NYJL's 8/23 Edition with Healthy Living Section

SP

O NY T H LIG JL’S Pg EA H s. LT T O 10 H N -1 7

Shabbos Shorts: Aaron Short visits Bialystoker Synagogue on a recent Shabbos

A Q&A with Josh Rabi, founder of Brooklyn and Tel Aviv based startup Serve.Us

NY’s Orthodox Jews are moving Upstate, and some residents aren’t happy

VOL. 1, NO. 22 | AUGUST 23-29, 2017 | NEWS THAT MATTERS TO JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN THE NEW YORK CITY METROPOLITAN AREA | NYJLIFE.COM | FREE

Our Maxine Dovere speaks with Avner Avraham and Rafi Eitan about “The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann” exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

New York State Nurses Association:

40,000 RNs

Standing Strong to Protect Your Healthcare Right now, Congress is considering a bill— the Better Care Reconciliation Act—that would devastate our healthcare system, leaving 22 million people without coverage by 2026.

Older Americans could be charged five times more than younger Americans Children would be among the largest group hit by the Medicaid cuts Essential services may be eliminated, even for people with employer-based health insurance

WWW.NYSNA.ORG 2 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

STAND WITH NURSES AND FIGHT FOR QUALITY HEALTHCARE FOR ALL

Publisher’s Note News that matters to Jewish communities in the New York City metropolitan area

The Jewish Community Exercises a Robust Approach to Healthcare Though it represents a massive $3 trillion part of the U.S. economy, there is nothing more personal than healthcare. From prior to conception through death, healthcare is both deeply intimate and of enormous consequence to the wider public. It’s as unwieldy as it is manageable. Like everything, it’s how you look at it, and what you’re willing to invest—forgive the sloganeering—in being part of the solution.

Leaving policy debates aside for now—they’ve been discussed at length everywhere and I don’t want to get caught up in details—it’s important to focus on broader truths about healthcare in New York. The Empire State has opportunities and resources unlike other places, but also challenges—some unique to our city; others in common with everywhere else in America.

Consider Jewish nonprofits and hospitals and healthcare providers.

From cradle to grave, and increasingly from difficulty conceiving to lengthy palliative care, this diverse community has long prioritized collective solutions to individual needs, without diminishing or subsuming the patient or his/her family. New York’s Jewish community, active here and in Israel, has always been at the forefront of vital research and service.

But it’s not just about the mechanics of healthcare delivery. It’s also about community response to poverty, hunger and food insecurity; supplemental education services; eldercare; wider social services; and whole-family

support. Healthcare is about class, access, race, negotiating with authority, ethnicity and education—to name just a few considerations. Jewish communities, for generations, have been active in all these complicated issues—for themselves, their neighbors and the whole city.

And we don’t give up. The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty was a powerhouse in providing a wide range of social services for New Yorkers of all stripes. Knocked on its heels by a corruption scandal involving former leadership that surprised everyone (I can speak personally on this issue as I worked with this group for years), it needed to go in a different direction, to adapt. Thinking creatively about next steps, with the shadow of past troubles having receded, Met Council, as it’s called by everyone, selected a new leader in powerful Brooklyn City Councilman David Greenfield, who will be leaving elected office at the end of this calendar year to steer a new ship. David, a talented organizer and accomplished fundraiser, is ideally suited to the position.

There are other groups throughout the city and region that do similar good works, some or which you’ve heard of and some you haven’t. All of them make New York unique in its tackling of healthcare.

With over 12 million people in the metropolitan region, our sheer size and diversity pose challenges. Some cultures don’t prioritize treating mental health; some have illnesses associated with severe poverty. Some

neighborhoods don’t have easy access to fresh, healthful foods, while others waste such staples. Diagnoses of some cancers regularly happen too late in some ethnicities, while others have public service announcements encouraging regular screenings for the same disease.

Of course, addiction is an illness and scourge that troubles all communities, with public and private resources called on to combat this growing epidemic.

The myth that addiction doesn’t trouble the most observant Jewish communities is finally giving way to painful truths and honesty. Healthcare and social-service providers, schools, law enforcement, and civic and religious leaders everywhere are involved in this healing. Again, the personal is public.

Whether it be maternal care, caregiver support for aging baby boomers, eldercare, diabetes or cancer treatment, cardiac care, medical research, policy, or helping the countless professionals who run and staff healthcare facilities throughout the region, healthcare is not a specifically Jewish issue, but we’ve certainly been at the forefront of effective, progressive care.

BUSINESS Michael Tobman PUBLISHER

Andrew Holt SENIOR PUBLICATION ADVISOR

EDITORIAL Maxine Dovere NYC BUREAU CHIEF

Lucy Cohen Blatter Jenny Powers Tammy Mark CONTRIBUTORS

Marjorie Lipsky COPY EDITOR

LETTER7 DESIGN

Send tips and editorials to news@nyjlife.com. For more information on advertising and sponsored content, email sales@nyjlife.com.

CANDLE LIGHTING

Michael Tobman, Publisher

Friday, Aug. 25 Candles: 7:21 p.m.

Shabbat Ends: 8:20 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 1 Candles: 7:10 p.m.

Shabbat Ends: 8:08 p.m.

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 3

SCHUMER IN THE NEWS

New Federal Money for Health Services FUNDING FOR PROGRAMS THAT INCLUDE EARLY EDUCATION, HEALTH SCREENINGS, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH, NUTRITION, SOCIAL SERVICES AND SERVICES FOR CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES (NEW YORK, NY) — U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced Thursday $1,061,034 for Head Start programs at Delaware Opportunities, Inc., in Delaware County. The federal funding was allocated through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and will be used to support childcare services for low-income families in the Southern Tier region.

“Study after study shows that the better we prepare our young children, through programs like Head Start, the better they perform in school later in

4 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

life,” said Sen. Schumer. “This federal funding for Delaware Opportunities, Inc., will bring real results to young students in the Southern Tier by providing them with the resources they need to succeed both in and out of the classroom. I am proud to support this essential funding and I will continue to fight to see that early-childhood education remains a priority.”

“Head Start programs help our children start out strong at critical early learning stages,” said Sen. Gillibrand.

“These federal funds will help Delaware Opportunities, Inc., support important

educational programs for children and will reduce the cost of high-quality early-childhood education for some of the most vulnerable in our community.

I will always fight in the Senate to make sure that all New Yorkers have the opportunity to reach their full potential.”

“We at Delaware Opportunities have long enjoyed the strong support of Sens.

Schumer and Gillibrand for the Head Start program. They have our deepest gratitude for their help in obtaining funding for this important program.

