The American Israelite, March 21, 2013

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THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013 10 NISSAN, 5773

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The American Israel Public Affairs Committee cordially invites you to

About Our Speaker

The 2013 Cincinnati Annual Event

David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel, the Jerusalem-based current affairs website that launched in February 2012. Since its inception, it has provided independent coverage of Israel, the region and the Jewish world; drawing a rapidly growing readership and has been praised for its engaging, fair minded journalism and innovative blend of content.

An Insider’s Perspective: Israel’s Risks and Opportunities in the Coming Months Featuring

David Horovitz

Founding Editor, The Times of Israel and Former Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post

Monday, April 22, 2013 6:00 pm - Leadership Cocktail & Hors D’oeuvres Reception (The leadership reception is exclusively for Club Members who have generously contributed a minimum of $1,500 to AIPAC’s 2013 Campaign.)

7:00 pm - Community Program & Dessert Reception

Manuel D. & Rhoda Mayerson JCC 8485 Ridge Road s Cincinnati $36 couvert per person t Payment requested upon RSVP Dietary laws observed.

ADVANCE RESERVATIONS PREFERRED

To register please visit www.aipac.org/cincinnati2013.

You may also register by contacting Sarah Beren at (312) 253-8998 or Brittany Cohen at bcohen@aipac.org.

Previously, Horovitz served as the Editor-inChief of The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s English language daily. In his almost seven years as editor, Horovitz moved The Jerusalem Post to the heart of the Israeli- Diaspora discourse, and helped build jpost.com into the world’s most-read English-language Jewish news website. He used his weekly “Editor’s Notes” column to promote intra-Jewish tolerance and to repeatedly urge the Israeli leadership to devote more attention to the struggle for Israeli legitimacy on “the second battlefield” – in the media, the legal arena and diplomatic forums.

Horovitz was previously editor and publisher of the award-winning newsmagazine The Jerusalem Report, and has written from Israel for newspapers around the world. He lectures widely in Israel, the United States and Europe on Israeli current affairs, regularly giving the introductory briefing on Israel to Congressional delegations brought to Israel under the aegis of AIEF, AIPAC’s sister foundation.

He has conducted landmark interviews with a succession of Israeli and international figures, including all of Israel’s recent prime ministers, Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, as well as Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin and, to the particular delight of his children, Paul McCartney.

A graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he was profiled in the university’s 90th anniversary President’s Report, as the graduate who had most impacted Israel’s reality in the field of media. Horovitz immigrated to Israel from London in 1983 and is married to Lisa. Together they have three children.

Midwest Office P.O. Box A3996 Chicago, IL 60690

Tel 312-253-8998 Fax 312-236-8530 www.aipac.org

LOCAL • 3

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Fraternity guys put partying aside for benefit They’re all American, redblooded fraternity boys, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they care a lot about breasts! What might be surprising, however, is why...

On Wednesday, April 17, the brothers of the University of Cincinnati's Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity (AEPi) will host a very special event to honor the women in their lives at the Think AEPiNK: Survive and Thrive Dinner at 6 p.m. at the Mayerson JCC to benefit Sharsheret, a national organization that supports Jewish women with breast cancer.

“Last year my fraternity brothers and I decided we wanted to start putting on an annual philanthropy event that would include a week of awareness and fundraising activities. So we started to look for a theme that we could use to give this week of events meaning,” explains Kevin Saeks, a sophomore at UC and the originator of the Think AEPiNK idea. “I knew that Sharsheret was one of AEPi’s seven national philanthropies and thought it would be the perfect cause to promote, both on campus and in the Jewish community, especially because every one of our AEPi brothers has someone in their lives who has been touched by this disease.

“We wanted to show that we are more than just a typical fraternity. We are a group of Jewish college students who are responsible and caring and believe in the Jewish value of tikun olam, making the world a better place,” continues Kevin. “I saw this as a way to honor the women in all our lives while raising money and awareness for a very important cause, and am proud that my brothers embraced the idea and are working together to make it a reality.”

The event will include a Bricks for Breast Cancer silent auction, light appetizers, a buffet dinner and dessert and will feature a keynote address by Sarah Ganson, Program and Engagement Associate at UC’s Hillel Jewish Student Center, and daughter of the late Ellen Ganson, who will pay tribute to her mother and others who have fallen victim to this terrible disease. “I was so touched when the men of AEPi asked me to speak at their Think AEPiNK event. My mother fought breast cancer for 10 years and always gave back to her community,” says Sarah. “I feel honored to share her story.”

The AEPi brothers have overseen every aspect of this event, from designing invitations and creating fliers, to choosing a menu and handling the numerous logistics involved in organizing a project of this magnitude, all in addition to carrying a heavy college workload. The person responsible for leading the charge is AEPi Philanthropy Chair, Michael Levy. He has worked tirelessly to coordinate all the moving parts and has done an expert job of

University of Cincinnati’s AEPi fraternity members will honor the women in their lives.

engaging a team of his fraternity brothers as well as community members in the project.

“This event has meant a lot for me in terms of helping the Jewish community in a matter that most people would not picture college guys thinking about,” says Michael Levy. “My AEPi brothers and I care deeply about how breast cancer affects those we love, as well as those we don’t even know. I am proud to be involved in this important project and while it’s a lot of hard work, I am lucky to have a great team of brothers and community members who have helped every step of the way. While all the AEPi brothers have made a contribution, I especially want to acknowledge Jeremy Dock, Kevin Saeks, Ian Silver and Alex Geller for all their hard work and dedication, as well as Anita Dock and Pam Saeks, who have also played a big role in helping connect us with the Jewish community in ways that we could not have done on our own. And a huge thanks also goes out to the rest of our parent and community committee, as well as our sponsors and table hosts for the evening!”

An unexpected byproduct that came out of planning this event is that it gave many local Jewish survivors of breast cancer a reason to come together for a common cause.

“When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my friends in the Jewish community gave me so much love and support, which carried me through the many challenges during treatment,” shares Anita Dock, parent and community chair of the Think AEPiNK Dinner. So when my son, Jeremy asked me to be the Parent Chair of this event to benefit Sharsheret, I was touched and honored to accept. Sharsheret’s mission mirrors Judaism’s value of gemulut chasadim, to reach out to others in need. This experience has not only provided me with a wonderful opportunity to bond with my son, it has also given me a chance to make a valuable difference in the lives of so many Jewish women in our com-

munity who are diagnosed with this life changing disease.

“To my knowledge, there has never been an event that has shined a light on the profound effect this disease has had on so many people in our own Jewish community,” adds Anita. “At our first committee meeting we realized this event could do even more than just raise money and awareness for Sharsheret, it could also help us to reach out to other Jewish women and men who have been, or may be, diagnosed with this disease, to provide resources and support to them on the local level,” she shares. “We have been in touch with the national office of Sharsheret and they are eager to partner with us to make this a reality in our Jewish community. That makes what AEPi is doing that much more impactful. I am truly proud to be a part of this incredible project!”

In addition to Anita Dock, other members of the parent and community committee include: Debbie Balk, Laura Beasley, Sarah Ganson, Pam Saeks, Debbie Steinbuch and Judy Zakem. The lead sponsor for this event is The Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation.

Support also comes from Netanel Deutsch, publisher of The American Israelite and Betsy Shonebarger Photography. Table sponsors include: Anita and Murray Dock, Michael Ganson, Laura and Tom Glassman. Michelle and Chase Kohn, Pam and Sonny Saeks. Trudy Balk and David Slifkin.

Philanthropy and Jewish life have been the cornerstones of AEPi since its founding at the University of Cincinnati in 1920. Since that time AEPi has produced a multitude of community leaders and pillars of Jewish life, and has been a powerhouse in academics and UC leadership. Members participate fully in sports and social life on campus and the fraternity hosts a multitude of events throughout the year, including brotherhood retreats, socials and date nights.

There is a charge for admission.

Dietary restrictions will be observed.

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Wise Temple presents ‘iMitzvah’ at the last session on April 14. In the Fun(d) Run group, students learn about the importance of taking care of one’s body. During each session, students condition themselves to become effective runners and walkers. In the coming weeks, religious school classes will be asked to donate their tzedakah to the group’s charity of choice as a way to recognize their hard work.

In Go Gaga for a Great Mitzvah, students explore what it means to give back to their synagogue com-

munity. In this group the eighth graders designed and created waterproof panels that will be affixed to the Ga-Ga pit. At the end of the school year, this common “sacred” space will have a new look thanks to this group.

In Read All About It, students learn about the value of our stories: as a Jewish people, as Jews in Cincinnati and as Jews today.

Founded on the notion that we bring Judaism alive today, these eighth graders made puppets with a master

puppet-designer and will perform Nachshon, Who Was Afraid to Swim to Wise Temple’s youngest students during religious school.

Over the past months, these students have taken ownership in their Jewish identity formation. With opportunities such as iMitzvah, these students have found ways to remain engaged in the synagogue community and have actively participated in a program that serves as a foundation for their involvement in Jewish life in the years to come.

Spring sports and aquatics at the J 16+, as well as a program for Red Cross certification as a water safety instructor (also for ages 16+).

Experienced swimmers of all ages may also be interested in the American Red Cross swim stroke clinic at the J on Wednesday, May 8.

A new aquatic exercise class offered this spring through Schloss Special Needs and Services at the JCC is called Fitness and Friends: Water Exercise Class. This low impact, inclusive water group exercise meets every Tuesday from 77:45 p.m. Sessions are geared toward young adults with intellectual disabilities, ages 21-35, who are able to participate independently in a low impact fitness class, where they

will have the chance to exercise and socialize with each other and their typical peers. This program is free for J Members and open to the public for a minimal fee.

See your children flourish and gain confidence in JCC youth sports.

JCC Blue Jays youth baseball provides teams for kids, ages 5 – 11.

Each player gets a uniform, competes against other area teams, and receives a trophy at the end of the season. Teams have already started forming.

Children aren’t the only ones enjoying team sports at the J! The JCC men’s fast pitch (modified) softball league begins play in early April and continues through early

September. The league features a season ending tournament, an allstar game and two family nights.

The majority of the games are played on Wednesday nights (with a few Sunday morning games) at the Triple Creek softball complex, just north of I-275.

Another popular adult sports league is the JCC Men’s Basketball League. Games begin in June and end in August. League play includes 10 games and a championship. If you can’t commit to a full season of softball or basketball, the J also offers co-ed pick-up soccer on Tuesday nights. Pick-up basketball is available for J Member men on Sunday mornings.

Cedar Village honored for Israel trip

“LET THERE BE LIGHT” THE OLDEST ENGLISH-JEWISH WEEKLY IN AMERICA - EST. JULY 15, 1854

VOL. 159 • NO. 35 THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013 10 NISSAN 5773 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 7:33 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 8:34 PM THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE CO., PUBLISHERS 18 WEST NINTH STREET, SUITE 2 CINCINNATI, OHIO 45202-2037 Phone: (513) 621-3145 Fax: (513) 621-3744 publisher@americanisraelite.com editor@americanisraelite.com production@americanisraelite.com RABBI ISAAC M. WISE Founder, Editor, Publisher, 1854-1900 LEO WISE Editor & Publisher, 1900-1928 RABBI JONAH B. WISE Editor & Publisher, 1928-1930 HENRY C. SEGAL Editor & Publisher, 1930-1985 PHYLLIS R. SINGER Editor & General Manager, 1985-1999 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher JORY EDLIN MICHAEL SAWAN Assistant Editors ALEXIA KADISH Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM IRIS PASTOR RABBI A. JAMES RUDIN ZELL SCHULMAN RABBI AVI SHAFRAN PHYLLIS R. SINGER Contributing Columnists JOSEPH D. STANGE Production Manager

older adults they serve.

Cedar Village received the award this month at the AJAS annual conference in the Los Angeles area. AJAS represents 120 North American nursing homes, housing communities and outreach programs.

Also at the conference, Cedar Village’s senior staff gave presentations about several of their innovative programs and practices: • Carol Silver Elliott, Cedar

Village’s CEO and president, and Sally Korkin, executive director of the Cedar Village Foundation, talked about the interfaith mission.

• Elliott also spoke on a panel about shelters that protect victims of elder abuse. In January 2012, Cedar Village launched the Shalom Center for Elder Abuse Prevention. It remains Ohio’s only safe haven for victims of elder abuse. Elliott joined colleagues from two other Jewish retirement facilities that have safe

havens for older adults. The panel encouraged other AJAS members to create similar programs.

• Marcia Westcott, director of Independent and Assisted Living, and Rachel Festenstein, director of Marketing and Community Outreach, gave a presentation about creative marketing approaches for retirement communities, including how programming and volunteer opportunities can be an important part of tours for prospective residents.

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Travelers with the 2012 Interfaith Mission to Israel gather at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. They placed hundreds of prayer notes from Ohioans in the Wall, which is Judaism’s holiest site.

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Cedar Village Retirement Community has been honored for its ground-breaking 2012 Interfaith Mission to Israel.

The Association of Jewish Aging Services presented its Jewish Programming Award to Cedar Village for its 10-day trip with Otterbein Lebanon Senior Lifestyle Community. Cedar Village initiated the trip, called Building Bridges at Any Age, to enhance interfaith understanding and to show that age does not need to be a barrier to new adventures.

Never before had American retirement communities made an interfaith mission to Israel. Cedar Village is affiliated with the Jewish community; Otterbein with the United Methodist Church.

The group included eight Cedar Village residents and five from Otterbein. The residents ranged in age from 63 to 89. Staff from both retirement communities accompanied them.

They visited sites significant to Christianity and Judaism, including the Western Wall in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and conducted traditional religious rituals, including Christian baptism and communion and Jewish Sabbath candle-lighting.

The Jewish Programming Award recognizes programs developed and implemented by AJAS organizations that are innovative, creative and designed to enhance the spiritual well-being of the

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Opportunities for fitness, learning and enrichment abound with new spring programs for the whole family at the Mayerson JCC. The spring session begins the week of April 7 and there is a broad range of sports and recreation leagues, classes and indoor swim lessons for all ages, toddlers to adults. Most programs are open to the public. Open registration starts Monday, March 25.

Swim lessons in the extensive JCC indoor aquatic center attract swimmers of all ages and abilities.

In addition to many levels of Red Cross certified swim instruction, the JCC also offers several advanced aquatics programs this spring. There is a lifeguard training class for ages

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“iMitzvah,” Wise Temple’s newest youth program, is specifically designed for eighth grade teens to connect with their peers while doing good, meaningful work. With the idea that eighth graders have a heightened sense of idealism and justice, as well as seek relationships with their peers, iMitzvah exists to serve as a bridge between middle and high school.

Students select from one of three groups and participate in a project that culminates with a presentation

THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE (USPS 019-320) is published weekly for $44 per year and $1.00 per single copy in Cincinnati and $49 per year and $3.00 per single copy elsewhere in U.S. by The American Israelite Co. 18 West Ninth Street, Suite 2, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-2037. Periodicals postage paid at Cincinnati, OH. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE, 18 West Ninth Street, Suite 2, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-2037.

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

LOCAL • 5

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

SOBER RECOVERY PASSOVER SEDER "THE TIME OF OUR REDEMPTION HAS ARRIVED"

Israeli official explores Cincinnati’s connections to Israel Earlier this month, Elad Strohmayer, one of Israel’s deputy consul generals, visited Cincinnati for an intensive two-day stay, as a guest of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. He visited local universities, met with Jewish and non-Jewish community leaders and learned about the city’s wide range of connections to Israel.

Strohmayer is posted at the Israeli Consulate in Philadelphia, which serves the mid-Atlantic region.

The Deputy Consul General visited Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to learn firsthand about its Israel Exchange Program from Israeli physicians currently training at the medical center. He heard from CEO Michael Fisher; Dr. Marc Levitt, director, Colorectal Cancer; and Dr. Marc Rothenberg, director, Division of Allergy and Immunology, about the collaborations between Cincinnati Children’s and leading Israeli medical centers and universities in the areas of research, clinical work, education and technology.

While at the hospital, he also met with the family of an Israeli patient being treated there.

“It was an honor to host Deputy Consul General Strohmayer,” said Michelle Kohn, who is regional manager for Israel at Cincinnati Children’s Global Health Center and also serves as a vice president on the JCRC board.

“His recognition of the impact of Cincinnati Children’s Israel Exchange Program (IEP) on Israeli families, healthcare professionals, trainees and scientists was greatly appreciated. We are also thankful to the Jewish community for their ongoing support of the IEP and their role in bringing Israeli dignitaries to Cincinnati.”

Strohmayer then met with representatives from the University of Cincinnati’s co-op and study abroad programs, Judaic Studies department and Hillel to discuss current connections with Israel and how those can be expanded and enhanced. He also met with Hebrew Union College faculty and staff and addressed the Foreign Policy Leadership Council about Israel’s relationship with its neighbors, focusing on Syria, Iran and Egypt.

During his visit, Strohmayer also explored economic and business development opportunities for Israel in the greater Cincinnati area with local government offi-

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JCRC President Gary Greenberg, Israeli Deputy Consul General Elad Strohmayer, and AJC Vice President Cheryl Schriber

cials, including Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls and the Southwest Ohio District Directors for Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman and for Representatives Steve Chabot, Thomas Massie and Brad Wenstrup.

Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber executives Denyse Ferguson and Tammy Riddle met with Strohmayer to discuss their recent trip to Israel, which focused on determining the needs of and creating working relationships with Israeli businesses considering Cincinnati as their base of operations in the U.S. Riddle said, “One of the goals of our Israel strategy is to have more business people from Israel visit Cincinnati. We know there are increased opportunities to build Cincinnati’s reputation as a business community through international partnerships, so we were happy to be included in the Deputy Consul General’s itinerary to discuss how he might play a role in facilitating those relationships.”

Finally, Strohmayer toured the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at Cincinnati Museum Center, to see the most comprehensive collection of ancient artifacts from Israel ever organized and one of the largest collections of the priceless 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls, which includes the earliest Biblical texts ever discovered.

Strohmayer became Deputy Consul General in August 2012, after completing the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affair’s

Diplomatic Training Program and then serving his first post as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Luanda, Angola. He is a graduate of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with a degree in political science and international relations, and is currently completing his master’s degree in international relations.

Strohmayer is a native of BatYam, Israel, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

The Consulate General of Israel in Philadelphia serves the mid-Atlantic region, which includes Pennsylvania, Delaware, southern New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.

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Author speaks on Holocaust Remembrance Day On Sunday, April 7, The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education (CHHE) presents a community-wide Yom Hashoah commemoration at the Mayerson JCC, to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Author Eyal Press will deliver the keynote address. The program, which will connect to CHHE’s 2012-2013 theme From Bystander to Upstander, begins at 2 p.m.

The program includes a mov-

ing candle-lighting ceremony, prayer and music, while reflecting on the role of bystanders and upstanders during the Holocaust.

Bystanders, through their silence and inaction, permitted the Holocaust to occur. Upstanders comprise rescuers and members of resistance movements, who acted to protect Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

Press will speak about his recent book. The author will

explore the motivations of nonJewish individuals who went against the norm to aid and protect their Jewish friends, neighbors and often strangers during the Holocaust, frequently at great risk to themselves. While Press will primarily focus on upstanders in relation to Holocaust history at the commemoration, his book also uncovers individuals who have stood up for what is right at other points in history, including a res-

cuer during the Bosnia genocide.

Immediately following the ceremony, violinist Miriam Kramer, cellist Deborah Kramer Netanel, and pianist Steven Aldredge, members of the internationally acclaimed TUTTI SOLISTI, will present a program of chamber music. The program will include works of Brahms and Shostakovich as well as traditional Jewish music.

The commemoration is open to people of all faiths.

COMMUNITY NEWS Interfaith seder at the JCC On Wednesday, March 20, from 1 – 2:45 p.m., an interfaith seder will be held. Rockwern Academy’s fifth, sixth and seventh graders will welcome guests from Finneytown’s John Paul II Catholic School. The Mayerson JCC will house the event.

Jewish leaders join new alliance pitching domestic fossil fuels

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON – On page 15 of the most recent edition of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association’s newsletter, beneath griping about perceived threats to the industry posed by President Obama’s tax and energy policies, was a nugget of positive news: Anew coalition had formed between the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, a national umbrella group, and the American Jewish community.

“We have been able to agree that there is common interest between our two groups regarding efforts to increase domestic oil and gas production and to decrease U.S. reliance on imported oil from the Middle East,” the newsletter reported.

Among the group’s officers is Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an organization that ostensibly aims to achieve a consensus among major Jewish groups on foreign policy issues.

The organized Jewish community has never managed to agree on a unified energy policy. Among the Presidents Conference’s members are groups that are on record opposing increased domestic drilling and hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, and calling for alternatives to fossil fuels. Several Jewish organizational leaders active on energy independence said they were barely aware of the new alliance, dubbed the Council for a Secure America.

“The emphasis that it has on oil and natural gas is not where the community is,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, who heads the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, one of the groups that has led Jewish lobbying for energy independence. “The preferred position is the development of alternative energy resources and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.”

On its website, the council says it was established by “key domestic oil and gas producers and leaders of the Jewish community,” and that it aims to promote public understand-

ing about the importance of reducing American reliance on imported Middle East oil.

The group’s co-chairs are Samuel (Sandy) Eisenstat, a major Jewish philanthropist and the founder and CEO of Abjac Energy, a private oil and gas exploration company; and Harold Hamm, a wildcatter from Oklahoma whose Continental Resources company is leading the oil boom in North Dakota. Hamm, a multibillionaire, was a top adviser to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign.

The group has made two outings: One last month to Israel to review the country’s security needs, and one to North Dakota to tour Hamm’s innovations in oil exploration. Eisenstat said he hoped to have the council running on an annual budget of less than $500,000, much of it coming from its officers.

“It was started with the idea that there was a natural, wonderful relationship between independent oil and gas producers who want America to be independent and those of us who believe it is in America’s interests for

Israel to be strong and secure,” said Eisenstat, a former vice president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

David Harris, the director of the American Jewish Committee, a group that pioneered Jewish energy independence advocacy in the 1970s, said he was vaguely aware of the new group and expressed wariness of any “silver bullet” strategy for weaning the United States from a reliance on foreign oil.

“Our strategy, developed through a staff team and a committee of experts, has always tried to take a balanced approach that says there’s not one silver bullet, but there is a collection of bullets that can lead us to the independence that every president since Nixon promised,” he said.

Hoenlein said the council’s aim was to address a broad range of alternatives to Middle Eastern oil.

“We have people looking into alternatives,” he said. “The whole point is to make it as broad as possible.”

Neil Goldstein, another council director and a former executive

director of the American Jewish Congress, is now involved in researching alternative energies through two non-profits, including one called the Israel Energy Partnership. Nonetheless, the council’s website clearly emphasizes fossil fuels. Six of eight articles on its recommended reading page are defenses of domestic drilling and fracking. The other two are about Israel.

Martin Frost, a former Democratic congressman from Texas who, like Hoenlein, is listed as a director of the council, said the emphasis made sense considering current realities.

“The primary focus is on oil and gas because that’s what will be available for the foreseeable future,” said Frost, who now lobbies for the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance. “There is a potential that you can have North American selfsufficiency in the not-too-distant future. That’s good for our balance of payments situation, and it’s good for the United States and for Israel in terms of foreign policy.”

Experts advocate for change to U.S. THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE’S policy on designating Palestinian refugees ARCHIVES ARE NOW ONLINE. THE REST IS JUST HISTORY.

By Maxine Dovere JointMedia News Service

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The Archives features issues from years past and search tools to help you find that long-lost article that you’ve been searching for!

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NEW YORK – The way that Steven J. Rosen sees it, the IsraeliPalestinian peace process is being held back because of mathematics.

“Multiplication of numbers does not lead to peace,” said Rosen, an associate fellow at Middle East Forum and former AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) executive, referring to Palestinian claims about their current number of qualified “refugees.”

Rosen joined Israeli Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ron Prosor and other experts last week at the Harvard Club of New York City for a conference to discuss the application and implications of the designation “refugee” as it applies to descendants of the roughly 700,000 Palestinians who left the nascent state of Israel in 1948.

Prosor said the refugee issue is the “principal stumbling block” to a peace agreement.

Courtesy of Maxine Dovere

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) speaks at the recent “Changing U.S. Policy on UNRWA and the ‘Palestine Refugees’” conference hosted by the Middle East Forum in New York City.

“No one will admit it, the real obstacle is the [demand for the] right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees,” he said.

The Palestinians have long demanded that 5 million foreign

Arabs who they claim are descendants of the 700,000 that fled in 1948 be allowed into all of Israelnot just Gaza and the West Bankas part of the what they call their “right of return.”

Typically, the UN’s policy is that only those who flee their countries themselves are considered “refugees,” not their descendants.

But the UN makes an exception for descendants of Arabs who fled Israel. In many cases, the countries where these descendants currently reside have refused to grant them citizenship.

While bodies such as the European Union repeatedly condemn Israeli construction beyond the 1967 Green Line as an obstacle to peace, Prosor warned that in his mind, the largest obstacle is the Palestinian refugee population, which as currently defined by the Palestinians “would cause Israel’s destruction.”

EXPERTS on page 19

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THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

National Briefs In Iranian New Year message, Obama warns Iran of isolation but not strikes WASHINGTON (JTA) – President Obama warned Iran of further isolation but stopped short of threatening military action should the country not cooperate with the international community on its nuclear program.

