

Converts “receive the absolute worst shidduch [matchmaking] recommendations for potential marriage partners, if they receive them at all,” wrote Bethany Mandel, a convert in her “Bill of rights for Jewish converts” in the Times of Israel after the Freundel scandal broke. “A corporate lawyer does not deserve to be constantly matched with the likes of a janitor just because he happens to be another black convert (yes, this happened to a friend on a serial basis).”

Rabbi Zvi Romm, who administers the Orthodox conversions in New York certified by the Rabbinical Council of America, says the demographic profile of most converts doesn’t make things any easier: Most are women in their late 20s and early 30s.

“When you convert at that age, you’re at a disadvantage,” said Romm, who expressed sympathy for the challenges facing converts.

“These people convert and they’re all starry-eyed, and they have this very idealistic image of what the Orthodox Jewish community is all about. Then they have a hard time getting dates. There is a certain degree of prejudice against geirim,” – Hebrew for converts.

Conversion also can be lonely.

New to the community, converts often have no place to go for Shabbat or holidays.

Yossi Ginzberg, an Orthodox activist who along with his wife runs support programs for converts, including hosting them for Shabbat and holidays, says the community needs to more attuned to welcoming converts – a mitzvah the Torah makes clear in passages about “loving the ger,” or convert.

Ginzberg says some of the greatest resistance to converts comes from their own families. At a wedding last week for a convert who remarried her Jewish husband just hours after formally becoming a Jew, the bride’s mother unexpectedly refused to attend because she was upset that her daughter had rejected Jesus. The mother eventually was coaxed into the Brooklyn synagogue basement where the wedding took

“I don’t trust the Iranians, I don’t think we need to bring them into this,” he said.

that honored soldiers of the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade. In Boston, the New England chapter event was attended by 1,200 people and featured an address by Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer.

Northeastern U. president decries swastikas drawn on Jewish event fliers (JTA) – The president of Northeastern University called the defacing of fliers advertising an event about Israel “an affront to our entire community.”

Swastikas were drawn on two fliers promoting a visit to the Boston campus by an Israeli army lieutenant colonel sponsored by the Alliance for Israel at Northeastern and the Louis D. Brandeis Center. The event, set for Monday, reportedly will go on as planned.

An email from the school’s president, Joseph Aoun, was sent near midnight Friday to the Northeastern community.

“Let there be no doubt: we have absolutely no tolerance for anti-Semitism, prejudice, and hate crimes of any kind, including this incident,” Aoun wrote in the email, which had the subject line “An affront to our community.”

North America.

Speaking before a crowd of more than 2,000 at the conference center just outside Washington, Breyer said the most remarkable thing about there being three Jews among the nine Supreme Court justices is how unremarkable it is in America today.

Kagan, the other justice on the panel discussion moderated by NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg, said that her Jewish identity was the one thing that didn’t come up during her confirmation process.

“The one thing nobody ever said, the one thing I never heard was, ‘We don’t need a third Jewish justice. My grandmother would have said ‘Only in America.’ “ Breyer said that when he thinks about what it means to be Jewish in the court, he thinks about the Jewish tradition of tzedakah.

“It’s not quite charity,” he said, “and it’s not quite rule of law either, but it’s part of trying to create a better world.”

Breyer said the great divisions of the world today are between those who believe in the rule of law and those who don’t.

Friends of the IDF raises $33 million in California among other regional events (JNS) A record of more than $33 million was raised at the annual Friends of the Israel Defense Forces Western Region Gala, held Thursday in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Top donations included $9 million from Larry Ellison, cofounder and chairman of Oracle Corporation; $5.2 million from brothers Maurice and Paul Marciano of Guess Jeans; $5 million from philanthropists Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson; $3.6 million from the event’s chair, Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban; and $2 million from Steve Tisch, chairman and executive vice president of the New York Giants. Celebrities who attended the gala included Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barbra Streisand, Pamela Anderson, and Ricky Martin.

FIDF’s New England and Midwest chapters, meanwhile, both held galas on Oct. 30. The Midwest chapter’s Central region drew 1,000 attendees and raised $2 million at an event in Chicago

Top U.S. general: Israel ‘went to extraordinary lengths’ to limit Gaza casualties (JNS) Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s highest-ranking military officer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that Israel “went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties” during its summer war with the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.

Dempsey’s assessment presents a stark contrast to that of Amnesty International, whose newly released report on the Gaza war accuses Israel of displaying “callous indifference” to civilian deaths.

“In this kind of conflict, where you are held to a standard that your enemy is not held to, you’re going to be criticized for civilian casualties,” Dempsey said during an appearance in New York at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Reuters reported.

U.S. Supreme Court justices talk Jewish at G.A. opening OXON HILL, Md. (JTA) – U.S. Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and Elana Kagan talked about their Jewish identities at the opening plenary of the 2014 General Assembly conference of the Jewish Federations of

CONVERTS on page 22

8 • INTERNATIONAL

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Ex-Hungarian Jewish leader’s government gig sparks talk of betrayal

By Cnaan Liphshiz BUDAPEST (JTA) – In the 22 years he ran Hungary’s Mazsihisz Jewish umbrella organization, Gusztav Zoltai was called out for many things.

Zoltai, a former secret police agent who led the Jewish federation until his retirement earlier this year, was accused of corruption and labeled a relic of dark times.

Others took issue with his flirtatious behavior toward women.

Yet for all his perceived flaws, no one had called Zoltai a traitor or questioned his loyalty to Hungarian Jewry – until September, when in the wake of a fierce war of words over what many Jews saw as the Hungarian ruling party’s pandering to farright voters, Zoltai abruptly switched sides.

Just hours before the first meeting between community leaders and the government since relations came to a halt in February over a disputed Holocaust monument, Zoltai accepted a position as a government consultant. In the Sept. 12 meeting, Zoltai sat with Hungarian officials opposite his former Jewish colleagues.

“Betrayal. That’s the only way to call what Zoltai has done,” said Judit Csaki, a journalist who led a series of recent protests against

International Briefs IAEA says probe on Iran nukes has stalled, hurting chances of deal by deadline (JNS) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations-affiliated nuclear watchdog, says that its investigation into the potential weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program has stalled. Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the probe might derail the prospects of a nuclear deal with world powers being reached by the Nov. 24 deadline.

Last February, Iran agreed to provide the IAEA with information on three aspects of its nuclear program: alleged experiments with nuclear detonators, work on high-explosive charges used in nuclear blasts, and studies on the calculation of nuclear explosive yields. But the IAEA says Iran has only provided information on the detonators, which the Islamic Republic insists were only used for oil exploration and non-nuclear military purposes.

“Iran has not provided any explanations that enable the

the planned staging of a pro-fascist production at a municipal theater. “Zoltai gave his name and his face to a classic divide-and-conquer tactic designed to break up the Jewish community for its criticism of the government.”

Andras Heisler, the newly elected president of Mazsihisz, said Zoltai had “destroyed his life’s work – that wasn’t immaculate to begin with.” The board of the famed Dohany Street Synagogue, where Zoltai once served as president, voted to expel him.

For Zoltai, a Holocaust survivor who has represented the Jewish community in restitution talks with the government, being branded a traitor was painful.

Raised in a Budapest suburb, Zoltai lost 27 members of his family in the Holocaust. His father died en route to a concentration camp. The fate of his mother remained unknown until 1995, when Zoltai brought back her remains from Germany, where she had died in a camp one day after its liberation.

“People who say I am a traitor are not right in the head,” Zoltai told JTA in a brief interview at his new synagogue at Bethlen Square.

“I took this position to help the community, not the government.

And my credentials speak for

themselves. I’m no right-wing nationalist.”

Mazsihisz Vice President Peter Tordai also defended Zoltai, telling the media that the treason charge is “ridiculous.”

Raised in an orphanage, Zoltai went to work in a textile plant at the age of 18. In the harsh postwar years, he was married twice but both wives died young.

Zoltai went on to serve as an airport border guard in the feared AVO secret police. Later he joined the Worker’s Guard, a communist militia set up to suppress resistance following the failed 1956 rebellion against the Sovietbacked government.

“Zoltai had absolutely nothing,” said Peter Feldmajer, a former Mazsihisz president who worked with Zoltai for 20 years.

“The party was his way to get ahead in life.”

But instead of pursuing a government career, Zoltai became the director of a small theater in the 1980s before assuming the directorship of Mazsihisz. Some allege Zoltai was forced out as part of Heisler’s attempt to reform a notoriously opaque organization that owns assets worth millions of dollars.

“The man knows everything, every little dirty secret about every community leader, past and

present,” said Rabbi Zoltan Radnoti, who heads a popular synagogue in Budapest. “That he could share this knowledge with his new employers is very frightening to them. I know the government likes this, and I think Zoltai enjoys seeing them shake with fear.”

The Holocaust monument dispute followed a series of moves by the ruling rightist Fidesz party that critics allege were designed to compete for the nationalist vote against the rising far-right Jobbik party. Among the government’s decisions were plans to name a Budapest street after an antiSemitic author and to stage a play by another at a municipal theater.

But the monument fight turned out to be a turning point. Like other community bosses, Zoltai had previously lambasted the government over the monument, which depicts an angel being attacked by an eagle. Critics charged the statue was a symbolic statement of Hungary’s innocence in the wartime murder of 500,000 Jews, a claim the government denied. Efforts to have the design altered foundered in February, after which Mazsihisz suspended contact with the government.

Citing a confidentiality clause in his contract, Zoltai would not say what his new government

position requires of him, nor how much money he is earning.

Like many Hungarian Jews, Radnoti is furious with Zoltai, but the rabbi also describes him as a kind man. When Radnoti’s father lost an eye in a car accident that rendered him jobless and penniless, it was Zoltai who put him up in a community-owned home within a day of being asked to help.

Working for the government, Radnoti says, is above all Zoltai’s way of reinserting himself into the center of the action.

“This is a man who ran the show for decades but has been excluded just like that against his will,” Radnoti said. “He took the government job because can’t let go now. It would kill him. He needs to be in the center. He needs to have power.”

To Feldmajer, that Zoltai should be ostracized for accepting a government position is a paradox that is indicative of the problems facing Jews in a society that has failed to fully come to terms with its Holocaust-era culpability.

“What’s really sad about this whole case is that in any other country, the Jewish community would be honored to have a former leader become a consultant,” Feldmajer said. “But this is Hungary.”

agency to clarify the outstanding practi-cal measures,” said a confidential IAEA report obtained

by The Associated Press.

The P5+1 powers-U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China, and Germany-have insisted that no final agreement with Iran will be reached until the IAEA is satisfied with its investigation.

reported. The memorial is considered one of the most significant Jewish landmarks in the country.

Likoed Nederland and other pro-Israel groups protested Plaisier’s planned attendance as a speaker at the event, which took place at the same time Saturday as the Jewish community’s official commemorative ceremony for the victims of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany and Austria, which many historians regard as the opening shot for the systematic application of violence against Jews by the Nazis and their helpers.