With this funding our organization will continue providing early childhood

education and help for children and families who need it most in Delaware County,” said John Eberhard, executive director of Delaware Opportunities, Inc. Head Start provides comprehensive child-development programs for lowincome children, as well as support and services for their families. Head Start programs primarily serve children ages three and four. The comprehensive services these programs offer include early education, health screenings, social and emotional health, nutrition, social services and services for children with disabilities.

Now That’s Serve.Us!

BY STAFF

NYJL spoke with Josh Rabi about his new startup Serve.Us, Tel Aviv, Cho-Sen Island and more.

NYJL: What is Serve.Us? JR: Serve.Us is a mobile app that brings vetted staff to bars and restaurants to fill last-second shifts.

NYJL: What was the moment you realized there was a need in the marketplace for Serve.Us? JR: I used to DJ in the East Village and my pay would be a percentage of the till. When a bartender or busser wouldn’t show, I noticed I was losing cash.

This was around the same time Uber was starting and I thought, “This technology would work great in the restaurant industry.”

NYJL: As a founder, what have you found to be the biggest surprise as you work to fund and grow your idea/platform?

JR: What the word “adversity” really means. You have to live the dream, sleep the dream, feel the dream at every moment. Because if you stop believing, everyone else stops also.

NYJL: Do you think technology has had a mostly positive or negative impact on society?

JR: I guess it depends on how we define “technology.” But technology has helped us live longer and connect in new ways; anything overused usually has negative effects.

NYJL: What is your advice to people looking to launch their own business, specifically those looking for funding?

JR: Never give up—and choose something that speaks to you. You’re about to dedicate everything you’ve go to it.

NYJL: Why did you choose a team based in Tel Aviv to handle the development and maintenance of Serve.Us? JR: It kind of happened organically. My father is Israeli, so I have been visiting for years. I met our CTO Tomer on a trip I had for my previous job while giving

symposiums at WeWork on branding and strategy, and he was a perfect fit and all-around great guy. Plus having to visit Tel Aviv a few times a year is always a good reason.

NYJL: With the rise of the BDS movement and the current political climate, do you feel an antiIsrael sentiment has hurt your ability to thrive in the marketplace?

JR: I absolutely do not believe it has hurt me in the marketplace. However, I have experienced on a few different occasions where I would be talking with an advisor or an investor and I will mention that our development is done in Israel where oddly all communication stops thereafter.

NYJL: You have worked and lived in New York City, the Five Towns and Israel. Where is home for you?

JR: There’s a level of “home” in each place. The feeling I get when I touch down at Ben Gurion is hard to describe—how safe and welcome I feel. I’ve had a close relationship with New York City ever since I was a young kid helping out at my father’s warehouse in the garment district, and it never stops surprising me.

And the Five Towns, that’s just where my parents live.

Brooklyn is home.

NYJL: Which is a better food town, New York City or Tel Aviv?

JR: Hands down, Tel Aviv. It’s a natural fusion of so many different cultures brought into one. There’s a lot of soul in the food. The ingredients are just as fresh at the corner shawarma spot with 30 salads as they are at the fanciest restaurant in town—also did I mention that the corner shawarma spot has 30 salads?

The people still love the craft, and the lack of high rent hasn’t gotten in the way, as it has here in New York.

NYJL: Favorite food?

JR: Obviously depends on the mood—but there’s nothing like a pargiot shawarma at Hashamen in Jerusalem, or my favorite part of the Five Towns: ChoSen Island—best Chinese on the planet.

NYJL: Lastly, considering we are a Jewish publication, have you thought about a Kosher version or feature for Serve.Us? JR: Like mashgiachs on demand? Never thought of it—but it’s interesting.

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 5

On Aug. 11, the Eruv Association filed a lawsuit against Mahwah, with Pinkasovits as a plaintiff, claiming that the demand to take down the lechis violates residents’ civil rights.

The battle isn’t just legal. Mahwah residents, in addition to residents from the neighboring town of Upper Saddle River, have mobilized in opposition to the eruv and what— or whom—it represents. A petition opposing the eruv to “Protect the Quality of Our Community in Mahwah” has garnered 1,200 signatures. In late July, 200 Mahwah residents gathered to protest the eruv. And a new organization called Mahwah Strong, also against the eruv, has grown to comprise around 3,000 members.

Local officials aren’t speaking to the media in light of the legal proceedings. But activists say the problem is that the Eruv Association bypassed the town while putting up the eruv and broke the signage ordinance. If the Eruv Association obeyed the law, they say, there would be no problem.

“If someone puts up a garage sale sign, it gets taken down,” said Deborah Kostroun, Mahwah Strong’s spokeswoman. “We’re very diverse, and very inclusive, and we want people to come to Mahwah.

A synagogue in Airmont, N.Y., a town that has seen its haredi Orthodox But if you come to Mahwah, you do population boom in recent months as families seek larger houses at a have to abide by the ordinances of more affordable price the town.”

PHOTO BY BEN SALES Kostroun did acknowledge, however, that residents also were religious community and, while extending only a wary of how a growing haredi population might change couple of blocks over the border, has led to raucous the area’s character. She pointed to the example of debates, vandalism and a lawsuit. the nearby New York town of East Ramapo, where Residents of Mahwah, a New Jersey town southwest members of a booming haredi community were of Airmont, have complained that the eruv breaks elected to the local education board and passed deep town ordinances because supports that mark the cuts in funding for the public schools, which hardly boundary are attached to public utility polls. Others any haredi children attend. have worried that a growing haredi population will In 2015, after accusations of mismanagement, the mean a large group of residents who don’t support board of education there was placed under state services like the public school system. oversight.

“I think people are reacting out of the unknown,” “There is a concern because of what is happening said Vince Crandon, a Mahwah resident who claims one mile away, five miles away, six miles away,” the eruv was erected illegally. “People will always say Kostroun said, referring to Monsey and East Ramapo. the worst when they are left without information.”

“Mahwah has one of the 10 best schools in the state, The Vaad HaEruv, or Eruv Association, expanded and property values are tied to how good the schools an eruv in the Monsey area around the beginning of are.”

July. Much of the eruv consists of existing telephone Others have expressed their opposition in less wires, but to make it kosher, the association had to savory ways. install PVC pipes that reach from the bottom of the Beyond the abuse that Pinkasovits and his wire to the ground and are affixed to telephone poles. neighbors have endured, the PVC pipes have been The pipes, called “lechis,” act as posts for the eruv. vandalized, left cracked and broken. The online The Eruv Association pays for their upkeep. petition to “Protect the Quality of Our Community in The Eruv Association says it obtained the necessary Mahwah” was closed after 1,200 signatures because of permits from the utility company that owns the several anti-Semitic comments. One referred to the telephone poles and installed the eruv under local “satanic verses of the Talmud.” police supervision. But the township of Mahwah But Crandon said he was skeptical that any claims the poles violate an ordinance that prohibits comments left anonymously online were actually placing signs on the poles, and has threatened to issue from Mahwah residents. summonses and demand that the poles be taken down.