Obama in his annual message marking the Iranian New Year, known as Nowruz, addressed Iranians and their leaders.

Senate letters on Mideast trip compete for Obama’s attention WASHINGTON (JTA) – Two separate Senate letters counsel President Obama to make IsraeliPalestinian peace a priority during his visit to the region. Both initiatives, including one that places the burden on the Palestinians, are circulating among senators ahead of Obama’s arrival in Israel on Wednesday.

A letter initiated by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) urges Obama in his meeting with Palestinian leaders to “make clear that the pathway for peace is through unconditional direct negotiations between both the Israelis and Palestinians.”

The resolution is similar to recent resolutions passed at UCIrvine and UC-Riverside and names Boeing, General Dynamics Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Ingersoll-Rand and Raytheon among other companies that “profit from Israel’s military occupation and violence against Palestinians in violation of international law and human rights.”

Would-be N.Y. synagogue bomber sentenced to 10 years (JTA) – An Algerian immigrant who admitted to planning to blow up synagogues in New York City was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Ahmed Ferhani, 28, was the first person convicted under a state terror statute that went into effect following the 9/11 attacks.

He was sentenced last Friday.

Ferhani could have been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison, but entered a plea agreement in December. He also will serve five years of probation under the terms of the agreement.

“By targeting a synagogue, which I knew to be a Jewish house of worship, in this manner, I intended to create chaos and send a message of intimidation and coercion to the Jewish population of New York City, warning them to stop mistreating Muslims,” he said in December during his plea bargain hearing in state Supreme Court.

Americans backing Israel in ever-growing numbers, poll shows (JTA) – Americans’ sympathies lean heavily toward Israel over the Palestinians in the highest level of support seen in 22 years.

According to data gleaned from Gallup’s 2013 World Affairs poll, 64 percent of Americans support Israel over the Palestinians, with 12 percent backing the Palestinians over Israel. The last time Israel garnered as much support from Americans was in 1991 during the Gulf War.

Dept. of Education outlines outreach plan to private schools WASHINGTON (JTA) – The U.S. Department of Education outlined new efforts to bring nonprofit private schools into federally funded programs. Their inclusion has been sought by Orthodox Jewish groups, among others.

State and local educational agencies “must ensure the equitable participation of eligible private school students and, as applicable, their teachers and parents” in such programs, the department’s Office of Innovation and Improvement said in its proposed plan for such inclusion posted last week on the department’s website.

UC San Diego student group supports Israel boycott motion (JTA) - A student council at the University of California, San Diego passed a nonbinding resolution calling for boycotting firms with business ties to Israel.

The Associated Student Council of UCSD voted in favor of the motion on March 13, with 20 in favor, 12 against and one abstention, according to a news release by Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that proposed the motion.

Israeli man arrested at N.J. airport for making bomb claim (JTA) – An Israeli man was arrested in a New Jersey airport after claiming he had a bomb in his suitcase.

Evan Hess, 44, of Tel Aviv, made the claim to airline officials at Newark Liberty International Airport on Monday in an attempt to have the suitcase removed from his connecting flight to Miami. The flight was oversold and did not have seats for Hess and his family.

Meet Menendez: The new Senate foreign relations chair’s public and private takes on Israel

By Maxine Dovere JointMedia News Service WASHINGTON, DC – For U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (DNJ), closing remarks at the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference publicly marked the start of a new phase in his relationship with the Jewish community.

Menendez, the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, follows current Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden in that post.

“There will never be any daylight between the United States and Israel on my watch,” he told the AIPAC crowd. “Never. Not on my watch.”

JNS spoke privately with Menendez in the halls of the Washington Convention Center following his address. The senator said he hopes that the upcoming trip of President Barack Obama to Israel, coupled with Kerry’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, “can reignite an effort where we can get the Palestinians back to the negotiating table with Israel, which is the only way in which we will have peace.”

“It has to be a negotiated [peace settlement]-you can’t do it at the United Nations,” Menendez told JNS, referring to the Palestinians’ unilateral statehood bids at the UN the last two years. “You have to do

Courtesy of Maxine Dovere

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) speaks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2013 Policy Conference on March 5.

it between the two parties. Israel has expressed its willingness to negotiate without preconditions.”

“We look to [PA] President [Mahmoud] Abbas as the elected leadership of the Palestinian people and we would hope that if he came to the negotiating table in good faith, that would spark an aspiration that exists among the Palestinian people, hope among the Palestinian people,” Menendez said. “If we move forward in good faith, then there might be the

wherewithal to strengthen his role so that we in fact can move more toward our ultimate goal, which is a two-state solution with peaceful, secure boundaries and above all, security for the State of Israel.”

Asked by JNS if he sees anyone else capable of leading the PA should Abbas leave or lose that role one day, Menendez responded, “I don’t think it’s really for the United States to look toward whom the Palestinian Authority and its people choose as its leader. We stand ready to work with anyone who is willing to follow the path to peace, who is willing to enter into a negotiated settlement with the government of Israel, and to seek to live side by side peacefully and fulfill the hopes and dreams and aspirations of their people. Whoever that is, we look forward to working with him. Right now, that’s President Abbas, and that’s with whom we work.”

JNS asked Menendez if his public support for the Jewish community and for Israel in any way has conflicted with his work in diverse New Jersey communities such as Paterson, a city that is home to the second-largest Muslim population in the U.S. as well as a mosque, the Islamic Center of Passaic County, whose leader, Mohammad Qatanani, is allegedly a member of Hamas.

MENENDEZ on page 19

8 • NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

StandWithUs and J Street clash on parameters of American criticism of Israel

By Jacob Kamaras JointMedia News Service LOS ANGELES – How far should American Jews go in their criticism of Israeli policies they disagree with?

According to the core principles listed on the website of J Street, the self-labeled “political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” Israel’s supporters “have not only the right but the obligation to speak out when we think the policies or actions of the Israeli government are hurting Israel’s and the Jewish people’s long-term interests.”

J Street’s emphasis on the “obligation” aspect in the above statement was at the center of a debate Monday night between the organization’s executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, and Roz Rothstein, CEO of the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs. “You feel you know better than the Israelis when to make peace with [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas or Hamas,” Rothstein told Ben-Ami. “I feel that position is presumptuous and I’m sorry to say, it’s insulting to the Israeli people.”

At Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, Ben-Ami and Rothstein didn’t find much common ground—at least according to BenAmi, who said as much in his concluding remarks.

Rothstein noted that J Street specifically opposed a 2011 congressional letter asking President Barack Obama to urge Abbas to return to peace negotiations and to end anti-Israel incitement following

Unlikely teammates: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his manager on Jewish-black relations

By Dawn Dellasanta-Swann JointMedia News Service

Courtesy of Israel Defense Forces

DF Chief of Staff Lt. Benny Gantz meets with two surviving children of the Fogel family, whose parents and three siblings were murdered by Palestinian men in the March 2011 Itamar massacre.

In a debate with J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami on Monday, StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein noted that J Street specifically opposed a 2011 congressional letter asking President Barack Obama to urge the Palestinians to end anti-Israel incitement following the “horrific, inhuman, and brutal attack in Itamar against the Fogel family.”

the “horrific, inhuman, and brutal attack in Itamar against the Fogel family,” in which two Palestinian men murdered Israeli parents and their three children ages 11, 4, and three months in Itamar. She criticized J Street for putting pressure only on Israel to take steps to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians, and for having a mission that falls short of calling for criticism of Abbas’s “promotion of hate, incitement, and terrorism.”

But Ben-Ami said of J Street’s mission, “It is not our mission to criticize the government of Israel or to oppose Israeli government poli-

cies. It is simply our right.”

J Street’s core principles further state, “Criticism of Israeli policy does not threaten the health of the state of Israel-but certain Israeli policies (and the silence that too many in the American Jewish establishment choose when vigorous protest of those policies is necessary) do threaten Israel’s future.”

Ben-Ami said he didn’t know where the quote Rothstein read from J Street’s website came from, adding that analyzing the website was not the type of debate he was CRITICISM on page 20

Standing behind the podium of the 2013 NAACP Image Awards is a man in a tux with a red tie whose smooth, dark skin is stretched over a frame so long that it cannot fit through a standard doorway.

Behind the same podium, a woman comes up to maybe the bottom of that man’s ribcage. She is fair skinned, black haired, ruby lipped, and sheathed in black lace.

She looks like a Jewish Snow White. He is the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) all-time leading scorer, an actor, New York Times best-selling author, and official U.S. Cultural Ambassador. She is a New England-bred “iconomist” – a term she coined that combines the duties of an agent, manager, lawyer, and marketing and public relations expert – and an award-winning film producer and director.

He is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and she is his Jewish manager, Deborah Morales. Together, this unlikely pair shares a unique passion for Jewish-black partnerships.

“The individual natures of those relationships is less important than the pattern: people of different backgrounds coming together to bring about a different world,” Abdul-Jabbar says in an interview with JNS. “Today’s fractured world makes it easier for

Courtesy of Deborah Morales

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his manager Deborah Morales at the podium during the 2013 NAACP Image Awards.

groups to isolate themselves from others.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media allows those with similar beliefs to confirm each other’s beliefs 24 hours a day rather than interact with those who might have different opinions. That’s why it’s more important than ever that people can see how such relationships from people of different backgrounds can overcome those differences in the service of something greater.”

Abdul-Jabbar took home two honors at the NAACP Image Awards this February – Best Children’s Book for What Color is My World?: The Lost History of African American Inventors, and Best Documentary for On the Shoulders of Giants: The Story of the Greatest Team You’ve Never Heard Of, which he produced with Morales.

Film suggests Toulouse killer was disturbed, not hateful

By Cnaan Liphshiz Jewish Telegraphic Agency Four weeks before he murdered seven people in Toulouse, a cheerful Mohammed Merah was filmed laughing and showing off his skiing skills to friends at a popular Alpine resort.

The footage, televised on March 6, formed the opening sequence in a controversial documentary about the 23-year-old, French-born jihadist who murdered three soldiers and four Jews last year in a rampage that shocked the country.

Aired by public broadcaster France 3 ahead of the anniversary of the killings, the 105-minute film, titled “The Merah Affair – The Itinerary of a Killer,” was billed as the definitive investigative work on Merah. More than 2 million viewers tuned in.

But the film also has exposed a rift between those who view Merah’s actions as the product of deep anti-Semitic currents among jihadists and others who believe

Courtesy of France 3/YouTube

In the documentary “The Merah Affair—The Itinerary of a Killer,” Mohammed Merah is shown skiing four weeks prior to his killing spree in Toulouse in March 2012.

Merah was driven largely by emotional problems stemming from a difficult childhood and possible psychiatric illness.

“Very early on after the killings, we saw an objectionable tendency to view Mohammed Merah as a victim,” Richard Prasquier, the president of the CRIF, France’s main Jewish umbrella

group, told JTA. “Regrettably, the film amplifies this view.”

Merah was a petty criminal from Toulouse who was jailed for theft in 2007. While in jail, the film reports, he was teased and seen as a buffoon. He tried to commit suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell, according to a prison psychologist.

Merah seemingly took comfort in Islam, growing his beard long and immersing himself in religious texts.

Following his release in 2009, he traveled to several Middle Eastern countries, including Pakistan, where he received weapons training at a terrorist encampment.

On March 11, 2012, Merah approached an off-duty French Moroccan paratrooper on a Toulouse street and shot him in the head. Four days later he killed two uniformed soldiers and injured a third at a shopping center in Montauban, about 45 minutes to the north.

Then, on the morning of March 19, Merah arrived at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse and opened fire, killing Miriam Monsonego, the 8-year-old daughter of the Jewish school’s principal, along with Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and his two young sons, Arieh and Gavriel. According to a police officer interviewed in the film, Merah knelt beside one of the children and shot the victim in the head.

In the film, Merah is portrayed as

a troubled and aggressive youth, the youngest of five siblings raised by a single mother. At 9 he was placed at a state-run institution for at-risk youths after a social worker determined he wasn’t attending school regularly and lacked the necessary support at home. Five year later, a teacher wrote, “He is offensive to girls. Every day we intervene on a fresh aggression, theft, conflict or attack committed by Mohammed, who will not accept the authority.”

Merah’s mother, Zoulikha Aziri, who in the film spoke to the French media for the first time, could provide no explanation for her son’s actions, but said he once told her, “There’s a man in my head and he keeps talking to me.”

“Our objective was to understand Mohammed Merah, to study the context in which he grew up,” Jean-Charles Doria, the film’s director, said in an interview with the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur.

“We found a banal setting: a broken family, absent father, powerless mother, late religious discovery and a disturbed character.”

INTERNATIONAL • 9

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Election of first Latin American pope coincides with growing focus on Latino Catholic–Jewish relations

By Sean Savage JointMedia News Service With the selection of Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I, the Catholic Church has recognized the growing significance of Latin American Catholics for the future of the Church.

For Jews and the state of Israel, fostering relations with that community should also prove critical for the future of Catholic-Jewish relations.

“We believe that it is important for the Catholic leadership in Latin America to personally see Israel for themselves, through their own eyes, not only through the eyes of the media,” Betty Ehrenberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), told JNS. In order to foster this relationship, a new program organized by the WJC, the Center for JewishChristian Understanding and Cooperation in Israel (CJCUC), as well as the Latin American Jewish Congress, brought young Latin American Catholic leaders on a week-long educational mission in Israel.

“Coming from South America, they don’t have that many opportunities to interact with Jews,” Rabbi

Courtesy of Tenan/Wikimedia Commons

Pope Francis I

Eugene Korn, the American director of CJCUC, told JNS. According to WJC, the focus of the CJCUC mission is to highlight the improvements of JewishChristian relations since the Second Vatican Council in 1965, which changed the church’s teaching on Judaism and denounced antiSemitism, as well as to introduce young Latin American priests to Israel and the Jewish people.

“In general, Catholics in places where there are few Jews are not as aware of Second Vatican teachings

that relate to Jews. It is not a practical issue for them in many ways,” Korn said. “As a result, many of the people from Latin America still have the old world [pre-Vatican II] hostile picture of Jews.”

“That’s why it is absolutely critical for us to teach them about current Catholic doctrine on Judaism and to introduce them to Israel,” he added.

According to Korn, the Latino priests “had a magnificent time” when visiting Israel with CJCUC. “They were very turned on about the reality of Israel and the friendships of the rabbis and the Israelis who they met there,” he said. “It was a transformative trip for them.”

Korn said that one of the most enlightening moments of the trip for the Latin American priests was their visit to Domus Galilaeae International Center, located on the Christian holy site Mount of Beatitudes near Capernaum. The center was inaugurated by Pope John Paul II as a place for inter-religious dialogue and a location where Christians can have direct contact with the living tradition of Israel and explore the Hebrew roots of their faith, according to its website.

ELECTION on page 22

With Chavez gone, Venezuelan Jews look warily to future

By Gil Shefler Jewish Telegraphic Agency CARACAS, Venezuela – The eyes of a dead man stare at visitors passing through immigration at Simon Bolivar International Airport.

They follow drivers making the trek along the tortuous four-lane highway through a mountain range leading to town. And they reappear at public spaces throughout this city.

It’s easy to be spooked by the ubiquitous image of Hugo Chavez, the larger-than-life leftist leader who died last week from an unspecified form of cancer. But in Venezuela, it has been the reality since he came to power in 1999.

“It never used to be this way with presidents before him,” said David Bittan, the owner of a taxi company whose cousin of the same name is the president of the Venezuelan Jewish umbrella group CAIV. “They started putting up these posters everywhere after he was first elected. It’s in line with Communist Party propaganda.”

With Chavez gone, this divided nation finds itself at a crossroads.

Will Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s handpicked successor, carry on “until victory,” as the posters of his political patron promise? Or might he chart a new path, taking a more

Courtesy of Gil Shefler

A vendor hawks a newspaper featuring a front-page headline that says “A Sea of Sadness for Chavez,” March 7, 2013.

conciliatory approach to relations with the United States and with the business community?

Or could opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski, the Catholic grandson of Holocaust survivors, surprise everyone by winning the presidential election set for April 14?

For members of Venezuela’s dwindling Jewish community, the political uncertainty is particularly unnerving. During Chavez’s 14 years in power, their numbers have dropped from 25,000 to about 9,000 today, driven abroad by economic instability, anti-Semitism in stateowned media and rampant crime that made Caracas a serious contender for murder capital of the world.

“We have great institutions, we have a great school, we have a wonderful Hebraica,” said Efraim Lapscher, the vice president of CAIV, referring to the sprawling community center that is the heart of Jewish life here. “We, our fathers and our grandfathers, built this with a lot of sweat, ideology and hard work. And it’s painful for us to see them slowly emptying out.”

Jewish life in Caracas revolves around the Hebraica, the compound at the foot of the Avila Mountain that is also home to the Jewish school and a growing number of communal institutions. Past the heavily guarded gate and high walls is the lush campus with a pool, soccer pitch, tennis courts, gym, food court – even a bank. On a warm day, children gambol by the pool while their parents lay on deck chairs.

“It’s a beautiful prison,” said a representative of an international Jewish organization based in Caracas. “Members of the community live their entire lives there without leaving because of fear of crime outside. Children are so used to being cooped up that when they visit Israel, they call their parents and say, ‘Guess what, I’m on a bus!’ That’s an exciting experience for them.”

FUTURE on page 22

International Briefs Fewer anti-Semitic attacks recorded in Switzerland last year (JTA) – The number of antiSemitic incidents recorded in Switzerland dropped to 25 last year from 36 in 2011.

The figures were reported in the annual analysis on antiSemitism by the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities.

Greek soccer player gets life ban for Nazi salute ATHENS, Greece (JTA) – A Greek soccer player was banned for life from playing for the national team after giving the Nazi salute during a game.

In barring Giorgos Katidis, who plays for AEK Athens, the Greek soccer federation said Sunday that the Nazi salute was a “severe provocation” and an insult to “all the victims of Nazi barbarity.”

March recalls liquidation of Krakow ghetto WARSAW, Poland (JTA) – Some 400 people made a remembrance march in Krakow to mark the 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the Polish city’s Jewish ghetto.

The marchers on Sunday walked from Ghetto Heroes Square to the site of the former concentration camp at Plaszow.

Bulgaria’s interim PM will not push EU on Hezbollah terrorism label (JTA) – Bulgaria’s interim prime minister said he will not push the European Union to label Hezbollah a terror group, despite the country’s finding that Hezbollah was behind a terror attack on its soil. Marin Raikov made his remarks on Saturday during an interview with the state BNR radio station, Reuters reported.

Bulgaria had implicated Hezbollah for the July 19 bus bombing at the airport in Burgas that targeted a bus of Israeli tourists. Five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver were killed.

“Bulgaria will not initiate a procedure [for listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization],” Raikov told the radio station. “We will only present the objective facts and circumstances, and let our European partners decide.”

Greek prime minister in shul visit vows crackdown on neo-Nazis THESSALONIKI, Greece (JTA) – Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras vowed to crack down on neo-Nazi groups.

Samaras was speaking Sunday at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the first deportations of Thessaloniki’s Jews to the

Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.The Greek government will enact legislation that will be “completely intolerant to violence and racism,” Samaras said at the city’s Monastiriotes Synagogue in what was said to be the first-ever visit by a sitting prime minister to a synagogue in Greece. Noting that with neo-Nazi parties on the rise again in Europe, he said governments have to “be very careful not to let them gain ground as they did in the 1930s. We have to be very careful to remember the message of ‘Never again.’ The fight against neo-Nazis is more important than ever,” Samaras said.

The ceremony commemorated the deportations that sent 49,000 of the city’s 55,000 Jews to Nazi death camps. The events also were marked Saturday with a silent march from the city’s Liberty Square to the Old Railway Station.

Ex-Israeli lawmaker dies in Latvia hours after anti-Nazi rally (JTA) – Marina Solodkin, a former Israeli lawmaker, died of what appeared to be natural causes in Latvia, hours after attending a protest rally against a large neoNazi gathering. Solodkin was found dead Saturday night in her hotel room at the FG Royal Hotel in central Riga. She was 60.

“There was some violence by neo-Nazis and it was a stressful time, but she seemed fine,” Rubinfeld told JTA. “It appears her death was of natural causes.”

Sociologist Kovacs wins high honors from Hungary (JTA) – Hungary recognized a Jewish sociologist, Andreas Kovacs, with a prestigious national award.

Kovacs, 65, was one of 17 people presented the Szechenyi Prize on the occasion of Hungary’s March 15 national day.

The prize, given to Kovacs for his decades-long research on postwar Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, minority rights and social history, recognizes outstanding contributions in academic life in Hungary.

He has tracked anti-Semitism in Hungary as well as Hungarian Jewish identity since the 1970s.

Interpol won’t lift arrest warrants for Iranians wanted in AMIA bombing BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) – Interpol will not lift the arrest warrants for Iranians suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, despite Tehran’s supposed cooperation with Argentina in investigating the event.

Over Jewish community protests, Argentina’s congress last month approved an agreement with Iran to jointly investigate the bombing of the AMIA center, which killed 85 people and is believed to have been carried out under orders from Tehran.

10 • ISRAEL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Two Israel Air Force pilots killed in helicopter training crash

By Israel Hayom JointMedia News Service Two Israel Air Force pilots were killed overnight Monday when a Cobra helicopter crashed during a training exercise near the city of Gedera, in central Israel.

The two pilots, both reservists, were identified as Lt. Col. Noam Ron, 49, of Oranit, and Maj. Erez Flekser, 31, of Haifa.

Ron was married with three daughters, one of whom is training to be an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. Ron’s brother, also a helicopter pilot, was killed 16 years ago in an abseiling accident.

Noam performed a huge amount of reserve duty, another brother told Army Radio.

“He protected us from our enemies; he did a lot for the security of

the state,” the brother said. “He loved flying. Since childhood he excelled in math and physics. He was the best of the best in the squadron, extremely talented and skilled.”

Flekser was married and was studying physics at Tel Aviv University, where he excelled in his studies. His friends said he was introverted but loved sports and was an avid swimmer.

Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel has ordered an immediate investigation into the accident. He has also grounded all Cobra helicopters until the circumstances surrounding the crash become clear.

An initial investigation appeared to indicate that the helicopter crashed because of a technical failure.

Ground forces lost contact with the two pilots around 1 a.m. as the

helicopter was on its way back to the Palmahim Air Force Base from a training flight. A large rescue team, including helicopters, unmanned aircraft, homefront ground forces, emergency medical technicians and border police officers, spent much of the night searching for the missing helicopter. The crash site was found at around 5:15 a.m.

“Six minutes to landing, headed toward Palmahim,” was the last communication from the helicopter before it crashed.

A military official said the fact that the helicopter parts remained relatively intact after the crash indicated that it had been flying low. Because of the low altitude, the pilots apparently did not have time to report any malfunction before crashing.

CRASH on page 22

With the help of Knesset members, Women of the Wall get to pray

By Ben Sales Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM (JTA) – If ever there were a gathering of Women of the Wall that was going to spark a wider conflict, Tuesday’s would have been the one.

For the past several months, police have detained members of the women’s prayer group during their monthly Rosh Chodesh services for wearing tallit prayer shawls at the site, in contravention of Kotel rules. At last month’s service marking the beginning of the Hebrew month of Adar, Jerusalem police arrested 10 women, including the sister and niece of American comedian Sarah Silverman, for disturbing public order.

For this month’s service on Tuesday, three members of Knesset would be coming. American Jews were planning solidarity rallies. And

Courtesy of Miriam Alster / Flash90/JTA

Women of the Wall holding their monthly Rosh Chodesh service at the Western Wall, in contravention of rules barring women from wearing prayer shawls or reading from the Torah at the site, March 12, 2013.

haredi Orthodox Jews were planning to put up a fight.

“Save us!” read posters hung in Israeli haredi neighborhoods, exhorting men and women to show up at the Wall at 7 a.m. Tuesday to oppose Women of the Wall’s service. “The Western Wall will be

trampled and desecrated by a group of women called ‘Women of the Wall,’ who wish to desecrate the Wall on Tuesday. Anyone who attributes importance to the place that God’s spirit will never leave will come to protest and cry out!”

Women of the Wall Chairwoman Anat Hoffman lodged a formal complaint with police Sunday alleging “incitement of violence against Women of the Wall” over the unsigned posters, known in Yiddish as pashkevillim.

This time, however, the women were allowed to pray largely undisturbed and without harassment by the police.

When 7 o’clock rolled around, only a few dozen haredim were there to protest the women, and the police were prepared. A few officers kept the haredi group away from the WOMEN on page 22

Lots of listening, no grand initiatives expected on Obama’s Mideast trip

By Ron Kampeas and Ben Sales Jewish Telegraphic Agency TEL AVIV – When President Obama visits Israel next week, Gavriel Yaakov wants him to jump-start the peace process.

“I’m excited,” said Yaakov, 67, sitting in a Tel Aviv mall. “I want negotiations to get to an agreement on a long-term peace with the Palestinians.”

Yaakov said he trusts Obama, but his friend, Yossi Cohen, is more skeptical.

“I’m not excited,” said Cohen, 64, who charged that the president supports Islamists and “hasn’t

done anything” to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.

“No one has helped,” Cohen said. “Whoever thinks there will be peace, [it will take] another 200 years.”

Their views reflect two of the president’s overriding concerns as he prepares to embark on a threeday trip to Israel next week.