Plaisier told the Nederlandse Dagblad newspaper, “I had not realized there were two commemorations, each sounding a different voice.”

but we can’t fail on this, we have no excuses.”

Maduro also announced the expansion of the program to engineering, architecture “and every field of knowledge.”

The scholarship program is named for Arafat, the former head of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the first president of the Palestinian Authority.

Maduro said he cried when he saw the images of Palestinian students dancing in their first minutes in Venezuela.

“We want to see you dance again,” the president said.

Anti-Semitic incidents reported in Europe, South America (JNS) Several attacks against Jews and Jewish sites have been reported in South America and Europe this week.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, vandals desecrated a monument in a Jewish area with graffiti.

The writing called to “kill Jews.”

In Cordova, Argentina, a swastika was drawn on the wall of a rab-bi’s home. Local officials said the vandalism was part of a larger pattern of similar antiSemitic incidents taking place in the city on a weekly basis.

In Berlin, Germany, five youths attacked an Israeli woman who was heard speaking Hebrew on the phone. The group grabbed her phone and stole it after calling her an “Israeli.” In Lisbon, Por-tugal, vandals drew the word “Ebola” on a memorial for a massacre that took place in 1506, Is-rael National News

Dutch Protestant Church pulls out of Kristallnacht event over sponsors AMSTERDAM (JTA) – A senior official from the Dutch Protestant Church pulled out of a Holocaust memorial event coorganized by Socialists who commemorated a Hamas leader.

Arjan Plaisier, secretary of the PKN umbrella of Dutch Protestant churches, announced Friday that he would neither be speaking nor attending the Kristallnacht commemoration event organized by the Platform Against Racism and Exclusion.

The platform lists among its Kristallnacht commemoration partners the International Socialists, which in 2004 held a ceremony in memory of Ahmed Yassin, a former spiritual leader of Hamas whom Israel killed that year.

Another sponsor was the Dutch Palestine Committee, which supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and far-left groups.

The Kristallnacht event is funded by Kerk in Actie, the PKN’s aid organization.

Venezuela to give 1,000 Palestinians free university education (JTA) – At least 1,000 Palestinians will receive a free university education in Venezuela.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Nov. 6 welcomed 119 Palestinian students who will be trained in the field of medicine through the new Yasser Arafat Scholarship Program.

“We will train at least 1,000 doctors, quickly, now,” Maduro said in an address to the students in Caracas, the South American nation’s capital. “It is a hard goal

78-year-old assaulted in Warsaw anti-Semitic attack (JTA) – Police in Warsaw arrested the alleged perpetrator of an assault on a 78-year-old man while shouting anti-Semitic slurs.

The suspect, identified in Polish media as a 30-year-old man named Pawel L., allegedly struck the victim outside a store on Friday, causing him injuries that required hospitalization.

Police found Pawel being subdued by passers-by who intervened after witnessing the attack.

Pawel was taken into custody immediately at the scene. If convicted, he could face a jail term of up to 10 years.

ISRAEL • 9

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Israel moves to ease path to conversion for those not considered Jewish

By Ben Sales TEL AVIV (JTA) – The Israeli government has adopted a major reform expected to ease the path to conversion for hundreds of thousands of Israelis now prohibited from marrying in the Jewish state.

In the most significant response in decades to the estimated 400,000 Israelis who are not considered Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate, the Cabinet expanded authority for conversion beyond a small group of approved haredi Orthodox courts.

Since only Orthodox Jewish marriage is permitted in Israel, such Israelis – the majority of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union – must convert if they wished to be mar-

ried in Israel.

Under the new law, which was passed Sunday and became effective immediately, the conversion process is expected to get significantly easier.

The measure, which allows any city rabbi in Israel to perform conversions, is expected to pave the way for the elimination of some provisions seen as overly stringent, such as the Chief Rabbinate’s requirement that converts send their children to Orthodox schools.

Currently, only four rabbinic courts appointed by the haredi-dominated Rabbinate are authorized to perform conversions.

“Every rabbi in every city will be able to set up his own tribunal according to Jewish law,” said Economy

Minister Naftali Bennett, who brought the bill to a Cabinet vote along with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. “It also gives a choice. People will be able to choose the tribunal they want to go to, and warm, friendly tribunals will be used more than others.”

Conversion policy has dogged Israel since the 1990s, when about 1 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union entered the country. The immigrants qualified for citizenship under the Law of Return, which requires immigrants to have just one Jewish grandparent. But hundreds of thousands did not meet the Chief Rabbinate’s stricter standard for Jewishness – either having a Jewish CONVERSION on page 22

Courtesy of Flash90

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, right, and lawmaker Eliezer Stern at a news conference on the government’s conversion reform, Nov. 2, 2014.

Everything you need to know about SodaStream’s move

By Ben Sales TEL AVIV (JTA) – SodaStream, the Israeli at-home seltzer machine company, announced last week that it would be closing its West Bank factory and moving the facility’s operations to southern Israel next year. Here’s what you need to know about SodaStream, the controversy that has bubbled up in its midst and what the actress Scarlett Johansson has to do with it.

What is SodaStream?

SodaStream is an Israeli company that makes and sells seltzer machines for home use. Since it was founded in 1991, the company has

sold more than 10 million machines in 39 countries. The foot-and-a-halftall machines turn still water into seltzer in 30 seconds. The company also markets dozens of mix-in flavors, such as cola, ginger ale, lemonlime and fruit punch.

Why is SodaStream controversial?

Until this week, SodaStream’s main factory was located in Mishor Adumim, an industrial park in the Israeli West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem.

Because the settlement is likely to be included in Israel in any future peace deal with the Palestinians, many Israelis don’t view it as all that con-

troversial.

But groups that oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank have called for boycotts of SodaStream due to the factory’s location. The debate over SodaStream gained attention earlier this year when the actress Scarlett Johansson became the face of the company, appearing in a SodaStream ad during the Super Bowl. Johansson ended up resigning as a spokeswoman for Oxfam International, an anti-poverty group that opposes the West Bank factory, after it criticized the actress’involvement with the company.

What is SodaStream’s position on its West Bank factory?

SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum has touted the Mishor Adumim factory, which has been in its current location since 1997, as a successful example of Arab-Jewish coexistence in the West Bank. Some 500 Palestinians work at the factory alongside Israeli Jews, and Birnbaum says he pays them well and treats them as equals with their Jewish co-workers, though proPalestinian groups allege that the Palestinian employees are treated poorly. The factory includes a mosque for Muslim employees.

Closing the factory, Birnbaum says, could mean putting hundreds of Palestinians out of work.

Birnbaum is a proponent of a two-state solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. He has noted that Mishor Adumim is defined as an area under Israeli control by the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords, and argues that Israeli industry there is thus not a violation of international law.

The company drew more criticism this summer after it fired 60 of its Muslim employees, claiming they refused to work. The employees countered that SodaStream did not provide them with sufficient meals following the Ramadan fast and therefore were unable to safely operate machinery.

From Ebola to Iraqi refugees, Israeli aid group tackles world’s most difficult crises

By Sean Savage (JNS) – Known primarily for their military prowess and high-tech ingenuity, Israelis are often overlooked when it comes to their global engagement. But IsraAID, an Israeli non-profit and non-governmental organization founded in 2001, has been on the frontline of every major humanitarian crisis of the 21st century—including today’s most difficult hotspots in Iraq and West Africa.

“Our mission is to efficiently support and meet the changing needs of populations as they strive to move from crisis to reconstruction and rehabilitation, and eventually, to sustainable living,” Navonel Glick, IsraAID’s program director, told JNS. Drawing on Israel’s military expertise and robust healthcare system, IsraAID has tackled humanitarian disasters in 22 countries, including the earthquakes in Japan and Haiti, refugee situations in South Sudan and Kenya, and Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy in the United States.

In early October, IsraAID supplied mattresses, blankets, food, and hygiene kits to more than 1,000 people in the Dohuk and Erbil refugee

camps in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Providing aid to refugees in the Arab world is no easy task for an Israeli organization, especially in countries as hostile to the Jewish state as Iraq, which has been overrun by jihadists from the Islamic State terror group.

“This is an issue that is very sensitive, but not for the reasons that one would expect,” Glick said.

“More than our security, our concern is how to make sure to protect the people that we are helping. Having people we want to assist become the target of Islamic State sleeper cells within camps would be horrendous.”

The plight of Iraq’s Christians and Yazidis is eerily similar to the story of the country’s former Jewish community. The modern persecution and expulsion of Iraqi religious minorities draws many parallels to the waves of attacks on, and eventual expulsion of, Iraqi Jewry during the mid-20th century. Nearly 135,000 Jews were forced to leave Iraq from 1948 onwards.

“We decided to launch this project because of the incredible needs of the displaced populations fleeing death and abuse at the hands of the Islamic State,” said Glick. “They are

coming with absolutely nothing but the clothes on their backs.”

According to estimates, more than 1.8 million Iraqis have been displaced by Islamic State.

Christians in particular have been singled out by the jihadists, with many being forced to convert, leave, or die.

Most of the refugees living in Iraq’s Kurdish region are Christians and Yazidis who fled from Islamic State during the summer. A video recently posted by IsraAID shows the organization’s truck arriving at a refugee camp in Kurdistan, with relief workers being warmly greeted by the refugees as they distribute the humanitarian items.

While Israel does not have diplomatic relations with Iraq, Israel and the Kurds maintain warm relations, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backed Kurdish independence.

“We do not want to hide our identity, and to be honest, with those who knew where we were from, we never encountered any animosity whatsoever—quite the opposite at times, in fact,” Glick said.

IsraAID is funded by a diverse group of sources—including North American Jewish communities,

Christian partners, foundations, corporate sponsors, and private individuals. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) recently announced that it would provide assistance to IsraAID’s efforts in Iraq and West Africa. AJC has partnered with IsraAID in the past on a number of humanitarian relief missions.

“AJC has long responded to humanitarian crises around the world,” Kenneth Bandler, AJC’s director of media relations, told JNS. “Our partnership with IsraAID began about a decade ago to offer an international Jewish response to manmade and natural disaster and emergency situation.”

“IsraAID’s ability to send quickly much-needed humanitarian and medical experts and supplies and to be among the very first on the ground is impressive, and, importantly, demonstrates that Israelis can and do assist others,” added Bandler.

Currently, IsraAID is the only Israeli entity present on the ground in West Africa amid the Ebola crisis.

Glick, who currently is in Sierra Leone to help lead the organizations efforts there, described the situation was “very worrying.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry and

MASHAV - Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation have jointly begun sending aid to the region, including the deployment of mobile field hospitals that feature isolation units and protective gear for medical professionals.

Despite increasing international assistance, more than 4,000 people have died so far in the Ebola outbreak.

“The Ebola outbreak continues to spread, and while an increasing amount of international support is coming, the healthcare workers that have been on the frontline of the fight for over five months now are absolutely exhausted, burnt out, and traumatized,” Glick said.

