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Synagogues Are Joining An ‘Effective Altruism’ Initiative. Will The Sam Bankman-Fried Scandal Stop Them?

By Asaf Elia-Shalev

tive careers in finance and tech that they oth erwise might not have chosen so they would have more money to give away.

(JTA) — A few years ago, Adam Azari was frustrated over how little he could do to alleviate suffering in the world with his modest income as a writer and caretaker for people with disabilities.

He kept thinking about a set of statistics and ideas he had encoun tered during his graduate studies in philosophy. For example, he remembered reading that for the price of training a guide dog for the blind in the United States, one could prevent hundreds of cases of blindness in the developing world.

This hyper-rational way of think ing about doing good was called effective altruism, and it was grow ing into a movement, known as E.A. for short. Some proponents were even opting to pursue lucra

Azari, meanwhile, had become a believer who was stuck on the sidelines. Then, one day, he had what he calls a “personal eure ka moment.” Azari would return to his roots as the son of a Reform rabbi in Tel Aviv and spread the word of E.A. across the Jewish denomina tion and among its millions of followers.

“It suddenly hit me that the Reform movement has this crazy untapped potential to save thou sands and thousands of lives by simply informing Jews about effec tive giving,” he recalled.

He badgered his father, Rabbi Meir Azari, and, for a moment, thought of becoming a rabbi him self. But he abandoned the idea and focused on pitching E.A. to the Reform movement’s international

arm, the World Union for Progres sive Judaism. Azari found an ally in WUPJ’s president, Rabbi Sergio Bergman, and the organization soon decided to sponsor his efforts, pay ing him a salary for his work.

Over the past year, Azari’s Jew ish Effective Giving Initiative has presented to about 100 rabbis and secured pledges from 37 Reform congregations to donate at least $3,000 to charities rated as the most impactful by E.A. advocates and which aid poor people in the devel oping world. Per E.A. calculations, it costs $3,000 to $5,000 to save a single life.

“Progressive Judaism inspires us to carry out tikkun olam, our con crete action to make the world bet ter and repair its injustices,” Berg man said. “With this call we not only do what the heart dictates in values, but also do it effectively to be efficient and responsible for sav ing a life.”

This charitable philosophy appears to be gaining traction in the Jewish world just as one of the fig ures most associated with it, who happens to be Jewish, has become engulfed in scandal.

Sam Bankman-Fried built a cryp tocurrency empire worth billions, amassing a fortune he pledged to give away to causes such as artifi cial intelligence, combatting bio hazards and climate change, all selected on criteria developed by the proponents of effective altru ism.

A few weeks ago, BankmanFried’s fortune evaporated amid suspicions of financial misconduct and revelations of improper over sight at his company, FTX, a cryp tocurrency exchange that was worth as much as $32 billion before a run of withdrawals ultimately left it illiquid. The situation has drawn comparisons to the implosion of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and authorities investigating the situa tion have said Bankman-Fried could face criminal penalties over his role.

In the wake of FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried has suggested that his embrace of E.A. was insincere, a tactic to bolster his reputation.

But Azari and the organizer of

Sam Bankman-Fried testifies during a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Dec. 8, 2021 (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

another initiative, a growing read ing and discussion group called Effective Altruism for Jews, are undaunted and don’t believe the scandal should taint the underlying principles of the movement.

“Whether you call it E.A. or just directly donating to global health and development, it doesn’t mat ter,” Azari said. “The basic idea is to support these wonderful chari ties, and I don’t think the FTX scandal changes any of that. Malar ia nets, vitamin A supplements and vaccine distribution are still super cost-effective, evidence-based ways of helping others.”

Azari added that he has had sev eral meetings with rabbis since the news about Bankman-Fried broke and that no one has asked him about it.

“I don’t think people are making the connection,” he said. “And to me, there is no connection between us and FTX.”

When talking to rabbis about why E.A. would make a good fit with their congregation’s charitable mission, Azari cites the Jewish value of tikkun olam, a mandate to “repair the world” often used to

implore people to care for others.

He explains that donating to chari ties with a proven track record is a concrete way to fulfill a Jewish responsibility.

That kind of thinking proved attractive to Steven Pinker, the prominent Harvard psychologist, who has endorsed Azari’s initiative.

In a recorded discussion with Azari and others last year, Pinker recalled his Reform upbringing, which included Hebrew school, summer camp and synagogue services.

“The thing I remember most is how much of my so-called religious education was like a university course in moral philosophy,” Pink er said. “We chewed over moral dilemmas.”

As an adult, Pinker returned to Jewish teachings on charity and, in particular, those of the medieval philosopher Maimonides, examin ing these ideas through the lens of E.A. He began to wonder about the implications of Maimonides’ focus on evaluating charity based on the motives of the donor. That focus, he concluded, doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for the benefi ciary.

“What ultimately ought to count in tzedakah, in charity, is, are you making people better off?” he said.

Also on the panel with Azari and Pinker was the man credited with authoring the foundational texts upon which E.A. is built. Peter Singer, who is also Jewish and whose grandfather died in the Holo caust, teaches bioethics at Prince ton. Starting in the 1970s, Singer wrote a series of books in which he argues for a utilitarian approach to ethics, namely, that we should forgo luxuries and spend our money to save lives. His thinking has led him to suggesting that parents of new born babies with severe disabilities be permitted to euthanize them.

From Bankman-Fried to Singer, the list of Jews who have either promoted E.A. or lead its institu tions is long. With their estimated fortune of $11.3 billion, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna have eclipsed Bankman-Fried as the wealthiest Jews in the field. There’s also popular philosopher Sam Harris and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who have each dedi cated episodes of their podcast to the topic.

The website LessWrong, which defines itself as “a community blog devoted to refining the art of ratio nality,” is seen as an important

early influence; it was founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky, an artificial intelligence researcher who grew up in a Modern Orthodox house hold but does not identify religious ly as a Jew anymore. Two other Jews, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, left the hedge fund world to establish GiveWell, a group whose research is considered the premier authority on which charities are deserving of E.A. donations.

The prevalence of Jews in the movement caught the attention of E.A. enthusiast Ben Schifman, an environmental lawyer for the fed eral government in Washington, D.C. About two years ago, Schif man proposed creating a group for like-minded individuals in hope of helping grow the movement. In an online post, he laid out the history of Jewish involvement and wrote a brief introduction to the topic of Judaism and charity.

Today, Schifmam runs a group called Effective Altruism for Jews, whose main program is an eightweek fellowship involving a read ing and discussion group with des

Meet The Jewish Founder Of The World’s Only Bobblehead Museum, And His Hanukkah Bobbles

Last year, the museum unveiled its first-ever Hanukkah items: a Bobble Menorah that features nine bobbling “flames” (sans real fire, of course) and comes in three color patterns, and a Bobble Dreidel on a gelt-shaped base.

we were already going to several games a year anyway as big sports fans. The collection sort of grew from that.

How did this interest turn into the world’s only bobblehead museum?

— people or things that otherwise haven’t had bobbleheads produced — and market them.

(JTA) — A crochet museum in Joshua Tree, California, features countless crochet animals that appear in airport ads worldwide.

The National Mustard Museum in Wisconsin was founded by a Jewish condiment aficionado.

In February 2019, another niche museum opened around 90 miles east of the mustard mecca: the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, located in Milwaukee.

Co-founded by Phil Sklar, a Jewish Illinois native, and his friend Brad Novak, the institution is the world’s only museum dedicated to bobbleheads. Its collection holds 7,000 unique bobbleheads, including some manufactured by Sklar and Novak.

Bobbleheads date back to the late 1700s, Sklar explained in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. A famous painting of Queen Charlotte — a replica of which hangs in the bobblehead museum — shows two figurines behind the monarch, with heads that bobble.

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“Having the candles with the flame bobbling and the dreidel on a spring, we thought was pretty unique,” said Sklar. “It was something that was tasteful and that people would enjoy displaying on Hanukkah, or with their Judaica collection.”

We spoke to Sklar about how a unique collection turned into a oneof-a-kind museum, how he uses bobbleheads for a good cause and, of course, which famous Jews have their own bobbleheads.

(This interview has been edited and condensed.)

JTA: With any collection like this, the first question has to be: How did you get into bobbleheads?

Sklar: My dad collected baseball cards, and he got me into collecting when I was growing up. Brad was working for a minor league baseball team in the early 2000s, and they gave away a bobblehead for the first time in 2003. We decided the bobblehead was sort of cool, and the [Milwaukee] Brewers and Bucks and local soccer and hockey teams were giving out bobbleheads. So, we started to circle the bobblehead dates on the calendar, since

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The collection grew out of traveling. We went on a journey to try to go to all the Major League Baseball stadiums, and as we traveled, we’d go to different museums in local places. Several times we’d either go to the stores in the area of the stadium, or antique malls, and just pick up some bobbleheads from the area to bring back.

Before we knew it, we were doing some buying, trading and selling on eBay, in our free time. Then in 2013 we set out to produce a bobblehead for the first time, of a friend of ours who was a manager for the University of WisconsinMilwaukee sports teams, and also a Special Olympian. We thought it would be a cool way to honor him. During that process we realized there was a need in the market, an opportunity to produce bobbleheads

At the time, our collection was numbering in the 3,000 range. I don’t even know how we got that many. We were running out of room for them. It’s a lot easier to store 3,000 baseball cards — you can get one box and store them. But 3,000 bobbleheads take up a lot more room. We started brainstorming, and realized, hey, there’s no museum in the world dedicated to bobbleheads. There’re museums dedicated to mustard and spam, and a bunch of other random things. So, we started to do market research on the museum side, and in November 2014 was when we announced the idea for the museum.

Tell me about the collection. How many bobbleheads do you have now, and what are some of the highlights?

We have 7,000 unique bobbleheads on display in the museum. The collection itself is now num-

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bering in the 10,000-11,000 range. We’re getting in new bobbleheads pretty much daily. There are teams sending them in, organizations, people across the country. It’s really everything from sports to pop culture, politics, music, movies, TV, comics. Really anything and everything that can be turned into a bobblehead, including the

menorah and the dreidel.

Do you have a personal favorite bobblehead?

The one of [our friend] Michael is sort of the one that sparked the whole idea for the museum, so that’s my sentimental favorite. He’s also Jewish. We didn’t meet because of being Jewish, we just saw him around campus when we started going to school and got to know him. Then we got to know his family, and found out we went to the same congregation.

What has the reception been to the museum? How did the pandemic impact your work?

We’ve been blown away by the reception. We’ve had visitors from all 50 states and I think 25 different countries.

We opened on February 1, 2019, and then closed for about 14-and-ahalf months in March 2020 because of the pandemic. Luckily, we were able to produce a ton of bobbleheads during that time. In the beginning of April was the first Dr. [Anthony] Fauci bobblehead… We were able to keep busy, keep everybody employed that works for us, and also do something for a good cause during the pandemic.

With some unique collections, there can be subcultures that develop within particular groups — the cult-like popularity of the band Phish among Jews comes to mind. Is there any bobblehead subculture that you’ve seen?

There definitely are various bobblehead subcultures. There’s definitely people out there who collect Jewish figures and bobbleheads. Or usually, it’s their favorite team or player. There are definitely Grateful Dead [bobbleheads] — quite a few different bobbleheads, and people try to collect all of them. There are people who are political, they want all the presidential- or historicalrelated.

The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle did a story, and we sent them pictures of the different Jews that have been depicted in bobbleheads. Sandy Koufax, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of KISS, a wide variety of people. It’s sort of fun to see, there’s more [Jews] than we had anticipated when we were going through the list.

How do you decide who to make?