“It’s very sad and I wish it wouldn’t have happened,”

New York’s Orthodox Jews Are Expanding into These Towns, and Some Residents Aren’t Happy

BY BEN SALES

AIRMONT, N.Y. (JTA) — When Moshe Pinkasovits walks with his kids down the street on Saturdays in his new town, he has to watch out for drivers shouting anti-Semitic slurs.

The Pinkasovits family didn’t face this problem in the neighboring town of Monsey, a heavily haredi Orthodox enclave in New York State, near the New Jersey border. But since the family moved six months ago to Airmont, a pastoral town next door, some residents have made it clear they don’t want religious Jews around.

Pinkasovits’ neighbor, another haredi newcomer, has had eggs thrown into his yard and found his mailbox bashed in. People have leaned out of car windows and shouted “f***ing Jew” at Pinkasovits or just shrieked.

“What did we do wrong by being here?” his children ask him.

But Pinkasovits isn’t leaving. Despite the abuse, he loves living in Airmont “in my own house with my own backyard.” He hopes his non-Jewish neighbors will come to accept the new religious Jews in town.

And if they don’t? It’s only a matter of time before the Jews reach critical mass, Pinkasovits says.

“It’s going to die out,” Pinkasovits said of the antiSemitism. “People are moving here because this is how we want to live. Everyone, they’re all going to move out. Wherever you look down the street, you see ‘For Sale’ signs hanging. I don’t mind living between them, but I also don’t mind if they leave and I get more Jewish neighbors.”

Pinkasovits is part of a wave of haredi Orthodox Jews who have spread out from Monsey to the surrounding towns. The towns—green, quiet and spread out—offer the large families spacious homes at an affordable price. Like Pinkasovits, haredi Jews who have moved to the towns say they just want to live their lives in a nice place, just like their non-Jewish neighbors.

But the haredi influx has led to friction with longtime residents.

The battle has coalesced around the construction of an eruv—the artificial boundary that, according to Jewish law, allows Jews to push and carry objects outside their homes on the Sabbath and holy days.

The eruv crosses into New Jersey towns adjacent to Airmont in order to accommodate the growing

6 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

said Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, who oversees the eruv.

“It’s going to be a long way to fix the relations with all these towns. We have to fight the legal [battle] to get permission to put it up, but we have to have a good relationship with all these towns.”

Airmont doesn’t seem the place to cause a pitched ideological battle. The town of 25,000 has sloping, winding, tree-lined streets—often without marked lanes, sidewalks or much traffic. Large houses are spaced out with yards between them.

It’s a stark contrast to Monsey, which has seen an increasing number of multifamily homes built as its population has grown more than 25 percent since 2000, according to census data.

In Airmont, Jewish infrastructure already is dotting the town. Pinkasovits’ neighborhood alone has three official synagogues, plus another three or four unofficial minyans, or prayer groups, that meet in residents’ homes. One synagogue, the Congregation of Ridnik, about a 15-minute walk from Pinkasovits’ house, was erecting a fence two weeks ago as it planned to expand its sanctuary. The synagogue, attached to the back of its rabbi’s home on a residential street, is awaiting official approval for its expansion.

“Nobody is here to take away their homes,” said Moishe Berger, the congregation’s rabbi, regarding the town’s residents. “Nobody is interested in big development. Everybody wants to keep the neighborhood quiet and nice, but we need places to live.”

“For Sale” signs dot the blocks surrounding the synagogue; there are three on Pinkasovits’ culde-sac alone. They are a symbol of some haredi newcomers’ confidence that when all is said and done, demographics will overwhelm whatever fights are happening now.

“I’m not worried,” said Shalom Kass, the man whose house was egged. “They’ll be gone in a few months, I think. You know how many houses are for sale? Half my block is on the market. There won’t be that many people left to be upset.”

A PVC pipe affixed to a telephone pole in the town of Upper Saddle River, N.J.—the pipe helps form an eruv for haredi residents of the area, but non-Jews in the town object to the way the pipes were installed.

PHOTO BY BEN SALES

Shabbos Shorts: The Bialystoker Synagogue Exclusive

BY AARON SHORT

This story is the first in an occasional series about Shabbos services at city synagogues, which are a window into contemporary Jewish life in New York.

The sound is faint, but unmistakable.

If you stand at the corner of Broome and Willett streets on an early Friday evening, you can hear the wail of Williamsburg Shabbos sirens wafting over the East River.

During the next 15 minutes, a handful of Orthodox Jews trickles into the basement of Bialystoker Synagogue, a shul whose congregation has been in operation since the end of the Civil War. It is not the oldest congregation in the city, but it may be in the oldest building.

Built in 1826, its two-story structure made from Manhattan schist served a Methodist Protestant denomination. The sanctuary reportedly once housed runaway slaves in its attic as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Members of the Bialystoker congregation, Polish immigrants who worshiped in buildings on Hester Street and then Orchard Street, purchased the Willett Street property in 1905.

Bialystoker is one of five synagogues on the Lower East Side—a neighborhood once home to 70 synagogues and 350 congregations a century ago.

Nearly 550,000 Jews lived in the area.

The Lower East Side’s Jewish population has dwindled in recent decades, but the synagogue remains extraordinarily active on the weekends and in the morning hours, when commuters stop in to pray as early as 5:30 a.m.

During the summer months, the shul holds two Friday-night prayer services—one at 6:45 p.m. for people who want to eat dinner earlier, and another at sundown.

One man who said his name was Vas was just leaving the first service on a misty August evening. He lives in a co-op on Grand Street, one of four 20-story brick buildings financed by labor unions in the 1950s and home to many of Bialystoker’s congregants.

Vas recalled that one young couple in his co-op had to bring their newborn to an administrator in order to move into a two-bedroom unit.

“These were the real socialists,” Vas said. “Bernie Sanders is just a warmed-over socialist. You asked for what you needed and got only what you deserved.”

You’re far more likely to see a civil court judge than a garment worker in a service these days. The shul has five judges among its membership, although one recently retired.

Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is a Bialystoker member as well. He once declined a hardship prayer at a Saturday service days after he was arrested in January 2015 for allegedly taking $4 million in kickbacks. A state appellate court overturned his conviction last month.