In Sierra Leone, IsraAID is beginning to provide training to address the psycho-social impact of Ebola.

“Most people realize the very direct medical efforts necessary to tackle the disease, but only now are people starting to realize the psychological toll that the outbreak has had on huge sections of the population— from fear of infection, to grief for whole families and communities EBOLA on page 19

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While terror rages in Jerusalem, Israel-Jordan relations hang in the balance

By Sean Savage (JNS) – While facing increased Arab riots and terrorist attacks that resemble the underpinnings of a renewed Palestinian intifada (uprising), Israel is simultaneously working to manage tension in its delicate relationship with Jordan, one of its two peaceful Arab neighbors.

On Nov. 5, masked Arab rioters threw rocks and shot fireworks at Israeli security forces on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, forcing Israel to temporarily close the holy site to visitors and touching off a diplomatic spat between the Jewish state and Jordan.

Israel also temporarily closed the Temple Mount to all worshippers last week after an Arab man’s attempted assassination of activist Yehudah Glick, a promoter of Jewish access to the Temple Mount. The preventative move came against the backdrop of weeks of increased Muslim riots and assaults on Jewish residents, including the recent vehicular Palestinian terror attack on Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill light rail station that killed two people. After pressure from U.S. and Muslim leaders, the Israeli police decided to re-open the Temple Mount ahead of Muslim prayers on Oct. 31. Yet Nov. 5 saw another car-ramming attack by a Palestinian driver, this time at the Shimon Hatzadik light rail station in Jerusalem. The latest car attack killed an Israeli Druze border police superintendent and a 17-year-old yeshiva student.

Following the temporary closure

Israel Briefs Israeli soldier stabbed in Tel Aviv (JNS) – An Israeli soldier was stabbed at a Tel Aviv train station on Monday in the latest in a string of terrorist attacks across Israel.

The victim, in his 20s, was taken to hospital in critical condition.

The attacker, a Palestinian man from Nablus, was apprehended.

The stabbing attack occurred at the entrance of the Hagana train station in southern Tel Aviv. The attacker tried to flee but was chased by a group of civilians and policemen. An Israeli in his 50s was lightly injured during the pursuit, but the attacker was ultimately arrested. Eyewitnesses reported that the young man was stabbed in the abdomen and lost a significant amount of blood.

Magen David Adom emergency services spokesman Zaki Heller told Channel 2, “At 12:12 we received a call that a young man had been stabbed. The para-

Courtesy of Hadas Parush

On Oct. 30, 2014, a Palestinian rock thrower targets Israeli police in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighborhood, near the house of the Palestinian man suspected of attempting to assassinate Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick.

on Nov. 5, Jordan threatened to undermine its relations with Israel by recalling its ambassador to the country over Israeli “violations” on the Temple Mount. Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab nations that have diplomatic relations with Israel.

After a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Judeh, accused Israel of “escalating the situation in Jerusalem” and “violations against the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the Jordanian news agency Petra reported. Judeh added that Jordan would continue to counter “unilateral Israeli moves through diplomatic and legal means, especially using its vantage position as a member of the U.N. Security Council.”

Grant Rumley, a research analyst specializing in Palestinian politics and the Levant region for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that he believes Jordan’s calculations “are mostly the result of domestic pressure.”

“It’s harmful for the Jordanians to pull their minister from Israel, but it’s even worse for [Jordan’s] King Abdullah domestically if he doesn’t do anything,” Rumley said. “This, combined with a complaint to be filed at the Security Council, amount to symbolic gestures that are likely to appease the Jordanian public (a majority of whom do not support the country’s peace treaty with Israel) while still not severely damaging the strategic relationship with Israel.”

medics who arrived at the scene found the young man unconscious on the road, not breathing and without a pulse. They administered first aid and resuscitation efforts commenced. The moment his condition made it possible, he was evacuated amid ongoing resuscitation efforts.

Hamas did not claim responsibility for the stabbing, but the Hamas television network praised the attack.

uncertainty, while the scoundrel (who ran over the soldiers) hides behind an outright blatant lie.”

Parents of soldier injured in Gush Etzion say car crash was no accident (JNS) – While Israeli security officials have said the recent incident in Gush Etzion in which three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were injured was an accident, the parents of Moshe Aharoni, one of the injured soldiers, believe the Palestinian driver who ran over the soldiers with his car did so intentionally in a terrorist act.

“Our son was run over in a clear and intentional manner by a miscreant,” Aharoni’s father, Roni, said at a press conference at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. “The blood of our son cries out. We are here in hours of

Netanyahu vows tough stance against Arab rioters (JNS).– Following riots over the Israeli police’s fatal shooting of a 21-year-old Arab man who tried to stab police officers in Kafr Kanna on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take a tough stance against Israeli Arabs calling for the Jewish state’s destruction.

“We will not tolerate disturbances and riots,” he said. “We will act against stone throwers and those who block roads and call for the establishment of a Palestinian state in place of Israel. … I will instruct the interior minister to examine the option of revoking the citizenship of those calling for the destruction of Israel.”

Right-wing marchers stopped from ascending to Temple Mount JERUSALEM (JTA) – Police prevented dozens of protesting right-wing activists from ascending to the Temple Mount.

The activists on Thursday night were protesting the security

Despite fighting against each other in the 1948 War of Independence and 1967 Six Day War, Jordan and Israel have always maintained a relatively close relationship, which was finally formalized in 1994 with the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.

Today, both countries cooperate in several important areas, including security, the economy, and natural resources. Jordan in September signed a 15-year, $15 million natural gas deal with Israel that was hailed at the time as an “historic agreement.”

As top allies of the U.S., Jordan and Israel also cooperate closely on intelligence sharing, especially amid the threat of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in nearby Iraq and Syria. Jordan and Israel have also set up joint industrial parks, including the Jordan Gateway, whose formation was announced in late 2013.

At the same time, Israel and Jordan maintain a unique arrangement in Jerusalem. According to the 1994 peace treaty, Jordan retains custodianship over the Muslim holy sites in eastern Jerusalem, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. But since the late 1990s, Israel has gradually allowed the Palestinian Authority to assert greater control over the site, which has caused some friction with Jordan and a gray area over control.

As part of the Jordan-Israel arrangement on the holy sites, Jews and non-Muslims are permitted to visit the Temple Mount, site of the First and Second Temples, on select days, but are not permitted to pray there. Yet there has been a push by some Israelis for greater Jewish sov-

ereignty at the Temple Mount, including prayer rights.

Meanwhile, Muslim leaders, including in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, have used the Temple Mount issue to incite protests and violence. Recent Palestinian news has been flooded with speeches, articles, and cartoons featuring calls by Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas to “defend” AlAqsa “in any way,” Palestinian Media Watch reported.

“This is our Sanctuary, our AlAqsa, and our Church [of the Holy Sepulchre]. They (Jews) have no right to enter it. They have no right to defile it. We must prevent them. Let us stand before them with chests bared to protect our holy places,” Abbas said.

For Jordan, the Temple Mount arrangement is just one of the critical issues facing the country.

“Jordan has about four major areas of concern these days: the threat of Islamic State, the economy, the crisis of handling Syrian refugees, and the tensions in Jerusalem,” Rumley told JNS. “Now, for Abdullah, that’s probably exactly the order he’d list these issues in importance,” he said. “For the Jordanian public, it might be the other way around. These are sensitive issues, and Abdullah made a strategic calculation in keeping this spat with Israel at the diplomatic/rhetorical levels. There are too many benefits to the relationship with Israel in regards to the other categories for the king to

situation in Jerusalem and the shooting last week of Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick. The demonstrators marched from the Begin Center in Jerusalem, the site of the assassination attempt on Glick, to the Temple Mount entrance.

Earlier in the day, rioting broke out in the predominantly Arab eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods of Shuafat and Abu Tor.

Following several deadly attacks on Egyptian troops in the Sinai, Egypt is also creating a security zone along its border with Gaza, forcing hundreds of families to leave their homes. The zone will be 8 miles long and 550 yards deep.

Egypt gets Israel’s OK for more Sinai troops to fight Islamists JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israel has authorized Egypt to deploy two more infantry battalions in the Sinai Peninsula to fight Islamist terrorists.

The authorization included permission to bring in a fleet of attack helicopters as well, Israel’s Army Radio reported Thursday.

Under the terms of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, Egypt must ask Israel for authorization before sending troops into the Sinai, which is supposed to remain demilitarized.

Egypt asked Israel for permission last week following a car bomb attack in the northern Sinai that left 30 Egyptian troops dead.

TERROR on page 22

U.S., Israel inaugurate production line for F-35 fighter jet wings JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israel and the United States inaugurated a production line for the manufacture of wings for F-35 fighter jets.

The ceremony was held Tuesday at Israel Aircraft Industries near Tel Aviv. Among those on hand were Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s minister of defense, and Daniel Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, as well as officials from Lockheed Martin and IAI. “The special relationship between the United States and Israel is stronger than any disagreement,” Yaalon said, referring to the current flap between the White House and Israel.. “And there is no dispute on the gratitude that the people of Israel owe the United States for supporting our strength and security.”

THURSDAY, NOVERMBER 13, 2014

ANNOUNCEMENTS ENGAGEMENT esley Levine of Cleveland, Ohio, is pleased to announce the engagement of her daughter, Tracy, to Joshua Juran, son of Betsy Goldfarb and Larry and Kim Juran, both of Cincinnati, Ohio. Tracy, daughter of Rob Levine of Florida, is the granddaughter of the late Olga and Michael Berkovitz of Cleveland, Ohio.

Josh is the grandson of Bob and Sue Juran of Cincinnati, Ohio and the late Dr. and Mrs. Milton Goldfarb also of Cincinnati, Ohio.

The bride-to-be graduated from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration. She is employed as a computer software consultant at itelligence Inc. The groom-to-be received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is

L

Tracy Levine and Josh Juran

the Director of Corporate Finance for Macy’s, Inc. The couple resides in Cincinnati with their dog, Markley, and their cat, Misha.

A wedding is planned for next New Year’s Eve.

CINCINNATI JEWS IN THE NEWS r. Gary Kirsh, president of The Urology Group, was elected president of the Large Urology Group Practice Association.

D

SOCIAL LIFE • 11

12 • CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

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THE POWER OF ONE AWARD LUNCHEON On Thursday, August 7, the JCC Senior Center held the Power of One Award Luncheon, an annual community event that recognizes two major supporters of the Senior Center. Nearly 300 people came together to honor the Power of One Award recipient, the Philada Home Fund, and the Together We Can Award recipient, Amy Hirschman. At the luncheon, guests celebrated the award recipients and the Senior Center with an elegant meal and live entertainment. Students from the JCC Early Childhood School opened the performance, followed by the Israeli Shalom Dancers led by Idit Moss and the International Folk Dancers. This unique, multicultural show gave guests a taste for global dance and music and highlighted community support for Israel.