Every day we’re coming up with new ideas. Staying in tune with the news, social media and trending topics is definitely helpful. But then we have a long list of general ideas. Like, there hasn’t been a turkey bobblehead in a long time, and we have a series of bobbleheads where holiday characters are sitting on a shelf. So we have a turkey on a

shelf coming out for Thanksgiving. Things like that, we’ll identify sometimes years in advance. A lot of them take some time to come to fruition. But it’s more, what do we think people will enjoy or buy? And we go from there.

How did you decide to create the Hanukkah bobbles? What is your goal with the products?

It was probably around this time last year, sort of close to Hanukkah, and we were thinking, there hasn’t really been anything Hanukkahrelated when it comes to bobbleheads. And I mentioned to my aunt who lives in Omaha, she works at the [Jewish Community Center] in childcare there, and she really liked the idea and mentioned it to a few other family members and they thought it was pretty cool. So we had a rendering made, and we went through some different iterations of the design, and thought, yeah, this would be pretty cool.

You go to Target or different stores, and you see a little small display of Hanukkah-related merchandise and then aisles of Christmas stuff. We could definitely help increase that assortment. They’re not going to be at Target or Walmart this year, but it could be something that in future years could be added to that assortment for a broader audience to see and to purchase.

Are there any other Jewish holidays that you think would be particularly conducive for a bobble?

Yeah, I think my aunt actually sent a list. There were some characters like Judah Maccabee. We could do Purim. We’re sort of waiting to see how the Hanukkah bobbleheads go. There’s also some other fun things that we could turn into bobbles. A bobble hamantaschen just came to mind. But I don’t know, it might get people to try to eat it or something. We’ll put a warning on the package.

A lot of your products and launches are connected to charities. Why is it important to you to use the bobbleheads to support these causes? Does your Jewish identity have any impact on that?

I think it probably does have something to do with my upbringing. Being taught to give back, and taught about tzedakah [charity] And we’ve seen other bobblehead companies start to do the same thing, and they hadn’t done it in the past, so I think we’ve actually inspired other people. We’re not doing it to boost the sales, but we’ve seen that when it has that good cause, it can definitely help boost the sales and boost the excitement around it as well. But we’re really doing it to give back to causes and to get people engaged.

JEWISH FOUNDER

Abe Foxman: If Smotrich And Ben-Gvir Get Their Way, Israel Will Lose Me And American Jews

By Ron Kampeas

say: ‘I love Israel and I want to love Israel as a Jewish and democratic state that respects pluralism.’”

“If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it,” he said.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Avi Maoz.

(JTA) — Abe Foxman, the past Anti-Defamation League leader who long has said that nothing could separate him from support for Israel, now says the leaders of an extreme party could do the trick if they get their way in coalition talks with incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I never thought that I would reach that point where I would say that my support of Israel is conditional,” Foxman said in an interview published Friday by The Jerusalem Post. “I’ve always said that [my support of Israel] is unconditional, but it’s conditional. I don’t think that it’s a horrific condition to

Foxman said his outlook reflected that of the larger Jewish community — but added that he was optimistic Netanyahu would not let the leaders of Otzma Yehudit, the extremist party assuming a role in the incoming government, make drastic changes.

“I think he’s sensitive and smart enough to listen, to see the very serious concerns that [American Jews] have,” said Foxman, who retired from the ADL in 2015, 50 years after first joining the organization.

He pointed to an interview Netanyahu had recently with Bari Weiss, the opinion journalist, in which the incoming prime minister said he would not allow the excesses counseled by extremist party leaders including Bezalel Smotrich,

But Netanyahu has struck a deal with Ben-Gvir to give him authority over the country’s police and has made Maoz, the leader of the homophobic party Noam, a new role overseeing “National-Jewish identity,” while he is reportedly nearing an agreement to make Smotrich finance minister. The men have said they want to expel disloyal Arabs from Israel, ban LGBTQ pride parades and roll back rights for non-Orthodox Jews.

Already, Netanyahu has reportedly agreed to back legislation that would stop recognizing non-Orthodox conversions. The men also agree on a vision to limit the power of Israel’s judiciary.

Netanyahu told Weiss that people alarmed by such demands should not be so worried.

“This Israel is not going to be governed by Talmudic law,” Netanyahu said. “We’re not going to ban LGBT forums. As you know, my view on that is sharply different, to put it mildly. We’re going to remain a country of laws.”

Foxman’s concerns, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a separate interview, are with proposals by the extremists to politicize the judiciary, to loosen open-fire regulations, to end recognition of non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism and to ban open LGBTQ events.

“It’s not one thing. It’s a whole package of things, which is bring-

ing us back to the Middle Ages,” Foxman told JTA. “So, it’s undermining democracy in terms of the legal system. It’s cutting back on human or equal rights for all whether it’s LGBT or whether it’s a it’s the Conservative movement, or the Reform movement that have strides in Israel.”

Foxman, 82, is still called on to pronounce on Jewish matters. A Holocaust survivor, he is on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. His remarks are notable in part because he was of a generation, together with Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and David Harris, who just retired as American Jewish Committee CEO, who said their top priority was keeping private differences between Israel and the U.S. Jewish community, and between Israel and the United States. Open criticism was the taboo.

That won’t hold if Netanyahu gives in to the demands of Otzma Yehudit, Foxman told the Jerusalem Post.

“If Bibi changes the nature of democracy in Israel, he will change the nature of Israel’s support in the U.S., certainly the American Jewish community, probably the general community and the U.S. government if it continues to be centerleft,” he said.

Abe Foxman at an Anti-Defamation League event at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., May 8, 2014.

(Michael Kovac/WireImage/Getty Images)

Ye Suspended Again From Twitter After Posting Swastika Following Pro-Hitler Infowars Appearance

By Philissa Cramer

praised Adolf Hitler, said he loved Nazis and denied that the Holocaust happened as it did.

below the picture before Ye’s account was disabled and emphasizing the point in another tweet.

form? Jews right now need allies, not enablers.”

(JTA) — Two weeks after returning from a suspension over his tweets threatening Jews, Kanye West has been booted from Twitter again — this time after posting a picture of a swastika.

West, the rapper and designer who now goes by Ye, tweeted the swastika shortly after wrapping a three-hour-long appearance on Infowars, the streaming show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in which he repeatedly

The picture that Ye posted — and that he and his children had been photographed wearing on shirts — was not the straightforward Nazi logo but instead a swastika inside a Star of David, a mashup of symbols associated with Raelism, a movement that believes that aliens created humanity. He indicated that it would be his presidential campaign’s logo.

“I tried my best,” Musk tweeted late Thursday night in reply to a user urging him to help Ye. “Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”

Musk, who is known to be vindictive toward his personal detractors, said he was not penalizing Ye for posting an unflattering picture of him. “This is fine,” Musk posted

Musk did not comment on Ye’s Infowars appearance, which captivated news consumers as information about it was shared widely in real time Thursday afternoon. Ye’s appearance on the show, which came a week after he dined with former President Donald Trump and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, drew sharp criticism from Jewish leaders, hate watchdogs and others alarmed by his sustained and mostly unchallenged praise for Hitler.

“There is nothing to like about Nazis or Hitler, the architect of the mass murder of 6 million Jews,” the Jewish Federations of North America tweeted in a statement. “Unfortunately, Ye’s latest comments continue to amplify antisemitism and hatred, the breeding grounds for physical violence against the Jewish people. It’s time for those with big platforms who give him a stage to realize they are complicit.”

“Conservatives who have mistakenly indulged Kanye West must make it clear that he is a pariah,” leaders of the Republican Jewish Coalition said in a statement that alluded to but did not name Trump. “Enough is enough.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted that Ye’s comments “are not just vile and offensive: they put Jews in danger.” He followed up with a tweeted directed to Musk, whose behavior since acquiring Twitter in October led the ADL to call for a boycott by advertisers: “Is this someone you still want to warmly welcome back to the plat-

Amid the uproar over Ye’s Infowars appearance, an account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee deleted a tweet that had come to represent commitment by a portion of the party to far-right ideas. “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” read the tweet, which was posted Oct. 6, as West first drew criticism for unveiling a “White Lives Matter” shirt at a Paris fashion show. In the months since, Trump has launched his presidential campaign and dined with Holocaust deniers, Musk has eviscerated Twitter and Ye has leaned into antisemitism, but the tweet had remained online.

Also on Thursday, the social media platform Parler announced that Ye’s proposal to purchase it had been canceled. A spokesperson said Ye and Parler “mutually agreed” earlier this month not to move forward with the acquisition, which Ye had vowed after being suspended from Twitter. Parler is popular among conservatives whose ideas have violated Twitter’s rules, and Ye said he would preservative as a place for right-wing views. After his suspension from Twitter Thursday night, he posted to Truth Social, the platform owned by Trump, who has not posted to Twitter since Musk restored his account.

Ye’s indefinite Twitter suspension marks the first removal of a high-profile user restored by Musk as part of his vow to allow most speech on the platform. It generated criticism from free-speech absolutists on the platform and elsewhere who had believed him to share their views unconditionally.

Birthright Israel To Scale Back Again, Slashing Number Of Free Trips By Up To A Third

By Andrew Lapin

“The significant cost increases of our program mean that we will not be able to accommodate as many applicants in the coming years,” Birthright CEO Gidi Mark said in a statement provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Onward Israel, another Israel travel program for young adults, during the pandemic.

(JTA) – Birthright Israel is drasti cally cutting back on the number of free trips it plans to offer to Jewish young adults, scaling back its oper ations by up to a third, the organiza tion announced Monday.

The cuts come amid what the organization said is a mix of finan cial pressures, chiefly inflation and heightened travel expenses in a post-COVID world. It plans to make added appeals to its top donors but still expects to heavily reduce its Israel trips in 2023 to as few as 23,500 participants, down from 35,000 this year and 45,000 annually pre-pandemic.

However, Birthright’s own fund raising has not been affected. A Birthright spokesperson told JTA that the organization actually expects its funding to increase from 2022 to 2023, but that the growth won’t be enough to compensate for the rise in expenses and inflation.

The group has shown other signs lately of scaled-back operations for its free 10-day trips to Israel for Jewish young adults. Earlier this year Birthright said it would lower the maximum age of participation back to 26, after five years of allowing Jews aged 27 to 32 to enroll. The group’s leadership said at the time that the increased age limit was backfiring by convincing younger Jews to keep delaying their trips. Birthright also merged with

The program was founded in 1999 as a means of encouraging greater Israel engagement among younger generations of Jews, and studies commissioned in the two decades since have shown that Jews who participated in Birthright trips were more likely than peers who applied but did not go to marry somebody Jewish and to feel a deeper connection to Israel. One such study was released last week.

“Without a major immediate increase in fundraising, we will be hard-pressed to have the positive effect we’ve had on many individu als,” Mark said.

The Birthright Israel Foundation, its fundraising arm, is making a large appeal to donors this year for increased funding. Though it receives large portions of its esti mated $150 million annual budget from the Israeli government and large donors such as the Adelson

Family Foundation, the founda tion’s CEO, Izzy Tapoohi, said it is “a myth” that “just a few large donors” fund Birthright.

It’s been a difficult period for several of Birthright’s most stalwart funders, from various legal troubles for founder Michael Steinhardt to potential sanctions for Russian Jew ish philanthropists in the wake of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Young American Jews have also indicated in demographic studies that they feel less culturally and politically connected to Israel than previous generations, and the group IfNot Now, which aims to end American Jewish support for Israel’s occupa tion of Palestinian territories, urged a boycott and other protests of Birthright.

Israel’s recent election that pro pelled a far-right bloc into govern ment is widely seen as likely to drive a further wedge between Isra el and many young American Jews.