Obama remains deeply unpopular in Israel, with approval ratings of about 33 percent last year, and Jewish leaders and local analysts are urging him to try to improve his relationship with the Israeli public. But the president also is seen as wanting to promote

a renewed effort at Middle East peace, though administration officials, wary of a top-down push for peace, have emphasized that the president is leaving such initiatives up to the parties there.

In a meeting with American Jewish leaders last week, Obama conceded that the short-term outlook for a peace agreement is “bleak,” but that prospects could improve in the coming months.

Instead, the president was focused on how best to reach out to Israelis, participants said, asking for input about what he should say and whom he should try to reach.

Israel Briefs Israel to request U.S. support for strike on potential Syrian weapons transfers TEL AVIV (JTA) – Israel will ask President Obama for U.S. support should Israel strike a Syrian weapons convoy bound for Hezbollah.

The request, according to the Guardian, will come during Obama’s visit to Israel later this week. It may include a request for U.S. participation in the strike, according to an unnamed Israeli official.

Israel’s Knesset approves new government JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israel’s Knesset approved the country’s 33rd government.

The lawmakers approved the new government on Monday by a vote of 68 to 48, with four absent.

The new government includes 68 of the Knesset’s 120 parliamentarians. It features Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Beiteinu faction, the Yesh Atid party led by Yair Lapid, the Jewish Home party led by Naphtali Bennett, and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua Party.

Israeli wounded in West Bank drive-by shooting TEL AVIV (JTA) – An Israeli man in his 60s was wounded in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank.

A gunman in a passing car shot the man in the leg while he was waiting at a bus stop Monday morning at Kedumim Junction in the northern West Bank, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Palestinians vandalize Obama billboard JERUSALEM (JTA) – Palestinians in Bethlehem vandalized a billboard bearing the image of President Obama.

The activists tore down the banner, drew swastikas on it and threw shoes at it, The Associated Press reported.

The billboard had been placed in Manger Square to garner Obama’s attention to the inequities in 3G telecommunication technology between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, according to the Palestinian Ma’an news agency.

1,600 participate in Facebook contest for

Obama speech (JTA) – More than 1,600 Israelis submitted slogans to a U.S. Embassy contest for tickets to President Obama’s speech in Jerusalem.

According to the embassy’s Facebook page, 1,618 people answered a post promising tickets for 20 of the most “original and creative” comments and posted them by March 14.

Winners will attend Obama’s address next week at the International Convention Center Jerusalem during his first presidential visit to Israel, Army Radio reported.

Another swarm of locusts in Israel sparks new concerns JERUSALEM (JTA) – Another swarm of locusts entered Israel, spurring concerns that they will continue to infest the country for several weeks. A new swarm was discovered in southern Israel on Saturday.

Locusts have been discovered mating and laying eggs throughout Israel’s South, Globes reported, citing the Ministry of Agriculture. According to the ministry, the locusts have not caused great damage to crops.

Eight Palestinians arrested for near-fatal stoning (JTA) – Israel arrested eight Palestinians suspected of causing a car accident that left an Israeli child in critical condition.

The suspects, who were apprehended by Israeli soldiers, Shin Bet security agents and police, are suspected of causing several injuries to Israeli civilians by throwing rocks at cars on March 14 near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel.

One of the cars collided with a truck as it came under a volley of rocks. In the crash, 3-year-old Adelle Biton sustained head injuries, which doctors at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petach Tikvah termed “extremely serious,” according to Army Radio. Her mother and two of her sisters from the settlement of Yakir received minor injuries and also were hospitalized.

Israeli judge who fled extradited from Peru JERUSALEM (JTA) – An Israeli judge who fled to Peru eight years ago following allegations of bribery and fraud was extradited to Israel.

Dan Cohen arrived in Israel on Sunday morning after he was arrested by Peruvian police and placed directly on an airplane leaving for Israel.

SOCIAL LIFE • 11

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

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BIRTH BIRTH

born on January 8, 2013. She weighed 6 lbs., 3 oz. Daisy is ndrew and Amanda

the granddaughter of Arnold

Buehrer are proud to

Gopman of Montgomery and

announce the birth of

Larry and Paula Buehrer of

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their daughter, Daisy Sophia,

Tipp City.

12 • CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

2013 Passover Cover Coloring Contest Honorable Mentions

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Jacob Kotzin, 13, Rockwern Academy

Danielle Jacobson, 12, Rockwern Academy

Max Grove, 10, Rockwern Academy

Ben Vigran, 7, Rockwern Academy

Matthew Youkilis, 12, Rockwern Academy

Olivia Vigran, 10, Rockwern Academy

Isaac Goodman, 10, Rockwern Academy

Sofia Cohen, 8, Rockwern Academy

Isabel Ginns, 8, Rockwern Academy

Jonathan Levy, 9, Rockwern Academy

Molly Fisher, 9, Rockwern Academy

Lucy Schneider, 9, Rockwern Academy

Shoshana Stern, 10, Rockwern Academy

Jess Levitt, 11, Rockwern Academy

Mady Warm, 9 Rockwern Academy

Ben Peri, 11, Rockwern Academy

Jacob Goodman, 9, Rockwern Academy

Hannah Peri, 7, Rockwern Academy

Taylor Miller, 11, Rockwern Academy

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE • 13

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Wynter Edwards, 8, Rockwern Academy

Tiffany Salzberg, 11, Rockwern Academy

William Schneider, 9, Rockwern Academy

Nathan Vigran, 7, Rockwern Academy

Jonah Podberesky, 7, Seven Hills

Arielle Podberesky, 10, Seven Hills

Yuval Jacobson, 9, Rockwern Academy

Bernard Netanel, 11, Rockwern Academy

Avital Isakov, 11, Rockwern Academy

Fiona Schaffzin, 9, Rockwern Academy

Andrew Levin, 8, Rockwern Academy

Noah Wise, 11, Rockwern Academy

Shayna Maltinsky, 9, Cincinnati Hebrew Day School

Naomi Horner, 11, Rockwern Academy

14 • DINING OUT

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Meritage Restaurant—growing up in Glendale

By Michael Sawan Assistant Editor For any music fanatics out there, you may have noticed that as your favorite band ages they “mature.” For better or for worse, early albums tend to be loosey goosey and experimental, while later ones are polished, controlled, and have lots of compression.

All creative arts can be measured in the same way. In the case of Meritage Restaurant, the passing of time has been for the best.

Fast approaching its two year anniversary, Meritage has kept the quality coming, smoothly transitioning from “new restaurant” to a staple of the tri-state region.

Chip Bramlage, the general manager of the restaurant, will tell you exactly how this happened.

“We present ourselves with quality meals at a value,” begins Bramlage. “With that we offer exemplary service, without having the prices that go along. You can buy a steak and a glass of wine for under 30 bucks, and have great service on top of it.”

Then, taking a look around the restaurant: “As you can see, it’s also a very modern, very relaxed atmosphere.”

This is an understatement. The restaurant is anti-stuffy, with warm lighting, bright colors and plenty of wood and glass enwrapping the restaurant’s two dining rooms. The bar is well stocked, with two large TVs glowing from on high. Meanwhile, classic rock, motown and jazz play pleasantly from the ceiling.

Bramlage has gotten to know Meritage well in his year and a half working there, having risen right alongside the Glendale business.

“I started serving here in September 2011, and was promoted [to general manager] as of September 2012,” explains Bramlage.

“I love it here,” he adds, explaining that the guests, the people and the interactions keep him content.

These interactions take many forms, from suggesting a wine, to cracking jokes, to speaking with a customer about one of the plants in the restaurant. Not a botanist, Bramlage was still able to answer some of the customer’s questions, and even make a suggestion for a nearby florist.

This touch of hospitality has worked, with Bramlage having noticed a widening market for the restaurant.

“I’d say within the year and a half that I’ve been here we’ve probably stretched all the way down to northern Kentucky and worked our way up through West Chester, Liberty Township and Fairfield; our name is starting to spread pretty nicely, out east, too, into Kenwood and Montgomery.”

“It’s all about the personal touch,” continues Bramlage. “It’s

(Clockwise) An outside view of Meritage; Chip Bramlage, the general manager of Meritage; The front dining room of the restaurant; A wine cabinet in the restaurant; Looking out onto the bar; A shot into Glendale, from the back dining room; The restaurant’s well-stocked bar, with new cocktails coming for the spring.

important that my staff – and they do very well with this – give each guest a personal touch. In other words, we pay attention, we’re very attentive to the customers’ needs. Most importantly, we know when to back off. We’re not too over the top.”

Bramlage also understands that not by hospitality alone can a restaurant survive.

“Outside of the value and the quality that we serve, our wine list is extensive, with 85 bottles. We also offer about 15 glass pours, all meant to pair well with our menu.

So it’s very easy for those who are beginners in wine, or those who are very advanced, to come here and pair something with their entrees to get the full experience of the restaurant.”

Meritage has new offerings on the horizon, too.

“We added some more wine, some more pours, and expanded our cocktail list, with some new spring drinks. Which are absolutely incredible.”

Bramlage’s favorite, the Refresh Me, is tequila with a simple sugar syrup, cilantro and egg white, all muddled with cucumber and shaken well.

When asked who designed the drink, Bramlage responded with a coy little “Moi,” then explained that the egg white is to “give [the drink] a little bit of froth and texture.”

Thinking back, I definitely should have asked for one.

The entree menu is changing, too: “This particular time we decided to use more seafood items,” says Bramlage. “We also brought out a veal chop, and we dressed up our filet with an encrusted cajun mix, topped with

a demi glaze.”

“It’s pretty yummy,” he ended simply.

Such satisfaction comes from Meritage’s moral mission statement. “We do our best to get the freshest local ingredients we can.

Also, every order a customer makes is fresh, made to order, with the freshest ingredients we can find locally.”

With spring coming, Bramlage is under the impression that locally sourced heirloom tomatoes, a big hit from last year, may be reappearing.

Besides this, “every first Tuesday of the month we have a wine tasting, which is $25 and you receive four glass pours,” explains Bramlage. “You also get appetizers for that, it’s pretty exciting.

Also, we’re open on Easter Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., which are special hours. With that said we’re

offering a Bloody Mary bar, a mimosa bar, and prime rib.”

The Bloody Mary and mimosa bar is something like a playground for adults: “[Customers] get a sheet and have options on how they would like to build their Bloody Mary. How spicy, etc. And then the mimosa bar, it’s just Champagne with some sort of fruit (they pick).”

Is it better to burn out or to fade away? Gracefully mature, self assured, and confidently stepping forward, Meritage Restaurant appears to have picked “none of the above.” Their hours are Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m – 10 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. – 11 p.m.; Saturday, 4 – 11 p.m.; Sunday, 5 – 10 p.m.

Meritage Restaurant 1140 Congress Avenue Cincinnati, Ohio 45246 513-376-8134

DINING OUT • 15

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

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9386 Montgomery Rd

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16 • OPINION

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Judaism must embrace its ‘doubters’

By Edgar M. Bronfman Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK – As of 2012, one in 20 Americans is identifying themselves as an atheist, agnostic or unbeliever. According to the research done by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released last year, nearly 33 million Americans list themselves with no religious affiliation. While it’s not specified in the Pew study how many Jews are among the ranks of the nonbelievers, doubtless the cultural landscape of Judaism is also impacted by these larger trends in Western culture.

Part of the reason for this shift is the co-opting of what is perceived to be “religious” by the most conservative forces in our society. As increasingly narrow definitions of what it means to be a “believer” prevail, people with progressive social values or who openly doubt a life lived within the boundaries of strict religious practice find themselves at increasing distances from a life defined by a religious identity. Although I am a proud and active Jew, I count myself among those who find this definition of religiosity too constrictive.

It seems the pendulum between doubters and believers is swinging further and further apart. Those who live in belief become more extreme in their views and less tolerant of any deviation from their definitions, while those who are more expansive in their views simply drop out rather than stay and fight for the legitimacy of their views.

This binary approach does not move us forward. The question we must ask if we are to give serious consideration to the Jewish future is why are the narrowest definitions winning the fight over defining Judaism?

At 83, I’m unusual for my generation in my open doubting.

Generally, the younger the age group, the less religious they are.

Millennials, specifically those born between 1990 and 1994, the youngest group of adults polled, logged in with 34 percent religiously unaffiliated.

This fits in to trends that Jewish sociologists have seen emerging throughout the late 20th century within American Judaism, where intermarriage, lack of affiliation with institutions and general alien-

ation from Jewish life expands amid increasing assimilation.

I refer to this generation as “doubters”: young Jews who openly question the meaning and worth of a traditional Jewish life. The existence of these doubters, with their hard questions about the relevancy of Judaism to their lives and removal from the community, usually is met with alarmist cries of fear about the existence of the Jewish future that I see as unfounded. What frightens me about this information is different.

It strikes me as a loss on two levels. First, the doubter allows the narrowest definition of what constitutes a religious life to dominate.

Second, it is the young people selfimposing their own exile from the Jewish people.

While I feel sadness knowing our young people do not always embrace the wealth of heritage that is theirs, I also understand them.

That is not to say I agree. I know what it means, however, to look at the Jewish landscape and feel that the existing options offer no home.

If one needs to see that in action, look at the religious forces in Israel, where the rabbinate has stifling control over a religious life defined by haredi Orthodox definitions that limit the civil rights of secular citizens. It is a blessing then – of the non-religious variety – that here in America we live in a society that allows so many avenues of religious expression.

(This is emerging in Israel, too, but it is far more complicated, although inroads are being made.)

In my youth and young adulthood, there were unifying causes of the Jewish people – something we all stood behind jointly because we knew in our hearts it was right.

We stood together against the Holocaust, for the State of Israel and to free Soviet Jewry. Such a single uniting principle allowed even those who did not see themselves inside of religion to still feel a place among our people.

In modern times, however, this central cause is lost to us. The threat of anti-Semitism is not as vital as it once was for many of us – especially here in America – and the threats to Jewish lives and wellbeing become more and more theoretical and remote for younger Jews, especially those who distance themselves from Israel.

DOUBTERS on page 22

C O R R E C T I O N: The American Israelite apologizes for having used a racially charged word in the From the Pages section of last week’s issue, March 14, 2013. In the future, we will use a less insulting word.

We make mistakes, and we apologize for having made this one.

Netanel (Ted) Deutsch, Publisher

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Do you have something to say? E-mail your letter to editor@americanisraelite.com

Dear Editor,

Dear Editor,

Regarding the column in the March 14 issue, “From the Pages,” the racial slur contained in “100 Years Ago” was offensive then and certainly 100 years later as well.

This past fall I received several pieces of campaign literature.

Some of the campaign literature that I received, I received from Jewish people like Ronald Lauder that wanted me to consider voting for Mitt Romney. Some of the campaign literature came from local Jews that also wanted me to consider not voting for President Obama. I looked at all the literature I received and then I voted.

Today, I would like to share the name of a book I just finished reading and that I think Jews in the United States should read.

The title of this book is The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons.

While I have read many, many books dealing with various facets of Jewish history over my 70 years, this book by Loftus and Aarons I highly recommend, especially for Jewish Republicans. Over the last 12 months, I have read IBM and The Holocaust by Edwin Black, The Deutsche Bank and the War Against the Jews by Harold James and In The Garden of The Beast by Erik Larson, and while each of these books was interesting and informative, none of them covered the scope of the historical narrative like this book by Loftus and Aarons.

Given that most Jews, I think, want to see a strong and vibrant Israel, I recommend this book in that spirit.

Sincerely, Barry E. Cobb Cincinnati, OH Dear Editor, March 5, 2013 at the Land Development committee meeting at the Amberley Village Hall the “Walnut Group” presented their credentials, which included the toy business Broadway productions, to try and impress the committee to endorse their plan to develop the former Crest Hills Country Club now know as Amberley Green. The document that they presented also included an extension provision. This timeline would tie up this irreplaceable green space in the center of our beautiful village for the coming clement months when a lot of people would love to drive a very few minutes to play golf.

Amberley has everything that a family could ask for: A Montessori elementary school, Walnut Hills High School (rated 26th best in the country), an outstanding police and fire department, French Park, ball fields at the corner of Ridge and Section and easy access to Kenwood, where shopping abounds including a Starbucks. If one is so inclined downtown is a mere 14 minutes away. Rehabilitate Crest Hills and complete perfection.

Sincerely, Dian Levine Cincinnati, OH

Sincerely, Fred Zigler Cincinnati, OH Dear Editor,

erable challenges. Four years ago, Obama rebuffed any trip to the Holy Land but managed to set the stage for his estrangement with Israel, when he visited Cairo and posited the equivalence between Jewish suffering during the Holocaust with the plight of the Palestinians. Coming off the heals of the Second Intifada, in which the PLO sought to destabilize and eliminate Israel through homicide-suicide bombings and resulting chaos, Obama’s comments were anything but welcomed by the Israelis. What we have learned since, is Obama is no more warm and fuzzy with Israelis as he is with his comrades in the US and elsewhere. So what can we expect from this trip? Will the ‘Palestinian conflict’ remain front and center to peace in the Middle East? Will the President encourage Israel to continue to promote progress in the lives of the Palestinians while pressing the Palestinians to promote peace building steps with the Israelis (i.e. cease the boycott). Or, will the President link the liberation of the Palestinians to the Passover story (Israelis are now the modern day Pharoah)? Does the Palestinian cause trump the 100,000 deaths and million refugees in neighboring Syria? Or, will Obama demand from the Moslem Brotherhood the creation of a democracy in Egypt with full and equal rights to all (including raped and repressed women), as he did 4 years ago, destabilizing the Mubarak regime? One would hope, as the only true democracy (warts and all) in the Middle East, Israel is not expected to give up any more than the Palestinians have offered (nothing…).

This week’s trip of President Obama to the Holy Land presents welcomed opportunities and consid-

Sincerely, Ray Warren Cincinnati, OH

How the ‘Obama and Israel’ debate misses the point

By Ben Cohen JointMedia News Service WASHINGTON, DC—A persistent theme at this month’s policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the weightiest and most influential of all the groups making Israel’s case in Washington, centered on President Barack Obama’s record on Israel in comparison with previous administrations.

Vice President Joe Biden, who addressed the conference on Monday morning, was unequivocal.

“No President has done more to protect Israel than Obama,” he

declared. (Interestingly, the applause that greeted this remark was noticeably more muted than that which followed Biden’s other statements, for example on the need to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.)

Many of the numerous tweets from the assembled crowd that conveyed each of Biden’s points noted that there was a massive elephant in the room, in the form of the recently confirmed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Hagel’s record of hostile statements toward the “Jewish lobby” (his phrase) and his queasiness about pursuing the military option with regard to Iran didn’t exactly boost the image of Obama as offered up by Biden,

who prudently elected to leave Hagel out of his speech.

The debate about Obama’s friendliness to Israel has essentially been an exercise in number crunching.

Partisans of the administration point out that securing Israel’s military edge is a key aim that has been acted upon: close to a billion dollars has been granted for missile defense, including the path-breaking Iron Dome system, along with $3.1 billion in aid last year, and the provision of bunker busting bombs that would presumably be deployed in any pre-emptive strike upon Iran’s nuclear facilities.

DEBATE on page 22

JEWISH LIFE • 17

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Why begin the Seder this way?

The Talmud criticizes Jacob for favoring Joseph over the other brothers and giving him the striped tunic. This gift, a piece of material with little monetary value, engendered vicious jealousy resulting in the sale of Joseph and the eventual enslavement of the Israelites for 210 years.

The point of the Seder is the retelling (“haggada”) of the seminal experience of servitude and freedom from generation to generation. Through this, all parents become teachers. They must inspire their children to continue the Jewish narrative of identification with the underdog and the outcast. They must imbue in their offspring insistence upon freedom for every individual created in Gd’s image and faith in the ultimate triumph of a world dedicated to peace and security for all.

This places an awesome responsibility on the shoulders of every parent: to convey the ethical monotheism, rooted in our ritual celebrations and teachings, to their children and eventually to all of humanity. Hence, parents must be warned at the outset not to repeat the tragic mistake of Jacob, not to create divisions and jealousies among their children.

Instead, we must unite the generations in the common goal of continuing our Jewish narrative.

What has this to do with Elijah the Prophet, who is slated to be the herald of the Messiah, the announcer of the “good tidings of salvation and comfort?” Our redemption is dependent on our repentance and the most necessary component of redemption is “loving our fellow as we love ourselves” – the great rule of the Torah taught by Rabbi Akiva.

Loving humanity must begin with loving our family; first and foremost our nuclear family. We read in the prophetic portion of this Shabbat that Elijah will bring everyone back to G-d by uniting parents with their children and children with parents. The biblical source of sibling hatred (the Joseph story), which has plagued Jewish history up to and including the present day, will be repaired

by Elijah, who will unite the hearts of the children and the parents together in their commitment to G-d.

Toward the end of the Seder, we open the door for Elijah and welcome him to drink from the cup of redemption poured especially for him. But if Elijah can visit every Seder throughout the world, surely he can get through even the most forbidding kind of door.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson, teaches that we open the door not so much to let Elijah in as to let ourselves out. The Seder speaks of four children; But what about the myriad “fifth children” who never came to a Seder? We must go out after them and bring them in – perhaps together with Elijah, whom we will need desperately to unite the entire family of Israel around the Seder table.

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: PASSOVER HAGADA 1. How should one read the Hagada? a.) Standing b.) Sitting c.) Reclining 2. Are the matzot shown during the seder? a.) Yes b.) No 3. When is the Charoset eaten? a.) With Matzo 5. C Hallel starts at the end of the story of the Exodus and resumes after the meal for also the future redemption.

EFRAT, Israel—“Behold, I send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And he [Elijah] will turn [back to G-d] the hearts of the parents through their children and the hearts of the children through their parents” (Malachi 3:23-24).

The Shabbat before Passover is called Shabbat Hagadol (the Great Sabbath), a phrase deriving from the last verse of the prophetic portion read on that day which declares that G-d will send Elijah the Prophet on the “great day” of the Lord right before the coming of the redemption.

Let us attempt to link Elijah to our Passover Seder in a way more profound than merely opening the door for him and offering him a sip of wine.

Our analysis begins with another Seder anomaly, the fact that we begin our night of freedom with the distribution of an hors d’oeuvre of karpas (Greek for vegetation or vegetable, often parsley, dipped in a condiment).

The usual explanation for this is that vegetation emerges in the springtime; Passover is biblically called the Spring Festival, and so we dip a vegetable in salt water, reminiscent of spring renewal emerging from the tears of Egyptian enslavement. Rabbi Shlomo Kluger, in his late 19thcentury Haggada, suggests another interpretation. The Hebrew word “karpas” appears in the opening verses of the Book of Esther, in the description of the “hangings” that were found in the gardens of King Ahasuerus’s palace, where the great feast for all his kingdom was hosted; karpas white cotton joined with turquoise wool. Rashi connects the term “karpas” in the sense of material with the ketonet passim, the striped tunic that Jacob gave to his beloved son, Joseph.

The Jerusalem Talmud additionally suggests that we dip the karpas in haroset (a mixture of wine, nuts and dates), adding that haroset is reminiscent of the blood of the babies murdered in Egypt.

In our case, the karpas would become symbolic of Joseph’s tunic, which the brothers dipped into goat’s blood and brought to their father as a sign that his son had been torn apart by wild beasts when in fact they had sold him into Egyptian slavery.

Let us attempt to link Elijah to our Passover Seder in a way more profound than merely opening the door for him and offering him a sip of wine.

b.) With Maror c.) With Wine 4. Are the four cups part of the Ma Nishtana? a.) Yes b.) No 5. When is Hallel recited? a.) Before the meal b.) After the meal c.) Before and after the meal

them. Talmud 3. B Charoset are put on the Maror and shaken off.

4. B

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT TZAVSHABBAT HAGADOL • LEVITICUS 6:1–8:36

Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

ANSWERS 1. C Reclining is a posture of free men 2. A Matzot are not only the bread of affliction, but the story of the Exodus is told in front of

Sedra of the Week

18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

JEWZ

IN THE

By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist ADMISSION “Admission”, a comedy/drama which opens in theaters on Friday, March 22, is based on the acclaimed 2009 novel of the same name by JEAN HANFF KORELIK, 51. Korelik, a well-respected writer, has lived in Princeton, N.J. since 1990 and her husband, a poet, teaches creative writing at Princeton University.

The plot: Straitlaced Princeton University admissions officer Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) makes a recruiting visit to an alternative high school run by John Pressman, a former college classmate (PAUL RUDD, 43).

Pressman has guessed that Jeremiah, a gifted student of his, might be the son that Nathan secretly gave up for adoption while she was in college.

Nathan finds herself putting her career at risk to help Jeremiah get in to Princeton. Meanwhile, she finds herself falling for Pressman.

WALLACE SHAWN, 69, who can be quite funny, has a supporting role as Nathan’s stiff colleague. Lily Tomlin reportedly almost steals the film with her slightly overthe-top performance as Portia Nathan’s fierce feminist mother.

NAT WOLFF, 18, the former co-star of the hit Nickelodeon kids’ show, “The Naked Brothers Band,” plays Jeremiah. The film is directed by PAUL WEITZ, 47 (“About a Boy”).

PREMIUM CABLE CORNER In the early-to-mid 1960s, there was no hotter rock music writer and producer than PHIL SPECTOR, now 73. He had an incredible sting of hits with such groups as the Ronettes and The Righteous Brothers. But by the late ‘60s, he went from being often annoying and neurotic to downright spooky weird. Spector virtually stopped working after 1980, but he had tons of royalties still coming in. Then, in 2003, he was accused of murdering actress Lana Clarkson at his mansion.