Silver wasn’t at the service I attended. Neither was the shul’s rabbi, Zvi David Romm. Most of the regulars decamp to second homes in the Catskills, congregants said.

For a sleepy Friday in the middle of August, the shul drew a healthy crowd of three dozen men, mostly middle-age fathers and their teenage sons, although several attendees appeared younger than 40. Nearly everyone wore dark suits and about half wore black Borsalino felt hats.

Women typically attend morning prayers and Saturday shabbat services when the synagogue opens its striking main sanctuary for its largest crowd of the week, congregants said.

Those who attend Friday services walk down steps from the street into a low-ceilinged ground-level space crammed with prayer books and well-worn wooden benches.

The evening service lasts a crisp 45 minutes and is entirely in Hebrew, although the majority of congregants use a Hebrew-English siddur called ArtScroll Ashkenaz.

On my way out I noticed Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Shlomo Hagler, a former president of Bialystoker, who spoke briefly about the shul’s history while his two sons kept asking him what they were having for dinner. They walked out of the shul and into a warm, light rain that greeted them.

Bialystoker Shul is located at 7 Willett Street, Manhattan. For more information visit http://www. bialystoker.org/

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 7

Operation Finale: The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann

BY MAXINE DOVERE

“Operation Finale: The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann” is on exhibit at the Museum of Living Jewish Heritage at Battery Park in lower Manhattan. Avner Avraham, former Mossad agent and exhibition curator; and the Beit Hatfutsot Museum’s team, led by chief curator Dr. Orit Shaham Gover, created the premier exhibit detailing the story of the capture of Adolf Eichmann.

“Operation Finale” was the Mossad code name for the capture operation. The exhibit includes original, deeply emotional film of the Eichmann trial.

Under Avraham’s stewardship, never-before-revealed materials are displayed in order to educate the public about the Shoah—the Holocaust. Organizations and individuals involved are recognized. Some identities must remain secret. The material exhibited was gathered, with permission, from Mossad archives. The trial of Adolf Eichmann is considered a cathartic point in the history of the state of Israel and the world, exposing the realities of the Holocaust learned from the testimonies of witnesses to the “incomprehensible evil.”

Forgive me while I channel Le Carré: Our meeting was rescheduled several times.

“At this point, the funerals of my friends happen often,” the former minister of Pensioner Affairs, retired general and, oh yes, master spy—Rafi Eitan— told NYJL. At 90, he remains of sharp mind and wit, with a twinkle in his eyes and an unending supply of stories.

As age begins to settle on this hero of Israel, his movement is a bit slowed. His vision is now aided by thick lenses; his hearing, damaged by an explosion, is limited.

However, whether remembering a daylight attack on a British Mandate radar installation or the awkwardness of a meeting with a former foe at a private London club; recounting his fears and emotions surrounding the capture of Adolf Eichmann; or commenting on Jonathan Pollard, his recall is clear and filled with a volumes of details about each operation he chooses to discuss.

Eitan has had many roles in Israeli society: soldier, spy, politician, minister, political advisor, to name a few. Since his “retirement” in 1990, his business

8 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

millions of dollars in increased funding for the elderly.

After the establishment of Israel, Eitan enlisted in the Shin Bet, the Israeli equivalent of America’s FBI or Russia’s FSB, advancing to deputy chief of the operations unit. Transfer to the Mossad soon followed.

Jonathan Pollard

He went on to assume advisory positions to several prime ministers—Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Eitan then served as director of LEKEM, the Defense Ministry’s Bureau for Scientific Relations, tasked with securing Western technologies for Israel’s then-nascent defense industry.

Jonathan Pollard, considered a significant source of information, was “handled” through LEKEM. Pollard was caught, convicted and jailed for 30 years. After years of controversy and much advocacy, Pollard was pardoned by an outgoing President Obama in 2015.

During Pollard’s incarceration, Eitan was a frequent target of Pollard’s supporters.

“Demonstrations,” he said, “were of no value. They didn’t help Pollard….The activity against me stemmed from a deep lack of understanding of the situation....

In intelligence work, there are also failures.”

Rafael “Rafi” Eitan was born on Kibbutz Ein Harod in 1926.

His parents had made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) from Russia in 1923. Noach Hantman, his father, was a farmer and poet. His mother, Yehudit Volwelsky, was a social activist. Rafi is the oldest of four children.

Displayed around his pleasant but nondescript corporate headquarters True to its socialist philosophy, in an office park 25 minutes from Tel Aviv are the products of Rafi Eitan’s the kibbutz placed children in a artistic imagination and his still-steady hand: somewhat impressionist children’s house, separated from metal figures. “I am sculpturing from my childhood. Why I started I can’t their parents. tell all.”

“My mother was not happy,” he said referencing the separation.

In 1928, when his maternal grandparents arrived acumen has made him a wealthy man. Eitan’s extensive interests include agriculture, real estate from Russia and provided funds, his parents left development, oil, high-tech companies and other the kibbutz and moved to Ramat Hasharon, then an businesses in many places, including Cuba and Africa. agricultural village of 100 families. Eitan told NYJL “I’m a farmer in Cuba,” he says. “All the rest are that some 15 years ago, when he was minister of Pensioner Affairs, he received the letter his mother stories from the press.”

He does acknowledge meeting with the late Fidel had written to the secretary of the kibbutz when she left.

Castro, saying wryly, “We were not friends.”

“Dear friends,” she wrote, “I am leaving the kibbutz.

As a member of the pre-state Palmach, the elite unit of the Haganah and the precursor to the Israel I take with me only my child.” (Her husband, Rafi’s Defense Forces (IDF), Eitan was actively engaged in father, left too.) “encouraging” the British to leave. Following his years in the IDF and then in the Mossad, he retired as a The Honorable Schoolboy general. Eitan was then elected a member of Knesset At 12, Eitan was sent to agricultural school. By on the combined list of the Pensioners Party and 1940 he joined the Haganah, Israel’s fledgling military Kadima, and was appointed minister of Pensioners force, and in 1944 volunteered for the Palmach, its Affairs. elite unit. He soon became a commander.

“We wanted to achieve things,” he said.

“I was a field animal,” he told NYJL. “I was very And he did, succeeding in getting hundreds of good at understanding the geography and could learn

maps by heart.”

He took part in the Leil Hagesharim operation, and was active in the attempts to free illegal immigrants from the ships the British stopped from entering port, including the port of Atlit. During one operation, he lost almost all his hearing after a mine exploded near Yagur.

“Remember we were very few in Palestine—only about a million Jews and one million Arabs. Today we are all together about 6.5 million Jews, two million Arabs and another three million in the West Bank and Gaza,” Eitan said.