Birthright Israel participants visit the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, Aug. 18, 2014. (Flash90)

Before Election, Israel Approved $2.3 Million Plan To Improve Its Image Among Reform And Conservative Jews: Report

By Asaf Elia-Shalev

(JTA) — Concerned that progressive values widely held by American Jews were fueling growing skepticism about the Jewish state, the Israeli government launched an unprecedented plan to counter the trend, according to internal documents obtained by the Israeli watchdog

newsroom Shomrim.

The documents reveal a $2.3 million partnership between Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and the Reform and Conservative movements in the United States focused on pro-Israel advocacy among young and liberal American Jews.

Shomrim’s Uri Blau reported that the fate of the plan is uncertain following Israel’s recent election, which saw major gains for the far right, including a politician who has called Reform Judaism a “fake religion.”

With negotiations among political factions underway, the final shape of the country’s next government has not yet been determined, but the various scenarios on the table have made many American Jews uneasy because of the racism and homophobia espoused by some of those who were elected. Reform leaders have said Israel’s democracy is in peril.

A government that includes ultranationalists “will almost certainly lead to challenging moments in U.S.-Israel relations and will be painful for Jews worldwide who will not see the Israel they love and believe in reflected in these leaders, nor in the policies they pursue,” the Union for Reform Judaism said in a statement about the election.

Israeli’s outgoing minister of diaspora affairs, Nachman Shai, told Shomrim that while past Israeli governments have been reluctant to engage with the Reform and Conservative movements, he made it a priority of his office. He said the tensions between the two sides have to do with values.

“That’s why it was very important for the current government to emphasize values shared by both us and them, such as diversity and minority representation,” Shai said. “We want to demonstrate that we nevertheless share common values.”

The leaked documents from Shai’s ministry show that he and other Israeli officials are paying attention to evidence that American Jews have grown more critical of Israel over time.

Whoever authored the analysis in the documents blames the embrace of progressive values among U.S. Jews for rising anti-Israel currents in the community. The situation is the result of “the internalization of the progressive discourse framework among a growing number of Jews,” the documents say, according to Shomrim.

The analysis also says that American Jewish identity, unity and communal character are under threat amid changing attitudes toward Israel.

The budget for the plan is reportedly earmarked toward bringing American youth to Israel for trainings and educational trips, holding community events in the United States and other related advocacy.

The documents obtained by Shomrim make no mention of the issues that many American liberal Jews say bother them about Israel, including religious pluralism and the occupation.

“The terms ‘Palestinians,’ settlements,’ ‘Western Wall, ‘equality,’’ and ‘intermarriage,’ and a long list of topics that are at the root of the conflict with American Jewry are not in there,” Blau reported.

Leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements were interviewed by Shomrim before the election but declined to speak on the topic further after the Nov. 1 vote, which has positioned Benjamin Netanyahu to return to power with the support of the Religious Zionists political bloc.

On Tuesday, the Zionist arm of the worldwide Masorti-Conservative movement, MERCAZ Olami, released a statement suggesting that a coalition including far-right extremists could threaten the ties that the government initiative was meant to strengthen.

“It is impossible to ignore the fact that the coalition which appears to be in the making, will include politicians whose positions regarding basic elements of democracy and diversity (such as Jewish pluralism, LGBTQ and vulnerable minorities) significantly differ from the values which have guided Zionism since its inception,” read the group’s statement, which was endorsed by nearly a dozen groups associated with the Conservative movement.

It went on, “The bridges between Israel and world Jewry could be severely damaged if a step back will be taken on sensitive issues like the Egalitarian Kotel, conversion, and who is a Jew.” 

Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai speaks during the Malmo International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism - Remember ReAct, in Malmo, Sweden, Oct. 13, 2021. (Jonas Ekstromer/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

Lithuania Proposes Setting Aside Nearly $40M For Holocaust Survivors And Their Heirs

By David I. Klein

vivors and their families for the horrors they suffered during World War II and its aftermath,” the World Jewish Restitution Organization said in a statement. “We look for ward to the opportunity to review this new legislation that would con tinue the process of property resti tution and support Jewish life in Lithuania.”

amid the rise in nationalism across Eastern Europe, streets, schools and monuments have been named for Lithuanian collaborators.

(JTA) — Lithuania’s prime min ister made what one Jewish organi zation called an ”important step” by introducing legislation to allocate more than $38 million as restitution for Holocaust survivors and their heirs.

Ingrida Šimonytė introduced the bill in the Seimas, Lithuania’s leg islature, earlier this month. If passed it would nearly double the money the government had already set aside for restitution claims in a country where 90% of Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Today only 5,000 Jews remain in the country.

“Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė’s proposal is an impor tant step to providing a measure of justice to Lithuanian Holocaust sur

ignated facilitators. Schifman said about 70 people spread across 10 cohorts are currently participating. There’s also a Shabbat dinner pro gram to bring people together for informal meetings with funding available for hosts.

Participants discuss how ideas that are popular in E.A. might relate to Jewish traditions and concepts, and also brainstorm ways to popu larize the movement in the wider Jewish community, according to Schifman.

“There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit with regards to the Jewish community and sharing some of the ideas of Effective Altruism, like through giving circles at syna gogues or, during the holidays, offering charities that are effec tive,” Schifman said in an interview that took place before the Bank man-Fried scandal broke.

Asked to discuss the mood in the community following the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s company and an affiliated charity, FTX Future Fund, Schifman provided a brief

Lithuania has a checkered histo ry when it comes to reckoning with its Holocaust history. The Nazis’ Lithuanian collaborators were involved in many atrocities, includ ing the massacres at Paneriai, a present-day suburb of the capital of Vilnius, where 70,000 Jews were killed between 1941 and 1944. Lithuanian battalions also per formed guard duty and organized deportations at the Majdanek death camp in Poland and the Warsaw ghetto.

Jewish leaders objected when, in 2020, Lithuanian lawmakers con sidered a law that would have declared that neither Lithuania nor its leaders could be blamed for par ticipating in the Holocaust because the country was occupied. And

The Lithuanian government has previously acted before to compen sate Holocaust victims. Over a decade ago, the parliament passed legislation to allocate 36 million Euros, then worth about $72 mil lion, for a Good Will Foundation that funds projects to benefit the country’s Jewish population. The money was considered restitution for communal property seized from Lithuania’s Jewish community under the Nazi occupation.

” This payment represented only partial value of the properties,” the WJRO explained. However, “it provided much needed funds to support Jewish communal life in Lithuania, restored several Jewish heritage sites, and offered modest payments to needy survivors.” The new bill would allow survivors and their heirs to apply for restitution for personal property as well, according to an AFP Report, and also continue to fund the Good Will Foundation.

statement expressing continued confidence in his project.

He said, “While we’re shocked by the news and our hearts go out to all those affected, as an organiza tion EA for Jews isn’t funded by FTX Future Fund or otherwise con nected to FTX. We don’t expect our work will be impacted.”

Even if Schifman and Azari are right that their movement is robust enough to withstand the downfall of a leading evangelist, a debate remains about what impact E.A. can or should have on philanthropy itself.

Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Net work, wrote about the question with skepticism in an article published more than two years ago. He argued against “uncritically importing the values and assumptions” of effec tive altruists, whose emphasis on the “cold light of reason” struck him as detached from human nature.

In a recent interview, Spokoiny echoed similar concerns, noting that applying pure rationality to all

charitable giving would mean the end of cherished programs such as PJ Library, which supplies chil dren’s books for free to Jewish families, that may not directly save lives but do contribute to a commu nity’s culture and sense of identity.

He also worries that too strong a focus on evidence of impact would steer money away from new ideas.

“Risky, creative ideas don’t tend to emerge from rational needs assessments,” he said. “It requires a transformative vision that goes beyond that.”

But Spokoiny also sounded more open to E.A. and said that as long as it does not try to replace tradi tional modes of philanthropy, it could be a useful tool of analysis for donors.

“If donors want to apply some of E.A. principles to their work, I’d say that is a good idea,” he said. “I am still waiting to see if this will be a fad or buzzword or something that will be incorporated into the practice of philanthropy.”

Lithuania's Seimas parliament chambers as seen during a swearing-in ceremony in December 2016. (Petras Malukas/AFP via Getty Images)

Walmart Pulls $40 ‘Elegant Sunscreen Scarves’ That Were Actually Jewish Prayer Shawls For Christians

By Philissa Cramer

(JTA) — “Why wear a tallis to shul when you can wear a very real product from Walmart?”

Ilan Kogan, an Orthodox rabbinical student,

asked on TikTok late Monday.

Kogan was talking about “Elegant Sunscreen Scarves Sun Block Shawl Scarf Beach Shawl Towel Clothing Accessories for Women Judaism (Blue),” the search engine-optimized title for a product that looked a lot like a tallit, the shawl worn by Jews during morning prayers.

His post was one of several to call attention to the product listed on Walmart’s website, with reactions ranging from curiosity (“I have so many questions,” tweeted Atlantic columnist Yair Rosenberg) to outrage (from the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism). By Tuesday afternoon, Walmart had removed the item, which had

been listed for $40.99, as well as a second with a similar name from a different seller that had been available for the cut-rate price of $14.49.

“Walmart has a robust trust and safety program, which actively works to prevent items such as these from being sold on the site,” a spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “After reviewing, these items have been removed.”

Like other products that have drawn criticism from Jewish consumers — such as “Schindler’s List” leggings printed with scenes from the iconic Holocaust film — the “elegant sunscreen scarves” reflect the oddities of contemporary merchandising.

In this case, the products were sold by thirdparty vendors using Walmart’s online marketplace, where shoppers can browse up to 60 million items. Those products are not subject to the same practices as those that Walmart sells directly, and many of them have names that are more a list of keywords than an accurate description of what a customer might receive.

Additionally, the tallit for sale were not actually intended for use by Jews. The printed Bible verses on the corners and the fish imagery visible in some of the product photos are giveaways that the items are made for Messianic Jews, who pray using the trappings of Jewish tradition while also believing in the divinity of Jesus.

Messianics and others who appropriate Jewish practices, including, increasingly, right-wing Christian activists, represent a growing market for ritual items. A search for “tallit” returned 286 items on Walmart’s website on Tuesday afternoon; some were clearly marked as Messianic but many others lacked language indicating that they are not traditional Jewish ritual items.

A search on Amazon, home to the internet’s largest storefront, turns up even more results, some coming from reputable Judaica brands but many others from brands seeking to appeal to Messianics and traditional Christians.

A tallit was for sale on Walmart's website until it was removed after Jewish customers complained.

(Screenshot)

The Feminist Hanukkah Story I Didn’t Know I Needed

I had never heard of a biblical Jewish woman who wasn't defined by her marriage and children — until I learned about Judith.

By Ora Damelin

there are the tragic romantic dam sels, the ready-for-soap-opera play ers: Rachel, Leah and Bathsheba. Silent sufferers who survive humil iation, poverty and assault with grace — like Tamar, Ruth and Esther — are credited with saving Jewish continuity and tradition. But supporting figures who speak their minds, women like Miriam and Michal, often pay for their unruli ness, their misdeeds defined in the eternal text as a warning for genera tions to come.

And then there’s Judith.

This story was originally pub lished on HeyAlma.

Most of the women in the Bible fall into a few distinct categories. There are the wise wives and moth ers like Sarah, Rebecca and Yoch eved, required to make hard deci sions to protect their children. Then

Most people learn about Judith in art history class from Artemisia Gentileschi’s iconic Baroque paint ing, “Judith Beheading Holofernes” (1620). I learned about her in day school as a third grader. I must have been 8 or 9; my teacher, probably Rabbi Gold or Gordon, went over the story of Hanukkah for the ump teenth time. Greeks, Maccabees,

teensy weensy bottle of oil — I’d been there before. But then he start ed to add in new details: a tyranni cal Greek general named Holofern es, the sort of military leader who never rides out into battle but still claims his legion’s body count as a personal victory. The scale of his wickedness is rivaled only by that of his security detail. Somebody needs to kill him (and take his army down with him), but nobody can get close enough.