His first trial, in 2007, ended in a mistrial. He was convicted in 2009 and isn’t eligible for parole until he’s 88.

The original HBO film, “The Bottom Line,” premieres on Sunday March 24, at 9PM. Directed and written by DAVID MAMET, 65, it got an advance rave in the usually reliable Hollywood Reporter.

The Reporter’s only caveat is that Mamet has an agenda: to plant a reasonable doubt in the mind of viewers as to Spector’s guilt or innocence. Al Pacino plays Spector, with Helen Mirren co-

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starring as Spector’s defense attorney.

As I’ve noted before, ZOSIA MAMET, David’s daughter, is one of three Jewish actresses playing three of the four leads on HBO’s “Girls.” As I write this, the 2nd season finale (March 17) hasn’t yet aired – but the March 10 episode was more “tribeheavy” than a Brooklyn bris.

Guest stars included SHIRI APPLEBY, 34, as the new girlfriend of Hannah’s ex-boyfriend; CAROL KANE, 60, as Appleby’s mother; BOB BALABAN, 67, as a therapist treating Hannah (star LENA DUNHAM, 26); and AMY SCHUMER, 31, as a guest at a party.

Schumer, a rising comedian, is the niece of Sen. CHUCK SCHUMER, 62, of New York.

Early this month, Amy was the headliner of a Showtime special, “Women Who Kill,” featuring four female stand-ups. It is in “heavy” re-run play until the end of March. Meanwhile, many of Chuck’s former constituents are featured in “Kings Point,” an Oscar-nominated documentary about (mostly) Jewish seniors in a Del Ray Beach, Fla., retirement community that airs all this month on HBO. ONE LAST WALTZ (UPDATE) Last week, the Jerusalem Post reported that Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, 55, who just won his second best supporting actor Oscar, was in Israel to attend the wedding of his daughter, MIRIAM, 30. The Post also reported that “Waltz’s son is a rabbi in Israel.” Back in 2009, director Quentin Tarantino surprised everyone when he mentioned that Waltz’s son “was a rabbi in Israel.” Not long after, actor/director ELI ROTH said that the son was “studying to be a rabbi in Israel.” I just came across a recent Austrian news report that clarified matters. Waltz’s ex-wife, JACKIE, is an American Jewish psychotherapist. They had three kids: Miriam, RACHEL, now 25, and LEON, 27. The Austrian paper spoke to the chief rabbi of Vienna, who knows Leon very well (Leon is often in Austria to visit his paternal grandmother).

The rabbi said that Leon did finish a several-year course of study at a Jerusalem yeshiva. But his studies didn’t have to end in rabbinic ordination and Leon chose not to be ordained. Leon, an Orthodox Jew, now works as a scientist in London. He is also working on writing Jewish historical studies.

The rabbi added that Leon and his father are close, but Leon couldn’t bear to watch his father act in an SS uniform in Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds.”

FROM THE PAGES 150 Y EARS A GO Happy holidays to the readers of The Israelite! May He who redeemed our fathers from the Egyptian bondage and led them through the perils of the first struggle for liberty and justice, protect all and each of you, gladden every heart and distill festive joys into every soul!

The Feast of Passover as commanded in the Bible (Exodus 12: Ibid 23; Ibid 34: Leviticus 23: Deuter. 16) begins the fourteenth day of the first month, Nissan, after sunset, to last seven days. The first and last days are holidays for “holy convocations,” and the intervening five days, are for work and pleasure, called Chol Hammoed. The fast begins this Friday evening and lasts to Friday evening next.

The feast was instituted in Israel, about 3,360 years ago, as a memorial of the day of redemption, when our ancestors left “the house of bondage,” the land of the Pharoahs, “the tents of Ham.” It was called Passover, as Sacred Scriptures inform us, because when the Destroyer slew the first born sons of Egypt in one night, he passed over the houses of the Hebrews and spared them. – April 3, 1863

125 Y EARS A GO Mr. and Mrs. Sam Kahn, Jr., and daughter, returned home on Tuesday evening last, after a most pleasant European tour. Mrs. Kahn and the little girl have been abroad for nine months, and Mr. Kahn went over six weeks ago to bring them home. The passage, which lasted fifteen days, was a stormy and disagreeable one, but they stood it well, and are in most excellent health.

Miss Millie Meyer, of 130 Carlisle Avenue, gave a delightful party to a number of her friends on Wednesday evening, March 14th, in her usual charming manner.

Among those present were the Misses Minnie Isaac, Belle Isaac, Bessie Van Cleeff, Flora Epstein, Jennie Hyman, Belle Goldsmith, Jennie and Belle Rosenbaum and the Messrs. Abe Jacobs, Jake Greenfield, Arthur Steiner, Sam Marx, Sam Greenfield, Mose Rider, Harry Victor, Gus Patliss, Emanuel Rosenthal, Meyer Levy, Charles Mode and many others. – March 23, 1888

100 Y EARS A GO The deed for the old Hebrew Union College Building, on West Sixth street, was last week delivered to the present owners, The Colored Industrial School of Cincinnati, on March 14. The consideration was $8,500. The original purchase price was $25,000.

After a tour of three months’ duration during which they visited many of the principal cities of the United States, including those of the Pacific Coast, Dr. and Mrs. Gotthard Deutsch have returned home. During his trip Dr. Deutsch lectured at numerous points, and was everywhere enthusiastically welcomed.

Cantor Isadore H. Weinstock of the Plum Street Temple has accepted an invitation to deliver his illustrated lecture on “Synagog Music” before the Woman’s Club of Isaiah Temple, Chicago, on April 2. When Dr. Jos. Stolz was here, during the W.A.H.C. Council, he heard Cantor Weinstock give the lecture at the “Jews of Many Lands” exhibit at the Jewish Settlement, and was so impressed with it that upon his return to Chicago he at once arranged to have the lecture repeated as above. – March 20, 1913

75 Y EARS A GO Predicting that the principles of Reform Judaism will be the “normal and natural” way for Jewish thinking in the not very distant future, Rabbi Solomon Foster of Newark, N.J., pleaded for a “confident, challenging and vibrant faith” as the outstanding modern need, at the Founder’s Day Services Saturday, March 26th, at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He spoke in tribute to the memory of Isaac Mayer Wise on the 38th anniversary of his death and the 119th anniversary of his birth.

Mr. Haim Reingold, Mathematics Department, University of Cincinnati, presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America in Columbus, Thursday, March 31st.

Mr. Bernard Shneider, senior at Northwestern University Dental School of Chicago, is spending his spring vacation with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kalman Shneider, of Windham Avenue. He has as his guest Dr. Arnold Raffle, of Chicago. – March 31, 1938.

50 Y EARS A GO The James Wilber Chamber Music Players will perform the sixth concert of the Taft Museum Chamber Music Series Sunday, March 24, at 3 p.m. at the Museum.

This is the 10th anniversary of the Museum-Cincinnati Musicians’ Association sponsored series. Free to the public the concerts are made possible by grants from the Recording Industries Trust Funds.

Members of the ensemble are: James Wilber, clarinet and alto sax; Jack Wellbaum, flute; Emil Schmactenberg, bass clarinet; Frank Brown, trumpet; Glenn Seaman, baritone sax; Glen

Parchman, bass; and Jack Volk, drums. Lee Stolar, piano, guest artist, will be featured in a Bossa Nova arrangement of “Tea for Two” by Mr. Wilber.

Mr. Wilber has emphasized jazz in his selection of program pieces. Much of the music is new.

The program includes two works by the contemporary French composer, Andre Hodeir; “Jazz Suit” in three movements by Mr. Wilber and works by Cincinnati composers Glen Parchman and Dave Matthews. – March 21, 1963

25 Y EARS A GO On Sunday, April 10, the Jewish Theatre Project, the resident theater group of Hillel, will present the play, “The Diary Of Anne Frank,” by Meyer Levin.

Performances will be at 2 p.m., 5 p.m., and 8 p.m. at the Hillel Jewish Student Center, 2615 Clifton Avenue.

Dr. Edward Saeks has been reappointed to chair the Jewish Federation’s Synagogue/Federation Relations Committee, announced David Lazarus, president. Assisting him as vice chairman will be Dr. Jeffrey Zipkin.

Jessica Baron and James Schloss, board members of the Jewish Vocational Service, have been appointed co-chairmen of the Advisory Committee for Employment, announced Harold Freeman, chairman of JVS. They will succeed John Frank Jr. and Ruth Youkilis, who have co-chaired the committee since its inception in 1983. The Advisory Committee for Employment is a group of community and business leaders who assist with placement services for the professional clients of Employer’s Choice, the placement department of JVS. – March 24, 1988.

10 Y EARS A GO Adath Israel Congregation honored the 50th anniversary of the Hillel Jewish Student Center, located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati, at its Shabbat morning service March 15.

A number of Hillel officers and members participated in the service, including Ellen Golub, Hillel board member; Mike Mills, VP of the Hillel board; Rabbi Elena Stein, former Hillel student and former OU Hillel executive director; Stephen Lerner, president of the Hillel board; Rob Lowenstein, Hillel board member; and Ken Miller, Hillel board member.

Cincinnati attorney Ed Marks has been elected president of the Cincinnati-Kharkiv Sister City Project (CKSCP). He is principal in the firm of Hardin, Lefton, Lazarus and Marks.– March 27, 2003.

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

CLASSIFIEDS • 19

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS Access (513) 373-0300 • jypaccess.org Big Brothers/Big Sisters Assoc.

(513) 761-3200 • bigbrobigsis.org Camp Ashreinu (513) 702-1513 Camp at the J (513) 722-7258 • mayersonjcc.org Camp Chabad (513) 731-5111 • campchabad.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 • camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 754-3100 • cedarvillage.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Cincinnati Community Kollel (513) 631-1118 • kollel.shul.net Cincinnati Community Mikveh (513) 351-0609 • cincinnatimikveh.org Eruv Hotline (513) 351-3788 Fusion Family (513) 703-3343 • fusionnati.org Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (Miami) (513) 523-5190 • muhillel.org Hillel Jewish Student Center (UC) (513) 221-6728 • hillelcincinnati.org Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati 513-961-0178 • jcemcin.org Jewish Community Center (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org Jewish Community Relations Council (513) 985-1501 Jewish Family Service (513) 469-1188 • jfscinti.org Jewish Federation of Cincinnati (513) 985-1500 • shalomcincy.org Jewish Foundation (513) 214-1200 Jewish Information Network (513) 985-1514 JVS Career Services (513) 985-0515 • jvscinti.org Kesher (513) 766-3348 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 Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 984-3393 • btzbc.com Beth Israel Congregation (513) 868-2049 • bethisraelcongregation.net 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 Ohr Chadash (513) 252-7267 • ohrchadashcincinnati.com Congregation Sha’arei Torah shaareitorahcincy.org 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

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

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 Hadassah (513) 821-6157 • cincinnati.hadassah.org Jewish Discovery Center (513) 234.0777 • jdiscovery.com Jewish National Fund (513) 794-1300 • jnf.org Jewish War Veterans (513) 204-5594 • jwv.org NA’AMAT (513) 984-3805 • naamat.org National Council of Jewish Women (513) 891-9583 • ncjw.org State of Israel Bonds (513) 793-4440 • israelbonds.com Women’s American ORT (513) 985-1512 • ortamerica.org

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EXPERTS from page 6 “It is essential to talk about the right numbers and the right image,” Prosor said. He said the real number of refugees, those who fled themselves, is about 50,000.

“Without a solution to this issue, there is no discussion of peace,” Prosor reiterated.

A major objective of the New York conference-titled “Changing U.S. Policy on UNRWA and the ‘Palestine Refugees’”—and hosted by the Middle East Forum—was to assure that the regulations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (the United Nations’ aid agency for the Palestinians) fall in line with U.S. immigration policy.

Discussions at the conference focused on redefining “refugee” as applied to a Palestinian population cohort that, under existing practice, retains that status generationally.

Questions raised included the MENENDEZ from page 7 The Senator responded by expressing his admiration for the “incredibly hard working people” of New Jersey’s Muslim community.

“They have helped rebuild some of our oldest communities,” Menendez said. “They have a strong faith and family focus. My experience has been that they are making contributions in those communities in New Jersey in which they reside.”

Menendez, in partnership with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (RSC), has co-authored a new resolution that calls on the U.S. to “stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the government of Israel in defense of its territory, people, and existence.” The resolution is expected to pass in the House and Senate.

Soon after submission of the Graham-Menendez resolution, U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Ted Deutch (D-FL) put forth a bill that would create a unique, legally acknowledged designation of Israel as a “major strategic ally” for the U.S. Delegates at AIPAC’s 2013 Policy Conference, preparing to go to Capitol Hill to lobby their House Representatives and Senators following the end of the

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(513) 531-9600 implications of citizenship granted to persons born in a country—a process that would remove millions of Palestinians from “refugee” status—and bringing the UNRWA designation into conformity with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization definition of “refugee.”

The solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, said Rosen, “is not returning to Israel.”

“Addressing this problem does not harm peace… Negotiators will have to give the most intractable party enough room to make the deal happen,” he said.

After World War II some 100 million people around the world were categorized as “refugees.” By 2013, only the Palestinians retained their refugee status, even with citizenship in another country.

Rosen noted that several American presidents have urged that the Palestinians move away from the “right of return” demand. conference on March 5, were invigorated by the words of Menendez, the three-day conference’s final notable speaker. The newly appointed Senate foreign relations chair was making his first major public appearance after returning from a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Menendez told the crowd, including the 500-member delegation from New Jersey that he acknowledged, that America would “protect and defend our fundamental promise to stand with Israel and the Israeli people in a strong and lasting alliance.”

He called the Jewish state “an enlightened society,” promising the availability of America’s “military strength where necessary.”

U.S. aid to Egypt should be contingent upon Egypt upholding its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Menendez said.

“American security assistance to Egypt cannot be a blank check,” he said.

Drawing a standing ovation from the AIPAC crowd, Menendez affirmed the biblical Jewish connection to the land of Israel.

“There can be no denying the Jewish people’s legitimate right to live in peace and security in a homeland to which they have a connection for thousands of years,” he said.

20 • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

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PARADE: The Leo Frank Story premiers at CCM COVINGTON, KY—Despite Tony Award wins for its soaring score and riveting script in 1999, the theatrical telling of the Leo Frank story is one rarely produced, requiring a large and talented cast and recounting a real American tragedy many would rather forget.

That will change this April.

The Carnegie and CCM Musical Theatre proudly present the stirring and multiple Tony Award winning musical PARADE, book by Alfredy Uhry, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown.

Co-directed by Dee Anne Bryll and Ed Cohen and featuring a cast comprised entirely of CCM Musical Theatre students, PARADE recounts the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager wrongfully convicted of mur-

der in early 20th century Atlanta.

The Real History of Leo Frank and PARADE The story which unfolds in PARADE is very closely based on the real-life events in the life of Leo Frank, a northerner managing an Atlanta pencil factory in 1913.

When a 13-year-old employee of the factory, Mary Phagan, was found dead, Frank was put on trial, convicted and sentenced to death amid a mob atmosphere, despite strong evidence pointing toward a factory janitor as the perpetrator.

Following his own investigation, Georgia governor Frank Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Two months later, a group of 25 men stormed the prison where Frank was held,

drove him to Marietta (Phagan’s home town) and lynched him.

PARADE had a brief run of only 85 performances in its 199899 Broadway debut, nonetheless earning Tony wins for “Best Book” and “Best Score” and nominations in seven other categories, including “Best Musical.” The show represented the first collaboration between Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winning playwright Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) and popular musical theatre composer Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years).

In addition to the performances on stage, PARADE patrons will have an opportunity to view a special exhibition in The Carnegie Galleries created to enhance the PARADE experience through

Acclaimed filmmaker turns camera on his own Holocaust experience for ‘Frontline’

By Penny Schwartz Jewish Telegraphic Agency BOSTON – When he was 5 years old, Marian Marzynski’s parents hatched a plan to smuggle him out of the Warsaw Ghetto.

It was 1942, and Marzynski and his family were among the 400,00 Jews rounded up two years earlier by the Nazis, confined to the 1.3sq.-mile ghetto in the heart of the city. To stay alive, Marzynski’s parents warned him, you must forget who you are.

That lesson in survival shepherded the young boy over the next three years as he hid from his tormentors, separated from his parents.

He eventually became one of the few child survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Marzynski (born Marian Kuszner) would go on to become an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker in the United States.

Now, 70 years later, after a career in which he made acclaimed films about Polish Jewry and the Holocaust, Marzynski has trained the camera on himself, telling his own story and those of other survivors in “Never Forget to Lie,” a film scheduled for nationwide broadcast on April 30 on the PBS series “Frontline.”

In the hourlong film co-produced with Jason Longo, Marzynski retraces his early years, chronicling his parents’ secular lives in prewar Warsaw, their confinement in the ghetto, his escape to the Aryan side of the wall, and his journey to the Catholic orphanage where he embraced life as a dutiful altar boy.

With an artful, empathic hand, he tells the stories of other survivors as well, capturing their childhood memories as they grapple with the trauma and loss of their early lives.

There are uplifting scenes, too, of Jewish culture and heritage being

Courtesy of WGBH

In his new film, Marian Marzynski returns to Poland to tell his story and that of other child survivors of the Holocaust.

celebrated in the streets of Krakow.

“If there is news in this film, it’s about a new perception of the Holocaust,” Marzynski told JTA in an interview in his suburban Boston home. “It’s basically a question of unfinished business. We are coming back to our childhood – a story of stolen childhood.”

Most Holocaust films have focused on the harsh realities of life in the concentration camps, not child survivors, so Marzynski views his film as a corrective of sorts, and a timely one. Child survivors are the last witnesses, and Marzynski says they have reached a point in their lives where they are ready to share their stories with the world.

“Other directors come in and tell the stories of other people,” said Sharon Pucker Rivo, an adjunct associate professor of Jewish film at Brandeis University. “Marian is a native insider. He knows the language, the territory. He didn’t need intermediaries.”

After the war, Marzynski reunited with his mother. His father, who escaped a transport train to a death camp, was murdered in the forest outside of Warsaw. Unlike most survivors, Marzynski remained in Poland with his mother, who remarried another survivor, and took his stepfather’s name.

Growing up under Communist rule, Marzynski said he understood

the political realities. The message was, “We all suffered from the Nazis. Everyone’s equal. Don’t brag about being Jewish, that you suffered more than other people.”

Marzynski became a journalist and a successful radio and television personality. But in 1969, during a wave of politically motivated antiSemitism in Poland, Marzynski fled to Denmark with his family – his wife, their young son and his mother and stepfather. Later, they resettled in the United States.

“We did not want our son to have to live the lie that I had to live,” he says.

In “Never Forget to Lie,” Marzynski ventures for the first time into the forest where his father was murdered. The camera lingers on the filmmaker as he holds his father’s watch, telling viewers that it is the first time he is wearing it. For a few moments, the otherwise voluble, opinionated director can hardly speak.

“It’s a quiet moment,” Rivo said. “There’s no swelling music, no gimmicks. You can see he is moved.”

Marzynski hopes the film reaches a wide audience, especially nonJews. The survivor stories reflect the universal human experience, he says.

Marzynski got a taste of that broader resonance in January, when he and his wife were invited to join a group of 560 European high school students and 85 teachers on a trip from Tuscany to Poland on the Treno della Memoria (“train of memory”), an Italian Holocaust education project. After visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau and seeing his film, many students approached him, fascinated to meet a survivor.

He says he was impressed by how eager they were were to learn about this history, and their perspectives were completely changed.

visual art. The work of Daniel Smith, Kent Krugh and Jennifer Beresford will be on display in the Main Gallery; their images are metaphors to the struggle of the subject matter that ensues in the theatrical production. Trees in a layered dream-like focus by Krugh; the pit-fired vessels of Beresford that examine a process of how clay was first fired; and the large, bold images of Smith portraying a beautiful world shattered by pain combine to enhance the viewer’s engagement and dialogue with PARADE. The second floor gallery will feature shows selected to bring a balance to the emotional side of the production of PARADE. Metal and wood reliefs, colorful abstract paintings and photography will

each allow a new experience for the viewer and a duality of ideas in contrast to the main gallery.

Admission to The Carnegie Galleries is free of charge to PARADE patrons throughout the run. An opening reception on Friday, April 5 at 6 p.m. will also be complimentary to PARADE patrons, and will include a cash bar and light hors d’oeuvres.

This will represent the first full programmatic collaboration between The Carnegie’s Theatre and Gallery departments, capitalizing on the organization’s unique multi-disciplinary nature.

CRITICISM from page 8

flict such as that between the Israelis and Palestinians, a third party such as the U.S. is needed because the last thing that works is to tell the parties to reach a resolution themselves.

To solve the conflict, Ben-Ami laid out a two-state proposal with the negotiation of borders starting at Israel’s pre-1967 lines (with some adjustments), a Palestinian capital in eastern Jerusalem, a Jewish capital in western Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and its surrounding holy sites as an international zone, Palestinians earning the right of return to “Palestine” but not to Israel, and a demilitarized Palestinian state with an international presence on its border to ensure the security of both parties.

“I find it fascinating that you have a plan like that,” Rothstein reacted, asking if Israelis on the ground who “actually matter” would agree with Ben-Ami’s plan.

“My solution is that people need to come to the table,” Rothstein said.

“Why do I need to provide a solution when the Israelis and the Palestinians need to sit and talk?”

Ben-Ami acknowledged that while “the world’s pressure does need to be on both parties,” J Street recognizes that “at the end of the day, we live here, and the Israelis live there, and the decisions need to be made there.”

Rothstein and Ben-Ami disagreed sharply on Abbas’s current suitability as a peace partner for Israel. When asked if a two-state solution is possible and worth advocating for, Rothstein said what needs to be asked first is, “Is now the moment?” for that solution, and of Abbas, “Is this the man? Is this the time?”

“This is the man and this is the time,” Ben-Ami said.

The Palestinians under Abbas, Ben-Ami said, have limited terror in the West Bank, have “built the institutions of statehood,” and have “done everything that the critics have asked them to do.”

seeking to have. He said taking an “us versus them, good versus evil, black versus white” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what “will make us all end up with zero.”

Trying to win the “blame game” with the Palestinians “is not a strategy,” he said, because it doesn’t help American leaders “chart a course out of the mess” that is the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

Rothstein said that for J Street to criticize Israel “and heap it on when we’re watching the world criticize Israel… I don’t believe that J Street should add to that chorus.”

“I would like to see more evenhanded criticism at the hatemongering that goes on in the [Palestinian] territories,” she said.

“To place the lion’s share of the blame on Israel, as J Street does, in their mission statement, this does not encourage reconciliation,” Rothstein added, explaining that peace “will only come from education and accountability.”

While “any and all criticism is fair game” when it comes to Israel, that criticism should be channeled through debating, writing, and other exercises other than the lobbying J Street does, Rothstein said.

“Feel free to criticize… but to lobby, because you want to get your way over there [in Israel] really does not put a lot of trust in the Israeli people,” she said.

J Street, on the other hand, believes “in the need for outside help” to resolve the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, Ben-Ami said.

Ben-Ami repeatedly stressed J Street’s stated mission of “mobilizing broad support for a two-state solution because it’s in Israel’s and America’s interest.” J Street believes “the lack of a two-state resolution poses an existential threat to the state of Israel” due to demographic realities, Ben-Ami said. Furthermore, he said that experts who have studied conflict resolution say that in a con-

The Carnegie and CCM Musical Theatre co-production will be the first staging of the show in a professional venue in Cincinnati.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT / FIRST PERSON • 21

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Matisyahu talks about his new religious outlook and appearance

By Daniel Hoffman Jewish Telegraphic Agency PARIS – Cigarette in one hand and cup of tea in the other, Matisyahu sat down with JTA in his closet-sized dressing room during his European tour to talk about his life, his music, how he’s raising his kids, and the recent changes in his religious outlook and physical appearance.

The beatboxing reggae star once known for his signature beard and hasidic garb has left his yarmulke by the wayside, dyed his hair blond and moved to Los Angeles from the hasidic stronghold of Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Matisyahu (aka Matthew Miller) says he felt locked in by the hasidic life and at some point thought his look no longer represented who he was. Orthodox Judaism does not have a monopoly on the truth in life, Matisyahu says; each person must discover his own truth. The 33-year-old singer, now dressed in a blue zip-up hoodie, says he still looks to the Torah and Judaism for inspiration, but his view of Jewish law – halachah – has changed.

Matisyahu talked about his ongoing evolution with JTA shortly before a performance at Le Bataclan in Paris.

JTA: A year ago you released the single “Sunshine,” probably one of your happiest songs. In what context did you write it?

Matisyahu: I was in California with my son, who has blond hair. It was “golden sunshine.” There was a really good feeling. Part of that is because of the connection between me and the producer and the way we approached the music – dealing with real topics, but in a positive light. I made certain changes in my life. I feel more open, more free. It’s like springtime coming out of a hibernation.

Let’s talk about these changes. A lot of your fans were shocked when you decided in December 2011 to shave your beard. Not long afterward, you posted pictures of yourself online without a yarmulke.

Now you have dyed your hair blond. Can you explain the different steps leading to these changes?