THURSDAY, NOVERMBER 13, 2014

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE • 13

14 • DINING OUT

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Breadsmith features special items for Thanksgiving & everyday bread lovers

By Bob Wilhelmy Let’s talk turkey. Our turkey talk will be of the Thanksgiving variety, only with a twist. Or might I better say a kneed?

This Thanksgiving, Breadsmith in Hyde Park features a turkey “loaf” of bread. This turkey-shaped loaf of French peasant bread is a 4pounder (see photo). The loaf can be used as a centerpiece for your feast, or more appropriately to my mind, as part of the feast.

French peasant bread is part crunchy crust, like a baguette, and part hearty, healthy, denser insides, made that way by the addition of cracked wheat. The bread cries out for good butter or tart jam.

Ward Bahlman, owner of Breadsmith, said the turkey-shaped loaf is one of two special holiday bread items he’s featuring. “We will have butter-flake rolls for Thanksgiving as well, and these rolls are really good,” he said.

“We make the buffer-flake product from the same dough used for croissants. The dough is done in a way that layers the dough with butter, and after the folding and rolling out is done, we have 145 layers of dough separated by butter.

It’s a 2-day process and the baked roll is just wonderful: it’s buttery, it’s crispy, it’s amazing!”

Bahlman encourages customers (you) to order in advance on the butter-flake and turkey-shape loaves. “Yes, we’ll have them in the case too, for walk-ins, but if we

run out, we’re out. So if you want to be sure to get either or both of these special Thanksgiving items, call us and reserve what you want.”

Another new item that is not specially for holidays is the salted or “deli” rye stick. The item came to be in the Breadsmith line because the Cincinnati franchise contingent asked for it at a recent conference of franchisees. “We are not allowed (as a franchisee) to offer anything Breadsmith corporate does not have a recipe for. So we asked to have a salted rye stick added. If you’ve spent any time in Cincinnati, you know salted rye sticks. Now we have it, and the response has been very good,” Bahlman said.

In addition to the rye sticks, Breadsmith now has four types of rye bread from which to select: New York, deli (or Jewish), dark (or German) and sauerkraut rye.

“The new sauerkraut rye is absolutely screaming for corned beef. And it’s not a flavoring in the loaf, but actual Kaiser brand kraut that is added to the loaf,” he said.

“We’ve worked with the rye flour to get the right consistency for our ryes, and ours is 12 percent rye flour, which gives you a great crust and a good chew. And we put caraway seeds in all our rye, because I feel that rye bread, to be good, needs the caraway.”

Each day of the week, Tuesday through Sunday (closed Monday), there are seven to nine daily breads baked, adding to the every-day

W. Ward Bahlman with a loaf of turkey-shaped French peasant bread in hand.

breads available at the start of each day. One of the most popular of these daily special bakes is the rosemary garlic ciabatta, offered on Fridays. The vanilla egg challah, also a Friday bread special, is another highly popular loaf.

One type of bread made a couple times each week is the semoli-

na loaf. Semolina is the same wheat flour used in making pasta, and I’ll give the bread it produces my personal endorsement. The bread makes perfect toast, crunchy, with good chew, and it’s great with butter or jam or other spreads.

Semolina loaf is ideal for sandwiches too, standing up to tuna or egg salad, and offering a good crust, but not so dense or crusty that you cannot easily bite through it. Allow me to explain my bite reference: some bread for sandwiches has a crust that is a bit leathery, so you wind up doing more tearing than biting off each mouthful. Not so with slices of semolina, allowing you to eat the sandwich with grace.

In the sweets category, Breadsmith offers a new treat as well, the snicker-doodle cookie.

This cookie has a cinnamon-sugar

The bread racks of Breadsmith.

dusting on top, and I don’t know of a kid anywhere who would refuse a snicker-doodle. Other sweets are: brownies, cinnamon claws, coffee cakes, cookies, dessert breads, muffins and scones. The shop offers coffee by the cup, and features locally roasted Seven Hills coffee, along with Stonewall Kitchens and American Spoon Foods jams and jellies.

Also, Breadsmith makes a variety of specialty items. Included are: biscotti, cinnamon cobblestone (like a coffee cake, but with a cobblestone-like top), crostini, croutons, garlic cobblestone, granola, hamburger buns, hotdog buns, pizza dough (ready to roll out and dress) and pull-aparts.

Breadsmith 3500 Michigan Ave. 321-6100

DINING OUT • 15

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014

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16 • OPINION

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What to do about car terrorism

By Stephen M. Flatow (JNS) – As I prepare for an upcoming visit to Israel, I can’t help but feel a twinge of apprehension.

How could it be otherwise? The recent vehicular terrorist attacks in Jerusalem inevitably make every visitor to the city wonder who will be the next victim.

On Oct. 22, a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a crowd at a Jerusalem light rail station, murdering two people, one of them a 3month-old baby. On Nov. 5, another terrorist used his van as a weapon against pedestrians at another light rail station in the Israeli capital, killing two people and wounding a dozen others.

The seeming randomness of the attacks is particularly terrifying— exactly as the killers intend. The attacker doesn’t need any bombmaking skills or expertise as a sniper. He doesn’t have to elude security check points or Israeli army patrols. All he has to do is get in his car and step on the gas pedal.

He can strike anywhere, any time.

And yet if you walk down any street in Jerusalem this morning, you will see Israelis going about their daily lives as they always do.

They don’t seem especially worried. They’re not going to stop taking the train. They know that a crowd at a bus stop or outside a movie theater or on a corner waiting for the green walk signal could be targets too. Life has to go on.

Israelis don’t worry because they have no choice. Visitors worry because they do. They can and will soon return to their home countries, where standing on a street corner is not a life-endangering action. That is a difference between the lives of Americans and Israelis that can’t be bridged.

Yet there is another, and very important, difference. The average Israeli can’t do much about Palestinian terrorism. But the average American Jew can.

Israelis have little choice but to rely on the police and the army to continue doing everything possible to preempt the terrorists in their ongoing genocidal war against them.

American Jews, however, have the ability to take political action that could make a real difference in the fight against Palestinian terrorism.

Let us recognize that “car terrorists” do not simply appear out of nowhere. Abdel Rahman alShaludi, who carried out the Oct. 22 attack, had twice served time in prison for terrorist activities. His uncle, Mohiyedine Sharif, was a senior Palestinian terrorist who was killed in an intra-Arab feud in 1998.

Ibrahim al-Akari, who perpetrated the Nov. 5 attack, was the brother of Musa al-Akari, who was convicted in the kidnap-murder of an Israeli border policeman and was freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

Al-Shaludi and al-Akari are the products of a society, and a culture, in which murdering Jews—whether by bomb, knife, or automobile—is praised and rewarded. Remember “It Takes a Village,” the children’s book by then-U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton? She argued that it is not just the immediate family that influences a child, but also one’s neighbors, culture, and community standards.

What influenced Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi and Ibrahim Akari to become “car terrorists”? One source was the Palestinian Authority’s leadership and social media.

Exhibit A: Sultan al-Einen. He’s a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, which is the largest faction of the PLO (the PA’s parent body) and is also chaired by Abbas. He’s not quite the Palestinian equivalent of Valerie Jarrett or (until recently) David Axelrod, but he’s up there.

Palestinian Media Watch has compiled a long list of statements

by Einen praising terrorists. But the one that attracted the most attention was his public praise, in May 2013, of a terrorist who stabbed to death an Israeli father of five. Einen said the killer was a “heroic fighter” and called for “blessings to the breast that nursed him.” In response, five members of Congress—Republican Ed Royce (Calif.) and Democrats Eliot Engel (N.Y.), Nita Lowey (N.Y.), Ted Deutch (Fla.), and Brad Sherman (Calif.)—wrote to Abbas, demanding that he fire Einen.

Abbas ignored the letter.

After the car attack by alShaludi two weeks ago, Einen publicly hailed him as a “heroic martyr” and charged that Israel “murdered him in cold blood.” Fatah’s Facebook page is replete with cartoons extolling “car terrorism” and urging viewers to “Hit the gas at 199 [km/h] for Al-Aqsa.”

Now is the time for American Jews to ask those five members of Congress to take action—not just another letter that Abbas will ignore, but the imposition of penalties that Abbas cannot ignore.

Here’s one idea: from now on, deduct the cost of medical treatment for victims of Palestinian terrorism from the $500-million that the U.S. gives the Palestinian Authority each year. Make them pay for the damage they cause.

There are many other ways in which American Jews, working closely with friends in Congress, can force Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to stop praising and glorifying terrorists. That would be the first, important step in the process of changing the culture in Palestinian villages that is raising children to become “car terrorists.”

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Kristallnacht’s lessons for today

By Abraham Foxman NEW YORK (JTA) -- Each year on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, we recall the opening salvo of the violent assault on Jews that foreshadowed the Holocaust and ask ourselves what should have been done at that moment.

In thinking about Kristallnacht, we should also consider the outpouring of violence against Jewish communities in Europe this summer and draw the right lessons for today. It is rightly said that the Holocaust began not with gas chambers but with words. The significance of Kristallnacht in the history of the Holocaust is the passage from anti-Jewish legislation and antiSemitic rhetoric to violence against Jews. And therein lies the lesson for today.

To be clear, in today’s democratic Europe, there is no risk of a new Holocaust. Invoking such a possibility obscures rather than illuminates the serious situation of European Jewry. Comparisons to Kristallnacht, however, are apt.

This summer we saw in France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe, anti-Semitic rhetoric followed by assaults on Jews and attacks on synagogues, Jewishowned shops and other Jewish institutions. The differences with Kristallnacht are stark and significant, but the similarities cannot be ignored. Not on this anniversary – not at a time of great insecurity among Jewish communities in Europe.

Two synagogues were attacked during anti-Israel demonstrations this summer in Paris. In one case, two hundred Jews were trapped inside, while a mob, armed with bats, tried to invade the syna-

gogue. Roger Cukierman, the head of the French Jewish community, made the connection explicit: “We’ve never seen anything like that. It resembled Kristallnacht in 1938 in Germany.”

And in Germany, where people chanted “Jews to the gas” at anti-Israel rallies and where Molotov cocktails were thrown at synagogues, Dieter Graumann, the president of the Central Council of Jews of Germany said, “These are the worst times since the Nazi era.”

The British Jewish community’s security agency, CST, said that July 2014 had the highest number of reported anti-Semitic incidents in any one month since it began keeping records three decades ago. Highly esteemed and hardly alarmist former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote at Yom Kippur that the Jewish community suffers “a degree of apprehension I have not known in my lifetime. Anti-Semitism has returned to Europe within living memory of the Holocaust.”

European Jews were terrorized

by Kristallnacht, and among elements of society in Europe today they are being terrorized once again by anti-Semitic hatred, especially, but not only, linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The terror is not from one night, but from an accumulation of incidents over the past years.

During Operation Protective Edge this summer, and during Operation Cast Lead in 2009, ADL reported on anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric around the world, related to the Israel-Hamas wars. We saw incitement to violence, demonization of Jews and Israel, blood libels and other antiSemitic vitriol. Too often these

words led to assaults and vandalism.