Enter Judith. She sweet-talks her way into his tent, plies him with cheese and wine until he passes out, lops off his head and brings it back to the Jewish resistance on a pike.

I can pinpoint the exact moment my pre-adolescent heart short-cir cuited.

Growing up in a tight-knit Ortho dox community and attending Jew ish day school, I learned a lot of stories from Tanakh, the Hebrew

bible. The ones I didn’t learn in school, I read on my own time whenever I ran out of children’s fic tion. I quickly learned that the women in these stories were not — could not be — like the outspo ken warrior-princesses of my favor ite grade-school fantasy novels. When Miriam dares to criticize Moses’ treatment of his wife, God infects her with a spiritual malady and she is forced outside of the camp, banished from the presence of God. Bathsheba does not play an active role in her relationship with King David: she neither protests when King David makes advances upon her, nor does she aid him in plotting to kill her husband. Ruth’s plan to save herself and her family from poverty hangs on the involve ment of a man. These are stories of women existing, manipulating the

rules of, and suffering through a man’s world. Either they live to support righteous men, or they need men to save them and act for them.

Judith is the exception.

In the storybook narrative fed to me as a child, she takes orders from no one but herself. She’s oddly detached from the male figures of the Hanukkah story, the Hasmoneans. There is no male military leader behind her assignation mission. Judith doesn’t have a husband; she’s a widow who never remarries. Even better, while she gains Holofernes’ trust by seductive means, she never actively seduces him. Unlike Yael, the other woman in the Jewish tradition to slay a general, the Sages do not hypersexual-

ize her in their commentary. She’s never married off to some righteous man as a reward or scolded by the midrashim for some mild infraction. She exists in her own right, independent of and unhindered by the men around her.

As an adult, I sought out Judith’s story at its source, “The Book of Judith.” In this version, Holofernes has besieged Judith’s city. Unable to watch his people die of thirst and starvation, the local leader, Uzziah, makes a public demand that God help them or he’ll surrender the city to their enemies. It is Judith who criticizes Uzziah for this dangerous ultimatum, and it is Judith, portrayed as devout yet practical, who refuses to wait for God or to let desperate men decide the fate of her city.

In her painting, Artemisia Gentileschi depicts a mixture of the two

stories, the fairytale and the ancient text. On the canvas, Judith holds down Holofernes with the help of a handmaid. Neither woman is beautiful, and neither is the murder being committed. Judith slowly saws through the general’s neck, her eyes filled with fury and determination. There is nothing gentle or modest or even heroic about her. This is a woman doing what she believes she has to do; she does not shirk her responsibility, but she also does not revel in the bloody act. Nobody showed me that picture when I was eight. If they had, I would have known that Judith was more complex and more real than the sexy warrior princesses of my favorite novels.

Already, at 8, the idea that my influence on my world was limited to my influence on the men around me, that I could never directly alter destiny by myself, was frightening. The quiet message that you cannot just be, but must become a wife and mother, instead, followed me from my elementary school classroom into an ultra-Orthodox high school where I was taught that a woman’s role was to rule through whispers and hints, to lead only in the shadows, to speak through the men

around whom her life revolves. One teacher told me that women were created in the image of God — but the version of God that did not perform open miracles, the God who preferred to let human beings believe they controlled the narrative.

And yet, still, there was Judith. Judith who takes no orders, who invades a man’s tent and walks out with his head on her pike. Judith who attacks alone, who is neither punished nor silenced. Judith, who alters the destiny of her people, my people, independently of her generation’s male heroes. Judith, who does the work of the God of open miracles, the God who splits the sea — the God who does not merely influence, but acts.

Every Hanukkah since I learned her story, I do not just commemorate the victory of the small against the mighty, the miracle of a small bottle of oil lasting for eight nights. I celebrate the human miracle of a Jewish woman defined not by her marriage or children, but by her actions alone. And I pray that even in the ultra-Orthodox community of my youth, this may cease to be a miracle during my lifetime.

Recipe: Lemon Ricotta Fritters

By Leanne Shor

This story was originally published on the Nosher.

tional sufganiyot. Sometimes our family made our own, or bought from local bakeries, but were usually left feeling kind of “meh.” They were always a bit too bread-y and heavy.

Around 10 years ago my sister enlightened us all with these perfectly crisp, round fritters. They’re so light and creamy with a hint of fresh lemon zest. The batter comes together in just five minutes, and it is as easy as making pancakes! We love to warm up some of my mom’s homemade jellies and jams for dipping.

do, make sure to store them in a paper bag for 1-2 days at room temperature.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

• 4 tsp baking powder

• 2 tsp freshly grated lemon zest

• 4 eggs

• 1/3 cup granulated sugar

• 2 cups whole milk ricotta cheese

• 2 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

• 4-6 cups canola oil, for frying

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

to thoroughly combine.

3. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and stir with a spoon until the batter just comes together, and there are no lumps of flour.

4. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can check if the oil is hot enough by placing a wooden spoon in the hot oil. If small bubbles form around the spoon immediately, the oil is hot enough. When the oil has come to temperature, use a #40 cookie scoop (2 tablespoons) to carefully scoop the batter into the hot oil, without crowding the pan.

I know that sufganiyot — jelly donuts — are traditional and beloved for Hanukkah. But I feel confident that once you try these easy and incredibly delicious ricotta fritters, you will be converted to these sweet fried treats.

And if I’m making a confession, I have actually never loved tradi-

Since these babies are at their absolute best right when they’re fresh, I like to fry them up while I make tea after the holiday meal. The wow-factor of fresh fritters is incomparable! Our guests always really love the deconstructed sufganiyot because it’s unexpected and gets people talking. I love to serve a variety of warm jellies like pomegranate, peach, and blackberry.

Note: I doubt you will have any fritters left over, but if you

• 1 cup jam or jelly (I love pomegranate, peach, and blackberry but feel free to use whatever jam you like)

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat the oil in a large pot on medium heat, until it reaches 365 degrees F.

2. In the meantime, in a large bowl combine the eggs, ricotta, sugar, and vanilla extract. Whisk to thoroughly combine. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder and lemon zest, whisk

5. Cook for about 2-3 minutes per side, until deep golden brown. Check the first fritter for doneness on the inside.

6. Use a slotted spoon or metal spider to remove the fritters and any excess oil, then transfer to paper towels to drain.

7. Dust with powdered sugar.

8. In a small pan, heat the jam or jelly until it becomes liquid, then transfer to a serving bowl. Serve immediately for best results.

When it’s time for hospice…

This Fried Filipino Delicacy Is Perfect For Hanukkah

By Abby Ricarte

relatives raving while inhaling as my mom basked in the compliments. Preparing for parties typically meant that my mom would make the filling ahead of time. Eventually, I would lose many of my weekend mornings to hours of rolling lumpia for her in front of that never-ending bowl of filling. I had no idea what was in the filling. It wasn’t until I was an adult, throwing my own parties, that I was able to pull back the curtain on the mysterious, world’s best lumpia recipe and call my mom to just ask.

1 carrot, roughly chopped 1 teaspoon of salt (plus more to taste)

1 packet spring roll pastry (found in the freezer aisle at Asian grocery stores—similar to phyllo dough)

2 Tbsp neutral oil (i.e., avocado, grapeseed, vegetable) plus about ½ cup more for shallow frying Store-bought sweet chili sauce for dipping

DIRECTIONS

To make the filling:

This story was originally published on The Nosher.

There's no question that the most delicious, comforting recipes are the simplest, especially if they come with a bushel of history and soul. My Jewish husband Miki’s grandmother (Grandma Esta) made the best brisket I’ve ever tasted. I know that these might be fighting words, but hear me out. It was complex, sweet and tender — everything that Grandma Esta embodied. I was honored that she passed down her recipe to me, but also surprised that the world’s best brisket could pretty much be made only with carrots and onions.

My own Filipina mother makes the best lumpia. Hands down. World’s best, even. Lumpia is a Filipino spring roll filled with meat (or vegetables) rolled skillfully and fried to golden perfection. My earliest food memories include platters of lumpia at family parties with

After Rosh Hashanah, when I have leftover brisket in my fridge and guests coming over, my first thought is: let’s turn this into lumpia! Lumpia is always a crowd-pleaser and easy to fry ahead and serve at room temperature. My brisket lumpia was merely a quick Filipinx/ Jewish experiment, but it tasted so wonderfully familiar. I had forgotten that my mom’s lumpia’s recipe is really mostly carrots and onions just like Grandma Esta’s brisket. As I look forward to creating my own special Jewish home with my husband, I’m comforted by these unexpected connections between his family and my own.

Note: You can find spring roll pastry for this recipe in the freezer aisle at Asian food markets. It is similar to phyllo dough, but not the same as egg roll wrappers.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground beef

2 yellow onions, roughly chopped

1. In a food processor, add walnuts, onions, and carrot. Pulse until finely minced.

2. In a large wok or sauté pan on medium high heat, heat 2 tablespoons of oil. Add vegetable mixture and saute for 2 minutes.

3. Add ground beef to the pan and combine thoroughly. Cook until beef is just about brown and there is no more red. Add salt to taste. Remove the filling from the pan and set aside to cool.

4. Roll the lumpia. Place a single pastry sheet onto a cutting board or clean counter. Point one corner towards you so that the sheet is positioned like a diamond. Add

about two teaspoons of the cooled filling to the lower triangle that is closest to you. Use your fingers to shape the filling into a log. Pull the bottom corner up and over the filling and roll tightly, tucking in the sides like a burrito.

5. Use a dab of water on your finger to seal the final edge. Repeat and roll the rest of the lumpia.

6. To a large wok or pan on medium high heat, add enough oil so that it reaches about ½ inch from the bottom of the pan. Gently heat the oil and fry the lumpia until golden brown.

Serve lumpia with a side of sweet chili sauce for dipping.

As More Israelis Choose Pure Olive Oil To Light The Hanukkah Menorah, Counterfeiters See An Opportunity

By Cnaan Liphshiz

This story was published on JTA.

burn it — in a menorah.

In a supermarket here, Ohad David made a beeline for the most expensive olive oil in the store.

He took three bottles of the award-winning Midnight Coratina brand, which goes for about $3 per ounce. It has “medium potency, green fruitiness and a green-leaf, grassy bouquet,” according to its description on the website of Ptora, the boutique olive oil factory that makes it.

But David, a 40-year-old insurance agent and father of five, did not buy the oil for its taste.

Like thousands of Orthodox Jewish consumers who buy premium olive oil ahead of Hanukkah, David purchased $160 of the stuff only to

Observant Israelis increasingly like to use olive oil in their Hanukkah candelabras instead of wax candles because of its significance in the holiday’s story. Hanukkah, which this year begins on Sunday evening, is a celebration of how the Maccabees, after defeating the Greeks, were able to light the menorah in the temple in Jerusalem for eight days with a one-day supply of oil— believed to be of the olive variety.

“Using olive oil for Hanukkah candles is not required by halacha [Jewish law], but in our communities everybody does it,” David said.

Those who follow suit want only 100% pure olive oil to use in their menorahs — and that has become more expensive in Israel over time because of tariffs on imports and the rising demand.

In response, some producers dilute their olive oil with cheaper vegetable oils without disclosing all of the ingredients and lure consumers in with lower prices. The product can still be considered kosher, but it is unacceptable for the observant Jews who want only pure olive oil in their menorahs.

“[T]he temptation to deceive customers is tremendous,” Rabbi Moshe Biegel, an expert on Israel’s kosher certification industry, wrote in a 2020 essay on the olive oil sector in Israel.

Israeli authorities perform inspections on dozens of brands each year around Hanukkah and often find oil advertised as pure to contain up to 50% canola or soy oil.