When I was in my early 20s, I became interested in Jewish identity and history. I went to Israel and had a strong feeling about being Jewish.

I started to think about how to incorporate my spiritual search into reggae music. And I decided to make the leap to express myself as a Jew. I started to wear a yarmulke, grew a beard and changed my clothes. It was very much like the blending of the old mystical tradition and spirituality with who I am in America as a 21-year-old musician. Then I decided that I would go the next level with it all and that I would take

Courtesy of Larry Busacca/Getty

Matisyahu says that despite his changed appearance, “I’m looking very much toward the Torah and Judaism as a source of inspiration.”

on the ideology of Orthodox Judaism, even though I didn’t necessarily understand it logically. I figured that I was going to submit myself to it. And I accepted it. It became a part of my worldview. At the same time, I was traveling a lot, meeting different hasidim, and I really got a good understanding of what it means to be Jewish. But at some point I felt locked in to that vision of the world. I needed to go back to my choices and make decisions about my life. I still believe there is a lot of truth in Orthodox Judaism, but not the whole truth.

Each person has his truth that he has to discover. You don’t necessarily have to mold yourself to another idea of who you are.

So you feel more authentic now that you have shaved your beard?

When I had my beard and my suit, that was very true for me. In that moment that’s what I wanted.

But I did feel that it no longer was representing who I was.

Were you affected by some of the negative reactions among your fans after you changed your look?

Obviously it made me a little sad because I’m not really interested in making people upset. But at the same time, I’m not representative for anyone. Some Orthodox Jews felt that I betrayed them.

There’s no betrayal; every person has to do what is right for him in his life. Then, separate from religion, there is the image issue. Some artists are bound to an image: Bob Marley has dreadlocks, Matisyahu has a beard. But that’s a reminder that the whole thing is not about style. It’s about music.

Still, you were, maybe unintentionally, a symbol for many Jews around the world that it was possible to reconcile tradition and modernity.

I think I’m still doing that! I’m looking very much toward the

Torah and Judaism as a source of inspiration. Maybe it’s not as obvious for people on the surface, but anyone who really listens to my record will find depth. And that’s a good way to weed out who is a real fan and who cannot go with you.

When you are in a relationship with an artist, if his music is a part of your life, you have to choose whether or not to follow him through his transformation and evolution. You know, it’s like the story of the golden calf. When Moses comes down from the mountain, the first thing he does is burn it and it goes back to its original form.

Sometimes a calf comes to us like an idol and we become stuck in an image. But to go back to the truth, we need to get rid of the image and get back to the base core. That’s kind of what I did.

Has your observance of Judaism evolved, too?

I’m taking every day as it comes. For example, if I’m on the road with my chef or if I’m home, it’s very easy to keep kosher. But what is it to keep kosher? Is it eating kosher potato chips? Kosher is a bigger idea. I think it’s about being healthy. But according to some people, it’s about not eating this food because it’s forbidden by the Jewish law. My view of the halachah changed a little bit. The laws are there hopefully to be a tool. When they’re acting in that way, I’m following them. But if not, I’m not just doing random things because that’s what you are supposed to do.

How did the people around you react to your changes?

The people that I’m around are my band. That’s who I’m spending most of my time with on the road.

They’re not religious, they’re not Jewish and they’re very understanding. Also, I don’t live anymore in the neighborhood where I used to live. As for my family, they are very accepting of my changes. My kids are learning very different perspectives. I felt that was something very important to teach them all along: bringing them out, getting them out of the shtetl, seeing the whole world, meeting people from different cultures, stressing the humanity of mankind. They’re also growing up with a strong Jewish identity because it’s a big part of our lives – with Shabbat, holidays and even school. I’m teaching them real Jewish values: not to judge people, believe in unity and oneness, and also to know who they are.

Will we see a new Matisyahu a couple of years from now?

In life, you’re never going to escape yourself, you’re never going to become something else.

Hopefully, if you’re having this interview in two or three years, you will meet a more evolved Matisyahu. It’s important to keep growing.

Who is Edie Lutnick?

Incidentally Iris

by Iris Ruth Pastor Have you ever thought about what you would do if confronted with a situation so devastating that you didn’t think you could ever recover and move on? Edie Lutnick doesn’t have to wonder about that scenario. She has lived it for the past eleven years.

Who IS Edie Lutnick? Well, she WAS a nice Jewish girl, working as a labor attorney, living on the Upper East Side of New York, enjoying the company of her many friends, steady boyfriend and her two devoted brothers. She never had an inkling when she awoke to a clear, beautiful crisp morning on September 11, 2001 that her life would change in an unimaginable way in just a few hours.

“On September 11, ” Edie relates, “my 36-year-old brother Gary – whom I had raised when our parents died young – was murdered in the World Trade Center, along with 657 of his friends and colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald – the firm where my one surviving brother, Howard Lutnick, is the CEO and Chairman.”

The first call that woke her was from Gary, trapped on the 103rd floor of one of the Twin Towers, calmly saying goodbye after the first plane had hit the tower – but before he was engulfed in smoke and flames – his young life extinguished.

The next call was from her other brother, Howard, assuring her he was unharmed. Fortunately, when the plane struck, he had been out of the building with his wife, taking their 5-year-old son to the first day of kindergarten.

Unfortunately, 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees weren’t so lucky and lost their lives when one of the rogue planes hit the first Twin Tower.

Edie lost her brother Gary and her life as she knew it. By the end of that harrowing week, Howard would ask her to rise out of the ashes of her grief and do something that would change the trajectory of her life forever.

In the coming days, as the nation tried to come to grips with this act of catastrophic proportions, Howard continued to implore a grief-riddled Edie to leave her job and take on the monumental task of heading an initiative aimed at

getting relief and compensation for Cantor Fitzgerald families.

Edie Lutnick proceeded to say goodbye to her career as a labor lawyer and went to work round the clock as the unpaid co-founder and executive director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Victim’s Relief Fund. Now when Edie is asked what she does, she says, “I fight battles that should never even be conversations.”

She’s not kidding. With her leadership, 658 Cantor Fitzgerald families faced the tragedy of 9/11 and beyond. As Edie would say, no grievance, no issue, no problem nor situation was too mundane, too non-essential, or too complicated for her and her band of zealous volunteers to tackle. She simply functioned as a housemother extraordinaire. “Thousands of broken hearted people became my family,” Edie recalls.

Unfortunately, 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees weren’t so lucky and lost their lives when one of the rogue planes hit the first Twin Tower.

Edie’s book is her story and the story of the families. But it’s so much more than that. “It’s how we behaved as individuals, colleagues, friends, communities, companies, philanthropic organizations, religions, societies and governments,” notes Edie. “The 11 years following 9/11 are a microcosm of everything going on in our world today.

We faced unfathomable obstacles and even when you are pure of heart, you don’t always win, but you keep fighting for what’s important. We as Jews understand the importance of remembrance. It’s central to who we are. We know how perilous forgetting can be.”

Who is Edie Lutnick? Well, she’s STILL a nice Jewish girl, but one that can add fearless warrior to her professional profile. And someone, no matter what battle you are waging, you’d like on your side.

“When you are confronted with tragedy and let’s face it, you will be,” Edie concludes, “if you find a mission larger than yourself, it will not only help you heal, but you will accomplish spectacular things.”

Keep coping, Iris Ruth Pastor

22 • OBITUARIES D EATH N OTICES FABE, Harry G., age 91, died March 15, 2013; 4 Nissan, 5773.

BORTZ, Eli, age 88, died March 16, 2013; 5 Nissan, 5773.

ELECTION from page 9 At the center, the priests had a chance to hear from Father Francesco Voltaggio, rector of the Galilee Seminary, who explained to them the Jewish roots of Christianity.

Voltaggio told the priests that they shouldn’t think of Jesus as being a Christian. In fact, he emphasized to them that Jesus was born, lived and died as a Jew. “Initially they were a bit surprised, but they didn’t resist the idea. They took it as authoritative.

They would have never understood that if they hadn’t visited Israel and spoken with Catholic leaders there,” Korn said.

JNS asked Voltaggio about his encounter with Latin American priests and the importance of further dialogue between Latin American Catholics and Jews.

“I noticed a great thirst for knowledge of Jewish traditions, Jewish roots and context of Christian faith, a sincere love toward the Holy Land, a relationship of sincere friendship…I think it is essential for Catholics from Latin America to know about Judaism and Israel, not only at the intellectual level, but in an experiential way,” Voltaggio said.

The papal selection of Cardinal Bergoglio, who is well-respected

by Jewish leaders for his close relationship with Argentina’s 200,000 Jews and for his compassionate response to the 1994 terror attack on Buenos Aires’ Jewish community center that killed 85 people, provides hope that Catholic-Jewish relations will continue to grow in a positive direction under his leadership.

FUTURE from page 9 The sense of siege hinders the willingness of Venezuelan Jews to publicly criticize their government, though there is little love lost for the president who severed diplomatic ties with Israel while embracing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Lapscher talks about the community’s post-Chavez prospects with deliberate caution so as not to be construed as taking sides.

“Sometime in the near future we’ll have elections and we can change the government. Or the same government will stay but we will have the same issues,” he said.

“We will try to give the best Jewish life possible and combat anti-Semitism if it comes from the government, its supporters or from the outside.”

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CRASH from page 10 Former Palmahim Air Force Base commander Brig. Gen. Gabi Shachor, a veteran fighter helicopter pilot, told Walla news that the air force had “been using Cobra helicopters since the 1970s, but there are series 1-6.

The first two series are no longer in use in the air force. The helicopters that are in the fleet are from the mid-1980s. The maintenance of these helicopters is done at a very high level, and even WOMEN from page 10 mechitzah barrier that separates men and women, and a few more police officers stood with Women of the Wall, who numbered more than 100.

Most of them – including Knesset members Stav Shaffir of the Labor Party, and Michal Rozin and Tamar Zandberg of Meretz – wore prayer shawls. But no one was detained or arrested, despite the 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling upholding a ban on women wearing tefillin or tallit prayer shawls at the site, or reading from a Torah scroll.

The Knesset members used their immunity to enter the area DOUBTERS from page 16 So what are the communal experiences that will guide us to a better Jewish future? There is a triple response here: education, positive communal experiences and unifying causes of social justice.

DEBATE from page 16 Those less sanguine about Obama’s record point out that this level of aid is hardly unprecedented. In 2000, as the IsraeliPalestinian grand bargain negotiated through the Oslo Agreement began to unravel with the second Palestinian intifada, the Clinton Administration provided Israel with $3.12 billion in aid – adjusted for inflation, that’s just over $4 billion in today’s terms. The Obama skeptics also argue that the current level of American aid to Israel was set in 2007 by the previous George W. Bush administration, following a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package agreed to

by Washington and Jerusalem.

The bottom line is simply this: If the available data makes nonsense of the claim that Obama is an Israel-hating radical, it also shows that he’s nothing out of the ordinary. Yes, he’s had a frosty relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, but when has the U.S.-Israel relationship been smooth sailing? Ronald Reagan famously tussled with the Israelis over the provision of AWACs to Saudi Arabia, while

though some time has passed since they were introduced into the air force, the familiarity with this particular aircraft has increased significantly, as has their level of maintenance.”

In an interview with Army Radio on Tuesday, Col. Neri Yarkoni (res.), a fighter pilot and aircraft accident investigator, said, “This is not just a helicopter that crashed. These are two families that have been crushed.”

“Every pilot in the air force lives with the full knowledge that some-

thing like this can happen to him or his friends at any given minute,” Yarkoni said. “It is not something that should come as a surprise—it is extremely dangerous to be an air force pilot, even during exercises. I can guarantee that the day after the mourning period ends, the squadron will resume full activity.”

Yarkoni said the cause of the crash would soon be found.

“As an investigator of aircraft accidents, I can say that since the helicopter was found in large pieces, and it did not burn as it went down,

finding the reason for the crash will be relatively easy,” he said.

He also said the air force only grounded the entire fleet when there was a suspicion of a technical malfunction.

“There are accidents where it is clear from the get-go that they weren’t caused by a technical malfunction. When there are doubts, there is room to ground the fleet until the suspicion is dispelled,” he said.

“Another accident due to the same malfunction would be tragic.”

with their prayer shawls, while other women had men bring the shawls in for them.

The biggest disturbances the women had to deal with were a few rounds of haredim chanting and singing “They will devise a plan and it will be foiled” – taken from a prayer cursing enemies of the Jews. Later in the service, a woman stood in front of the group and yelled “For shame!” several times.

Other than that, the Women of the Wall prayed their service complete with self-assured singing.

“For 24 years, the Women of the Wall have been praying at a site sacred to the Jewish people and for years they have been stopped just because they seek to

pray in their own way,” Shaffir wrote on her Facebook page.

“This morning, following hate banners in the haredi press, I joined them. At first we were prevented from entering the square on the grounds we were disturbing the order but there is nothing that 100 women armed with a shawl can’t do.”

The rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, condemned Tuesday’s prayer service. In a statement issued to the media, he said the women brought “brothers against brothers in unnecessary confrontation” and noted that the wall next to Robinson’s Arch has been designated as the area for women’s prayer services.

“The Western Wall is the only place shared by all the people of Israel – and it is not the place to decide or express a world view,” Rabinowitz said. “I urge anyone for whom the Wall is dear to do whatever he can to keep disputes outside the plaza, and leave the people of Israel one place where there are no demonstrations, clashes and hatred.”

A spokeswoman for Women of the Wall, Shira Pruce, told JTA that she does not expect the group’s success on Tuesday to establish a precedent at the Western Wall. She surmised that the police didn’t want to arrest the Knesset members or cause a stir just before President Obama’s visit to Jerusalem next week.

Jews are now secure enough, especially in America, to focus their activities on the betterment of all humanity, not just the Jewish people. Coupled with that is the need for even doubting Jews to educate themselves about their heritage and traditions. Those practices need not be limited by the

most religious interpretations.

Acknowledging a Judaism that embraces doubt, and that such a practice is backed by hundreds of years of Jewish thinking, is one way in which we, like our forefather Abraham, can expand our tent.

It is time to be realistic about the future of the religious and cultural

heritages of Judaism.

In abandoning the doubters and their tough questions, we are abandoning the hope that the legacy of our meaningful texts, beautiful rituals and unique view of the world will live on – not because we didn’t embrace religion, but because we didn’t embrace doubt.

George H.W. Bush expressed his displeasure with Israeli policy toward the Palestinians by threatening to cut off loan guarantees to the government of the late Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir.

Why, then, does anxiety persist in pro-Israel circles about Obama?

Because, I would argue, his administration’s foreign policy can be encapsulated in a single word: equivocation. And it’s a problem that extends far beyond bilateral relations with Israel.

Take Syria. As Bashar alAssad’s butchery continues without mercy, we long ago lost an opportunity to take charge of regime change by striking a deal with Syrian rebels, thus leaving the field open to Al Qaeda affiliates and other Islamist groups.

(Contrast Obama’s dithering over Syria with the decisive French military intervention against Islamist terrorists in Mali.) Now there is a very real prospect that Assad’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of such groups, with potentially dire consequences for the security situation on Israel’s northern border.

Or take Egypt. When it comes to the Arab world’s historically

dominant country, Obama and his foreign policy team have actively stoked the fiction that the new Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo can somehow be moderated.

As Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy asserted at one of the most valuable breakout sessions of the AIPAC conference, what western democracy understands as moderation is light years away from the Islamist interpretation. Trager pointed out that the German architect Albert Speer might have been described as a moderate within the Hitler regime, but he was still a Nazi. With all extreme ideologies, there are certain core beliefs that are non-negotiable: for the Brotherhood, eternal rejection of Israel’s right to exist is just such a belief.

Further afield, there is a clear lack of U.S. leadership everywhere from the Korean Peninsula, where North Korea’s communist regime is engaging in one of its periodic bouts of hysteria against the South, to Latin America, where a U.S. government delegation dutifully trooped to the funeral of Venezuela’s tyrant, Hugo Chavez, alongside President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Such displays fuel the fear that Obama doesn’t do enough to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, and that he takes our friends for granted while exaggerating the degree of goodwill on the part of our enemies.

Put another way, this administration does very little to promote constitutional liberal democracy – a system which, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in the 18th century, is the best guarantor of “perpetual peace” – on a global scale. Its conduct of international relations is akin to the “talking cure” favored by relationship therapists: engage in dialogue, and everything will be all right.

That’s why I have no argument with those who say Obama is committed to Israel’s defense. My reservations stem from his overcautious response to the myriad threats that face not just Israel, but other key allies of the United States as well. And with the main impact of sequestration hitting the defense budget, there is good reason to worry that the administration has made its peace with the decline of American power at precisely the time it’s needed most.

Please join the Gentlemen of the University of Cincinnati’s AEPi Fraternity as we honor the women in our lives at the

THINK AEPiNK: Survive and Thrive Dinner Wednesday, April 17th · 6pm · Mayerson JCC

Benefiting Sharsheret, supporting Jewish women with breast cancer Keynote Speaker Sarah Ganson will pay tribute to her mother and beloved Jewish community member, Ellen Ganson. $18/student · $36/person with advance RSVP · $50 at the door Bricks for Breast Cancer silent auction.

Cash bar. Dietary Restrictions observed.

Table Sponsors Debbie & Mark Balk Anita & Murray Dock Michael Ganson Laura & Tom Glassman Michelle & Chase Kohn Pam & Sonny Saeks Trudy Balk & David Slifkin

Special Thanks Netanel (Ted) Deutsch Anita Dock Betsy Shonebarger Photography

Host/Hostess Michelle & Howard Pinsky Susan Bernstein & Howard Ain Beena & David Pinales The Beasley Family Galite & Ryan Silverman Cheryl & David Bernstein Carol Ann & Michael Schwartz Lisa & Jonathan Bernstein Sharon Stern Marie & Philip Bortz Debbie & Michael Steinbuch Jan & Ross Evans Tenenholtz Family Bonnie & Michael Fishel Tieger Family Carrie & Ken Goldhoff Michele & Morry Wiener Karen & Ruth Levy Natalie & Scott Wolf Susan Brenner & Steven Mombach Diane & Howard Yasgur Beth & Scott Kotzin Judy & Gary Zakem

Lead sponsor: The Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation

More info: michael.levy0813@gmail.com

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P A S S O V E R

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PASSOVER • B3

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Happy Passover! from

How to get through a Passover seder BEECO MONUMENTS

By Leo Margul JointMedia News Service

Passover means seders. They are important Jewish traditions, but also social and hunger-filled minefields. These tips will help you navigate the time between when you show up and avoid questions about your career/relationship to when you shout “Next year in Jerusalem!” and run out with all the flourless desserts.

Staying full during the long wait for the Passover meal Why did I starve myself in anticipation of dinner tonight?

Can’t I just nibble on some brisket while we get through this seder?

You could if you were at my house, but some people aren’t as cool. Here is how to stay satiated during the seder’s long, foodless period: • Dipping the bitter herbs: We dip the bitter herbs into some saltwater, but who says the dipping has to be over after that? Two words: side, guacamole. Between the salt water dip and your mouth, dip those leafy greens into a convenient bowl of guacamole you brought from home, and smile knowing you’re keeping hunger at bay and representing other cultures at the table.

• The Hillel sandwich: A combination of horseradish and charoset that is so close to actual food it

makes you weep for something more substantial. Two words: pocket, turkey. Keep a slice of turkey in your pocket, throw it on the Hillel sandwich and BAM! You’ve got a real meal, complete with delicious protein. Honeyglazed or oven-baked turkey, your call. Feel free to offer others your pocket turkey slices, but be prepared for their bewildered looks, which means they’re jealous.

By the time the actual seder rolls around, everyone else will be struggling from hunger, but you’ll be ready for your second course.

You can go put your pocket turkey in the fridge now, you champion.

Finding the afikomen As someone in my 20s, I am still occasionally the youngest person at the seder, which means I have to find the afikomen. The sadists hosting usually decide that because I’m older they should hide it somewhere much harder to find, like the tool-shed in their garage or folded up in a tiny locket around their neck. To get them back, while you’re looking for the afikomen, feel free to re-arrange some of the stuff in their house too. Then when you come back, say “found the afikomen, good luck finding your checkbook.”

Hopefully this will get you off the hook for next year and convince people to start having babies, then they can go look for the afikomen.

Reading from the Haggadah Usually at a seder, participants will take turns reading from the Haggadah. Your relatives’ monotones, however, don’t help you pay attention. Between Aunt Leah and Uncle Moishe it sounds like Ben Stein and Kristen Stewart got together to help put some children to sleep.

This leads to you zoning out while fantasizing about Bagel Bites and losing your place in the Haggadah. How do you pretend you're focused when called on to read? Simple: just create a few sentences using any combination of these popular Passover words: Egyptians, bondage, Pharaoh, matzo, unleavened, bitter, ancestors, etc. For example: • Our ancestors made matzah to escape from Pharaoh and the house of bondage.

• We eat unleavened bread today just as our ancestors did.

• Pharaoh was into bondage, but other Egyptians were not, and this made him bitter.

Oh what’s that? Suddenly everyone stopped drawing cool shapes with the 10 plagues pinky wine on their plates and started paying attention.

Following these instructions will certainly make you the most popular person at your gathering.

Then you can host your own seder next year, where everyone gets a variety of side dishes and pocket meats.

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From L.A., following the Egyptian signs to the Red Sea

By Edmon J. Rodman Jewish Telegraphic Agency

HAPPY PASSOVER from

THE HAMILTON COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY www.HamiltonCountyRepublicanParty.org Paid for by the Hamilton County Republican Party, Alex M. Triantafilou, Chairman, 700 Walnut St, Ste 309, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Best wishes for a happy Passover Dr. Michael A. Safdi, President Barbara Glueck, Director www.AJC.org

H AP P Y PAS S OVE R

LOS ANGELES – If the Passover haggadah seems like hieroglyphics to you, it could be a good thing.

Though the Israelites left Egypt presumably to escape the ankhs and eyes of Horus of the ancient written language, recently I discovered that hieroglyphics – a system of pictorial characters – had a way of writing me into the haggadah.

Considering that on Passover we are commanded to re-enact an event of which we have no memory, perhaps adding some details from the Egyptian point of view might deepen our understanding, or at the very least acclimate us to the theme of leaving Egypt.

Besides, since the current Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi had been seen recently in a video telling Egyptians to teach their children hatred for Jews, I was looking for a way to ameliorate my own responsive charged feelings and not bring them to the seder table.

Carol Meyers, a professor of religion at Duke University in an interview on the PBS show “NOVA,” related, “There are other ways of understanding how people have recorded events of their past. There’s something called mnemohistory, or memory history,” she said. “It’s a kind of collective cultural memory.”

I wondered, would looking into the holiday with an Egyptian eye help me to recover some of that cultural memory and see past the present?

After sitting through seders for so many years, where a trip through the Exodus often becomes an endurance race to the matzah ball soup, I knew that my cultural memory definitely could use some augmentation and elaboration.

To freshen my “mnemohistory” – this being Los Angeles, where movie magic memories are made – I made tracks for the historic Egyptian Theater in the heart of the Hollywood Boulevard tourist district.

The theater, an ornate Egyptian Revival movie palace that had a large stage to accommodate the elaborate prologues before the films, recently was refurbished.

Developed by Charles Toberman along with the Jewish impresario Sid Grauman of Grauman’s Chinese Theater fame, the theater had opened in 1922. As luck would have it, a few weeks later, King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt, resulting in an Egyptian craze that swept the nation.

Further connecting the theater to the Exodus, I found that “The

Courtesy of Brenda Rodman

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics painted on a Hollywood theater wall inspire a new reading of the Passover haggadah.

Ten Commandments” debuted there in 1923. According to the theater’s website, the prologue for the Cecil B. DeMille silent epic featured more than 100 costumed performers on stage, including “players seen in their identical roles in the flesh and blood.”

Now doesn’t that beat Uncle Earl droning through the Four Sons?

I wondered, would looking into the holiday with an Egyptian eye help me to recover some of that cultural memory and see past the present?

Still thinking about those costumes, I left in haste for the theater.

Upon arriving at its columned courtyard, I sat on a bench for a pre-holiday lunch of matzah and hard-boiled egg. Looking out at the surrounding cement walls that were cast to resemble stone blocks, I read a passage from a haggadah that I had brought along: “They put taskmasters over them to oppress them in their suffering; and they built the store-cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Ramses.”

And movie theaters as well?

As I poured myself a little juice, I tried to decipher the hieroglyphics – scarabs, ankhs, jackals, birds and snakes – that were painted on a nearby wall.

For me, Egyptian imagery conjures up a creepy feeling of deja vu. Was it a cultural memory from the generations spent in Egypt?

More likely just the result of too many haggadahs illustrated with pyramids, crooks and flails.

Even if the Exodus story has no basis in historical evidence, it is such a keystone story, so imbedded in Jewish outlook and religious practice, that when you see the signs of Egypt, even in kitschy indecipherable fashion, they speak to you.

On the hieroglyphics wall there were no cute wind-up frogs or Ten Plagues puppets like the kids have at the seder. But looking up at them, I wondered whether after the hail, lice, boils and cattle death if some Egyptians might have wanted to inscribe “Hebrews go now” on a wall.

Below the hieroglyphics I noticed a couple of cartouches.

Originally worn by the pharaohs, the oval-shaped inscriptions could be worn as an amulet or be placed on a tomb.