The teenage soldier rose quickly through the ranks.

“I got missions, like commander of an attack on the radar stations of the British army,” he said.

Even after the tragedy of the Holocaust, the British refused to allow Jewish immigration. He recalled the story of a ship called “Exodus,” which arrived in Haifa on July 10, 1947.

“The British decided to expel the people back to Germany. The Haganah—the Jewish government— decided to explode two radar stations, both on Mt. Carmel. I was the commander of one of these operations. We planned it on the same day the ship was to dock.”

Seventy years later, Eitan relates the details of operations as though he is reading a military report.

“It was the first daytime battle,” he recalled. “Until then, all Palmach operations had been only in the night.”

The Arabs had started bringing in regular military; a full brigade commanded by Gen. Kougia was poised against Eitan’s platoon of 100. Kougia was determined to conquer Haifa. Eitan and his platoon were the line of defense. He suggested an attack from the rear, in the middle of the day. His platoon attacked and “broke the brigade’s spirit and limited its ability.”

Haifa stayed in Jewish hands.

A serious leg wound during the 1948 War of Independence subsequently made walking difficult.

“What to do? I joined the intelligence unit. They don’t run in the fields,” he noted with a chuckle.

After the war, the now battle-hardened Eitan had to decide whether to stay in military intelligence or to go to civilian intelligence.

“I decided to join a little company called Mossad,” he said.

Almost a decade later, Eitan was a student at the London School of Economics.

“For living expenses, I got some work...for the Mossad. Of course, I was already a member.”

On assignment as liaison officer to the British intelligence service MI6, he “had dinner” with one of the heads of MI6 at the “club.” Eitan was adviser to MI6 on counterterrorism. During one meeting, a conversation about why the British left Palestine ensued.

“The Englishman said the straw that broke the camel’s back was ‘Exodus’ and the explosion of the radar station. That, he said, made the difference!

That’s when we [the British] decided to give back the mandate to the United Nations.”

Eitan, who commanded that operation, maintained his silence.

Partisans’ Song

Never say that this is the end of the road.

Wherever a drop of our blood fell, There our courage will grow anew.

This song, written in blood, was sung by a people Fighting for life and freedom.

Our triumph will come and our resounding footsteps will proclaim, “We are here!”

So never say you now go on your last way, Though darkened skies may now conceal the blue of day, Because the hour for which we’ve hungered is so near, Beneath our feet the earth shall thunder, “We are here!”

A Most-Wanted Man

Several years of investigation, planning and a bit of mazel resulted in the success of the 1960 Operation Finale—the capture and extradition from Argentina of Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

“My most important—and most historic— operation was finding Eichmann, capturing him and taking him to Israel. I was the commander of this operation....I must say, I was not excited. I was determined.”

Eitan continued, “For the first 10 years of the state, we were so busy we had no time to look for ex-Nazis.”

He confided that the intelligence services of Israel— the Mossad—had information about Eichmann in 1953. But only in 1960 did Prime Minister David BenGurion call the head of the Mossad and direct him to bring one of the ex-Nazis to be tried in Israel. BenGurion didn’t name names. He didn’t impose a time limit. He just said it was very important to bring one of the war criminals to trial.

“In 1958, we started the search,” Eitan said.

Four names were put on the table: Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy who was already dead; Heinrich Müller, the commander of the SS; the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele; and Adolf Eichmann.

“We already had some information about Eichmann,” Eitan explained.

The attorney general of West Germany, Fritz Bauer, who had escaped from the Nazis, received a letter from a German named Herman living in Buenos Aires.

Herman believed he knew Eichmann, and Herman’s daughter had friends in Buenos Aires, one of whom was named Nicholas Eichmann. Herman believed Nicholas to be the son of Adolf Eichmann.

Bauer, who was a Jew, had escaped from Germany during the Holocaust. When he returned, he was determined to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.

By 1963, as attorney general of West Germany, he began the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. Bauer secured guilty verdicts in 750 of the 789 cases he tried against Auschwitz personnel.

Attorney General Bauer, said Eitan, “did not trust the police in Germany and sent the information about Eichmann to Israel, believing the Israelis were the

only ones who could do something. We didn’t react immediately,” Eitan told NYJL. In 1959, Israeli Attorney General Haim Cohen, a German-born Israeli, made professional connections with Bauer.

“We started searching for Eichmann at the beginning of 1960,” recalled Eitan. “We found him in March of 1960.”

The preparation for Operation Finale was complex.

“At the beginning we thought to take him out by an Israeli ship.”

He noted that Israel was shipping large quantities of Argentinian kosher meat at the time. Two ships, each carrying 10,000 tons of meat, were considered.

However, an alternate plan was then formulated.

Argentina was about to celebrate 150 years of independence. After consulting with Eitan, Yisrael Ariel, head of the Mossad, went to Prime Minister Golda Meir to ask her to authorize an Israeli delegation to the celebration, which was being led by famed diplomat Abba Eban. El Al, coincidentally, was inaugurating its first turbo jet capable of crossing the Atlantic without refueling. The plan was formulated.

“We had to prepare the whole operation. The prime minister wanted to have Eichmann in Israel on the 21st of May.” Eitan noted, “When I held his head, the words of the ‘Partisans’ Song’ were ringing in my head. I remember thinking, ‘Please don’t say this is my last journey.’”

Operation Finale, said Avner Avraham, “was a complex one with many parts. The culmination was the capture and extradition of the arch Nazi, flown to Israel dressed as an El Al officer suffering from some disease.”

NYJL asked Eitan to consider what legacy he would leave. There was no hesitation in the initial part of his answer: “To make sure the state of Israel and the Jewish people remain strong.”

“The Jewish nation has a history of surviving,” declared the spymaster. “How many nations have such a complicated situation like the Jewish people?

I think that the internal ‘emunah’—faith—of the Jewish people will help both the people and the Israeli state survive. There is no doubt we are going under a revolutionary time—mainly because of communications.”

He continued, but on a darker note: “I feel that mankind is developing the ability to destroy itself.

No doubt we have enough crazy people that would be ready to make suicide together with the whole world….We are not so far from the ability to destroy the world.”

In 1982, Eitan had said he expected another hundred years of terrorism.

“As a rule, I believe that in the long race against terrorism, defense must come first. We cannot kill all of our enemies, and therefore we must defend ourselves.”

In 2017, he told NYJL that “within 50 to 100 years, we must have world government, world police, a world army that will be able to maintain law and order in every corner of the world. Without this, we are probably not going to survive.”