But despite fines and the naming of offenders online, the phenomenon persists.

For David and others in his community, the solution is to stick to boutique brands, no matter the cost.

“You know there’s no monkey business because to them it’s a matter of pride, so there’s a high level of transparency and trust,” David said. He discovered Ptora while visiting their facilities during a family trip to the northern Negev desert, where the factory and groves are located, about 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

Like many boutique olive factories in Israel, Ptora offers tours and tastings to increase their brand recognition.

“The place is magical,” said Hani Ashkenazi, owner of the Jerusalem Olive Oil factory, about the Ptora groves. He is technically a competitor, but the two companies cooperate on some projects to leverage their respective strengths.

The olive is a national symbol tied closely to the country’s broader agricultural history — it is even depicted in the official emblem of the State of Israel. In 2019, Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture found that Israeli olive oil was on average double the price of its European counterparts, costing about 9 euros (roughly $10) in Israel per liter compared to 5 euros throughout much of the European Union. Israel employs a protectionist customs policy meant to level the playing field for local producers.

Both production and demand are rising steadily in Israel, a 2020

report from the ministry shows. About 30,000 tons of olive oil are sold in Israel annually, of which about 12,000 are imported. In comparison, the average annual production between 1990 to 2010 was 5,000 tons The average for the past decade has been 16,000 tons annually.

(For comparison, Egypt, with a land area 47 times that of Israel’s, produces about 20,000 tons of olive oil annually. Italy produces about 340,000 tons annually, and the biggest producer is Spain, providing about 1.7 million tons annually, or half of the world’s supply.)

In recent years, local producers have profited from growing demand for olive oil generally and a preference for Israeli brands specifically, said Ashkenazi, who runs her olive oil factory in the northern Negev with her partner, Moosh.

“Hanukkah is the Jewish feast of light, but it’s also the feast of the Israeli olive oil,” she said. “Each year we’re seeing an increase in sales especially ahead and during Hanukkah.”

The share of shoppers seeking it as candle fuel is unknown, but increasingly firms are buying packages of premium Israeli olive oil as a holiday gift for their employees, Ashkenazi said.

Business is going so well that Ashkenazi says she doesn’t need the protectionist taxes imposed on the imported products.

“Competition is good, the consumer should have broad choice,” she said.

This 16-Year-Old Turned Her Grandmother’s Holocaust Survival Story Into A Novel

By Julia Gergely

bookSHelF

edited for length and clarity.

New York Jewish Week: What was the process of writing the book; how did the idea begin and how did you collect your grandmother’s story?

(New York Jewish Week) — In May of 1937, 7-year-old Inge Eis inger lived in a luxurious Vienna apartment with a pantry stocked with favorite foods and a staff to keep her company. Though she had a strained relationship with her mother and an absent father, Inge, who was mostly raised by her maternal grandmother Anna, was living a charmed life.

This is the scene that opens “Running for Shelter,” a young adult novel about the Holocaust written by a young adult herself: 16-year-old Suzette Sheft, who is a junior at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. In the novel, Sheft retells her grandmother’s story of surviving the Holocaust.

Published by Amsterdam Pub lishers, which specializes in Holo caust memoirs, the book is a deli cate and powerful reminder of the importance of recording one’s fam ily history. It’s a lesson Sheft learned too early in life: Her father, Peter, died of pancreatic cancer when Sheft was just 13 and she soon realized she was forgetting all the stories he told her about his childhood.

“I fantasized about rewinding time, so I could go back and record my favorite stories about his child hood,” Sheft writes in an author’s note. “I wished I had taken the time to write these stories down when I had the chance, because his death allowed me to understand the vital ity of preserving the stories of our loved ones before it is too late.”

The story of his mother, her grandmother Monique Sheft, who was once the Viennese school girl

Inge Eisinger.

In pre-war Austria, Eisinger had been living a completely assimilat ed life — so much so that her par ents never even told her that she was Jewish. Following the Nazi takeover of Austria, her mother managed to whisk the two of them away to Switzerland, then Paris, but soon abandoned her. After a twist ing and tragic story, Eisinger even tually reunited with her grandmoth er and moved to a village in Central France to wait out the war, chang ing her name to the more French “Monique.”

Sheft’s novel ends in 1946, when the two are on the boat to New York after the war and Eisinger’s grand mother reveals to her that she and her family are actually Jewish.

In spite of this — or perhaps because of it — Sheft, who lives in Manhattan with her mom, her twin brother and two dogs, is very com mitted to her Jewish identity. “Although my grandmother never really practiced Judaism, my dad was very involved in the Jewish world,” she said. “He was very pas sionate about Jewish causes and just Judaism, in general. So I felt very connected to the Jewish world because of him.”

The New York Jewish Week talk ed with Sheft about what the book means to her, why its subject matter is important and what she learned in the process of putting it together. (At the time of his death, Peter Sheft was a member of the board of directors of 70 Faces Media, the New York Jewish Week’s parent organization.)

This interview has been lightly

Suzette Sheft: I had heard a lot of my grandmother’s stories from my dad. I always had an interest in the Holocaust — I would go to Holo caust museums in every city I vis ited, and I almost exclusively read books about World War II and the Holocaust growing up. So I kind of knew in the back of my head that I wanted to do something like this, but [my father’s death] sparked and ignited the necessity of doing it as soon as possible.

As for the process, a few sum mers ago I spent a week with my grandmother, interviewing her every day about her escape from Austria to France. At first, she shared physical elements of her life, like her apartment and her fam ily dynamics and her school life, but then she began to talk to me about the time leading up to the war — the years before the Germans invaded Austria. As she spoke, I recorded everything she said in bul let point form and I would periodi cally stop and ask for more detail. The next day, at the beginning of the conversation, I would recap what we had talked about, and then allow her to elaborate or clarify the story.

Later, I wanted to widen my per spective and uncover other stories and details that she may have for gotten, so I watched an interview she did with the USC Shoah Foun dation. This was really helpful because there were some details that she had forgotten or that she had left out.

Even though the book is about your grandmother’s life, you wrote it as fiction. How much of the story came from your grandmother’s details, and how much did you have to research or create on your own?

Every event that happens is true, and everything actually happened to her, but there are some small details that I embellished. For me, it was really helpful because, while I love creativity and writing, I some times struggle to pick an idea. So, the fact that she had all these little

stories, and I could expand from those, was something I loved while writing this. I had to use fiction when describing the atmosphere of certain places and also to write the dialogue because I can’t know exactly what they said or how they said it.

Do you have a favorite story your grandma told you that you made sure to get in the book?

Inge goes to a boarding school [in France] with her host family and there the children play a game where they pick someone to be the “torturer,” who is usually whoever they think the ugliest person is. My grandma had red hair and green eyes, and I guess she wasn’t the traditional standard of beauty. They picked her to be the torturer and she would have to pull people’s hair and scratch them. There would also be a queen, who was usually the prettiest girl with blond hair and blue eyes, and she would be pro tected. I thought it was interesting because to me it was the children’s way of understanding what was going on in the world around them. It’s a bit complicated, but when she told me this story I was completely shocked. It was really fascinating.

For people your age, why do you think Holocaust education is still relevant and important?

Some people my age doesn’t know anything about the Holo caust. I recently came across a sta tistic that talked about how little Gen Z knew about the Holocaust. There’s also been a spike in anti semitism and a decrease in aware ness of history. For example, with Kanye West, who has a lot of fol lowers, saying antisemitic remarks, a lot of people are going to just go along with what he says. There’s also just been a lot of hate crimes towards Jewish people, especially during COVID.

Lastly, the number of living Holocaust survivors is diminishing by the day. Gen Z is the last genera tion probably that is ever going to have the ability and the opportunity to speak with Holocaust survivors before they’re all gone. It’s impor tant that we share this book now and then we educate people now before it’s too late.

Suzette Sheft and her grandmother, Monique Sheft. Earlier this month, Sheft released a novel about her grandmother's story escaping from Austria to France during the Holocaust. (Courtesy)

SPortS

All The Jewish Players And Storylines To Watch In The 2022 World Cup

By Jacob Gurvis

(JTA) — It’s a World Cup like no other in recent memory — that started in late November.

That’s because it’ll take place in Qatar, where temperatures won’t usually fall under 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

The headlines going in are focused on the country’s widely-criticized

human rights record. The preparations for the first World Cup hosted in the Arab world have taken years to complete, have cost more than $200 billion and, according to human rights organizations, have led to the deaths of thousands of migrant workers.

Qatar also has no diplomatic

relations with Israel, leaving Israeli fans in a tense situation — more on that below.

But beneath these headlines, there are other Jewish angles to the world’s biggest sports spectacle. Let’s dive in.

The US has 2 Jewish players Jewish professional men’s soccer players from the United States who compete on the world stage are a rare phenomenon. But this year, the U.S. men’s national team has two on its roster — including the likely starting goalie.

Matt Turner, a 28-year-old New Jersey native who didn’t seriously begin playing soccer until he was 14, struggled to prove himself through high school, college and through the start of his professional career. After going undrafted in Major League Soccer, Turner joined the New England Revolution in 2016 and finally in 2020 ascended to the upper eche-

lon of the sport’s goalkeepers. He’s now the backup keeper for Arsenal F.C., one of the top clubs in England’s Premier League.

Turner’s father is Jewish and his mother is Catholic, but he identifies more with the Jewish tradition, according to a profile in The Athletic. Turner’s great-grandparents fled Europe during World War II because they were Jewish, he explained on soccer journalist Grant Wahl’s podcast, and he obtained Lithuanian citizenship in 2020.

Turner’s teammates on defense include DeAndre Yedlin, a Seattle native who was raised Jewish but has said he practices Buddhism. Yedlin has a large Hebrew tattoo on his right shoulder in honor of his great-grandparents.

Yedlin, who is of African-American, Native American and Latvian heritage, is in his first year of a four-year contract with the MLS team Inter Miami after spending five seasons with the Premier League’s Newcastle United. He is the only player on the U.S. roster with World Cup experience; he served a bench role in 2014.

While Yedlin’s playing time this

From left to right: Matt Turner, Andres Cantor, DeAndre Yedlin (Getty Images/Design by Grace Yagel) See

Matt Turner, left, and DeAndre Yedlin are both on the U.S. men’s national team. (Getty Images)

year may not be much different, his off-field presence is seen as an asset.

“He’s a glue guy,” said USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter. “He’s there for the team, he creates atmosphere for the team. Sometimes he’s a shoulder to cry on or to talk to. Other times he’s a motivator.”

(A third member of the U.S. team, forward Brenden Aaronson, is not Jewish, but has occasionally elicited questions about his back ground due to his Ashkenazi-sound ing surname.)

many AFC member countries began to boycott playing Israel over time.

In 1958, Israel won its World Cup qualifying group without play ing a single opponent due to pro tests. In 1974, the AFC expelled Israel from the confederation in a 17-13 vote organized by Kuwait.

Israel would wander the soccer desert for two decades before secur ing full membership in the Union of European Football Association. Israel remains the only UEFA mem ber without any territory in Europe.

That membership brings tough competition: Israel is in the same conference as soccer powerhouses like Spain, France and Italy. In the 2022 qualifiers, Israel was grouped with Denmark, also a perennially top-tier team.

Despite the tough competition and frequent antisemitism Jewish and Israeli players face across Europe, the Israeli Football Asso ciation is content where it is.

Israeli diplomats will also be per mitted to offer support to Israelis during the World Cup — which will be crucial since Qatar, which is part of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, has a very limited Jewish communal presence. Chap ters of the Chabad-Lubavitch move ment normally help Jewish tourists procure kosher food and offer other support, but the closest Chabad center in the region is in the United

Arab Emirates.