And those attacks have caused vast numbers of European Jews to no longer feel free to live openly as Jews. The European Union’s human rights agency surveyed eight major Jewish communities in Europe in 2012 and found widespread insecurity. One in five Jews had been the victim of an anti-Semitic insult, harassment or assault, and one in three worried about being physically attacked over the next 12 months. Two out of five Jews always or frequently avoided wearing a kippah or Star of David in public.

Anti-Semitism never left the continent, but its recent transformation from rhetoric to violence, including murders at a Jewish school in Toulouse and the Jewish museum in Brussels, has caused a sea change in the confidence of Jewish communities across Europe. Most European political leaders have condemned the antiSemitic incidents in their countries, but the indifference among the public is shocking and dismaying. If the hatred espoused and acted out by the anti-Semites and the apathy of European citizens overtake the efforts of the wellintentioned political leaders, European Jewish communities will have a dim future: communal self-segregation, individual withdrawal from Jewish communal life or emigration.

“Never again” stands. There will not be another Holocaust. But Kristallnacht is another story. Let us learn its lessons, not to avoid another Holocaust but to avoid a different disaster, the slow terrorization of Europe’s Jews into permanent fear, faced with the awful choice of abandoning their identity or fleeing.

JEWISH LIFE • 17

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2014

tion of Athens, where citizens had the right to vote).

Now we can understand Abraham’s bargaining with the children of Heth. Abraham opens the conversation defining himself as an alien resident; on the one hand he is a Hebrew, not a Hittite, a stranger of a radically different religion and culture.

He is nevertheless an upright resident, ready to cooperate with the Hittite civil laws in every way. The children of Heth are happy to adopt this highly successful patriarch of a new tribe as one of their own, to “assimilate” him within their culture.

Abraham is ultimately willing to pay any price for Sarah’s total independence from their surrounding civilization, for her persona as a Hebrew will be expressed and established by the place and manner in which she is buried. Show me where you are buried and how you are mourned, and this will reveal volumes about the life that you lived.

Given that the manner in which a nation reveres its dead goes a long way in defining its future, is it any wonder that the Hebrew word kever (burial plot) is used by the talmudic authorities as a synonym for rehem (womb)?

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s funeral last year was undoubtedly the largest in Israel’s history, estimated to have included some 800,000 mourners. It expressed the amazing power of Torah, the most authentic and eternal legacy of our people. Make no mistake: he was not being mourned as a politician; much the opposite, his politics were often divisive and even offensive. He was being mourned as a Prince of Torah, as the greatest unifying authority of Torah law in our generation, a unifying Torah respected and accepted by Ashkenazim as well as Sephardim, haredim (ultra-Orthodox), modern Orthodox and secular alike – for representatives from all walks of Israeli life came to his door to seek halachic advice and live by his rulings.

His Torah, true to the tradition of the greatest Torah leaders of the last 2,000 years, was unique in our generation. It was a Torah which breathed democracy, because although he came from Iraq and expressed the Iraqi (Babylonian) tradition, his was the ultimate word for Ashkenazim too – and so he gave

standing and respect to a population which had previously been discriminated against by the ruling WASP (“White Ashkenazi Sabra Populace”) of Israel.

His Torah was a Torah of peace and moderation – he ruled that in the interest of peace and the saving of human lives, we could give up Yamit in Sinai. His Torah was a Torah of inclusiveness – he ruled that the Jews of Ethiopia, considered to be of the lost tribe of Dan by the 16th-century authority Radbaz (Rabbi David ben Zimra), were legitimately Jewish and did not require conversion, and he ruled that all the military conversions were legitimate.

And his Torah was a Torah of compassion, which sought to solve problems rather than create them. I never brought him a problem of an aguna (“chained woman” seeking a divorce) or a mamzer (illegitimate offspring) for which he did not find a solution. May His memory and his way serve as a light that will continue to illuminate the future of our people.

Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone Chief Rabbi – Efrat Israel

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T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: CHAYEI SARA (BRAISHITH 23:1—25:18) 1. How did Avrohom buy the Tomb of the Patriarchs a.) Paid 400 Shekels b.) Gave precious jewels c.) Traded his lands 2. Did Avrohom only buy the cave? a.) Yes b.) No 3. Who accompanied Eliezer on his mission to Charan? a.) Avrohom b.) Isaac

for Isaac by also giving water to Eliezer's camels.

5. C 24:62

EFRAT, Israel – “This is how the field and its cave became the property of Abraham as a burial site, purchased from the children of Heth."

(Gen. 23:20) We recently marked one year since the passing of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the great halachic and political leader of millions of Jews throughout Israel and the world. Our portion this week devotes an entire chapter to the purchase of a gravesite for the burial of Sarah, Matriarch of Israel. What is the meaning behind Abraham’s bargaining for a burial plot, and what connection, if any, does this biblical story have with Rabbi Ovadia’s funeral last year? Let us begin with our text. Abraham, an itinerant shepherd throughout the area which will one day become the Land of Israel, approaches the “Children of Heth” (the Hittites): “I am a stranger-resident among you,” he says. “Give me possession of a gravesite so that I may bury my dead from before me” (Gen. 23:4).

The Children of Heth seem more than generous in their response: “You are a Prince of God in our midst; in the choicest of gravesites may you bury your dead. None of us will withhold his gravesite from you.” (23:6) Abraham is not satisfied. He requests a meeting with Ephron the son of Zohar, to whom he wishes to pay “top dollar and cash-in-hand” for the Machpela Tomb at the end of his field. The residents of Heth want to give Abraham a free burial plot; Abraham insists on paying a high price.

The “bargaining” begins.

Ephron insists on giving the patriarch a free plot; but when he finally names a price, it is an excessive 400 silver shekels. According to the Code of Hammurabi, an average workingman’s annual wages at the time were six to eight shekels.

Abraham paid the equivalent of 70 years of wages for one burial plot.

What is the text teaching us? I would submit that Abraham is heaven-bent on establishing the unique Hebrew identity of his beloved wife, Sarah, no matter what the financial cost – an identity which will be defined and determined by her gravesite. You see, in the ancient world, a citizen of a specific locality received only one advantage as a result of his citizenship: a free burial plot in that locality (with the excep-

Show me where you are buried and how you are mourned, and this will reveal volumes about the life that you lived.

c.) Yishmael d.) Nobody 4. How did Elizer travel to Charan? a.) By foot b.) By Camels c.) By Donkey 5. Isaac spent time at which special place? a.) Mount Moriah b.) Hebron c.) The well at Lchai Roei

the trees.

3. C 24 4. B 24:10 Rivka proved she was the right wife

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT CHAYE SARA GENESIS 23:1- 25:18

Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

ANSWERS 1. A 23:16 2. B 23:17 Avrohom also bought the field and

Sedra of the Week

18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

JEWZ

IN THE

By NATE BLOOM Contributing Columnist At the Movies/Movie News “Rosewater” is the first film directed and written by JON STEWART, 51. It is based on a memoir by Iranian-Canadian Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari about his 107-day imprisonment in solitary confinement by the Iranian regime. A few days before Iran’s 2009 presidential election, “Daily Show” correspondent Jason Jones, pretending to be a “spy” (a put-on), interviewed Bahari at a Teheran coffee shop. The regime arrested Bahari four days after the interview aired on “The Daily Show” and charged him with spying! After his release, he and Stewart became friends. Here’s an excerpt from a recent NY Magazine interview with Stewart : (Q) “Speaking of Iran: You learned a great deal about its politics and culture writing and directing Rosewater. Did you make the movie because you felt guilty about contributing to Bahari’s jailing?” Stewart replied: “Listen, Jews do a lot of things out of guilt. Generally it has to do with visiting people, not making movies. If I could draw a linear, rational line to what we had done and the charges against Maziar, I would be really devastated. You couldn’t do something more inane and vapid than Jason Jones in sunglasses and a kaffiyeh in a café going, “I am an American spy!” But you can’t control what idiots will weaponize….”. By the way, Bahari was tortured by his interrogators, one of whom was obsessed with New Jersey, calling it a “den of massage wickedness.”

(Opens Friday, Nov. 14) Celeb Ailments/Obit Note DANIEL RADCLIFFE, 25, recently told Conan O’Brien that he ingested half a cup of antifreeze and was sick for three days. Back story: he was making the film “Horns” in Canada. It was very cold, so the crew put anti-freeze in the trailer water lines overnight. Radcliffe didn’t know that and drank from the trailer’s inside water tap—which had the poisonous stuff inside it.

Meanwhile, JERRY SEINFELD, 60, told Brian Williams that he might be on the “autistic spectrum.” He said that he’s “very literal in conversation and basic social engagement is a struggle…but I don’t see it as dysfunctional, I just think of it as an alternate mindset.”

The great bassist Jack Bruce died on Oct. 25, age 71. His maternal (Scottish) grandfather may have been Jewish. Not widely known is that Bruce’s song-

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NEWZ

writing partner on those Cream 1960s classics (“Sunshine of Your Love”, “White Room”) was PETE BROWN, now 73, an English Jew. Baby Boom Ashton Kutcher, in a recent appearance on “The Conan O’Brien Show,” explained how he and his fiancée, MILA KUNIS, 31, came up with their newborn daughter’s name, WYATT ISABELLE. First, Kutcher said he came down with “name Tourette’s,” and started spitting out every name that came to mind in an effort to find one that Mila would like. Finally, he said “Wyatt” and Kunis said, “That’s It.” Then he added, “We gave her the middle name Isabelle after Mila’s grandfather who was Itzhak, and so it has a little heritage.” He didn’t explain that it’s a Jewish naming custom to give a newborn a name whose first letter or sound is similar to the name of the honored relative.

Robert Downey, Jr., who wed producer SUSAN LEVIN DOWNEY, 40, in a Jewish ceremony in 2005, welcomed a daughter on Nov. 4. She’s named AVRI ROEL DOWNEY. In 2012, they had a son, whom they named EXTON ELIAS DOWNEY. (I suspect that Avri, too, is named after a Jewish relative. It is a common Hebrew nickname for Abraham). Meanwhile, ISLA FISHER, 38, and hubbie SACHA BARON COHEN, 43, are reportedly expecting their third child. The couple has two daughters: OLIVE, 7, and ELULA, 4.

TV Worth Watching The History Channel of Canada made an original dramatic film in 2012 entitled, “The Real Inglorious Basterds,” that was shown earlier this week on the American Heroes Channel (AHC—formerly the Military Channel). It will be re-run on Nov. 15 (9AM) and on Nov. 17 (7PM and 2AM on the 18th). It tells the true story of two young American Jewish refugees from Europe who joined a secret branch of the army, parachuted into Austria in the last months of WWII, and met up with a German army deserter. Together, they gathered invaluable intelligence and did sabotage work. Sergeant FRED MAYER, now 92, one of the two Americans, was captured and tortured. But he convinced the Nazi head of that region that he was an army “big wig” and eventually, alone, he accepted the surrender of Innsbruck and turned the city over to advancing American troops!