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 9

ISRAELI SCIENTISTS OFFER RAYS OF HOPE IN FIGHT AGAINST SKIN CANCER Jews are at higher risk than most for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

PHOTO BY DESEO/GETTY IMAGES

BY MICHELE CHABIN

JTA, JERUSALEM — The number of people being diagnosed with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, has skyrocketed over the past three decades.

And Jews are at higher risk than most.

The statistics about skin cancer are sobering. Most melanomas (and some 90 percent of nonmelanoma skin cancers) are associated with exposure to the sun’s dangerous ultraviolet rays. Each year there are more new cases of skin cancer than all the new diagnoses of breast, lung and colon cancer combined.

One in every five Americans will develop skin cancer over the course of his/her lifetime, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

That’s because the proteins produced from the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are involved in repairing damaged DNA, which helps keep cells from growing and dividing too fast. Mutations in these genes hinder DNA repair. As these defects accumulate, they can trigger cells to grow and divide uncontrollably and form cancerous tumors.

While about one in 400 people in the general population carries the BRCA mutations, among Jews the rate is one in 40—making Jews 10 times more likely to develop a BRCA mutation-related cancer.

Melanoma, while accounting for less than 1 percent of all skin cancer cases, is responsible for the majority of skin cancer deaths—approximately 10,000 Americans every year. Your risk for melanoma doubles if you have had more than five sunburns, according to a 2001 study. Although those with fair skin or a family history of skin cancer due to gene mutations are at the highest risk for melanoma, anyone—including those

10 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

with dark skin—can develop it.

For patients whose melanoma is detected early on, the five-year survival rate is about 98 percent.

But the survival rate falls precipitously if the disease has reached the lymph nodes (62 percent of those patients survive after five years) or metastasizes and spreads to other organs (18 percent), according to the American Cancer Society.

Here’s the good news: Skin cancer patients have greater reason for hope, thanks to cutting-edge melanoma research being conducted in Israel and the United States.

Just 10 years ago, Israel had one of the highest melanoma rates worldwide. But then came better education about the dangers of sun exposure and an effort to test thousands of women for BRCA mutations and alert them if they had heightened risk for the disease. That effort, funded in part by the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), has helped bring Israel’s melanoma rate down to 18th in the world.

On the research side, Israeli researcher Dr. Gabi Gerlitz of Ariel University is investigating the inner workings of melanoma cells that migrate— metastasize. When patients have cancer, 90 percent of them die from the cancerous cells’ migration to vital organs, not from the primary tumor, Gerlitz notes. The question is, how do the cells migrate?

Gerlitz and his team began by studying the DNA in the nuclei of migrating melanoma cells. They found that the DNA contracts when the cell starts to migrate, as if it were packing up tightly for a trip.

“When we look at moving cells, we see fibers called cytoskeleton that help the cells to migrate as well as to move and to reshape their nuclei,” Gerlitz said.

“We were the first to study this process. Later, others saw it happening in leukemia, colon and breast cancer

cells, suggesting it’s quite a general phenomenon.”

Once Gerlitz saw how the DNA contracts in order to migrate between other cells, he began to study how and when this contraction affects the gene. His research is being backed by the Israel Cancer Research Fund, which raises money in North America for cancer research across different Israeli institutions.

“Once we understand fully what exactly is changing in the migrating cells, we can identify targets for treating cancer patients,” he said. “If we know that a specific gene is important for migration, we can try to interfere with it.”

At Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, Dr. Cyrille Cohen, head of the tumor immunology and immunotherapy lab, is using an ICRF research grant to focus on cancer immunotherapy: how to stimulate and improve the body’s immune system to prevent or treat cancer.

“The basic principle behind this field is that our immune system is able to recognize and kill cancer cells under certain circumstances,” Cohen explained.

“We believe this happens all the time but that sometimes, due to external pressure—for example what we eat or what we’re exposed to, like sun or smoke—more cancer cells arise in the body. They acquire the means to tackle our natural defenses and the immune system fails to take care of them.”

Cohen’s laboratory specializes in studying and genetically engineering the cancer response of T-cells—cells crucial to eradicating viruses and coordinating broad immune reactions. His team has developed ways to tweak the response of those cells to make them stronger when they are exposed to cancer cells.

This approach offers a personalized approach to fighting cancer. Using a handful of patients from a National Institutes of Health clinical trial, Cohen’s team used gene sequencing to identify the number and types of mutations in each of the patients’ cancers.

Then, using a computer algorithm, they predicted which mutations would be targeted by T-cells, and they generated synthetic molecules that mimicked the mutations on the melanoma cells.

After researchers singled out the T-cells specific to those patients’ mutations, scientists found that those T-cells were able to fight the tumors when injected back into the patients. Now Cohen’s research is aimed at improving the T-cell prediction process and better understanding the requirements for an efficient immune response against cancer.

As a sign of the promise of Israeli research, the U.S.based Cancer Research Institute (CRI)—the world’s leading nonprofit dedicated to immunotherapy—is teaming up with the Israel Cancer Research Fund to jointly fund immunotherapy-related research in Israel.

Israel is known for its medical innovation, but funding is hard to come by, says Jill O’DonnellTormey, CEO of the Cancer Research Institute.

“CRI has always funded outstanding science globally. Partnering with ICRF helps ensure that we can couple CRI’s immunological expertise with ICRF’s longstanding relationships with Israeli institutions,” she said. “We hope our collaboration will attract the best scientific minds in Israel to focus on immunotherapy research.”

The Undisputed Leader in New York City Healthcare Properties

AVAILABLE PROPERTIES

PARKSIXTY MEDICAL 110 East 60th Street Between Park & Lexington Avenue Size: 4,500 – 155,000 SF +/- for lease

MAGNIFICENT PARK VIEWS 4 West 58th Street Between 5th & 6th Avenue Size: 3,974 – 18,296 SF +/- for lease

PERFECT FOR PSYCHOLOGIST 166 East 61st Street Between Lexington and 3rd Avenue Size: 508 SF +/- for sale

MAGNIFICENT TOWNHOUSE 12 East 68th Street Between Madison & 5th Avenue Size: 1,180 SF +/- for lease

CARNEGIE HILL MEDICAL 1192 Park Avenue At East 94th Street Size: 1,400 SF +/- for sale

THE BEST OF PARK 740 Park Avenue Between East 71st & East 72nd Street Size: 2,100 SF and 2,330 SF +/- for sale

72ND OFF PARK 45 East 72nd Street Between Park & Madison Avenue Size: 1,550 SF +/- for sale

RUTHERFORD PLACE MEDICAL CONDO 303-305 Second Avenue Between East 17th & East 18th Street Size: 2,170 SF +/- for sale/lease