And while as many as 20,000 Israelis could make the trip, the Israeli government is still urging them to be careful.

“The Iranian team will be in the World Cup and we estimate that tens of thousands fans will follow it, and there will be other fans from Gulf countries that we don’t have diplomatic relationship with,” a senior Israeli diplomat warned fans as part of a Foreign Ministry cam paign. “Downplay your Israeli pres ence and Israeli identity for the sake of your personal security.”

RELATED: Check out the Jewish Sport Report’s Soccer Spotlight video series, hosted by former pro fessional soccer player Ethan Zohn. The first episode, with Major League Soccer VP Jeff Agoos, is out now.

A pair of Jewish Telemundo announcers are back

Telemundo’s coverage of the tournament, as it has for years, will feature plenty of “goooaaaaaals.”

That’s because it will include sixtime Emmy award-winner Andres Cantor, the Argentine-Jewish announc er who perhaps is most responsible for popularizing long goal calls in the English-speaking world.

“We prefer our clubs and nation al teams playing at the European level,” Shlomi Barzel, a spokesman for the IFA, told the Jewish Tele graphic Agency in 2018. “We find a warm, welcoming and challenging home in Europe.”

Israelis normally aren’t allowed into Qatar, but this World Cup is an exception

Israelis normally aren’t allowed into Qatar, and direct flights from Israel aren’t allowed into the Mus lim-majority country. But for the World Cup, Qatar announced it would allow direct flights from Tel Aviv to its capital Doha for Israeli fans, and depending on Israeli gov ernment approval, for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well.

The Israeli national soccer team lines up during the national anthem before the start of a match against Australia in Mexico City, May 25, 1970. (Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

He will be joined by one of his mentees, two-time Emmy nominee Sammy Sadovnik, who has been with Telemundo since 2007 and covered sports since 1989. He’s a proud Jew from Peru who visits Israel every year.

Israel isn’t in the tournament and hasn’t qualified since 1970 Israel’s first and only appearance in the World Cup was in 1970. That half-century hiatus is not due to a lack of talent.

Israel was one of the founding members of the Asian Football Confederation, joining in 1954, and would enjoy international success culminating in winning the 1964 AFC Cup. But Israel’s success was overshadowed by geopolitics —

Andres Cantor arrives at the Telemundo and NBC Universal Latin America Red Carpet Event in Miami Beach, Fla., Jan. 16, 2018.

(Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images)

Nelson Cruz And Other Hispanic MLB Players Visit Israel To Promote Christian-Jewish Relations

By Hillel Kuttler

ly considered running after them for a photo herself.

“I wish I’d known who they were,” she said.

Raanana.

TEL AVIV (JTA) — On a recent Monday, the owner of a restaurant here captivated a group of 14 lunch patrons with stories of her life before and after moving to Israel from Ethiopia as a youngster. A family visiting from New York approached from another table, and the adult son asked if he could pose for pictures with some of the mem bers of the big group.

After the group had left to walk to the shore nearby, the restaurant’s owner learned that she had just hosted a group of professional ath letes and their entourage. She brief

The athletes — Nelson Cruz, Cesar Hernandez and Jeimer Can delario, all Major League Base ball players in the United States — were surprised by what they learned at lunch, too. For instance, they had not known of the exis tence of Black Jews, including the thousands of Ethiopians living in Israel.

The players and their significant others were brought to Israel for a week by the Philos Project, a U.S.based nonprofit organization that promotes Christian relations with Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. It was the organization’s first delegation to Israel involving Hispanic athletes, said Jesse Rojo, the Philos Project’s director of His panic affairs. The group toured Christian sites in Jerusalem and the Galilee and ran a baseball clinic for Jewish and non-Jewish youth in

The visit also aimed to “proac tively” combat antisemitism, Rojo said, “to show our baseball players that they can make a difference, not wait for someone to come out with an antisemitic tweet to do some thing.” The trip was organized well in advance of the recent antisemi tism controversies involving Amer ican celebrities such as rapper Kanye West and NBA star Kyrie Irving.

But the players also expressed eagerness to learn about Israel and to impart their experiences upon returning to their homelands of the Dominican Republic and Venezuela — and to MLB clubhouses.

Cruz, from the Dominican Republic, is 39th on the MLB’s alltime home run list with 459. He hit only 10 homers this year and is 42 years old, but he said he’s hopeful a team will sign him to a contract for 2023. Hernandez, a second base man who is also now a free agent, hails from Venezuela and is a for

mer Gold Glove winner, earned for being named the best defender at his position in the American League. Candelario, born in New York but raised in the Dominican Republic, is also looking for a new team after playing six seasons at third base for the Detroit Tigers. Cruz and Her nandez played together on the Washington Nationals this past sea son.

On a minibus, before it set out for a day of touring, Cruz led a prayer of gratitude as everyone along for the ride bowed their heads. Members of the group uttered “amen” responses through out. In Jaffa, Candelario expressed excitement at learning that the Bible’s Jonah had departed by ship from the ancient city’s port before being swallowed by a huge fish. At lunch, Candelario led the table in grace.

In separate interviews, each of

From left, Jeimer Candelario, Nelson Cruz and Cesar Hernandez pose for a photo at a baseball field in Raanana, Israel. (Nico Andre' Duran)

the three visiting players said he had never heard anti-Jewish or antiIsrael views expressed by relatives, friends or acquaintances. Most of their compatriots, they said, think that Israel is constantly under enemy attack, a view they added was dispelled by their experience traveling around the country and feeling safe.

All attributed pro-Israel inclina tions to their strong Christian beliefs, including regularly attend ing church services. They cited their mothers as devout women who raised them with Bible stories.

“We love God and the word of God. This is the land of our fathers,” said Candelario. “Whoever blesses Israel will be blessed,” he said, paraphrasing God’s promise to Abraham.

Rojo is organizing a charity soft ball game in the Dominican Repub lic between Dominican and JewishAmerican MLB players in the coastal town of Susua — which was founded by refugees of Nazism who established still-operating dairy and sliced-meat factories. Funds raised through the event will pay to renovate both a baseball field and the town’s synagogue and to commemorate the Jewish immi grants’ roles in Susua’s history, Rojo said.

Cruz is trying to recruit fellow Dominican players to come on sub sequent Israel trips and to play in

next year’s Susua event. Superstar outfielder Juan Soto, Cruz’s former teammate on the Washington Nationals, considered participating in the recent delegation, but he reversed course after being traded mid-season to San Diego, Cruz said. Cruz also hopes to persuade the retired legends Albert Pujols and Manny Ramirez to come to Israel, too.

Back home, “we’ll share this experience, and definitely more players will be motivated to come,” Cruz said.

“Anyone who’s an opinion-mak er from such countries helps us,” said Jonathan Peled, the Israeli for eign ministry’s deputy director gen eral for Latin America. “They become ambassadors of good [will]. Whether a pastor, an athlete, a per former, a YouTuber – on every visit to Israel, there’s nothing like first hand observation to see Israel in a more balanced, positive manner and less distorted.”

Peled said. “But we hope that [ties] will be renewed soon,” he said.

Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Israel, coincidental ly, will be competing (along with Puerto Rico and Nicaragua) in the same group at the upcoming World Baseball Classic, to be held in Miami in March. The teams will feature large contingents of major leaguers, with Israel’s ros ter consisting mainly of American Jews.

Baseball is not a top sport in Israel, but Team Israel’s periodic success on the world stage has helped promote the game. The Raanana site — dedicated in memory of Massachusetts native Ezra Schwartz, who was killed in a 2019 terrorist attack in Israel — is one of only a handful of base ball fields in the country. Other notable ones are at Kibbutz Gezer, in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park, and at the Baptist Village complex in Petach Tikvah.

At the group lunch, Hernandez said that he “would live here” in Israel in the off-season if he could obtain a visa. He was asked wheth er he meant it.

Israel enjoys good relations throughout Latin America, with Venezuela an exception after it broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in 2009,

“Yeah, because it’s the Jesus country,” Hernandez said. “I asked my wife, and she said yes.”

Sitting beside him at the restau rant, Gabriela Hernandez nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “because of the significance it has for us.”

Jeimer Candelario, a third baseman for the Detroit Tigers, interacts with children at the Raanana field. (Nico Andre’ Duran)

A Holocaust Survivor And Her Family Saw

‘Leopoldstadt.’ The Broadway Play

Told Their

By Julia Gergely

(New York Jewish Week) — On a Wednesday evening last month, three generations of a Jewish fami ly made their way to their seats at the Longacre Theater to see “Leop oldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic Broadway play about the tragedies that befall an extended Jewish fam ily in the first half of the 20th cen tury in Vienna.

The date of the family gathering was a significant one: Nov. 9, the 84th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms known as Kristallnacht. And in the audience was Fini Kon stat, 95, who lived in the once thriv ing Jewish neighborhood after which the play is named, and wit nessed the horrors it portrays firsthand. Alongside her were her daughter and her son-in-law, Renee and James Akers, and her oldest great-grandchild, Lexi Levin, 23.

When Konstat was a child, she lived in a “nice apartment” in Leo poldstadt. But exactly 84 years to the day of their theater date, “I was running with my father, seeing all the Jewish stores with all their win dows broken,” she told Levin in a short video her great-granddaughter filmed before the curtain rose.

“It’s such a blessing for me to be here with you,” Levin said to her great-grandmother in response. “Ninety-five years old, survived the Holocaust and a pandemic, at a Broadway show in New York City.”

Story.

way run in mid-September, “Leop oldstadt,” with its depiction of a prosperous Viennese family on the brink of destruction, has moved audiences to tears and inspired deep reflections on the Holocaust. Based on the celebrated playwright’s own family history — of which he was barely aware while growing up in England — it has provided a stark counterpoint to news about rising antisemitism and the celebrities who have been purveying it.

But for Konstat, the play was much more personal. “When I heard the word ‘Leopoldstadt,’ this alone gave me lots of thrills and memo ries,” Konstat, who is known in her family as Mimi, told the New York Jewish Week in accented English. She recalled how Levin, who recently moved to the city, invited her to fly to New York to see one of Broadway’s hottest tickets.

“Leopoldstadt,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “The second dis trict. That’s where we lived.”

Since the beginning of its Broad

At the end of Stoppard’s five-act play, audiences learn that most of the Jewish characters had perished under the Nazis — of the four gen erations in the show, just three cousins survive to carry on the fam ily’s legacy.

For Konstat too, she and her par ents were among the very few in their extended family to survive the Holocaust. “Almost all of them went to Auschwitz or other camps,” Konstat said. “My mother was a twin and only the twins remained alive. [My mother’s] five other sib lings and my grandmother per ished.”

In a Zoom conversation held over Thanksgiving weekend, Kon stat, surrounded by two of her daughters, two of her granddaugh

Left: Fini as a child on the balcony of her apartment in Leopoldstadt. Right: Fini with her three children in front of the very same building, pictured in 2015. (Courtesy)

L-R: Renee Akers, James Akers, Lexi Levin and Fini Konstat at the Longacre Theater to see Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt on Broadway,’ Nov. 9, 2022. (Courtesy)

Left: Fini Konstat and her mother, Anny Vogel, in Vienna in the 1930s. Right: Fini, bottom left, with her daughter, sonin-law and great-granddaugther on their recent trip to New York City. (Courtesy)

CHINA BEFORE COMMUNISM

“Shen Yun is a transformative experience for body, soul, heart, and mind.

This is the wisdom of all the ancient lineages.”

—Douglas Beechwood, media producer

“I am so blessed to watch it. I felt a very strong, beautiful energy.”

—Paige McNamara, dancer

“I feel elevated, I feel like I’m in a better mood. You can be immersed in love and compassion here, so come see it.”