FROM THE PAGES

We have been informed that Messrs. Carl Barus and Andrew Nembach have associated themselves as a firm to open a Musical Institute where, with the assistance of several female teachers, all branches of music will be taught to ladies and gentlemen.

Messrs. Goldberg & Mayfield, dealers in all kinds of Groceries, foreign and domestic produce, wines, liquors, cigars, etc, are now daily in receipt both from Europe and the East, of large stocks of the above-mentioned articles. They keep constantly on hand the best qualities of Herrings, Sardines, Sardellen, Anchovies, Raisins, Prunes, and a thousand other articles too tedious to mention.

Dealers, both wholesale and retail, would do well to give them a call, or send in their orders to which prompt attendance will be paid.

Died, November 29, at the residence of her son-in-law, Mr. Max Thurnauer, on Eighth Street, Cincinnati, Mrs. Caroline Goodheart, aged seventy-four years, after a protracted disease. – December 9, 1864

Mr. and Mrs. Ben Lehman, of 2514 Ingleside Avenue, Walnut Hills.

The wedding took place at the home of the bride’s parents. The young couple will be at home after December 1, at 2514 Ingleside Avenue.

Dr. David Stern, aged fiftyseven years, died on Sunday, November 8, at his late home, Lyleburn Place, Clifton. He was unmarried. The funeral took place Tuesday morning at the mortuary chapel of the Walnut Hills Jewish cemetery., Dr. Grossmann officiating. Dr. Stern was the professor of chemistry at the Ohio Dental College since 1895. Prior to that time he was a student and co-worker of Prof. Hoffman in Berlin.

Prof. Stern was one of the first chemists to bring to the attention of the scientific men of the United States the great value of coal-tar products. Dr. Stern was the son of the late Bernard Stern, a pioneer Cincinnatian. He is survived by his brothers, William, Max and Louis Stern of New York and Dr. Leopold Stern of Cleveland, and two sisters, Mrs. Louis Kramer and Mrs. Louis Stricker, the wife of Dr. Stricker. – November 12, 1914

125 Y EARS A GO

75 Y EARS A GO

Mr. and Mrs. Charles M. Rothschild, of 416 West Seventh Street, are the parents of a boy, born on Thursday, the 14th.

Mother and child are doing well.

Mrs. Dr. David Philipson was elected a Director of the Women’s Free Hospital at the last meeting.

The hospital is on Nassau Street, Walnut Hills.

Last Saturday evening, in honor of her sixteenth birthday, Miss Rose Fruhauf, of 335 George Street, was tendered a surprise party by the members of the Progress Literary Society. The guests participated in dancing up til twelve o’clock, when all enjoyed an elegant collation, served by Caterer Basse, after which the party enjoyed themselves until a late hour, when they dispersed.

There were present the Misses Rose and Emma Fruhauf, Nora Ettlinger, Carrie Meyer, Ray Plaut, and Messrs. Max Fruhauf, Henry Bowman, Lee and Arthur Weil, Seymour G. Bottigheimer, of the P.L.S. and the Misses Carrie, Elsie and Flora Fruhauf and Messrs.

Adolph Loeb and George J. Solomon. – November 21, 1889

Mrs. John J. Frank and Mrs. Samuel Malcolm Levy are cochairmen of the Women’s Committee for the Big and Little Brothers’ banquet, to be held Sunday, Dec. 3rd, at 6:30 p.m. in Avondale Synagogue Center.

Much of the program-featuring WSAI and WLW stars-will be broadcast of WSAI from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., according to Maurice W. Jacobs, program chairman.

The marriage of Miss Elizabeth Pollack, daughter of Mr. Julian A. Pollack, to Mr. Morton Rauh, son of Mrs. Louis L. Rauh and the late Mr. Rauh, took place Wednesday evening, Nov. 15th, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Pollack on Redway Avenue. Rabbi James G. Heller officiated.

After a wedding trip to Mexico, Mr. and Mrs. Rauh will be at home at 1306 Paxton Road. – November 23, 1939

150 Y EARS A GO

100 Y EARS A GO Rabbi George Zepin, director of the Department of the Synagogue and School Extension of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, was married on Sunday morning, November 8, to Miss Laura Lehman, daughter of

50 Y EARS A GO Miss Rocky Dombar was elected homecoming queen of Woodward High School at the annual homecoming dance Saturday, Nov. 14. Five candidates competed for the honor.

Miss. Dombar is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Dombar of 872 West Galbraith Road.

Mr. and Mrs. Jules O. Oppenheimer of North Avondale announce the engagement of their daughter, Jean, to Mr. David Simmons, son of Mr. and Mrs. Pete

Simmons of Bond Hill.

Miss Oppenheimer is a student in radiological technology at Jewish Hospital. Mr. Simmons attends the Ohio College of Applied Science.

Miss Oppenheimer is the granddaughter of Mrs. Louis Oppenheimer. Mr. Simmons is the grandson of Mr. Morris Kizner. No date has been set for the wedding.

– November 19, 1964

25 Y EARS A GO Lisa and Steven Frankel announce the birth of a son, Micah Alan, Oct. 31. Micah has a sister, Ellyn Rachelle.

Maternal grandparents are Alice and Dick Campbell of Columbus. Paternal grandparents are Penina and Naftali Frankel of Cincinnati.

Paternal great-grandparents are Dr. Morris and Ruth Schulzinger of Cincinnati, Rabbi Joshua Frankel of New York and the late Pearl E. Frankel.

Dr. and Mrs. Robert Lukin ammounce the engagement of their daughter, Kimberly Faith, to Bradley H. Kuhr, son of Nancy Sattler Kuhr and Richard T. Kuhr, all of Cincinnati.

Kimberly is the graddaughter of Mrs. Melvin Schultz of Cincinnati and Mrs. Joseph Lukin of Cleveland. Bradley is the grandson of Mrs. Samuel Sattler of Hollywood, Fl. and Alvin Kuhr of Tamarac, Fl. Kimberly is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a bachelor of science degree in education. Bradley is an executive with Riverfront Steel, Cincinnati.

A January wedding is planned.

– November 23, 1989

10 Y EARS A GO Shelley and Edward Hattenbach are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Meryl Jennifer, to Richard Watson, son of Betty and Jimmie Watson of Memphis, Tenn.

Meryl is the granddaughter of Ann Wallack and the late Dr. Joseph Wallack and Hannah Hattenbach and the late Arthur Hattenbach.

Meryl earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in environmental science from The Ohio State University. She is a field ecologist wtih the Nature Conservancy in Little Rock, Ark. Richard earned a bachelor of science degree in engineering and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Tennessee.

He is a safety engineer for OSHA in Little Rock, Ark. – December 2, 2004

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY / CLASSIFIEDS • 19

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 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 • jewishcincinnati.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

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 Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com

EBOLA from page 9

ZELDIN from page 6

that have been decimated, all compounded by increasing stigma towards survivors and the families of victims,” Glick said.

According to Glick, the reaction to IsraAID training has been very positive among the people of Sierra Leone and the country’s government—including support from the First Lady of Sierra Leone, Sia Koroma, who is a trained psychiatric nurse.

Though the crisis in West Africa is serious, Glick said people around the world need to stop the panic and hysteria surrounding Ebola. He said the sensationalistic global reaction to the outbreak is leading to a growing stigma associated with people from West Africa and hampering efforts to combat the disease.

“This disease is indeed dangerous and scary, but it is not easily transmitted, and even in the affected countries, there are still millions of people that are living their lives every day,” he said.

Glick said IsraAID is committed to continuing to provide aid to Iraqi refugees as winter approaches, and he believes that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is also a long-term project that may take several years to contain and heal.

Reid to block and tackle for him," Brooks said, using the Yiddish word for “troubles.”

The RJC congratulated the national party and noted its own role in bringing about the gains.

"Our members contributed and raised millions of dollars for campaigns around the country," its statement said. The RJC political action committee "made significant contributions to critical races. And our grassroots events energized our members to participate in get-out-the-vote efforts."

Moline also faulted Democrats and his own organization for ignoring Jewish voters in key states, including Georgia and Virginia. In Virginia, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from Ed Gillespie, with the race still undecided by Wednesday morning. In Georgia, Michelle Nunn, the daughter of the long-serving Democratic senator Sam Nunn, was defeated by Republican David Perdue.

“There are more Jewish voters in Georgia than in Michigan,” Moline said. “There was a tremendous effort

EDUCA EDUCATION Chai Tots Early Childhood Center (513) 234.0600 • chaitots.com Chabad Blue Ash (513) 793-5200 • chabadba.com Cincinnati Hebrew Day School (513) 351-7777 • chds.shul.net HUC-JIR (513) 221-1875 • huc.edu JCC Early Childhood School (513) 793-2122 • mayersonjcc.org Kehilla - School for Creative Jewish Education (513) 489-3399 • kehilla-cincy.com Mercaz High School (513) 792-5082 x104 • mercazhs.org 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

to turn out Latinos and African Americans, but very little effort for Jewish voters.”

There were some wins for candidates with unusual Jewish community ties.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), named by the state’s governor to the seat in 2013 after Jim DeMint retired, was elected outright, remaining the only African-American Republican in the Senate. He is close to Nick Muzin, an Orthodox Jew who formerly served as his chief of staff and now advises Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a likely candidate for the GOP presidential nod in 2016.

In New Jersey, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who was elected in a special vote last year after Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) died, won his first six-year term outright. Booker, an African-American who headed a Jewish studies group when he studied at Oxford University, remains close to the New Jersey Jewish community.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats scored a rare win with Tom Wolf picking up the governor’s mansion.

Wolf is close to the small Jewish community in his native York and is a major contributor to its JCC.

DO YOU WANT TO PLACE A CLASSIFIED? Send an e-mail including what you would like in your classified & your contact information to

business@ americanisraelite.com or call 513-621-3145 GREENBLATT from page 6 Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

In the Jewish world, Greenblatt has served on the board of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, and he was one of the judges in the 2011 “Next Big Jewish Idea” contest of the Los Angeles Jewish federation.

“I have enjoyed a varied career that has spanned business, nonprofit and public service, but the common thread linking these experiences has been a commitment to tikkun olam, to repair the world, whether by building businesses, creating products, driving policy or forging partnerships,” Greenblatt said in his speech Thursday.

As ADL succession committee members winnowed down their top candidate choices from 25 to 15 to eight and then to three, Barry Curtiss-Lusher, the chairman of the committee and ADL’s national chairman, said he realized that, while “a number of people could be great leaders of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt was the best choice.”

Curtiss-Lusher also told JTA that while Greenblatt has not been a Jewish communal professional, he is a committed Jew who maintains a kosher household and is an active member of his Conservative shul.

Foxman will formally hand over the reins to Greenblatt on July 20.

Foxman has been a singular leader for the organization. A child survivor of the Holocaust, he started at the ADL in PASSPORT from page 6 Lewin said she was not concerned that a decision, even one that goes against her client, would have such broad ramifications. The current court has been known for narrowly casting its decisions and avoiding far-reaching constitutional conclusions.