Thinking about the 10th plague – the death of the Egyptian firstborn – I imagined the resulting stacks of amulets. It put new meaning in the seder custom of taking a drop of wine from our cups, demonstrating that we are not rejoicing over our enemy’s loss.

Curious how my own name would look on a cartouche – as apparently are others – I used my smartphone to go a hieroglyphics website that provides the Egyptian symbols to spell your name. Mine was represented by two reeds, a hand, an owl, a hawk and water – images that made me feel like I was connected to a body of water; making me think of the shore of the Red Sea. To get to Passover, it was time to cross.

PASSOVER • B5

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

In experiencing real freedom, the importance of boundaries

By Dasee Berkowitz Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK – We have a love-hate relationship with boundaries.

We hate being confined or told what to do. Many adults don’t like having a boss, and many schoolchildren get annoyed when the answer is “no.” Boundaries limit our individuality, intrude upon what we want to do and sometimes feel like an arbitrary obstacle to getting what we want.

For children, limits of time (bedtime), sources of enjoyment (how much ice cream for dessert) or behavior (being scolded for shooting a toy bow and arrow around the living room) can seem like arbitrary rules that stymie their ability to fully enjoy the activity at hand in favor of some far-off goal that only their parent understands.

As a grown-up, when I see a sign that says “Keep off the grass,” I want nothing more than to frolic in my bucolic surroundings.

But we also love boundaries because we know that without them, life would be chaotic.

As a parent, we know setting firm boundaries helps us raise our children and run our households.

As a global citizen, we know that boundaries help us create civilized societies. And as Jews we know that boundaries help define who we are and what our purpose is.

No holiday helps us understand this more than Passover.

The form of the holiday is all about boundaries. The flow of the seder – not to mention the very word itself, which means order – requires us to take each step at a time, in a certain sequence. The rabbis teach that one does not fulfill one’s obligation of the seder until we have completed speaking about the pascal offering (pesach), matzah and the bitter herbs (maror).

The themes of Passover also require a degree of prescriptive recitation. On seder night we travel from slavery to freedom, from being idol worshipers to worshiping God, and in the words of the haggadah, from degradation (“genut”) to praise (“shevach”).

We understand these central themes of the holiday by the rituals on seder night. We have particular symbols on the seder plate.

We ask four questions, hinting to us that our ability to ask questions itself is an act that reflects our status as free people. We drink four cups of wine, which relate to four languages of redemption from the Torah itself, when God says, “I will take you out from under the burdens of Egypt”; “I will save you from their bondage”; “I will

redeem you”; and “I will take you to me as a people.”

Recited in this sequence, we are encouraged to reflect how liberation from Egypt is a process from physical subjugation to forging a new relationship with God.

Freedom from slavery is one kind of freedom that we celebrate on Passover, but that is only half of the story.

Our story of liberation is a carefully scripted narrative. And while creativity is not only allowed on seder night but encouraged (in fact the haggadah itself exhorts, “anyone who increases the telling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt is praiseworthy”), the prescribed ritual matters.

It’s counterintuitive. If we are celebrating freedom, why can’t we be free to choose how we want to celebrate a holiday of freedom? A Jewish Woodstock? An intellectual salon contrasting the haggadah with other literary works of freedom? Freedom drum circles with a “L’chayim” to Elijah at the end?

Freedom from slavery is one kind of freedom that we celebrate on Passover, but that is only half of the story. We were liberated from Egypt not to wander as free spirits in the wilderness but for a purpose – to serve God. The words are interesting here – we escape from “avodah kasha” (difficult labor), which the Egyptians forced upon us, to “avodat Hashem” (worship of God) and a system of life that God reveals to Moses and the children of Israel at Mount Sinai 50 days later. The fulfillment of Jewish freedom is a life of commitment, direction and purpose.

We can understand what a purpose-driven freedom means from the Pirkei Avot (the Teachings of our Fathers) interpretation of the verse from Exodus, “the word of God was harut (engraved) on the stone tablets (that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai)” (Exodus 32:16). In Pirkei Avot 6:2, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi writes, “Don’t read carved (harut)] but rather freedom (heirut), for there is no free person other than one who is occupied with Torah.”

Here there is a word play between “engraved,” which connotes rigidity, and “free.” If we neglect a relationship with the Divine, which is established here through the study of Torah, and more broadly with our Jewish tradition and the ethical system that has been passed down to us through the generations, then we lack freedom.

One of the lessons of Passover is that only within boundaries and structure can we experience true freedom. When we create appropriate physical boundaries for our children, they are able to play and express themselves freely. When we embrace the boundaries of Jewish commitment through holiday and Shabbat celebration and learning, we open up for ourselves the contours of a meaningful life.

We fill our lives with the grand narratives (of pursuing justice and working to free slaves) and lofty ideals (like the importance of Shabbat and turning off our egodriven selves for a day to become attuned to our souls).

And when we see that our duty as global citizens requires us to put others’ needs before our own desires, we create caring societies.

This Passover, celebrate the commitments you have made – to your family, your Jewish community and the world, and feel truly free.

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By Ben Sales Jewish Telegraphic Agency The families surround long tables covered by white tablecloths.

Festive decorations line the walls, and the kitchen is free of chametz, the leavened foods forbidden on Passover. Seder plates sit in front of hungry participants.

But instead of someone reading the Haggadah or reciting the kiddush over wine, the crowd sings a modern Israeli kids’ song about Passover: “Great joy! Great joy!

Spring has arrived, Pesach is here!”

So begins the holiday at Ramat Yochanan, an 80-year-old secular kibbutz near Haifa.

Many secular Israelis attend traditional seders on Passover; as with American Jews, the seder is one of Israel’s most widely performed religious rituals. Several of Israel’s oldest kibbutzim depart from tradition, however, and conduct secular seders according to their own sensibilities rather than the dictates of the traditional Haggadah.

At many secular kibbutzim, the emphasis is on the themes that motivated their founders to settle the land nearly a century ago: freedom, nature and the Jews’ return to the land of Israel.

Ramat Yochanan’s seder does not “tell midrashim, how many plagues happened at the sea, this and that,” said Miri Feinstein, who

The kibbutz Haggadah, which it has used for decades, has four sections: spring, from freedom to slavery, peace and the land of Israel. The division is a nod to the sets of four (cups of wine, sons, etc.) that pepper the original Haggadah. organizes the meal. “Our conversation about leaving Egypt and guarding the freedom of the other is more important.”

Its Haggadah features illustrations of landscapes and Jewish history drawn by a kibbutz member from the 1940s and includes biblical verses not found in the traditional text – from the book of Exodus as well as from “Song of Songs,” which traditionally is read on Passover.

At Kibbutz Ein Shemer, near the Mediterranean coast, the seder is marked by children’s plays, Israeli folk sing-alongs and musical performances. Hundreds of kibbutz members and their guests attend.

The kibbutz Haggadah, which it has used for decades, has four sections: spring, from freedom to slavery, peace and the land of Israel.

The division is a nod to the sets of four (cups of wine, sons, etc.) that pepper the original Haggadah.

“We see it as the founding holiday of our nation, which we celebrate according to our rules,” said Anna Sasson, who has been running the Ein Shemer seder for 15 years. “We give it its own character from our secular world, and we have a lot of love for tradition, homeland, agriculture, spring and freedom.”

As at other kibbutzim, Ein Shemer pays homage to the seder’s religious roots in its Haggadah by quoting heavily from the Bible, using verses describing springtime or the Exodus.

Shlomo Deshen, author of “Secular Israelis on Pesach Night,” says kibbutzim long have led the way in making Passover a modern Israeli holiday of “Zionism, socialism, humanism.”

“The holiday inspired creative ceremonies whose greatest expression was through the new Haggadahs of the kibbutz movement,” Deshen wrote.

Today, even many religious Israelis have incorporated nontraditional elements such as children’s plays and modern songs into their own seders. But the kibbutzim take things further.

At Ramat Yochanan, one of the

community’s Passover highlights is a gathering on the holiday’s first day in a wheat field for a reenactment of a ceremony described in the Talmud: the wheat harvest celebration.

“Is the sun coming?” asks a man standing on a stage. “Is it time for the harvest?”

“Yes!” the members answer.

The kibbutz’s boys then rush into the field to grab sheaves of wheat and throw them into baskets held by the community’s girls. The girls swing the baskets up and down and side to side while a leader reads passages from the Bible about the wheat harvest and settling the land.

A choir and band then perform on stage while kibbutz members sing and dance to Israeli folk songs.

Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek, in northern Israel, stages a smaller harvest ceremony.

“Our holiday is based on our being an agricultural town and the spring being an awakening,” says Raya Shlomi, who runs the kibbutz’s seder. “We also have the story of the Exodus from Egypt, but unlike a traditional seder, where God performs all the miracles, Moses plays the central part.”

As the kibbutz movement has changed in recent decades, becoming less communal, the seders at Ramat Yochanan have shrunk.

Decades ago, more than 1,000 people used to turn out for the holiday celebration; today the number is down to 400, according to Feinstein. Most kibbutz members now choose to celebrate at home with their families, she says.

“People need to feel like the seder is theirs and that they’re not sacrificing themselves,” she said.

“The collective used to be in the center. Now the individual is in the center, and he needs to decide what’s appropriate for him.”

Feinstein isn’t ready to give up on the communal meal.

“What I see in the kibbutz seder is ‘brothers sitting together,’ ” she said, quoting a famous biblical verse. “Even when we were poor, we always invested in Passover. People want to safeguard the community.”

PASSOVER • B7

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Matzoh Break

By Lisë Stern JointMedia News Service Passover escapes make for a great family vacation.

Passover is one of the most social Jewish holidays, with multiple generations getting together to celebrate. It can also be one of the most labor-intensive, for those Jews who kasher their kitchens for Passover, changing dishes, lining counters with foil, stocking up on special foods, and preparing the many festive meals for friends and relatives.

Due to this, companies offering kosher for Passover getaways, in which everything is taken care of for the eight-day festival, have become increasingly popular. Options range from stays in Arizona, Florida, California, the Catskills and Cape Cod, to Aruba, Mexico, France, Italy, Israel and more.

A relaxed time with family is the goal for Camp Ramah Darom in Clayton, Georgia, which started offering a Passover retreat for about 300 people in 2002.

Abby Polin of Skokie, Ill., is a single parent who works two jobs, as a vice president of mortgage lending and cofounder of a website that brings together small service providers and users. The ease of a Passover vacation is immensely appealing. “We’ve been going away for Pesach for about 13 years. We’ve gone to the hotels in Florida, gone to Israel a few times. My family is spread out all over, and it’s such a nice time to get together,” she says.

“You don’t really have to prep the house.”

That was the draw for Jillian Segal of Needham, Mass. Now the mother three, she started going away for Passover when she was in college. “It always revolved around Pesach being a tremendous amount of work, ‘let’s go away,’” she says.

“That way my mother could sit and join us and not be in the kitchen the whole time.” Segal’s grandparents lived in Florida then, so she, her parents and siblings would go to a Passover escape in the Sunshine state.

Florida is where the Passover vacations started. According to Robert Frucher, managing director of Leisure Time Tours, his father Daniel

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Passover getaways are becoming an increasingly popular way to enjoy the holiday.

Frucher was the first to kasherize a nonkosher hotel for Passover, in 1972. Before that, the only options were kosher hotels in Miami and the Catskills. “These weren’t great hotels,” Frucher says. “Passover was their biggest piece of business all year. My father saw the need, specifically in Miami Beach. The demand was so big even for the lousy kosher hotels, they were actually housing people across the street and feeding them in the lobby, putting up tables everywhere.”

Leisure Time’s first venture was at an upscale property in Miami Beach, with spaces for about 400 people, and they sold out in six weeks. Today the company runs Passover getaways in five hotels, with programs serving 450 to 1,300 people.

In the four decades since that first Florida luxury offering, the Passover getaway market has exploded. Raphi Bloom, London-based owner and sales director of the Jewish travel website TotallyJewishTravel, notes that this year, “there are 135 disparate Pesach hotels around the world.” He’s been running the site for a dozen years. The Passover business, he says, “has grown and grown and grown. It’s seen hard times, but this year it seems to have really weathered the economic downturn.

You’re seeing far more new hotels coming in terms of Pesach.”

A typical Passover getaway is all-inclusive, for nine nights. They are not cheap; while some start at about $1600 per adult, many are $3500 and up, depending on the accommodations. As Frucher says, “What’s happened with Passover programs, it’s the cruise ship concept on land.” They include three meals a day, plus a “tea room” – where food is always available. There are daily services (usually Orthodox), plus lectures, study sessions, day camps for kids, teen programs and excursions.

“We went to the Hoover Dam, and to the Strip,” says Yussie Awendstern, a financial advisor from Valley Stream, N.Y. One of his daughters lives in California, and they meet in Lake Las Vegas for a program run by World Wide Kosher

Tours. “What I really like is spending time with my daughter and seven grandchildren.”

A relaxed time with family is the goal for Camp Ramah Darom in Clayton, Georgia, which started offering a Passover retreat for about 300 people in 2002. The camp itself was built in 1997. CEO Fred Levick says the facility was “built to accommodate groups year-round. One of the first things we focused on was Passover. We’re primarily in the camping business, and have the experience of creating communal events, which are fun and educational. This seemed like a great opportunity for families.”

This April, Polin, her children, and parents are traveling from Chicago to Camp Ramah Darom to celebrate Passover with her brother from Israel and sister from Massachusetts. “It’s a nice time that the family could all be together, and great for all the grandkids to spend with their cousins,” she says. “It’s not just about the food and going away, it’s being able to do activities in a kosher for Passover setting. It’s not just a getaway, but incorporates the whole Jewish holiday.”

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Passover—Israel style

By Judy Lash Balint JointMedia News Service JERUSALEM – Not every Israeli observes Passover, but every Israeli knows Passover is coming.

Preparations for the seven-day holiday are impossible to ignore and encroach on almost every facet of life in the weeks leading up to Seder night.

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reveals that 88 percent of Israelis will take part in a Seder and 47 percent will eat only kosher-forPassover items during the holiday.

As for Israel’s army, some 200 IDF chaplains, including reservists, are pressed into service to commence the massive task of koshering the hundreds of kitchens, mess halls and eating corners used by soldiers at bases all over the country. According to Rabbi Zev Roness, a captain in the Armored Training School, “It’s a whole operation… The army prepares more than a month before Passover to ensure that all of the army kitchens meet the highest kosherfor-Passover standards.”

Street scenes in Israel change every day before Passover according to what’s halakhically necessary: Several days before the seder, young men wielding blow torches preside over huge vats of boiling water stationed every few blocks on the street and in the courtyard of every mikveh.

The lines to dunk metal utensils start to grow every day, and at the last minute before the seder, blow torches are at the ready to cleanse every last gram of chametz from oven racks and stove tops lugged through the streets by kids or overwrought mothers.

Prominent newspaper ads from Israel’s Energy Ministry feature dire warnings about the dangers inherent in cleaning gas burners. The text of the ads advises on the minutiae of taking apart the metal covers to get at that last bit of chametz.

No alarm clock is needed in the pre-Passover period–clanging garbage trucks do the trick as they roll through the neighborhood every morning during the two weeks before Passover to accommodate all the refuse from the furious cleaning going on.

Two days before the Seder, there’s the annual pickup of oversized items and appliances. Dozens

Courtesy of Judy Lash Balint

Burning chametz on a Jerusalem street on the eve of Passover.

Courtesy of IDF Spokesperson's Office

Preparing the IDF for Passover.

of antiquated computer monitors and old toaster ovens stand forlornly next to the garbage bins.

The day before Passover, families seek out empty lots to burn the remainder of their chametz gleaned from the previous night’s meticulous search. The city is dotted with sputtering fires despite ads posted by the Jerusalem municipality announcing the location of official chametz burning bins and banning fires in any other areas.

Most flower shops stay open all night for the two days before Passover, working feverishly to complete the orders that will grace the nation’s Seder tables.

Observant Jews mark the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot by carrying out some of the laws of mourning–one of these is the prohibition against cutting

hair. As a result, barber and beauty shops are jammed with customers in the pre-Passover days.

Mailboxes overflow with appeals from a myriad of organizations helping the poor. Newspapers are replete with articles about altruistic Israelis who volunteer by the hundreds in the weeks before the holiday to collect, package and distribute Passover supplies to the needy.

In Jerusalem alone, more than 40 restaurants close a few days before Passover. They clean out their kitchens, revamp their menus and open up with rabbinic supervision for the holiday to serve kosherfor-Passover meals to tourists as well as the hordes that are sick of cooking after the seder.

PASSOVER on page 14

PASSOVER • B9

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Taking Passover back to its roots

By Judy Lash Balint JointMedia News Service JERUSALEM – When most Israeli Jews sit down for the Passover seder on the night of March 25, the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nissan, they’ll wait for the kids to recite Mah Nishtana, the four questions; pucker up to inhale the bitter herbs; relish the sweet Charoset; dip herbs in salt water; sing rousing renditions of Dayenu and Chad Gadya; and knock back four cups of wine.

But none of these rituals are part of the Passover observance of Israel’s Karaite and Samaritan believers, who observe the biblically mandated holiday in quite a different way.

Rabbi Ovadya Murad, 62, leader of the Karaite community in Jerusalem’s Old City, explains that the Karaite belief in a strictly literal interpretation of the Torah without any adherence to the Oral Law embodied in rabbinic-Talmudic tradition makes observing Passover quite simple.

“We buy a sheep; bake matzot; make wine from soaking raisins and prepare the maror – what you call bitter herbs – from pickled lemons,” he tells recent visitors to the Karaite Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Jerusalem.

Pulling out the Karaite Haggadah, Murad points out that the text includes only verses from the Torah describing the Exodus from Egypt and the ten plagues, with the addition of some Psalms and portions of Hallel. “The whole thing doesn’t take more than 90 minutes,” he says with a smile.

“Karaites eat only fresh foods during the festival of unleavened bread – fruits, vegetable, fish and poultry – nothing out of a box,” he adds. (Karaites generally do not refer to “Passover” since the Torah uses that word only to describe the sacrifice on the night before, never to refer to the 7-day festival of unleavened bread). Anything that has fermentation potential – such as wine, cheese and yogurt – is forbidden to Karaites during Passover.

Karaites in Israel today number in the tens of thousands, with the largest presence in Ashdod and Ramle. Despite their outright rejection of rabbinic Judaism, Karaites are recognized as Jews, according to Professor Michael Corinaldi, a legal scholar and expert on Israel’s minority Jewish communities at Netanya College.

Most historians believe that Karaites emerged in the 9th century as a sect of followers of Anan Ben David in Baghdad, who prescribed following the Bible to the exclusion of rabbinic tradition and laws. Over the centuries Karaites spread throughout eastern Europe and into Lithuania, Crimea and Egypt. A tiny Karaite presence in Jerusalem has existed since medieval times, but most of the Karaites in Israel today arrived from Egypt with the wave of

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The Samaritans’ Passover pilgrimage on Mount Gerizim in 2006.

Egyptian Jews fleeing the unrest surrounding the Arab-Israel wars of the 20th century.

Samaritans in Israel today are more visible than Karaites, despite their smaller numbers, largely due to the curiosity of Israelis. The annual Samaritan Passover sacrifice that takes place on Mount Gerizim overlooking Nablus in Samaria has turned into a major spectacle, attracting thousands of onlookers to the scenic hilltop.

This year, the Samaritans, who number just 756 souls, divided between the Kiryat Luza village on Mount Gerizim and Holon, will mark Passover on April 23. Prof.

Corinaldi says the calendar discrepancy is because Jews start calculating from the first year of creation, whereas the Samaritan calendar starts from the first year Joshua Bin-Nun entered Israel. As a result, the leap years are not parallel and Samaritan festivals sometimes take place a month later.

While both Karaites and Samaritans are full-fledged Israeli citizens according to Israel’s Law of Return, Samaritans are not considered Jews by Israeli rabbinic authorities. Samaritans, who claim to be original ancient Israelites with genealogy going back to the tribes of Ephraim and Menashe, hold that Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, is the spiritual center of Israel. Like the Karaites, Samaritans accept only the Five Books of Moses and the book of Joshua – for this tiny remnant, the history of Israel after Joshua is that of a renegade sectarian community.

According to British Rabbi Jeffrey M. Cohen, an authority on Passover customs around the world, “Only they (the Samaritans) remain the faithful ‘Israel.’”

Jews abandoned the ritual of the Paschal lamb sacrifice when the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E. The shank bone on the seder plate is the closest most Israelis will get to a sacrifice.

Samaritans, who never identified with Jerusalem and who believe Mount Gerizim to have been where the binding of Isaac took place, never gave up the sacrificial practice. This year the Samaritans will perform the Passover sacrifice as they have done on Mount Gerizim for thousands of

years. Following the biblical commandment in Exodus 12:5, each male head of household selects an unblemished lamb and the entire community gathers with the High Priest Aharon ben Ab-Chisda ben Yaacob at twilight on the 14th of Nissan to observe the sacrifice in a festive manner.

Samaritan community leader Benyamin Tsedaka, director of the Institute of Samaritan Studies in Holon, describes the ancient annual ritual.

“The High Priest opens with the sacrifice prayer and announces the ritual slaughter,” he says. “The sheep are brought to the altar and are slaughtered by experienced slaughterers. Members of each family check the kashrut of the slaughter for each other. Matzot with bitter herbs are distributed to all members of the community. The sheep are then cleaned both inside and out and they are bound, each sheep on a spit and koshered by being sprinkled with salt. About two and a half hours before midnight, the sheep on their spits are put into ovens, which have been well heated. The opening of the oven is completely sealed with an iron net to stabilize the skewers and with burlap, which is immediately covered with a damp mixture of earth and bushes. The fire is stifling and the immense heat that wafts from the deep ovens roasts the sheep.

In the middle of the night, at the time when the Angel of Destruction went out to slay the Egyptian firstborn, the sheep are removed from the ovens, taken off the skewers, transferred onto large platters, and accompanied by singing, which has not ceased since the start of the sacrifice, and the platters are brought home. There, the meat of the sacrifice will be eaten in haste with matzot and bitter herbs.

Any remains left over are brought to be burned before dawn.”

“Karaite and Samaritan Passover customs are differences not in principle, but in practice,” asserts Professor Corinaldi. In his view, they illustrate freedom of religion in Israel.

“The Orthodox would like to have unity and uniformity of practice, but that will only happen when the mashiach appears,” he concludes.

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Passover, peace and Palestine: An Arab-style seder in 1920s Long Island

By Rafael Medoff JointMedia News Service Passover at Irma Lindheim’s Long Island home in the 1920s was not your standard Jewish holiday experience.

There was plenty of matzo ball soup and brisket, to be sure. But the dining room was occupied by a makeshift tent, the Passover table was replaced by a pile of sheepskin rugs, and the Lindheim children were dressed in Arab garb. For Mrs. Lindheim, the national president of Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization, from 1926 to 1928, Passover was an opportunity to make a dramatic statement about what she perceived as the common heritage of Arabs and Jews and her hopes for peace in Palestine.

The path that led to Irma Lindheim’s unique Passover seders began during a trip to the Holy Land shortly after World War I. A visit to a Bedouin encampment near the Syrian border deeply impressed her. The sheik received her “so courteously,” the wives of his harem were so attractive, his children were so charming, the ample food was “so delicious in taste and aroma,” that Mrs. Lindheim had to wonder, as she put it, “Under what possible circumstances could such people and I possibly be enemies?”

In Mrs. Lindheim’s eyes, the Arabs of Palestine closely resembled the Jews of biblical times— so, surely, they should all be able to get along. She marveled at the fact that her host “pulled off my boots himself, and laved my feet with cool water, [just] as Abraham had done with the three strangers,” as recounted in Genesis 18:1-4.

“The customs of Abraham,

Wishing you a happy and healthy Passover!

Courtesy of Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America

Irma Lindheim

Isaac and Jacob were customs of the present-day Bedouin,” she wrote. “When Abraham sat before his tent in the heat of the day… he did no differently than a Bedouin sheikh we encountered, resting before his tent in the Plains of the Huleh.”

As her personal contribution to the cause of Arab-Jewish amity, Mrs. Lindheim decided to radically revise her own Passover seders.

Her children “would wear the robes of the desert Bedouin and would eat their meal in a tent… to commemorate not only the flight of their forebears from slavery to freedom, but also bonds with the Arab people who lived now exactly as their forefathers lived then.”

On their first such Passover, “young Norvin [her eldest son] stood, tall and darkly handsome in his Bedouin robes,” to recite the story of the exodus before a group that included Sir Wyndham Deeds, first secretary of the British government in Mandatory Palestine, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the foremost American Jewish leader of that era. Wise was a renowned orator, and “his beautiful, great voice boomed out” as the hosts and their guests all joined in reading sections of the Haggadah.

Lindheim’s youngest son, Stephen, who was named after Wise, recited the Four Questions.

“To the children, to ourselves, and to our many guests,” she later recalled, “the seder [was] at once an unforgettable experience in itself and, in its way, a family landmark.”

But Mrs. Lindheim was not content with symbolic gestures such as her unorthodox Passover seders. She and the Hadassah organization undertook a series of projects in Mandatory Palestine aimed at improving Arab-Jewish ties, including providing free health care to Arab communities, establishing the U.S. Jewish leadership’s only Committee for the Study of Arab-Jewish Relations,

Courtesy of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (pictured), the foremost American Jewish leader of his time, was part of Irma Lindheim’s first Arab-style Passover seder.

and building the first Jewish-Arab playground in Jerusalem.