—Taiya Himebauch, therapist

LEOPOLDSTADT

Continued from Page 24

ters and three of her great-granddaughters, shared what the play meant to her — and how her family has restored what she lost.

In the months after Kristallnacht in 1938, Konstat and her parents hid in a neighbor’s apartment; Konstat recalls hiding under the duvet when German soldiers showed up. Eventually the family fled to Turkey, and then to India, before settling down in Mexico City. There, the teenage Fini met her husband David, also a survivor who escaped Poland. The two of them began to write the rest of their story — starting with the birth of the first of their three children in 1948.

Pictured here on their 40th anniversary, Fini and her husband David met in Mexico City after both had fled Europe. They were married 54 years before David died in 2001. (Courtesy)

such an amazing multi-generational family has come to fruition, it feels miraculous.”

Reviews of the show have ranged from rhapsodic to resistant, with some critics suggesting the play is simplistic and obvious in its storytelling or that it is less a well-crafted play than a well-meaning lesson on the Holocaust.

Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Fini and David Konstat were open about their experiences during the war, instilling a sense of pride and duty to remember in their children — something that eventually extended to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“They were proud to speak about how they survived this,” said the Konstats’ middle child, Renee Konstat Akers. “Their life was an odyssey. They had the courage to do things that you would never think were possible. We grew up grateful knowing how our family survived in that incredible way.”

Each child moved to different places as they grew up and got married. Manuel, the oldest, stayed in Mexico. Renee married an American and moved to the Midwest, and Denise, the youngest, to Houston. Each became deeply involved in their Jewish communities, sending their children (Konstat’s grandchildren) to Jewish day schools, celebrating Jewish holidays and participating in synagogue life.

“The word ‘miracle’ really does not feel like an understatement in this scenario,” said Sherry Levin, one of Konstat’s grandchildren. “When we think about what it took for my grandmother and grandfather to survive and how they were able to intersect in Mexico, and

But just as the Merz family clashes and argues about everything from antisemitism to intermarriage to socialism in “Leopoldstadt,” each generation of the Konstat family that saw “Leopoldstadt” that night came away with something different — a reaction influenced by their age, their Jewish identity, their nationality and their relationship with their family.

For Konstat, the arc of “Leopoldstadt” was so familiar that it hardly stirred her. “It was just very happy watching it and enjoying it and enjoying my children with me, “ she told the New York Jewish Week. “I didn’t think about anybody else.”

Akers, too, felt an intense familiarity with the story, and, perhaps toughened by her own family history, didn’t experience an intense emotional reaction. Her own parents’ lives gave Akers a sense of purpose in her life — for example, in the 1990s, she was passionate about helping resettle Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union. With her own children, she instilled in them a strong sense of Jewish purpose in their work, their education and their family.

“I was a sandwich in between seeing my mother and my granddaughter,” she said of her “Leopoldstadt” experience. “I was emotional thinking of my mom who went through it, but I was more emotional about seeing my granddaughter be so moved. It really hit her at her core.”

Indeed, it was the youngest member of the family present that night

Pictured on her 90th birthday in 2017, Fini Konstat now has three children, ten grandchildren and twenty greatgrandchildren. (Courtesy)

who was most shaken by the play.

“It really felt like a gift to my family and to me, specifically, to be able to see what Mimi’s life looked like before the war,” Lexi Levin said, surmising that, as a fourth-generation survivor, she is among the first in her family to be able to start processing the loss on a grander scale.

“For the first time in my life, I really felt the magnitude of her loss,” she added. “I’ve known her story and I’ve been inspired by her story to be involved with my own Jewish causes, but I have never been able to access and truly empathize with her grief and what it meant that she lost the entire family she had before this one that she created.”

Turning to her great-grandmother, as if trying to make her understand the exact precision of the show, Levin explained, “It’s a play about generations and the family was large and then it was small.”

“You made it large again,” she said, referring to the generations of family that had assembled — in the Broadway theater and again over Thanksgiving weekend. “Look at this room.”

There was a coda for the family after the curtain went down. The day after the show, the family wanted to see the 1907 “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” one of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings, which currently hangs at the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. A version of the portrait’s true story — how a painting of a socialite from a prominent Viennese Jewish family was looted by the Nazis and the family’s efforts to get it back — features in the plot of “Leopoldstadt.”

The gallery, however, was closed on the only day the family could visit. After a call to the management at the gallery, which showcases the German and Austrian art

collections of Jewish philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, the gallery’s director arranged a private tour.

“It felt like we were in a puzzle and everything was finally coming together,” said Akers. “It was an emotional, emotional time.”

When the week was over and the emotions were spent, Konstat and the Akers returned home with a reignited passion for their family story. But there was yet another twist: In addition to the whirlwind trip Levin planned for her grandparents and for Mimi, she had been undergoing the laborious process of applying for Austrian citizenship. Six members in Konstat’s large family have undertaken the process over the last two years.

“Part of the motivation was knowing Mimi’s story, and knowing that she survived because her mother had citizenship in Turkey,” Levin said. “That story was just inspirational to me, knowing that dual citizenship was what saved our family.” She convinced her brother and mother to apply for Austrian citizenship as well.

The day after her grandmother and great-grandmother left New York, Levin called them with news from her small apartment in Manhattan: An Austrian passport had arrived in the mail. The curtain was rising on another act.

Konstat was surprised at how interested her family was in getting Austrian citizenship. “I feel very good,” she said. “I’m very happy.”

“Does it make you emotional?” Levin asked her during the Zoom call with the New York Jewish Week.

“It does — of course it does. I used to love Austria,” she said. “I was sad to leave. I was disappointed. We never thought of coming back. I was happy to be able to escape. Thank God, we made it out of hell.”

Charlie Kerner

Happy Chanukah to my friends and supporters in the Jewish Community. It has been an honor to serve as your judge for over 25 years, and I sincerely appreciate your prayers, and your support.

Judge Ethel Simms Julien

Civil District Court Division N

Best Wishes to my many Jewish friends and constituents for a happy Chanukah

Justice of the Peace Jefferson Parish 3rd Justice Court

Happy Chanukah to all my friends in the Jewish Community. Thank you for your continued support.

Harrison Ford Will Fight Nazis Again In Forthcoming ‘Indiana Jones’ Sequel

By Andrew Lapin

canonically Jewish, Jones is known for staring down antisemites over Biblical artifacts in the first and third entries in the series, making him something of a Jewish folk hero.

(JTA) – Indy’s going to sock it to the Third Reich once more.

The fifth movie in the Indiana Jones series will plop Harrison Ford’s heroic archaeologist into “a castle swarming with Nazis” in the year 1944, according to new plot details revealed in Empire Maga zine this week. Digital de-aging technology will be used to make Ford appear young again for the opening sequence before the film transitions to the year 1969.

Leaked set photos had previously hinted that Nazis would be involved in the story to some degree, but the full details were not known. The image of Indy fighting Nazis with his bare fists became an iconic part of series lore after its first entry, 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but the most recent go-around, 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” was set in the 1950s and swapped Nazi villains for Soviets.

Although the character is not

In the universe of the series, Hit ler’s army has been subjected to cosmic punishments for attempting to exploit holy items, implying the existence of a Hebrew Almighty: “Raiders” depicts a gang of Nazis getting their faces melted off by a divine presence after they pry open the Ark of the Covenant, while 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” ends with a Nazi crum bling to dust after he tries to drink from the Holy Grail (and also fea tures Adolf Hitler signing auto graphs at a Berlin book-burning).

Set to be released next year, the still-untitled fifth Indiana Jones movie will co-star Phoebe WallerBridge and Mads Mikkelsen, and it is the first not to be directed by Steven Spielberg. He has handed the reins to James Mangold, whose other credits include “Logan” and “Ford v. Ferrari.” Spielberg, who created the character with George Lucas and remains involved as a producer on the fifth entry, has said he based the franchise on the adven ture serials of his youth.

Another artifact of Spielberg’s childhood is currently an early Oscar favorite: “The Fabelmans,” a loose retelling of his own Jewish upbringing, is getting a wide theat rical release over Thanksgiving.

Harrison Ford and Phoebe WallerBridge are seen on the set of "Indiana Jones 5" in Sicily on October 18, 2021 in Castellammare del Golfo, Italy. (Photo by Robino Salvatore/GC Images via Getty Images)

Hereditary Cancers Aren’t Just A Women’s Problem. Jewish Men Need To Take Precautions Too.

By Larry Luxner

things that would cause a man’s nipple to discharge blood: being an avid runner, which I wasn’t; having a subtropical fungus, which I didn’t; and breast cancer,” he said. “That was a pretty big shock.”

HeAltH

which elevates the risk not only of breast cancer, but also of melanoma and prostate, ovarian and pancreatic cancer.

Ashkenazi men can carry harmful mutations of the BRCA gene, putting them at elevated risk not only of breast cancer, but also of melanoma and prostate, ovarian and pancreatic cancer. Yet there are precautions they can take to minimize their risks.

(Thomas Barwick / Getty Images)

Bill Harris, a veteran Los Angeles photojournalist, didn’t think much of it when one morning in 2012 he woke up and found a tiny blood spot on the T-shirt he’d slept in. The next morning, he found blood in the same place on his chest — and went straight to his computer.

“Online, I could find only three

Harris, then just a few weeks shy of his 61st birthday, immediately called his doctor, who ordered a mammogram and ultrasound. They confirmed a cancerous growth in his right breast. Ten days later, a biopsy came back positive. The next month Harris got a right mastectomy, followed by the removal of his left breast half a year later.

“I walked into a woman’s imaging center and had to get into a pink paper robe,” he recalled. “All the women in the waiting room were staring at me.”

Like many other Ashkenazi men, Harris never had considered that he might have been born with a harmful mutation of the BRCA gene,

“Hundreds of other mutations in the BRCA gene are just as dangerous, but they’re not specific to Ashkenazim,” said Dr. Robert Sidlow, director of the Male BRCA Genetic Risk Program at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. About 1 in 40 Ashkenazi Jews (those of Eastern European descent) carries the harmful mutation, compared to about 1 in 400 in the general population.

“The vast majority of patients I see are relatives of women who have breast or ovarian cancer and then get tested,” he said. Of BRCA mutation carriers, Sidlow added, “Most men are pretty happy to enroll in some kind of surveillance program once they get over the initial shock.”

Sidlow is on the Men’s Leadership Council at Sharsheret, the national Jewish nonprofit organization that educates the community about cancer risks and supports those with breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

Elana Silber, CEO of Sharsheret (Hebrew for “chain”), says it’s crucial that men with a family history of cancer undergo genetic counseling screening for BRCA and other hereditary cancer mutations.

Genetic testing is possible via a standard blood or saliva sample.

While Sharsheret is primarily considered a women’s organization, it has been using November — nicknamed Movember for its focus on men’s health — for an awareness campaign focused on Jewish men’s cancer risks.

“This is not only a women’s issue,” Silber said. “Family history is so important. When a man shares his family history with his doctor, he may not realize that he should mention that his mother had breast cancer or that his sister had ovarian cancer, as these are not generally ‘men’s diseases.’ They are not aware that these cancers could mean that they themselves are at increased risk for cancer and that they can pass on these mutations to the next generation – their daughters and their sons.”

Judge Sidney H. Cates, IV Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans

CANCERS

If someone discovers he (or she) is a carrier of one of the genetic mutations with elevated cancer risks — not just BRCA but also such mutations as ATM, TP53, CHEK2, and PALB2 — there are various precautions they can take for themselves and their children. They can monitor their own health more closely, they can get encour age their children to test to see if they are carriers and, for any future children, take steps to prevent the mutated genes from being passed down.

For example, couples can con ceive via in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and then test the embryos before implantation to ensure that only those unaffected by the genet ic mutation are implanted.