“I don’t see this court writing an opinion giving the executive branch such broad power in foreign policy that it cuts out Congress from that role,” said Lewin, the daughter of seasoned Supreme Court lawyer Nat Lewin.

Lewin did acknowledge, however, that the ruling could have farreaching import for Jews and their attachment to Jerusalem.

“Getting this practice changed is very important psychologically, regardless of separation of powers,”

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(513) 531-9600 1965. Under his leadership, ADL expanded its reach with 30 regional offices across the United States and an office in Israel. In 2011, the last year for which data is available, the ADL reported nearly $54 million in revenue.

But Foxman’s role transcends that of leader of an organization that monitors anti-Semitic activity, offers discrimination-sensitivity training and runs antibigotry programs, including for law enforcement. He has become the leading global arbiter for what constitutes antiSemitism, the go-to person for apologies and exculpation when public figures make anti-Semitic gaffes or missteps, and a favorite hated figure of antiSemites worldwide. He also has been a staunch advocate for Israel.

“I’m confident that ADL will continue to thrive and grow under Jonathan’s leadership,” Foxman said in a statement. “I look forward to working with him to ensure a successful and smooth transition.”

Greenblatt said he is deeply honored to have been chosen for the post.

“The threats that face our community today – including the expanding specter of global anti-Semitism, the continued legitimization of anti-Zionism, and the spreading infection of cyberhate, are serious and sinister,” Greenblatt said Thursday. “Fighting this scourge and advocating for the rights of all is not just an intellectual pursuit – it’s personal for me, a deeply held value, one that has been seared into my soul.”

she said. “And this case has raised awareness. Before this, many people were unaware that the formal position of the United States is not recognizing Israel’s capital as Jerusalem.”

Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of Zivotofsky, said that while Lewin was casting her case as the choice of an individual, it had broader meaning.

“There are many American Jews and other Americans who think it’s absurd that the United States and other world governments do not extend to Israel the courtesy they extend to other countries by recognizing where its government sits as its capital and has not located its embassy there,” he said.

20 • FIRST PERSON / FOOD

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Detroit, Michigan: The lowdown on Motown Wandering Jew

by Janet Steinberg Like a ball that’s been slammed to the ground, Detroit has been slammed to the ground. But like a ball, Detroit is bouncing back. Truly America’s “Comeback City”, Detroit has hit a home run with me.

Detroit’s downtown occupancy rate is now at 98% and there is a waiting list for downtown living. The Detroit Riverfront placed number 9 in the “10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards for Best American Riverfront”.

Among the many nicknames of

this largest city on the U.S.-Canada border, my choice is “Motown” because of its musical legacies. A recent trip to Motown gave me a first-hand look at many facets of this resurging city. Please allow me to show you the good time that awaits you in Motown. However, first things first…where to stay.

I love old ladies…not only the kind with wrinkled faces and lilac hair, but also the historical icons that qualify as Grande Dames.

Almost every big city has one and in Michigan’s most populous city, that regal lady is the 1924 Westin Book Cadillac Detroit. This stunning lady, affectionately dubbed “The Book” is a landmark hotel that reflects the resurgence of downtown Detroit.

The historic 1924 Book Cadillac Detroit Hotel has been restored to its original grandeur.

This luxury landmark has returned its legendary style and splendor to downtown Detroit. Built by Detroit’s famous Book Brothers, this Italian Renaissance-style hotel, with sweeping views of the city sky-

Detroit’s riverfront voted one of America’s top ten

Hitsville USA “The little house that ‘rocked’ the World”

line or the Detroit River, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the 1924 Grand Opening, The Book was the tallest hotel in the world. During the celebration, there was an endless flow of champagne. Now the hotel’s 24grille has brought Detroit its first Champagne Bar. After checking into the hotel, a champagne toast was definitely in order since we had arrived on our 26th wedding anniversary. A glorious pre-dinner massage at the hotel’s Spa 19, refreshed, relaxed, and readied me for a celebratory evening. We could think of no better place to have our anniversary dinner than at the hotel’s award-winning restaurant Roast, a contemporary, uncluttered, and sophisticated dining establishment.

Celebrity Chef Michael Symon’s focus is on meat…what the restaurant terms the “Beast of the Day”. On our evening at Roast, the “beast’ was a goat that roasted slowly on a spinning rotisserie. An open kitchen was adjacent to the rotisserie.

The following day, it was time to begin experiencing the Motown magic. Motown is the great Detroit story…an American phenomenon. What better place to start than at the Motown Museum that preserves the history and legacy of Motown?

Esther Gordy Edwards, sister of Berry Gordy who founded Motown Records in 1959, founded the Motown Museum in 1985. The Museum opened in the Hitsville U.S.A. building, “the little house that ROCKED the world". In 1987 it was declared a Historic Site by the State of Michigan. In 1995, a gallery was added and the early Motown offices, plus an upper flat in which a young Berry Gordy and his family lived, were restored.

Almost six decades after the founding of Motown Records, I was in awe as I found myself experiencing the actual place where the Motown Sound was created.

Standing in Studio A, in the footsteps of Motown Stars like Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson Five, I viewed the original 1877 Steinway grand piano. When Paul McCartney visited the studio, the piano was so out of tune that he paid to have it restored. Only the original finish was retained. Also, in the museum is Michael Jackson’s crystal glove and his black fedora with his name inscribed in gold on the hat’s sweatband.

Broadway comes to Detroit in the Fisher Theatre. The Fisher Theatre opened as a movie and vaudeville house on November 11, 1928. Its tacky décor, that once included banana trees, a goldfish pond and wandering macaws that WANDERING on page 22

Life changes Zell’s Bites

by Zell Schulman I have been here at the Kenwood seven months, and I am doing well but not terrific. I am stil learnng and creating “life as a senior, independent woman.”

No one told me it would be an easy adjustment, neither did they tell me that I would need to create an entire new outlook each day on where I am, what I can do, and how to adjust to the “ways of independent living “ in a retirement home. After all, I’m really not retired, as I am still a paid journalist as well as a community volunteer. What has changed is how I use my time each day, what I used to accomplish and don’t accomplish as quickly and what goals I need to aet for myself. These are all challenges I am still working on.

The classes I take at the University of Cincinnati’s Ollie program are great and I am specifically using them to put together a book as a legacy for my grandchildren.

Fortunately, though, I don’t have a deadline, but it is quite a challenge going back a generation or two and trying to remember who was who, describe their personalities, their importance to my life then and now and what lessons I Iearned from each one and how their personalities affected my life and my life’s paths.

Another daily challenge for me is not having to cook for myself so what do I do to take the place of creating new dishes and making meals for me, my family and my friends. No more shopping lists for the groceries or specialty stores, no more meal planning, no more menues for entertaining and only myself to think about when it comes to food and cooking. What a change and a challenge it is each day.

Actually I have replaced a lot of meal preperation with baking. I realize I can’t share meals or soups or casseroles with those living here as we all get our meals as part of our living here. I don’t go down for breakfast or even lunch most days, although I do love the rolled oats and cream of wheat they prepare and partake at least once a week for one or the other. After all, who needs to dirty up the kitchen and clean up afterwards for a bowl of hot cereal. If I haven’t any weekend plans, I do look forward to Saturday night dinners, because I have learned they serve my favorite entrée-grilled lamb chops!

With holiday entertaining coming up, here is the perfect punch recipe for entertaining a large crowd. The Kenwood served it at my Welcome to the Kenwood party they gave me several months ago. It is best to make the punch the day before you are going to serve it. I buy 5 one gallon plastic jars, then fill them. You can make the ice ring the night before and leave it in the freezer until you are ready to place it in the punch bowl.

ORANGE-PINEAPPLE PUNCH Makes 5 gallons Ingredients Punch Base 5 32-oz cans pineapple juice 5 12-oz cans frozen orange juice, defrosted 5 12-oz cans frozen lemonade, defrosted Additions 1 gallon pineapple sherbet 2 quarts of very dry ginger ale Ice Ring 3 large navel orange 12 maraschino cherries Preparing the Ice Ring 1. To prepare a ring mold for any type of punch, begin by placing layers of various fruits i.e.: citrus slices, canned pineapple chunks, cherries, berries etc. in a round ring mold like you would make a gelatin mold in.

A 4-cup ring mold for this amount of punch works well.

2. After placing some of the fruit on the bottom of the ring mold, add just enough water, fruit juice or sparkling non-alcoholic beverage to cover the fruit. Freeze 30-40 minutes, until solid. Continue layering the fruit and liquid, freezing the ring after each addition, until the mold is filled.

Hold the ice ring in very warm water, count to 10, and invert the mold into your punch bowl. Add the punch Method l. Do not dilute the frozen juice with water. In each gallon containr place one can of pineapple juice, a can of frozen orange juice, and a can of frozen lemonade. Stir all the juices well and place them in the refrigerator until ready to serve the punch.

2. When ready to serve the punch, place the ice ring in the bottom of the punch bowl. Add one gallon of the fruit juice base and 2-quarts of the pineapple sherbet. Pour in one quart of ginger ale.

3. As you see the punch bowl getting low, add another gallon of fruit juice and another quart of sherbet.

Add the remaining quart of ginger ale and the last of the sherbet with the final gallon of juice.

4. You can prepare the ice- ring several days ahead and place it in the freezer. Just before you’re ready to serve the punch, remove the ice ring from the ring. Set it in hot water for 30 seconds and invert into the bottom of the punch bowl.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014

The Audi A8 offers better efficiency along with an abundance of technology The Audi A8 has take the long road in becoming a legitimate competitor for the full-size MercedesBenz and BMW sedans. But now it's the newest generation of A8 that truly stands out as a fully realized contender in the niche. The A8 offers a set of interesting drivetrains and an abundance of technology to help sway shoppers toward the rings. It's a real player in the segment now–competing happily at virtually every level–and even winning some of the categories along the way.

For 2015, the A8 gains more attractive LED headlamps standard across the lineup, and more power with better efficiency amongst some of its drivetrains.

The A8 comes in standard-length A8 and extended-length A8 L models, depending on which drivetrain is specified. The A8 L offers five inches of additional wheelbase and overall length, nearly all of which goes to rear legroom: you get a roomier rear seat, with easier entry and exit, and no significant sacrifice in maneuverability. Trunk space is abundant in both versions. Included in the W12 and available in V-8 models are lavish individual seats in back that might just be cause to get someone else to do the driving. Four-zone climate control keeps everyone comfortable, the rear seats are power-adjustable, and the right-side one includes a footrest while the left-side seat includes massage and recline functions. Also available is a two-panel panoramic sunroof that brightens the interior without interfering with headroom.