Generously funded by Mrs. Lindheim’s aunt, Bertha Guggenheimer, the Zion Hill playground opened near the Zion Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City in 1926, complete with supervisors trained by the American Playground Association.

Sadly, it did not last long.

In the late summer of 1929, Arab residents of Hebron and Jerusalem carried out widespread anti-Jewish violence. Since the Zion Hill playground was situated in a predominantly Arab neighborhood, the supervisors, fearing for the children’s safety, quickly shut down the facility. Two months later, when they returned to the site to reopen it, they were horrified to find local Arab children painting slogans such as “Down with the Jews” and “Down with the Balfour Declaration” on the equipment and walls.

Although one of the goals of the playground had been to promote good relations with the local Arab residents, chief supervisor Rachel Schwarz found that “amongst the Arab neighbors are many who took an active part in recent riots and are very active at present in the [anti-Jewish] boycott.” Schwarz reported to Mrs. Lindheim and the other American sponsors of the project that Arab children were harassing the Jewish children with shouts of “We will slaughter the Jews” and “The Jews are dogs,” and there had been incidents in which “the Arab boys ran after the Jewish children, throwing stones at them.”

SEDER on page 15

PASSOVER • B11

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Long before the Maxwell House haggadah

By Donald Altschiller JointMedia News Service Scholars have identified mor e than 3,500 extant editions of the haggadah, and ther e is har dly a Jewish community in the world that has not produced its own.

For the past three years, President Obama and his family have hosted a Passover Seder in the White House for a select group of invited guests, both Jewish and non-Jewish. A Maxwell House haggadah – probably the most widely used Passover Seder text among American Jews – was placed at each table.

The haggadah (the Hebrew word means “telling”) has a venerable and remarkably varied history, which long precedes the often wine-splotched classic published by the coffee maker.

Scholars have identified more than 3,500 extant editions and there is hardly a Jewish community in the world that has not produced its own haggadah. Although the earliest manuscripts have been lost, the oldest, complete text was found in a prayer book compiled by the philosopher and rabbinic scholar Saadia Gaon during the 10th century.

The haggadah reportedly emerged as an independent volume during the 15th century.

Some scholars speculated about the origins of an edition that was published in Guadalajara, Spain in 1482, but the publication location has never been confirmed nor has it been definitively established as the first separately-published haggadah.

In 1486, the Soncinos, a noted Italian Jewish family of printers, published a siddur to which a haggadah was bound. Although it is not known whether such binding was common during this time, some historians consider this Soncino volume a separate and independent work.

The history of haggadahs and the Soncino edition is recounted in an erudite and elegant 1975 volume entitled Haggadah and History. Written by the late Harvard professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, this work traces the evolution of this classic Passover text, which reflects the variegated and tumultuous history of the Jewish people.

Most of this nearly 500-page work contains reprinted haggadah pages from around the world. The range of publishing locations and languages employed is remarkable: a Poona, India, text was published in the Indian language Marathi; the Istanbul, Turkey, edition is bilingual, written in Ladino and Hebrew; a Tel Aviv haggadah in Hebrew was produced in prestate Palestine. Also depicted is an unusual item: a parody of the hag-

Reprinted from "Haggadah and History" by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975

A page reprinted from a Cairo volume Agudat Perahim (1922) which also includes the Passover haggadah. This illustration depicts an Arabic translation of the festive song “Dayenu.”

gadah. Published in Odessa, Russia, in 1885, this text used the Four Questions to highlight the poor pay and treatment of east European elementary school teachers, comparing their plight to that of Israelite slaves in Egypt!

Yerushalmi notes that only 25 haggadahs were published during the 16th century, but the production increased to 234 in the 18th century and more than 1,200 during the 19th. Although this Passover text has been published for more than 600 years, the majority of individual editions were issued in the last century.

Early haggadahs featured handdrawn illustrations and in more recent times, pictures were inserted to stimulate the “curiosity of the children…[and served] as a lively medium of visual instruction, much like today’s picture books,” Yerushalmi writes.

The Sarajevo haggadah is the most famous such work, a beautifully illustrated text originating in Barcelona in the 14th century, smuggled out of Spain during the Inquisition, transported to Italy and eventually ending up in the former Yugoslavia. Unlike many Jews, the Sarajevo haggadah somehow survived the Nazi onslaught. The remarkable story of its survival has been evocatively told in the novel People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, and in a network television documentary.

The Birds’ Head Haggadah, the oldest surviving Ashkenazi illuminated manuscript, was produced in Germany during the 14th century. This strikingly beautiful volume derives its name from the birdlike human figures depicted in the margins. Scholars claim that this animal motif is related to the Second Commandment that prohibits the creation of graven images. In lieu of drawing a human figure, the volume depicts

distorted heads of birds, often wearing a headpiece and other garments.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is permanently displayed in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina while the Birds’ Head Haggadah is found in the Israel Museum. Unlike the everpresent and dependable Maxwell House haggadah found at many seders, these precious volumes are securely spared from matzoh crumbs, spilled wine and drippings of horseradish.

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Writers—not rabbis—bring text to life in the ‘New American Haggadah’

By Beth Kissileff JointMedia News Service Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer recently published a haggadah that demonstrates how a whole class of people without rabbinic training are empowered and committed to cr eating a new Jewish text for their own era.

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Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated, remembers that when he was growing up, his parents used a homemade haggadah for the Passover seder, put together from a variety of sources. The family joke was that this night was different from all other nights because copyright laws do not apply.

It seems this spirit of creativity was successfully passed down to the next generation. Foer is the editor of the New American Haggadah, published this spring

by Little, Brown and Company. In a phone interview with JointMedia News Service, Foer seemed unfazed by the boldness of giving his text the same name that Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan – founder of the Reconstructionist movement of American Judaism – took for his versions of the haggadah in both 1941 and 1978.

According to the 1978 introduction in Kaplan’s New American Haggadah, it was meant to “inspire in the new generation the same devotion to freedom that our ancestors gained from the ancient Haggadah.”

There were no rabbis involved in the making of the 2012 New American Haggadah. This is indicative of how the new American Jewish culture – perhaps inspired by Kaplan’s philosophy of “Judaism as a civilization” – is increasingly a product of fiction and non-fiction writers, historians and professors. A whole class of people without rabbinic training are empowered and committed to creating a new Jewish text for their own era.

Foer told JointMedia News Service that he originally envisioned an anthology format for the New American Haggadah, with contributions from 20 writers. But ultimately, Foer said the writers “came to love the book we were working on” and realized that the best way to engage readers was to present the material and “get out of the way,” rather than obstructing the text with too much overtly contemporary or political material.

Therefore, Foer – along with Jewish studies professor Nathaniel Deutsch of the University of California at Santa Cruz – chose 10 moments for a smaller group of four writers to comment on. This

Courtesy of David Shankbone

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer is behind a newly published haggadah, which incorporates the work of authors, not rabbis.

format hosts sections titled “House of Study” by Deutsch, “Nation” by Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg, “Library” by philosopher and fiction writer Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and “Playground” by children’s author Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler).

Each commentator has short essays of three or four paragraphs that are themed around an examination of a particular theme.

Goldberg asks questions like “How do we balance our faith’s demand to care especially for our fellow Jews, and care especially for the entire world, at the same time?”

Handler has an eclectic take on the seder, discussing such urgent matters as someone’s need to “check on the food” – which actually means “sneaking a few bites” – while adding that “it is the muddle and the mess around the order that represent the freedom that everyone deserves, and that far too many people have been denied.”

Deutsch writes movingly about the contrasts between the “shalem”(wholeness) that is contained in the name of Jerusalem with the necessity in the Hassidic tradition of being broken (“tsubrokhenhayt” in Yiddish) and the possibility that as Jews, we are trying to find “wholeness in brokenness.”

Newberger Goldstein writes with astounding power of the need for the “tutored imagination” to involve ourselves in the narrative of the Passover story as we collectively “sanctify storytelling.”

Overall, the haggadah’s format of highlighting different voices on a particular theme works effectively to convey both a variety of ideas and a modern outlook on the text.

The haggadah’s design is by Oded Ezer, a modern Israeli artist and historian of typography. Ezer has not only invented a number of popular Hebrew fonts, but also produces art such as Typosperma

and Typembra, which give new aspects to letters by merging them with other life forms.

Ezer describes his work as “a great journey to try to bring forms from the past into the future,” and he incorporates fonts from different eras of Jewish history in the haggadah. Mia Sara Bruch, a fellow at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, wrote the timeline at the top of the page.

The timeline is an interesting pedagogical device shedding light on the formation of the seder service, the languages Jews have spoken and where they have lived around the world, and what percentage of the world population Jews have constituted at any point in time.

Nathan Englander, who translated the haggadah service from Hebrew to English for the New American Haggadah, told JointMedia News Service that the task gave him a “new identity and ownership of the material.”

Englander ended up spending three years on a project that he had thought might take six weeks. He found a partner to study the text with in a chavruta (one-on-one study) and examined a variety of haggadah texts. The result is a translation that conveys the Passover story’s meaning to an English-speaking audience in mellifluous, thoughtful and fluid language.

“All who are expansive in their telling of the Exodus from Egypt are worthy of praise,” Englander reads from the haggadah.

Foer said that “the central trope of the Haggadah, ‘you yourself should feel as if liberated from Egypt,’” is a “radical” idea if taken seriously. The New American Haggadah – intended to bring Jews together around the notion of shared memory – should help any reader fulfill that obligation.

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The homepage of ElijahTracker, which allows users to follow Elijah on his journeys during the week of Passover.

Is Elijah, the annual Passover guest, also the ‘Jewish Santa Claus’?

By Sean Savage JointMedia News Service In millions of Jewish homes across the world each Passover, a special cup of wine is poured and the door is opened for Elijah the prophet.

But how did this tradition start? Who is the prophet Elijah and how can modern Jews relate to this Biblical figure?

“Passover is the season of redemption and the Prophet Elijah is seen as a redemptive figure in Judaism. The book of Malachi describes how Elijah will return and announce the coming of the Messiah and redeem his people,” Dr. Marc Shapiro, who holds the Weinberg Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton, told JNS. Indeed, Elijah’s role in the Bible is often to encourage the Jewish people to do what’s right, to steer away from false gods like the Phoenician Baal, and to obey Hashem. In later rabbinic literature such as the Aggadah and Babylonian Talmud, a more complete picture of Elijah emerges, including Elijah’s role as someone who fights injustice on behalf of God. For early rabbis, Elijah was also seen as someone who would visit communities and settle disputes of legal problems. This may be how Elijah became associated with the Passover seder.

“The real reason is because there is a dispute in the Talmud about how many glasses of wine we drink at the seder – four or five. So we leave the fifth cup on the table for Elijah. The thinking is when the Elijah and the Messiah come, he will solve this dispute for us,” Shapiro said.

But since Passover is a widely recognized Jewish holiday that is celebrated even by many less observant and secular Jews who normally do not have much attachment to Jewish tradition, they may not be aware of the important, redemptive role Elijah plays or the Talmudic dispute over the Passover seder.

“Most Jews probably don’t

know the story of Elijah in the Bible; all they probably know is that they pour a glass of wine and open their door for Elijah, that’s it,” Rabbi Laura Baum of Congregation Beth Adam in Loveland, Ohio – who is also the founding rabbi of OurJewishCommunity, an online progressive Jewish community – told JNS.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Prophet Elijah

Therefore, in order to connect the story of Elijah to many modern Jews, Jewish leaders such as Baum have come up with creative new ways of bringing the story of Elijah to life.

One of those new ways is to connect the mysterious and mythical figure of Elijah with another—Santa Claus.

“What I realized is that Elijah’s role during Passover is very similar to Santa Claus’s during Christmas,” Baum said.

“Elijah and Santa Claus have this theoretical journey around the world, visiting homes and having food and drinks left out for them.”

The story of Santa Claus is based on the legend of Saint Nicholas, a 4th-century Greek Christian Bishop living in modern-day Turkey who became

famous for his generous gifts to the poor. Like Elijah in the Bible, Saint Nicholas, and his later incarnation as the modern-day Santa Claus, is seen as a fighter of injustice.

“As a liberal Jew, Judaism is a lot of different things: community, connection to tradition, and an evolving framework of how we think about the world. But Judaism is also about having fun. So why not have fun with the story of Elijah and capitalize on his journey around the world?” Baum said.

Baum expanded on this point in an article for the Huffington Post last year that described Elijah’s role as a “Jewish Santa Claus.”

“Sometimes religion becomes so serious and sometimes ritual feels like it must be laden with meaning. That framework is valuable, sometimes. Yet, there’s also value in adding an intentional playfulness to religion,” she wrote.

As a result, Our Jewish Community launched the ElijahTracker website, which allows people from all over the world to follow Elijah on his journeys during the week of Passover.

“We have been doing it for two years now and people are really excited about it,” Baum told JNS. “One of the other cool things we did is we had people from Jewish communities around the world take photos for us,” she said. “We then placed a figure of Elijah there, to show him visiting these places. It is a great way to get kids involved in the holiday.”

On ElijahTracker, Elijah is seen visiting places from all over the world, from Hawaii to Uganda to, of course, Israel.

Baum said she plans to keep the ElijahTracker site going again this year during Passover. She hopes that people can take away a positive message about Elijah.

“The story of Elijah encourages us to have a positive impact on the world,” Baum said. “We want to empower people to have a positive impact and there are messages associated with Elijah like that.”

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By Deborah Fineblum Raub JointMedia News Service Hosting interfaith childr en at your seder? Her e are a few suggestions to ensur e that it goes down in their memory as a fun, engaging and educational event.

When you have youngsters from interfaith families at your seder table, it can’t help but up the Passover ante.

Maybe you are the kids’ auntie, or their grandparent, cousin, neighbor or friend. And maybe, just maybe you’re their parent.

Whatever your relationship, what you need to know is that this may be the first seder these children have ever attended. And, you are in the driver’s seat, having been given this precious opportunity to make sure it won’t be the last.

The entire purpose of the seder is to inspire the next generation with the drama of the defining moment when G-d set us free after 210 bitter years of Egyptian slavery—and to do it in a highly memorable way. That’s not to say you will necessarily need to don the costumes of Moses, Miriam and the Pharaoh (more on that later) and act out the Exodus. But it does mean that, for many of these kids, your seder will go down in their memory as the definition of what a seder is. So, you want it to have lasting impact. And that takes a little planning, so…

Plant the Seeds. Why not drop off (or if they live at a distance, pop into the mail) a copy of the Haggadah you’ll be using?

Note: if the kids don’t know Hebrew, it helps if the songs are transliterated. Encourage the parents to teach the Four Questions to their offspring. For a refresher on

PASSOVER from page 8 Since most of the country is on vacation for the entire week of Passover, all kinds of entertainment and trips are on offer. The annual Boombamela beach festival, kid’s activities at the Bloomfield Science Museum, concerts in Hebron, explorations at the City of David, solidarity excursions to the Shomron and music festivals at the Dead Sea are all popular. The popular Hebrew Bananagram game has even invented a special Passover version with points for words in the Haggadah.

The Passover theme of freedom and exodus in Israel even extends to criminals. Israel Radio announces that 700 prisoners will get a furlough to spend the holiday with family.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Israel’s fishmongers will sell 1,100 tons of carp, 80 tons of St. Peters fish and 300 tons of

the tune, visit youtube and search for “Four Questions” to play the Shalom Sesame video. You can also ask each child to bring a picture they’ve drawn of something they’re looking forward to at the seder.

Play Hide-and-Go-Seek the Afikomen Way. Some families’ tradition calls for the leader to stash the precious bit of matzah in a fiendishly clever kid-proof hiding place. Others allow the younger guests to squirrel it away, which turns into a game of wits as the kids team up to outsmart the adults.

Either way, remember to have a special “prize” handy for redeeming this important ritual dessert.

Let those Special Passover Foods Talk. Charoset resembling the bricks we were forced to make, and then build Egyptian cities with. Hot horseradish, for the suffering of slavery. Salt water, reminding us of our people’s bitter tears as we pleaded with G-d to set us free. Don’t just provide the necessary food items, take the children through what they represent. Seders wrote the book on multi-sensory learning as we literally eat the story of our freedom.

Keep the Noshes Flowing.

Speaking of food (this being, after all, a Jewish holiday), since it can be a long, dry spell until the meal is served, you’ll be investing in the kids’ cheerful dispositions— and their parents’ gratitude—if you keep a bowl of carrot sticks and dip or nuts at the table.

Why Stop at Four? As in questions, not cups of wine.

Encourage each child who’s old enough to ask at least one question of their own. And then answer them patiently, honestly and with respect. This can turn into a lively game of “Stump the Leader,” as

you issue a friendly challenge to the kids (and adults too) to try to ask a Passover question you can’t answer.

Give it Over Simply. The traditional Haggadah tells the story of our people’s release from Egyptian slavery in the roundabout way we have come to love over the years. But, let’s face it: simple it ain’t. Helping lend drama and fun to the telling are the pre-packaged plague bags (filled with small tchotchkes, each representing a plague) and assorted collections of plague masks and puppets. These have gained popularity for a reason: They work, delighting the youngsters and keeping them engaged. You may also want to have some scarves and sheets handy for dressing up as the key players in the Passover story so that, during the telling, the kids (and grownups who’ve had enough Manischewitz) can play a role.

Pass the Baby Moses. Wrap an ordinary doll in a towel fastened by a safety pin and voila! It’s Baby Moses. Give each child a turn to take care of him as you tell the story of his dramatic rescue by three heroic women—his mother Yoheved, big sister Miriam and Egyptian Princess Batya.

Sing it Loud, Sing It Proud.

No seder is complete without rousing (and typically off-key) renditions of such traditional favorites as, Eliyahu Hanavi, Chad Gadyah, Adir Hu and Dayenu. The latter is a perfect opportunity to explain how grateful we are to G-d for each and every gift given us, even those we often take for granted. Again, if your Haggadah doesn’t have transliterations, here’s where an Internet search can prove useful in compiling song sheets to print out.

mullet this Passover season to satisfy the tastes of gefilte fish lovers, as well as the Moroccan-style chraime fish eaters.

In every ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, men and boys block the narrow streets with hand trucks piled high with sacks of carrots, potatoes and oranges and cartons of eggs – all courtesy of the Kimcha D’Pischa funds that funnel donations from abroad to Israeli Haredim.

At the entrance to many large supermarkets, teenagers hand out fliers listing suggested items generous shoppers may purchase to be placed in bins for distribution to needy families.

Israel’s chief rabbis sell the nation’s chametz to one Hussein Jabar, a Moslem Arab resident of Abu Ghosh. Estimated worth: $150 billion secured by a down payment of NIS 100,000. Jabar took over the task some 16 years ago, after the

previous buyer, also from Abu Ghosh, was fired when it was discovered his maternal grandmother was Jewish.

At the Kotel, workers perform the twice-yearly ritual (pre-Passover and pre-Rosh Hashanah) of removing thousands of personal notes stuffed into the crevices of the Kotel, prior to burying them on the Mt. of Olives.

Finally, the end of Passover is marked by the festive Maimouna, a traditional holiday celebrated by North African Jews immediately following Passover.

In recent years, Maimouna has become a national day marked by music, eating sweets and pastries and political glad-handing before everyone heads back to work until the fast-approaching season of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day and Jerusalem Day.

PASSOVER • B15

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Making the seder fun again

HAPPY PASSOVER Alterations of Springdale

By Dr. Erica Brown JointMedia News Service Too often the seder is a weak content warm-up to family meals.

Tell a vibrant story and engage your children in the story of Passover.

Three times in the book of Exodus and once in Deuteronomy, we are commanded to tell the master narrative of our people to our children. Sometimes it is because children ask, and we have a responsibility as bearers of a legacy to answer. Sometimes children do not ask, and we have to stimulate their curiosity by becoming wonderful storytellers.

Storytellers need to know their stories to tell them well. They need a terrific script and a pinch of creativity. Most of all, they need to feel inspired. It is impossible to tell a great story if it fails to move the storyteller first.

The rabbis of the Talmud wondered why four verses were necessary to communicate the obligation at Passover to retell the tale of the Exodus. They concluded that these four verses must represent four different kinds of children, offering an educational scale of learning styles or personalities who each must hear the story in his or her own way. One size fits all rarely fits anyone properly. Not only do we have to know the story well to tell it; we also need to know our audience well to make sure they hear it.

The best stories are fun to tell and fun to hear. They incorporate all our senses. They offer a range of emotional responses from laughter to tears, and good stories have staying power. They continue to inform our values long after they are shared. The Exodus story can be all of that. But most often, it is none of that. It is told in a tepid and incoherent way, read from a poor English translation without color or charm. It is the weak content warm-up to most family meals, even though it is one of the most observed rituals among American Jews.

It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old. Everyone appreciates a well-told story, so this year ask yourself: am I doing a good job in the chain of tradition at telling the Exodus story? Is my seder fun? Will it be memorable for everyone around the table? If SEDER from page 10 By the autumn of 1930, the majority of the playground’s sponsors decided to close it for good. Mrs. Lindheim opposed shutting down the facility, on the grounds that “the Arab and liberal press will make capital of this” to prove that the Jews were not sincerely interested in cooperation with the Arabs. But her colleagues

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Seders boring your children? Here are some suggestions to liven up the night.

the answer is “not really,” here are a few ways to fulfill the biblical commandment to tell the story, and the Disney way to make it stick.

Brush Up on the Details: No actor reads his lines the night of the musical. Don’t just dust off recipes. Take out a haggadah a few weeks before Passover and read it through. You might want to assign parts to your guests and ask them to do something creative with it. Reading Exodus 1-15 never hurts either.

Use props: Great storytellers use props because objects themselves are powerful storytellers.

Find objects in your home that tell your family’s Jewish story and put them on the table. Or have every guest bring an object that tells his or her family story.

Decorate the Room: You do it for birthday parties. Why not for Passover? Why should anyone sit in a dining room in suburbia when they could be in downtown ancient Cairo? Try costumes. We even had our kids write and read ancient weather reports. Chances are it’s hot and sunny.

Sing the story with show tunes or ask the kids to prepare a rap song. Just go online and you’ll find loads of lyrics. Here are a few of my top ten:

many dishes – Out with the hametz, no pasta, no knishes – Fish that’s gefillted, horseradish that stings – These are a few of our Passover things.

Sung to the tune of “These are a Few of My Favorite Things” – Cleaning and cooking and so

Dr. Erica Brown is the scholar -inresidence at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

were convinced that, despite their noble intentions, the site had become too dangerous.

As Irma Lindheim’s experiences demonstrated, the notion that American Zionists ignored the Palestinian Arabs in the preIsrael years is a myth. Not only were American Jewish leaders well aware of the local Arabs, but some, such as Mrs. Lindheim, were acutely sensitive

to Arab concerns and invested considerable time, effort and funds to improve Arab-Jewish relations.

But no matter how deeply American Zionists yearned for peace, and even when they went so far as to radically revise their Passover celebrations in order to foster positive feelings toward the Arabs, their good intentions often went unreciprocated.

Sung to the tune of “Maria”: – Elijah!

– I just saw the prophet Elijah.

– And suddenly that name – Will never sound the same to me.

– Elijah!

Sung to the tune of “Just a Spoon Full of Sugar” – Just a tad of haroset helps the bitter herbs go down, – The bitter herbs go down, the bitter herbs go down.

– Just a tad of Charoset helps the bitter herbs go down, – In the most disguising way.

These are a few of my favorite things to help make Passover a living history lesson and a memorable evening each year. We are a people with no word for history, only memory. We are memory-makers.

That is an awe-inspiring responsibility. Let’s do it well on the most important night of our story-telling year.

Happy Passover

Wishing you the best.

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Quinoa, ‘mother of all grains,’ may (or may not) be kosher for Passover

By Chavie Lieber Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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NEW YORK (JTA) – On any given day, a wind might blow through the farmlands of South America, pick up an errant grain of barley and deposit it nearby among the vast rows of cultivated quinoa.

If that barley manages to make its way into a sifted batch of quinoa, and avoid detection during repackaging, it could wind up gracing your seder table on Passover night.

However dubious it might seem, the scenario is among the reasons that the world’s largest kosher certification agency is refusing to sanction quinoa for Passover consumption, potentially depriving Jewish consumers of a high-fiber, protein-rich staple that many have come to rely on during the weeklong holiday.

The Orthodox Union announced last year that it would not certify quinoa as kosher for Passover out of concern that quinoa falls into the category of kitniyot, a group of legumes forbidden because they look similar to grains proscribed on the holiday.

Menachem Genack, the CEO of O.U. Kosher, also cited the danger of quinoa crops grown in close proximity to wheat and barley fields.

Star-K, a rival kosher certification company based in Baltimore, has been certifying quinoa as Passover-friendly for years and dismisses what it sees as an outlandish prohibition.

“Rav Moshe Feinstein said we weren’t to add on to the rules of kitniyot, so I don’t know why anyone would,” said Rabbi Tzvi Rosen of

Star-K, referring to the esteemed decisor of Jewish religious law who died in 1986. “And what’s more telling of this ridiculous debate is that quinoa is a seed, not a legume.”