BUILD TO SUIT 418 East 71st Street Between First & York Avenue Size: 985 – 4,735 SF +/- for lease

MURRAY HILL MEDICAL CONDO 308 East 38th Street Between First & Second Avenue Size: 516 – 1,816 SF +/- for sale

RITZ TOWER MEDICAL 111 East 57th Street At Park Avenue Size: 1,228 – 37,579 SF +/- for lease

THE DOWNTOWN MEDICAL BUILDING 156 William Street Between Ann & Beekman Street Size: 3,000 – 7,157 SF +/- for lease

FIFTH AVENUE FOR SALE/LEASE 1035 Fifth Avenue Between East 84th & East 85th Street Size: 1,275 SF +/- for sale/lease

PERFECT FOR PSYCHIATRIST 180 East 79th Street Between Lexington & Third Avenue Size: 1,220 SF +/- for sale

PRIME PARK AVENUE 791 Park Avenue At 74th Street Size: 1,300 SF +/- for sale

PRIME MEDICAL ON UPPER EAST SIDE 1035 Third Avenue Between East 61st & East 62nd Street Size: 1,120 – 8,494 SF +/- for lease

SUTTON AREA MEDICAL 333 East 57th Street Between 2nd & 1st Avenue Size: 1,200 SF +/- for sale

FABULOUS FIFTH AVENUE 800A Fifth Avenue At East 61st Street Size: 950 SF and 4,293 SF +/- for lease

CARNEGIE HILL MEDICAL 1056 Fifth Avenue Between East 86th & East 87th Street Size: 678 SF +/- for sale

FABULOUS PARK AVENUE LOCATION 700 Park Avenue Between East 69th & East 70th Street Size: 1,800 SF +/- for sale

CHARMING UWS MEDICAL OFFICE 8 West 86th Street Between Central Park West & Columbus Ave. Size: 1,200 SF +/- for lease

MEDICAL CONDO IN FORT GREENE 55 Greene Avenue At Carlton Avenue Size: 1,916 SF +/- for sale

NEW WEST SIDE DEVELOPMENT 600 West 58th Street At Eleventh Avenue Size: 18,620 – 87,717 SF +/- for lease

SUTTON PLACE RETAIL 2 Sutton Place North York Avenue @ 61st Street Size: 2,000 SF +/- for lease

UPPER EAST SIDE MEDICAL / RETAIL 260 East 67th Street At Second Avenue Size: 1,915 to 10,858 SF +/- for lease

For information on these properties and for the largest selection of Healthcare Properties in New York City, call: Paul L. Wexler | Lic. Associate Real Estate Broker | o: 212.836.1075 | plw@corcoran.com www.healthcare-properties.com Real estate agents affiliated with The Corcoran Group are independent contractors and are not employees of The Corcoran Group. Equal Housing Opportunity. The Corcoran Group is a licensed real estate broker located at 660 Madison Ave, NY, NY 10065. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Corcoran makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice.

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 11

How the Jews Nearly Wiped Out Tay-Sachs

BY IRA STOLL

Tay-Sachs disease is a genetic metabolic disorder that causes spasticity and ultimately death, usually by age 5.

There used to be an entire hospital unit—16 or 17 beds at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn—devoted to taking care of these children.

It was often full, with a waiting list that admitted new patients only when someone else’s child had died.

But by the late 1990s that unit was totally empty, and it eventually shut down. Its closure was a visible symbol of one of the most dramatic Jewish success stories of the past 50 years: the near-eradication of a deadly genetic disease.

Since the ’70s, the incidence of Tay-Sachs has fallen by more than 90 percent among Jews, thanks to a combination of scientific advances and volunteer community activism that brought screening for the disease into synagogues, Jewish community centers and, eventually, routine medical care.

Until 1969, when doctors discovered the enzyme that made testing possible to determine whether parents were carriers of Tay-Sachs, 50 to 60 affected Jewish children were born each year in the United States and Canada. After mass screenings began in 1971, the numbers declined to two to five Jewish births a year, said Karen Zeiger, whose first child died of Tay-Sachs.

“It had decreased significantly,” said Zeiger, who until her retirement in 2000 was the state of California’s Tay-Sachs prevention coordinator.

Between 1976 and 1989, there wasn’t a single Jewish Tay-Sachs birth in the entire state, she said.

The first mass screening was held in May 1971 at Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, Maryland. The site was chosen in part for its proximity to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. One of the two doctors who discovered the missing hexosaminidase A enzyme, John O’Brien, was visiting a lab there, and another Johns Hopkins doctor, Michael Kaback, had recently treated two Jewish couples with Tay-Sachs children, including Zeiger’s. Zeiger’s husband, Bob, was also a doctor at Johns Hopkins.

The screenings used blood tests to check for the missing enzyme that identified a parent as a TaySachs carrier. A machine to process the tests cost $15,000.

Before screening, couples with both parents being

12 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

Tay-Sachs carriers “almost always stopped having children after they had one child with Tay-Sachs, for fear of having another,” Ruth Schwartz Cowan wrote in her book Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening.

But with screening, Tay-Sachs could be detected before birth, and “carrier couples felt encouraged to have children,” she wrote.

Dr. Kaback’s work helped enable thousands of parents who were Tay-Sachs carriers to have other, healthy children.

The screenings were transformative, and the campaign to get Jews tested for Tay-Sachs took off. This was in the days before Facebook or email, so activists and organizers spread the word about screenings through newspaper and magazine articles, posters at synagogues and items in Jewish organizational newsletters. Volunteers and medical professionals spoke on college campuses and sent promotional prescription pads to rabbis, obstetricians and gynecologists. Doctors and activists enlisted rabbis and community leaders to encourage couples to be tested before getting married.

Another early mass-screening event was held at a school in Waltham, Massachusetts, guided by Edwin Kolodny, a professor at New York University medical school. The first mass screening in the Philadelphia area was on Nov. 12, 1972, at the Germantown Jewish Center, and drew 800 people, according to a Yale senior thesis by David Gerber, Genetics for the Community: The Organized Response To Tay-Sachs Disease, 1955-1995.

Nearly half a century later, the Tay-Sachs screening

effort remains a model for mobilizing a community against genetic disease. Parent activists, scientists and doctors are trying to emulate that model with other diseases and other populations.

“You can’t be complacent, because now there are 200 diseases you can test for,” said Kevin Romer, president of the Mathew Forbes Romer Foundation and a past president of the National Tay-Sachs and Allied Diseases Association. The foundation is named for Romer’s son Mathew, who died of Tay-Sachs in 1996.