The Audi A8 comes with the latest version of Audi's MMI system, which is completely redesigned versus the previous generation. Once again, you get a rotating controller to scroll through menus, but the special new feature is MMI Touch--a scratchpad that makes address or info entry much easier by simply scratching out individual letters. Steeringwheel controls also let you see an abbreviated list of options, and a new Google Maps–based navigation system uses its own data connection to get live-updated mapping and routing information. That system and an integrated wireless hotspot have been made standard, though the data is on subscription from T-Mobile.

Serious audiophiles will want to go for the top Bang & Olufsen Advanced sound system, which has 19 speakers, including small tweeters at the front of the cabin that emerge at startup, along with more than 1400 watts of power. Also on offer in back is a rear-seat entertainment system with its own 20GB hard drive and two 10.2-inch screens, or—for the classic executive car need—a folding table.

The usual A8 lineup of V-6, V-8,

and W-12 engines has been joined by a V-6 turbodiesel with outstanding economy and very good performance. It adds a useful dimension to the A8, a blast of 800-mile-per-tank, 36mpg practicality to an $85,000 sedan that bolds and underscores Audi's commitment to diesels. All the other powertrains offer better acceleration and qualitative performance, outside of fuel economy: of them, opt for the S8's revtastic twin-turbo V-8 and its 520 horsepower over the 333-hp supercharged six or the detuned 435hp twin-turbo V-8 that both come in either wheelbase. There's also the patriarchal long-wheelbase W-12powered car, with 500 hp, and it seems decadent in a car intent on being less conventional and more thoughtful.

A well-calibrated eight-speed automatic and all-wheel drive are standard equipment on every A8, and the combination accent its surefooted feel. It's light to the touch until you make it not so via Audi Drive Select, the electronically calibrated, driveradjustable system that governs powertrain, steering, and suspension feel.

Drive Select gives drivers the choice of Dynamic, Comfort, Auto, or Individual modes. Overall, it's an excellent setup that brings out the best in this big sedan, whether you're in tight switchbacks or cruising on the highway.

AUTOS • 21

22 • OBITUARIES

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

D EATH N OTICES

CONVERTS from page 7

HERNANDEZ, Peter J., age 25, died November 1, 2014; 8 Cheshvan, 5775.

place by interlocutors who argued that her daughter’s conversion to Judaism amounted to an embrace of Jesus’ original religion.

Some converts say they face hostility within their own families when they explain that they can no longer eat in their parents’ kitchen or face the predicament of a sibling’s church wedding (Orthodox authorities commonly forbid entering churches or attending church services).

“The biggest transition for me was adjusting to always having to rely on close friends for certain things, like the holidays, especially since I come from an Italian family

KELLER, Emmy, age 97, died November 5, 2014; 12 Cheshvan, 5775.

ESSIG, Thelma, age 90, died November 6, 2014; 14 Cheshvan, 5775.

O BITUARIES SCHAENGOLD, Carol Stern Carol Stern Schaengold was born to Eugene and Frances Stern in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 25, 1919.

The youngest of four, she graduated from high school at 16 and went to study at Newcomb College, traveling by train and ferry to New Orleans. After earning her twoyear degree she transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met fellow artist and lifelong friend Alice Balterman. She left Chicago to marry Bob Schaengold and raised her family in Cincinnati.

She stayed active as an artist, continuing to work on her art and showing her paintings in many local venues. She campaigned door-to-door for art programs in the Wyoming schools, and was instrumental in starting up the Wyoming Art Fair. She also drew the original signpost and flower basket logo for the Wyoming directory.

Carol Stern Schaengold passed away on October 24, 2014 at the age of 94. Carol is survived by her devoted children Janet, Ellen, and Robert (Charlotte), grandchildren Morgan, Bevin (Jimmy), Zach, and David (Audrey), great-grandchildren Eli and Eleanor. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband of over 55 years Bob Schaengold, brother Howard Seymour Stern, sisters Olive Hart and Virginia Stern. She will also be missed by the many other young people who called her “Grammy,” particularly fellow skating fan

Mara Frisch and great-niece and nephew Nadda and Youssry Taha.

The funeral was held at Weil funeral home on Monday October 27. Rabbi Sandford Kopnick led the service and soprano Rachel Sachs sang an original recitative version of the 23rd Psalm.

Donations in Carol’s honor can be made to the Cincinnati Art Museum or to Crossroads Hospice, or to art education in Wyoming: Wyoming City Schools (Art Department).

TERROR from page 10 seriously consider severing ties.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Paul Hirschson, meanwhile, was careful not to place too much blame on Jordan for recent unrest, instead focusing on PA incitement.

“We regret the Jordanian decision [to recall its ambassador], which doesn’t contribute to calming the situation,” Hirschson told JNS. “We would expect Jordan to condemn the violence, deliberately instigated from [PA headquarters in] Ramallah.”

Before the news of the recall of the Jordanian ambassador and the threat of diplomatic action in the U.N., reports indicated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah met secretly in Amman on Nov. 1 to discuss the situation in Jerusalem and urge calm.

that’s really close knit,” said Stephanie McCourt, an Orthodox convert in her 20s originally from Connecticut. “Balance between religion and family will always be a struggle.”

Ariella Barker, a 34-year-old single attorney, says that after her conversion she would often leave her lower Manhattan home to spend Shabbat on the borough’s Upper West Side, home to America’s single-largest concentration of modern Orthodox singles. But the scene there felt like a club in which she clearly was not welcome.

“I felt like an outsider. I really couldn’t break through and make a lot of friends,” Barker said. “People would always ask me, ‘Are you

Jewish?’ or ‘What’s your Hebrew name?’ I never felt like I fit in.”

Barker immigrated to Israel a year after her conversion and said she immediately found a warm embrace in her multinational Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. But four years later she became ill, forcing her to move back in with her mother near Charlotte, N.C. Now she says her greatest challenge as a Jew is her isolation. The closest Orthodox synagogue is a 45-minute drive away, and it’s Chabad, which Barker says is not an ideal fit for her modern Orthodox sensibility.

“It’s very difficult for me living with my family because my family is not Jewish,” Barker said. “I still keep kosher, I still keep Shabbat. It’s

just not what it was when I was living in a community.”

Of course, not all Orthodox converts have difficult transitions.

One Brooklyn man who asked to be identified only as Simcha said he was worried about acceptance before he converted five years ago.

But his fears turned out to be unfounded.

“I have only had really good people who were genuinely interested in helping me, who were there for me and continue to be,” said Simcha, who is married to a Yemenite Jewish woman, with whom he has a child. “Most people that know me don’t know I’m a convert.”

CONVERSION from page 9

focused on Russian immigrant interests, proposed a measure similar to the one that just passed, but a provision would have given full control over conversions to the Chief Rabbinate.

That provoked the ire of non-Orthodox groups and the law was shelved.

“This government resolution doesn’t give more power to the Chief Rabbinate,” said Seth Farber, the founder of Itim, an organization that aids Israelis with personal status issues.

“The hope is that this bill will enable a much more understanding and friendly set of rabbinical courts to emerge without the Chief Rabbinate imposing their monolithic view on every conversion.”

The reform chips away at longstanding haredi Orthodox dominance of conversion policy. Both of Israel’s chief rabbis, who are haredi, oppose the new law. Should the chief rabbis attempt to block the conversions, Farber has pledged to petition the Supreme Court.

The passage of the law marks the end of a lengthy legislative process.

Though it passed an initial Knesset vote last year, a ministerial committee vote required to move the measure along was postponed continuously until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu removed it from the legislative agenda entirely two weeks ago, reportedly to appease haredi parties.

A group of ministers led by Bennett and Livni responded by pushing the law through the committee anyway, and a modified version passed in the Cabinet.

While the reform doesn’t go as far as recognizing non-Orthodox conversions – a step many non-Orthodox and Diaspora groups would liked to have seen – those groups nevertheless heralded its arrival. Rabbi Gilad Kariv, CEO of the Israeli Reform movement, said he supports any reform that eases conversion as long as it doesn’t hurt non-Orthodox streams.

The Detroit Fox Theatre is one of five spectacular Fox Theatres built in the late 1920s by film pioneer William Fox. Opened in 1928, it was Detroit's premier movie destination for decades. In the 1930s, Shirley Temple made appearances when the theater showed her films. Decades later, after a 1988 restoration, the theatre staged notable performances such as a concert with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli.

Another resurging downtown venue, not for music or theater but for connecting people, is the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue.

Currently housed in a former department store, bright red doors with Star of David door handles open to welcome all people to share and learn from one another.

Don’t leave Detroit without trying a few more unique dining/entertainment spots.

Top of the Pontch, on the 25th floor of the Crowne Plaza (formerly the historic Pontchartrain Hotel), offers spectacular views of the Detroit River and Windsor, Canada.

Along with the view is a menu of locally sourced food that is artfully prepared. However, I must admit,

the divine Dover Sole is actually from Dover, England.

Bert’s, in the Eastern Market District, is a fun spot. If Motown has already crept into your soul, you can opt for authentic soul food.

For the less adventurous, there is down-to-earth comfort food like meatloaf and mashed potatoes. In any case, it’s “food for your soul…”

Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, operating since May 1934, is the world’s oldest operating Jazz Club.

Many famous musicians, such as Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, George Shearing, and Cab Calloway have performed at Baker’s. And the food is downhome Motown. Believe it or not, I loved my short ribs, collard greens, and mac ‘n cheese. All this, plus a keyboard-shaped bar, and the Motown sound belted out by a shimmering Audrey BranhamNorthington and legendary saxophonist Allan Barnes, one of the original Blackbyrds.

You might ask: ‘What was the secret of the Motown sound?’ The answer is not that it was the music.

The answer is that it was a feeling.

A visit to Detroit, Michigan will also give you that feeling!

mother or undergoing an Orthodox conversion – and thus could not marry in Israel.

The Chief Rabbinate’s stringencies led many to balk at the process entirely, in many cases choosing instead to marry abroad. Israel recognizes nonOrthodox conversions performed overseas.

The Cabinet vote on Sunday is the latest attempt at a compromise to make the conversion process friendlier.

In 1999, the government established the Joint Institute for Jewish Studies, a body intended to teach potential converts about Judaism from a range of non-Orthodox perspectives in preparation for an eventual Orthodox conversion, but the effort foundered.

In 2010, the issue heated up again after Yisrael Beiteinu became the Knesset’s third-largest party. The party, WANDERING from page 20 audience members fed by hand, is now adorned with marble, Indian rosewood and walnut paneling, and crystal and bronze decorative work.

As luck would have it, the Broadway hit “Motown the Musical” was playing at the Fisher when I was in Detroit. “Motown the Musical”, is the “celebration of music that transformed America”.

It began as one man's story… became everyone's music… and changed our culture forever. It is the American dream personified…the story of Motown founder Berry Gordy, a featherweight boxer who became a heavyweight music champion. What better place to see “Motown the Musical” than in Motown itself?

The United Sound Systems Recording Studios (USSRS) is more than just a Recording Studio – it is an institution that birthed a musical legacy. USSRS was the first independent and full service major recording studio in the nation that gave artists, musicians, writers, and producers the ability to record music, cut the record, and get airplay without being signed to a major label.