Long a staple of the Andean diet, quinoa has earned a reputation as “the mother of all grains,” celebrated for its high nutrient quality and as an alternative for those following a gluten-free diet. But quinoa is not a grain at all. It’s a member of the goosefoot family, and closely related to spinach and beets.

On Passover – when wheat, oats, rye, spelt and barley are all prohibited – quinoa has emerged as a popular substitute.

That could change, however, with the world’s major kosher certifier refusing to give quinoa its Passover seal of approval.

“We can’t certify quinoa because it looks like a grain and people might get confused,” Genack said. “It’s a disputed food, so we can’t hold an opinion, and we don’t certify it. Those who rely on the O.U. for a kashrut just won’t have quinoa on Passover.”

The O.U.’s non-endorsement is the result of a debate within the organization’s own ranks.

Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, the head of Brooklyn’s Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and a consulting rabbi for the O.U., maintains that quinoa qualifies as kitniyot because it’s used in a manner similar to forbidden grains. Rabbi Hershel Schachter, one of the heads of Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school and also an O.U. consultant, agrees with Rosen that the category of kitniyot should not be expanded.

Rosen said the Star-K certifies

only the quinoa that has no other grains growing nearby. This year, for the first time, the company sent supervisors to South America to supervise the harvesting, sifting and packaging of the product.

“Whenever there’s a new age food, there’s always a fight between kosher factions,” Rosen said. “But we should be worrying about other things, like all the cookies, pizzas and noodles that are Passover certified but appear to be chametz.

Quinoa is the least of our problems.”

The O.U. is recommending that kosher consumers look to their local rabbis for guidance on the quinoa question. But for Eve Becker, risking a rabbinic prohibition on a staple food probably won’t sit too well in her house. A Jewish food blogger who maintains a strictly gluten-free kitchen because her daughter has Celiac disease, Becker said quinoa is one of the most important foods.

“It’s a tiny powerhouse packed with protein, vitamins and minerals, and it’s an important grain alternative, especially on Passover,” Becker said. “It’s great to have it on Passover instead of the usual potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. Most of the Passover foods just end up tasting like Passover, so we rely on quinoa to be that side staple.”

Ilana S., a mother of two who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, said she trusts the O.U. and will refrain, begrudgingly, from buying quinoa this Passover.

“These rabbis are always changing their minds, so I’m confident they’ll have a new statement next year,” she said. “Until then, it’s only eight days.”

Chocolate shakes up the seder ritual

By Rabbi Deborah Prinz Jewish Telegraphic Agency Rabbi Adam Schaffer, who’s been leading chocolate seders since he edited a chocolate seder haggadah in 1996, acknowledges that “people often do feel ill” from all the chocolate.

Still, Schaffer, the religious school director at Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, Calif., says he was motivated to “experiment outside the box and engage college students who were not in the usual Hillel track,” and found that the chocolate seder took things to a “fun level, helping make connections for people, re-contextualizing the seder.”

In the last couple of decades, college campus groups and synagogue youth groups have concocted the seders that replace the ritual foods with chocolate. There is green-colored chocolate for the karpas/lettuce; chocolate-covered

nuts for the charoset mix of nuts, apples and wine representing mortar used in building for the Pharoah; a chocolate egg for the roasted egg symbolizing the Passover sacrifice; a very dark 90 percent to 100 percent chocolate for the bitter herbs or maror. You get the idea.

A chocolate-soaked seder may help sugar-hyped participants absorb the ritual’s teachings about freedom. An alternative to wallowing in the gooey substitutes for the usual ritual foods, as entertaining as that might be, could be to use chocolate to name the issues of slavery, economic justice and fair trade in the chocolate business. This elevates the profound themes of Passover: Freedom, dignity and fairness.

Chocolate may become the medium for uncovering teachings about ethical kashrut, worker equity and food sustainability to celebrate those who toil, often in great poverty, to grow and harvest

cacao, including children and young adults – some of them in bondage in the Ivory Coast and Ghana’s cocoa plantations.

Instead we should hope for a harvesting of the fruits of productive, meaningful and safe labors.

The custom of three matzahs – the chocolate seder version uses chocolate-covered – recalls our tikkun olam, our ongoing struggle to perfect the world, as we consider responsibility for the contrast between the limited resources of most cacao growers and the wealthy consumers of chocolate.

When we cover our matzah with chocolate, we recall that not only are we descended from slaves in Egypt, we recall child slaves on cocoa plantations of our time.

As we prepare to celebrate Passover this year, may we feel assured that we have helped advance the messianic era through our tantalizing array of chocolate choices, not just chocolate matzah.

PASSOVER • B17

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

No more gorging on matzah for a week: delicious Passover recipes for every day

By Mollie Katzen JointMedia News Service While planning what to cook to feed the whole Mishpucha (family) on Passover’s big seder night, it’s easy to forget to plan your meals for the rest of the holiday week.

Suddenly, lo and behold, you find yourself staring at the wide-open cupboard with nothing but matzah staring back at you.

But not to worry! Passover isn’t Yom Kippur, and with the right preparation, you can still eat a decent meal.

With more than 6 million books in print, Mollie Katzen is listed by the New York Times as one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time and has been named by Health Magazine as one of The Five Women Who Changed the Way We Eat. Below, Katzen offers some exciting vegetarian, pareve and dairy-based recipes to spice up your daily meals during the eight days of Passover. These recipes are all Passover-friendly (no leavened bread) and fit both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic cuisine traditions: ASPARAGUS-FETA FRITTATA Asparagus is the emblematic spring vegetable, and Passover is the spring holiday.

Eggs are another seasonal symbol, so combine them all and get a tasty meal from the obvious, delicious mix.

Ingredients: 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 cup finely minced onion 4 medium stalks asparagus, trimmed of the tough ends, peeled if desired, and sliced into thin (1/8inch) diagonal coins 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon 1 teaspoon minced garlic 8 large eggs Freshly ground black pepper 4 ounces feta cheese Instructions: 1) Place a 10-inch skillet with an ovenproof handle over medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, wait about 10 seconds, then swirl to coat the pan.

Add the onion, and sautÈ for about 5 minutes, or until softened. Stir in the asparagus, salt, tarragon, and garlic, cook for about 3 minutes or until the asparagus is tender-crisp and remove from the heat.

2) Break the eggs into a large bowl, and beat well with a whisk. Add the sauteed vegetables, grind in some black pepper, crumble in the cheese

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You won’t have to simply gorge on matzah for all of Passover if you follow Mollie Katzen’s recipes.

and stir until blended. Clean and dry the skillet and return it to the stove over medium heat. Preheat the broiler.

3) When the skillet is hot again, add the remaining 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil, wait about 30 seconds, and swirl to coat the pan. Pour in the vegetable-egg mixture and let it cook undisturbed over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the eggs are set on the bottom.

4) Transfer the skillet to the preheated broiler, and broil for about 3 minutes, or until the frittata is firm in the center. Remove the pan from the broiler, and run a rubber spatula around the edge to loosen the frittata. Slide or invert it onto a large, round plate, and serve hot, warm, or room temperature, cut into wedges.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings EGGPLANT CUTLETS Thick, round and crisp eggplant slices become meltingly tender in the center when cooked. Serve on a bed of your favorite tomato sauce or roast some Roma tomatoes (see next recipe) and use them as a sauce.

Top with a spoonful of pesto or Salsa Verde.

Use a big, chubby eggplant for nice round slices of burger dimensions.

Choose an eggplant with tight, shiny skin and no wrinkles, soft spots or blemishes since you will not be peeling it (Eggplant peel is edible).

You’re going to need to do this in batches, so use two frying pans and plan the timing accordingly.

Ingredients: 1 large eggplant (about 1 3/4 pounds), unpeeled 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon water 1 cup matzo meal 1 teaspoon salt

Happy Passover!

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil (possibly more, as needed) Extras: Herbs in the matzo meal (Italian seasoning, or a combination of dried thyme and oregano, about 1/2 teaspoon each) Up to 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese in the matzo meal will make it crispier and more flavorful.

Serving ideas: Mozzarella cheese melted on top, Pesto sauce, tomato sauce.

Make this vegan by swapping in 1/2 cup plain soy milk for the eggs and water.

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Instructions: 1) Slice off the eggplant top and bottom, and discard. Use a sharp knife to cut the eggplant crosswise into half-inch slices. You should end up with about 12 to 14 rounds.

RECIPES on page 20

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Save the self-pity, choices abound for Passover meals

By Helen Nash Jewish Telegraphic Agency For the many who feel overwhelmed by Passover because of the demands of cooking without leaven, a word or two: That should not be an obstacle.

After all, on this most celebrated of Jewish holidays, we are allowed to eat fish, meat, poultry, eggs, nuts, fruits, most vegetables and fresh herbs.

All of the recipes featured here are nutritious, attractive, flavorful and easy to prepare. They emphasize fresh, seasonal ingredients, fewer complicated techniques and stylish, elegant dishes. What more would you want for Passover?

The seder meals, when we recount the Exodus story, are the most important events of the holiday. Most people, like myself, favor their own traditional menu. Each year I repeat the seder menu as a way to hold on to cherished family traditions.

1 1/4 pounds (570 g) beets, plus 1 small beet for garnish 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 small red onion, sliced 2 garlic cloves, sliced 1 McIntosh apple, peeled and sliced 4 1/2 cups (1.08 liters) vegetable broth 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar Kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper

BEET SOUP Makes six servings With their magnificent color, delicious flavor and vitamin richness, beets are one of my favorite vegetables. In the summer I serve this soup at room temperature; in the winter I like it hot.

Ingredients

Courtesy of Overlook Press

Beet Soup is pareve and can be served at room temperature or hot.

Preparation Peel and slice the beets (see note below). Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Add the onion, garlic and apple, and saute for 5 minutes.

Add the beets and broth. Bring to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat and cook, covered, for about 30 minutes, until the beets are tender.

Cool a little.

While the soup is cooking, wrap the reserved beet tightly in foil.

Bake in a toaster oven at 400 degrees F (205 C) for 30 minutes, or until just tender when pierced with the tip of a paring knife. Cool, slip off the skin, and grate.

Puree the soup in a blender until very smooth. Season to taste with the vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper.

Garnish with the grated beet.

Note: I always wear thin plastic gloves when I work with beets, as this avoids staining my fingers with beet juice, which can be hard to remove.

CHICKEN SALAD WITH RADICCHIO AND PINE NUTS Makes six servings This is a colorful and delicious salad with an interesting mixture of textures and tastes. The currants and pine nuts add an unusual Mediterranean piquancy.

Ingredients 1 small red onion, very thinly sliced 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 ounces/170 g each)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil for greasing the chicken Kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper 1 head radicchio, shredded 1 to 2 bunches arugula, leaves torn if they are large 1/2 cup (20 g) loosely packed flatleaf parsley, finely chopped Preparation Place the onion slices in a small bowl and cover with cold water. Let stand for 30 minutes. Drain and pat dry. Place in a large serving bowl.

Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and grease with oil. Season lightly with salt and pepper.

Place each chicken breast in the center of a piece of cling wrap and wrap it so that it is completely covered. Place the packages in a steamer, cover and steam over high heat for about 9 minutes. (The inside of the chicken should still be pale pink.) Turn off the heat and let stand for 1 minute.

Remove the chicken and cool, still wrapped. When cool, unwrap the chicken and cut it on the diagonal into thin strips. Place in the bowl with the onions.

SWEET AND SOUR DRESSING Ingredients 1/3 cup (80 ml) extra virgin olive oil 1/2 cup (70 g) pine nuts 1/2 cup (115 g) raisins or currants 2 tablespoons Marsala wine 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar Preparation Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the pine nuts and raisins and saute over low heat until the pine nuts are lightly golden. Remove from the heat and add the Marsala and vinegar.

Add the radicchio, arugula, and parsley to the chicken and onions; toss with the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

MARINATED SALMON Makes six servings This is a variation on the traditional pickled salmon sold in every Jewish delicatessen. The difference: The salmon is more delicate and less vinegary, and has a richer color. It makes a perfect Sabbath luncheon dish.

Ingredients 6 skinless center-cut salmon fillets (about 6 ounces/170 g each) 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil for greasing the pan Kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper Preparation Preheat the oven to 200 F (95

PASSOVER • B19

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

Courtesy of Overlook Press

Chicken Salad With Radicchio and Pine Nuts is colorful and features an interesting mixture of textures and tastes.

C). Grease a glass or enamel-lined baking pan that can hold the fillets in a single layer.

Pat the fillets dry with paper towels and season them lightly on both sides with salt and pepper.

Place them in the dish and bake, uncovered, for 25 to 30 minutes, or until cooked to your taste.

Remove the baking pan from the oven, cover with foil, and let cool completely. (The fish will continue cooking outside of the oven.)

MARINADE Ingredients 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 4 tablespoons rice vinegar (for Passover, replace with white wine vinegar) 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Freshly ground black pepper 1 small red onion, very thinly sliced (see note below) 15 dill sprigs, snipped finely with scissors, plus 2 sprigs, snipped, for garnish Preparation In a medium bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar and salt. Add pepper to taste. Pour the marinade over the salmon, add the onion and sprinkle with the 15 snipped sprigs of dill.

Cover the dish with wax paper, then foil and refrigerate for two to three days without turning.

To serve: Bring the salmon to room temperature. Place on individual plates along with some of the marinade and onions. Garnish with the fresh snipped dill.

Note: I use a mandoline to slice the onion, as it makes the cutting easier.

CHICKEN WITH POTATOES AND OLIVES Makes four servings I am always pleased to come up with a dish that is a meal in itself – one that combines either chicken or meat with vegetables.

This is one of my favorites, and because it is so easy to make, I often serve it at Passover. I bake it in an attractive casserole, so it

can go directly from the oven to the table.

Kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper

Ingredients 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 9 garlic cloves Kosher salt 1/4 cup (60 ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice Leaves from 10 thyme sprigs Freshly ground black pepper 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 ounces/170 g each) 5 plum tomatoes 1 pound (450 g) Yukon gold potatoes, unpeeled, quartered 1/2 cup (67 g) pitted black olives, quartered

Preparation Break the stems off the spinach leaves and discard.

Roast the pine nuts in a toaster oven on the lowest setting for one or two minutes, until they are golden. (Watch them carefully, as they burn quickly.)

Heat a wok over high heat until hot. Add the oil. Add the spinach and stir quickly until it is just wilted, no more than a minute. Season with salt and pepper. With a slotted spoon, transfer the spinach to a serving dish. Sprinkle the pine nuts on top.

Preparation Preheat the oven to 450 F (230 C). With 1 tablespoon of the oil, grease a glass, ceramic or enamellined baking pan that can hold all the vegetables in a single layer.

Coarsely chop four of the garlic cloves on a cutting board. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and, using a knife, crush them into a paste.

Place the paste in a small bowl and combine it with the lemon juice, two tablespoons of the oil, half of the thyme leaves and pepper to taste.

Pat dry the chicken breasts with paper towels and season lightly on both sides with salt and pepper.

Coat the chicken with the mixture and set aside.

Bring a pot of water to a boil.

Drop the tomatoes into the boiling water; bring the water back to a boil and drain. Core the tomatoes and slip off the skin. Cut the tomatoes in half widthwise and squeeze gently to remove the seeds. (Some seeds will remain.) Cut the tomatoes in quarters.

Thickly slice the remaining five garlic cloves and spread them in the prepared baking pan along with the tomatoes, potatoes, olives, the rest of the thyme leaves, and the remaining two tablespoons oil.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Roast the vegetables, uncovered, for 20 minutes, or until almost tender.

Place the chicken breasts on top of the vegetables and bake, uncovered, for five minutes. Turn them over, spoon on some pan juices and bake for another five minutes, or until the chicken is slightly pink on the inside. Cover with foil for one minute.

CHOCOLATE MERINGUE SQUARES Makes 3 1/2 dozen squares

STIR-FRIED SPINACH Makes six servings This is a delicious recipe that captures the very essence of spinach. Now that prewashed spinach is available in almost every supermarket, you can prepare this dish in minutes.

Ingredients 20 ounces (570 g) prewashed spinach 1 1/2 tablespoons pine nuts 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

These meringue squares are like cookies, but they are light, chocolatey and surprisingly low in calories. I often serve them at Passover.

Ingredients 1 tablespoon (15 g) unsalted margarine for greasing the pan 1/2 pound (225 g) blanched almonds 6 ounces (170 g) good-quality imported semisweet chocolate, broken into small pieces 8 large egg whites (see notes) 1 cup (200 g) sugar Preparation Preheat the oven to 350 F (175 C). Line a 9-by-13-by-2-inch (23by-33-by-5 cm) baking pan with wax paper and grease the paper with the margarine.

Chop the almonds in a food processor, in two batches, until medium-fine. Transfer to a bowl.

Chop the chocolate in the processor until fine, and combine with the almonds.

Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric stand mixer.

Using the balloon whisk attachment, beat at high speed until foamy. Gradually add the sugar and beat until stiff.

With a large rubber spatula, gently fold the chocolate-almond mixture into the egg whites, making a motion like a figure 8 with the spatula. Do not overmix.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out almost dry.

Cool on a wire rack. Invert onto a cutting board and peel off the paper. Cut into 1 1/2-inch (4 cm) squares.

Notes: It is easier to separate the eggs straight from the refrigerator, when they are cold. Make sure the whites have come to room temperature before beating. To freeze the squares, place them side by side in an air-tight plastic container, with wax paper between the layers.

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RECIPES from page 17 2) Break the eggs into a pie pan, then beat with a fork or small whisk, adding the teaspoon of water as you go. When the eggs become smooth, stop beating and set this aside.

3) Combine the matzo meal, salt and pepper on a dinner plate. Have a second dinner plate (or several) ready for the coated eggplant slices. (Also have some damp paper towels ready to wipe your hands, as needed.)

4) One at a time, dip the eggplant slices into the egg, then let any excess egg drip off back into the bowl. Put each moistened round into the matzo meal mixture, pressing it down firmly, so the crumbs will adhere. Then turn it over, and press the second side into the crumbs until it becomes completely coated all over. Shake off any extra of the mixture, then transfer each coated slice to the other plate.

5) Place a large (10- to 12-inch) heavy skillet over medium heat and wait for about a minute. Pour in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and swirl to coat the pan. Wait a little longer until the oil is hot enough to sizzle a dot of matzo meal on contact.

6) Carefully transfer the coated eggplant slices (as many as will fit in a single layer) to the hot pan. Cook undisturbed for 4 to 5 minutes, or until golden brown on the bottom.

Use a metal spatula to carefully loosen each piece, keeping its coating intact (you don t want to lose any of it to the pan). Flip it over, and cook on the second side for another 4 to 5 minutes, until the coating is evenly golden all over, and the eggplant becomes fork-tender. (You might need to drizzle in additional olive oil as you go, if the pan seems dry.)

7) Transfer the cooked slices to the cooling rack and repeat the cooking with the remaining slices. (If you want to keep them hot, transfer them to a cooling rack on a baking sheet and keep them in a low (250 F) oven while you cook the remaining slices.) Serve as soon as possible.

Makes 12 to 14 slices (2 to 3 per serving) Rhubarb Crisp for Passover Rhubarb has a short season every spring, usually coinciding with Passover.

Ingredients: 2 pounds rhubarb (8 or so jumbo stalks) 3 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup farfel, buzzed to bread crumb consistency in a food processor 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 tablespoon granulated sugar 1 tablespoon safflower or canola oil or whatever your everyday kitchen oil is Pinch of salt Instructions: 1) Heat the oven to 400 F. Meanwhile, chop the rhubarb into º-inch slices.

2) When the oven is hot, place 2 tablespoons of the butter in a 9 X 13-inch baking pan and set it in the oven for a few minutes so the butter can melt and the pan gets hot.

3) Carefully remove the pan, and swirl to coat the entire inner surface with the butter.

4) Scatter the chopped rhubarb in an even layer and put the pan back in the oven for 20 minutes.

Interrupt once or twice during this time to shake the pan to get the butter distributed throughout the rhubarb.

5) After 20 minutes, shake the pan again. Reserve one tablespoon of brown sugar from the cupful, then sprinkle the remaining brown sugar over the rhubarb. Shake or stir, or both, to coat, then return the pan to the oven while you quickly prepare the topping (5 minutes or less).

6) To do so, simply combine the farfel crumbs with the cinnamon, granulated sugar, reserved tablespoon of brown sugar and possible dash of salt. Melt (microwave for 20 seconds) the remaining tablespoon of butter and add this, along with the tablespoon of oil. Toss with a fork until uniform, then sprinkle the mixture over the top of the rhubarb.

7) Return to the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until it bubbles with enthusiasm. Remove and cool to desired eating temperature, which should arrive no sooner than a good 15 or 20 minutes, so as not to burn your mouth. (That sugar gets HOT.) Yield: 6 or more servings.

Salsa Verde Vegan, pareve Dab it onto scrambled eggs, pasta (hot and cold), many soups, simple bean preparations, burgers, savory pancakes, plain cooked rice and more. Use salsa verde to green up your rice, put on pasta, grilled fish or vegetables. This will stay fresh for a good while in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator or frozen.

Ingredients: A packed Ω cup each: Flat-leaf parsley Cilantro Basil leaves Scallion (about 4 large or 6 slim) 1/2 teaspoon minced or crushed garlic Scant º teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil Instructions: 1) Place the herbs, garlic and salt in the small bowl of a food processor and pulverize as far as possible without adding liquid. You ll likely need to stop a couple of times to scrape down the sides.

2) Add 1 teaspoon vinegar or lemon/lime juice, buzz to blend, and then drizzle in the oil as you keep the machine running. When it s completely blended, taste for salt and possibly more vinegar or lemon/lime juice.

Makes about æ cup

PASSOVER • B21

THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

(513) 891-4444

New Passover products for 2013 The major kosher manufacturers are releasing a slew of new products for this holiday season.

Osem USA has launched a new line of dry foods to join its already extensive list of more traditional fare for the Passover holiday.

It is now possible to bake your own kosher-for-Passover bread with the aid of Osem’s Homestyle Passover Roll Mix. The result is a deliciously light and flavorsome bread-roll uncannily similar to its non-Passover twin. Experimenting with the mix has led some consumers to stuff the rolls prior to baking with an assortment of meats and vegetables creating a delicious, alternative, entrée.

Osem’s Homestyle Passover Roll Mix is under the strict supervision of the OU. Another offering from the kosher giant is a Gluten-Free Pancake Mix which is under the strict supervision of the OU and Yerushalayim Mehadrin. Osem has perfected their recipe with the end product being a sweet and fluffy breakfast pancake which will delight the whole family. Passover, it appears, is no longer the domain of stale matzo. Passover is a chance to experiment with new products, new mixes and creative alternatives to all your family’s favorite products.

Matzolah enables your creativity, too, pairing well with yogurt and ice cream, as well as matzo brie, kugel, cookies, brownies, cobbler; the possibilities must be endless.

The classic stand by, Manischewitz, is now offering products such as Organic Matzo, “a perfect option for those health-conscious consumers,” according to the company. Other health conscious options include Guiltless Gourmet Coconut Water, as well as Gluten Free Red Velvet Macaroons. Other gluten free options are also available, including Matzo-Style Squares and Crackers.

But what to put on these crackers? Manischewitz is also offering an Almond Butter Spread (a gluten free alternative to peanut butter) as well as a Mediterranean Gefilte

Happy Passover!

Happy Passover from the Gettler Family Foundation

Osem’s Gluten Free Pancake Mix

Fish. This new take on the classic contains “a tasty twist with the flavors of Rosemary, Oregano and Olive Oil that distinguishes it from traditional Gefilte Fish.”

You’d be surprised how easily things can be assimilated to the kosher way: Foodman’s now offers its Original Matzolah – “The Trail Mix of the Exodus” which is strictly designed to do anything and everything traditional trail mix can do.

Winner of Best New Kosher for Passover Product at Kosherfest 2012, Matzolah is made with Vermont maple syrup, California raisins, almonds, walnuts, pecans, and of course, matzo. Described as a “matzo granola breakfast and nosh,” the product suits your hunger needs accordingly. And, with high fiber and low sodium, you don’t even need to feel guilty about it.

Matzolah enables your creativity, too, pairing well with yogurt and ice cream, as well as matzo brie, kugel, cookies, brownies, cobbler; the possibilities must be endless.

A socially conscious element is also present in the preceedings. As Israel recovers from yet another military operation to ensure the safety of its southern residents, Osem USA is once again teaming up with JNF to raise money for the support of a large indoor playground in Sderot.

Sderot, located close to Israel’s border with Gaza, has long been afflicted with daily rocket attacks traumatizing residents. Children fear leaving the safety of their homes and the idea of playing outside in an exposed playground has fast become a distant memory.

Together with JNF, Osem is fund-

ing the large, reinforced, indoor play center for the children of Sderot to enjoy without the need to run for shelter should the siren wail. The center will also be used for rehabilitation work, classes and parties.

Osem’s Homestyle Passover Roll Mix

Osem is raising money for this momentous project by donating a percent of their profits each time a Passover snack is bought. “We, at Osem USA, are delighted to have this opportunity to raise money for JNF’s recreation center in Sderot where children can have fun and feel safe and secure,” said Kobi Afek, Osem USA’s director of marketing. “It is a fantastic way to support Israeli children through proceeds from Osem sales. Every child in the U.S. who consumes Bamba and Bissli is helping other children in Israel. By partnering with JNF we bring more meaning to our consumers and educate our children about social responsibility.”

Happy Passover

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