While most women are aware of the risks of breast cancer, men generally are not — even though the disease strikes 2,500 men in the U.S. every year and kills about 500 of them, according to Sidlow. About 1-2% of men with the BRCA1 mutation and 6-7% of men with the BRCA2 mutation will develop cancer by age 80.

“This is why we recommend periodic mammograms starting at about age 50 for men who carry a BRCA2 mutation,” Sidlow said. “We like to educate these men on how to check their chests once a month and have a clinician do a breast checkup on them once a year.”

Since the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations also make prostate can cer more likely, men with either mutation should get PSA (prostatespecific antigen) levels in their blood tested annually beginning at age 40, rather than 50, the age at which screening generally begins, Sidlow said.

Sharsheret has been promot ing the importance of learning one’s family history, genetic counseling and screening among both men and women. The 20-year-old organization also runs various peer support networks, offers financial assis tance to cancer patients, pro vides mental health counseling and guidance to patients, care givers, and their friends, and seeks to educate the broader Jewish community about cancer risks and support.

Peggy Cottrell, a certified genet ic counselor at Sharsheret, said men in general are more reluctant to get regular checkups than women.

Ashkenazi Jewish men are at elevated risk not just of breast and prostate cancer but also of pancre atic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is particularly difficult because it’s tough to detect early enough and hard to treat. The five-year sur vival rate is only 11%. About 2% of BRCA1 carriers and 4% of BRCA2 carriers will develop pan creatic cancer, Sidlow estimated.

“Usually by the time pancreas cancer is clinically detected it has already spread microscopically to the liver,” Sidlow said. “But pan creas cancer is potentially curable if caught when the tumor is extremely small.”

Even among those with elevated risks, certain behaviors can improve one’s odds, such as avoid ing obesity, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.

Harris, the California photojour nalist, is still fighting at age 71. While he overcame breast cancer 10 years ago, last year he was diagnosed with ampullary cancer, a rare disease related to his BRCA2 status that was discovered thanks to his participation in a UCLA study. Surgeons have removed his gall bladder, half his pancreas and part of his small intestine, and he has had to endure eight rounds of chemotherapy.

“I’m still working through the aftereffects of the chemo. I have to eat smaller quantities than before and take enzymes to supplement my digestive processes,” Harris said.

Meanwhile, his 37-year-old son discovered that he, too, carries the BRCA2 mutation, and he had a double prophylactic mastectomy and reconstruction at age 30 — just to be on the safe side.

“If there’s any history of breast, ovarian or prostate cancer in your family, get tested genetically so that you’re informed,” Harris advised. “Diagnoses happen way too late for men, and the danger is too big.”

This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with Sharsheret, the national Jewish breast cancer and ovarian cancer organization. This article was pro duced by JTA’s native content team. 

Judge Kern Reese Orleans Civil District Court Section L

Maureen “MO” O’Brien St. Tammany Parish Council, District

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A New Exhibit On Jewish Delis Explores The Roots And Rise Of A Uniquely American Phenomenon

By Lisa Keys

A view of the new exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, "'I'll Have What She's Having': The Jewish Deli." (Lisa Keys)

(New York Jewish Week) — It was a stupendously bad idea to arrive at the press preview for the New-York Historical Society’s new exhibit, “‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli,” on an empty stomach.

The exhibit — which originated at the Skirball Center in Los Ange les and opens in New York on Fri day, Nov. 11 — traces the mouth

watering history of the Jewish deli, beginning with the first waves of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centu ries. These new Americans created a “fusion food born of immigra tion,” according to the exhibit, adapting Eastern and Central Euro pean dishes like pastrami and knishes to meet Jewish dietary needs and serving them all under the same roof.

From there, the exhibit examines how delis evolved and, as Jews left cities for the suburbs in the mid20th century, how they spread from coast to coast. Relying on a mix of archival materials, informative pan els, interactive displays and more, “I’ll Have What She’s Having”

seems uniquely designed to make visitors crave a pastrami sandwich.

(Sadly, while a tray of babka and rugelach were laid out for the open ing, there is no actual pastrami available on site.)

It’s also, as Louise Mirrer, the president and CEO of the NewYork Historical Society said in her

kitsch,” she told me. “It has to be grounded in research, in archival research, and it has to take the Jew ish deli as a part of the American landscape — not as a Jewish niche object of rarified Jewish pleasure.”

“Because, to me, and I funda mentally believe this, the Jewish deli is a part of American culture,” she added. “And it is something that all Americans take part in, in one way or another, whether it’s through pop culture, or through actually going to the Jewish deli, or working in Jewish deli.”

opening remarks, “a trip down memory lane” for any native New Yorker.

Most of all, “I’ll Have What She’s Having” establishes the Jew ish delicatessen as a uniquely American phenomenon. Writer Lara Rabinovitch, a curator of the exhibit who has a PhD in history and Jewish studies, said there were “important caveats” before she got involved in its creation. “If we’re going to do this exhibition, it can not be grounded in nostalgia and

This Americanness is empha sized throughout the exhibit, which includes an area dedicated to Levy’s iconic “You Don’t Have to Be Jew ish to Love Levy’s Real Jewish Rye” ad campaign and explanations of how many delis added a wider array of cuisines to attract more diverse customers. There’s also a focus on the deli in pop culture, which includes costumes from the deli scenes seen on the Amazon Prime hit “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

Fascinatingly, one thing the

exhibit doesn’t do is define what a deli actually is. “We came up with it as a community, a place where people gather to eat Jewish food of one kind or another, but it’s always changing,” Rabinovich said. “I mean, we all know, in certain capacities, what a Jewish deli is. But it’s sort of like pornography — it doesn’t have a definition, but you know it when you see it.”

Case in point: This version of “I’ll Have What She’s Having” has an area dedicated to dairy restaurants — not something that most people would associate with the classic Jewish deli. (For those who keep kosher, delis and dairy restaurants must be kept as separate as the meat- and milk-based dishes that they serve.)

Other New York-centric details include an area dedicated to “Bagels Over Broadway,” examining the relationship between iconic eateries like the Carnegie Deli and Stage Delicatessen — both closed, alas — and the greater theater community. There’s also an area on delis in the outer boroughs, including Ben’s Best Kosher Delicatessen, which was a popular

gathering place for Holocaust survivors in Rego Park, Queens.

Among the compelling artifacts on display are a bottle of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda from 1930s; a meat grinder from the early 20th century for making kishke, salami and the like; and matchbooks from delis of yore.

Particularly notable is historical proof that New Yorkers did, in fact, listen to Katz’s Delicatessen’s famous slogan, “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army”: On display is a 1944 letter from Italy from Private Benjamin Segan to his fiancée in Manhattan. “I had some tasty Jewish dishes just like home,” he writes, describing how his mother had sent him a, yes, salami.

especially, there are numerous options for deli delights, from the old-school classics to newer establishments like Frankel’s in Greenpoint. I remarked to Rabinovitch that there is something slightly incongruous about standing beneath the iconic 2nd Avenue Deli sign inside a museum. Here, its Hebraic letters are viewed as an artifact; meanwhile, while it’s no longer at its original Second Avenue location, we could still go there for lunch.

“You don’t have to go that far,” she pointed out. “You can go across the street to Nathan’s hot dog cart. And that is the Jewish deli, also. It’s literally a part of the American landscape. It’s part of the New York landscape. There is a trope, ‘Oh, the deli is dying, you can’t get a pastrami sandwich anywhere.’ We believe the deli is everywhere. It’s just how you think about it.”

But I had an article to write. So I hopped on a Citi Bike, headed to midtown, and picked up a bagel that I could hold one-handed as I wrote this story.

“‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli” is on view at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, through Sunday, April 2, 2023.

Attorney St. Tammany Parish

According to the New-York Historical Society, by the 1930s, there were an estimated 3,000 delis in the city — today, only about a dozen remain. One classic survivor is Katz’s — the setting for the famous “When Harry Met Sally” scene that inspired the title of the exhibit. Third-generation owner Jake Dell told me that “food, tradition-slashnostalgia, and atmosphere,” are the reasons for his deli’s enduring appeal today.

Because, here in New York,

As much as I loved this sentiment, I’m not really a street meat kind of person. It was a sunny, unseasonably warm morning, and I had a terrible urge to blow off the rest of the day, head to Katz’s for a pastrami sandwich and spend the afternoon wandering the Lower East Side.

District

Slivovitz, A Spirit With A Cherished Jewish History, Gets Unesco World Heritage Protection

By David Klein

that the agency seeks to preserve.

It wasn’t Jews leading the charge for the hard-burning brandy, but rather Serbia, where the spirit is a mainstay, as it is across much of the Balkans, Eastern and Central Europe.

That’s where Jews first got turned onto the drink, according to Martin Votruba, a Slovak studies professor whose research included the history of slivovitz and who died in 2019.

taverns. They found special utility in slivovitz when it came to maintaining the Jewish laws around keeping kosher.

marketed to Jewish consumers, typically around Passover each spring.

Though its popularity has waned, it can still be found on some synagogue kiddush tables, and remains in the cultural memory of American Jewry.

Author Michael Chabon chose it as the spirit of choice for his hard drinking, Yiddish-speaking detective, Meyer Landsman in “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” a crime novel set in an alt-history Jewish state in Sitka, Alaska.

Slivovitz, a plum brandy traditionally associated with Passover by many Ashkenazi Jews, has been added to the United Nations’ list of items with “intangible cultural heritage.”

The decision was made at UNESCO’s conference in Morocco this week where France successfully campaigned for the inclusion of the baguette on the list, a complement to the regular tally of physical sites

“Jews would acquire this local drink after moving into European kingdoms,” Votruba told Moment magazine in 2014. “They would simply pick it up as part of the culture.”

The spirit became particularly associated with Polish Jewry in the 19th century, as Jews became prominent in the field of alcohol production and the running of inns and

Unlike wine, traditional brandy and some types of vodka, being made from plums (the root “sliva” means plum in several Slavic languages) meant that slivovitz was not subject to the same stringent rules that apply to grape-based alcoholic beverages. And unlike beer, whiskey and other types of vodka, it had no wheat or other grains, so it was acceptable for consumption on Passover. It was also relatively inexpensive.

As a result, the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity at Italy’s University of Gastronomic Sciences wrote in a primer on the drink, “the Polish Orthodox Jews adopted the plum brandy as [their] festive spirit,” which in some cases became known in Polish as Śliwowica Paschalna or literally Passover slivovitz.

When masses of Polish Jews arrived in America, they brought slivovitz with them, and it quickly became associated with the Jewish community. Today, much of the slivovitz sold in the United States is

Meanwhile, the 1990 Barry Levinson film, “Avalon,” which tells the story of a family of Polish Jewish immigrants in the United States, presents it as the drink of choice of the main character’s father in the old country.

“He never drank water. And oh, boy, could he drink! What was that stuff called he always used to drink?” one character asks. Another answers, “Slivovitz. Slivovitz. He used to call it ‘block and fall.’ You have one drink of that, you walk one block and you fall!”

Slivovitz gradually gave way to other favored spirits as Eastern European immigrants, Jewish and otherwise, assimilated in the United States. But the drink is having a bit of a nostalgic renaissance: It’s on the menu at several swanky bars in New York City, such as the Second Avenue Deli’s Second Floor Bar & Essen, which makes Jewish themed cocktails with both Manischewitz and slivovitz, as well as Kafana, a high-end Serbian restaurant in Alphabet City.

(JTA) — L’chaim! L’chaim! Živjeli!

Bottles of slivovitz, some kosher, show off the varieties available of the newly UNESCO-recognized plum brandy beloved by many Jews. (Wikipedia)

A Hasidic Jew tastes slivovitz during a 2015 pilgrimage to the grave of Tzadik Elimelech Weissblum in Poland, March 2015. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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