Romer and others stress the importance of screening interfaith and non-Jewish couples too.

Some research indicates, for example, that Louisiana Cajuns, French Canadians and Irish people may also have an elevated incidence of Tay-Sachs.

Scientific progress means that Jews can now be screened for over 200 diseases with an at-home, mailin test offered by JScreen. The four-year-old nonprofit affiliated with Emory University’s Department of Human Genetics has screened thousands of people, and the subsidized fee for the test—about $150— includes genetic counseling.

While some genetic tests are standard doctor’soffice procedure for pregnant women or couples trying to get pregnant with a doctor’s help, JScreen is targeted at pre-conception screening. The test includes diseases common in those with Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi backgrounds as well as generalpopulation diseases.

“Carrier screening gives people an opportunity to plan ahead for the health of their future families.

We are taking lessons learned from earlier screening initiatives,” said Karen Arnovitz Grinzaid, executive director of JScreen. It was a path pioneered by the Tay-Sachs screening that began in 1971.

In Cowan’s book, she mentions a chart prepared

by Dr. Kaback reporting on 30 years of screening: 1.3 million people screened, 48,000 carriers detected, 1,350 carrier couples detected, 3,146 pregnancies monitored.

“Kaback and his colleagues could well have stopped there,” she wrote. “But they did not. There is one more figure, the one that matters most and that goes the furthest in explaining why Ashkenazi Jews accept carrier screening…after monitoring with prenatal diagnosis, 2,466 ‘unaffected offspring’ were born” to parents who were both Tay-Sachs carriers.

Widespread testing is credited with helping reduce the incidence of Tay-Sachs among Jews by more than 90 percent since screenings began in the early 1970s.

COURTESY OF NATIONAL TAY-SACHS AND ALLIED DISEASES ASSOCIATION

N

YC Health + Hospitals / Kings County has provided medical services in Brooklyn, since its founding in 1831. This Brooklyn institution, is a hospital of “firsts” which has the proud distinction of being home to the first Level 1 Trauma Center in the U.S., conducting the first study of HIV infection in pregnant women and developing the world’s first portable hemodialysis machine. Kings is reaching new, higher heights serving the needs of Brooklyn’s 2.6 million people.

Today, medical and behavioral health care are provided side by side. Kings County’s Behavioral Health Program (BH) takes an integrated approach to care, because truly taking care of a person, means caring for the “whole” person. Kings County’s BH program is now an internationally recognized program that draws clinicians from around the country and indeed, the world.

Our Behavioral Health Service (BHS) is an evidenced based, patient centered and trauma informed care team that strives to integrate mental health, chemical dependency and physical health to best support the recovery of our patients and their families.

That means, we partner with each individual in our care to come up with a wellness plan that’s based on their real life experiences, not text book anecdotes. We provide a wide variety of services in a state of the art building to ensure safety.

Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program: This service includes our Psychiatric Emergency Room; Extended Observation Unit (6 bedded unit for 72 hour observation) and Mobile Crisis Team (which sends our staff into the community to provide assistance). Not all hospitals have these three integrated services to meet the urgent needs of their communities.

Our Psychiatric emergency room is open 24/7 and serves adults and children.

Adult & Child Inpatient Programs: The Acute Care Inpatient service includes: 6 Adult Inpatient Units, 1 Adult Medically Managed Detoxification Unit and 3 Child & Adolescent Inpatient Units. On each of the units you or your loved ones will be cared for by a full interdisciplinary team that includes: Medical Internist, Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Nursing, Social Worker, Peer Counselor, Behav‐ ioral Specialists and Creative Art Therapists.

At Kings we believe it is our duty to care for each and every aspect of a person’s health.

We have two notable specialty units: One is an inpatient units dedicated to treat‐ ing pregnant women. This is vital, because we believe it is critical we ensure treat‐ ments provided are safe for both mother and child in an environment that recognizes

their special needs.

Our second specialty unit is one of our child inpatient units which specializes in working with young adults and their families encountering mental health issues or crises for the first time.

Adult Outpatient Programs: The Kings County Adult Mental Health program is comprised of: Mental Health Outpatient Care teams, Primary Care Clinic, Walk‐In‐Clinic (that provides both mental health and chemical dependency services), Partial Hospitalization Program, Intensive Out‐ patient Program, the Family Justice Center (FJC) for domestic violence care, Kings on Track (KOT) and the Kings Early Episode Pro‐ gram (KEEP) for our newly diagnosed patients.

Our Chemical Dependency Adult services include: Opioid Treatment services, Chemical Dependency Treatment (CDTOP), Poly Drug and Early Intervention service and our Bedford‐Stuyvesant satellite outpatient care and community residence.

Child Outpatient Programs: The Child Mental Health program is comprised of: Mental Health Outpatient Care teams, the Intensive Crisis Stabilization and Treatment program (ICST), the Children’s Crisis Intervention Services (CCIS), school based satellite services and the Developmental Evaluation Clinic (DEC).

Consultation-Liaison Services: There are three key teams providing consultation services: The Consultation‐Liaison team manages consults within BHS and through‐ out the Kings County campus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In addition to this service, BHS is proud to have a Neuropsychological team and the Behavioral Analysis Support Team, to support teams within and outside of the BHS service that operate during weekday hours.

New York City Health + Hospitals/ Kings County is your local provider with interna‐ tional recognition, and we are committed to making sure our community receives the highest quality care in a safe, nurturing environment. Each day we challenge ourselves to provide holistic, individualized care.

At Kings County we we’ve been working to make sure we are all, “Getting Better Together.”

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 13

Kibbutz Comeback CAN MEDICAL MARIJUANA REVIVE ISRAEL’S KIBBUTZ MOVEMENT?

BY ANDREW TOBIN

Elifaz, located in the Arava Desert valley in southern Israel, is the only kibbutz that is already growing medical marijuana. It is one of just eight farms the government licensed to do so in 2010 as part of a limited system that will be replaced by the new one.

(Recreational marijuana use is illegal in Israel, though it was recently largely decriminalized.)

So far, the medical marijuana business has not been particularly lucrative for Elifaz’s more than 100 members and children. The vast majority of its income still comes from date and pomelo farming and tourism. Just last year, the kibbutz began paying differential salaries to its members, a reform most of the once rigidly collective communities have made.

But Bdil, 42, who was born on Elifaz and returned to raise a family here, expects the years of experience to pay off when the exporting of medical marijuana starts. He said Elifaz also would benefit from its close ties with other kibbutzim. In the same way the kibbutz produces date honey and date liquor as part of a kibbutz conglomerate, Bdil said, it would one day manufacture cannabis products like extracts, creams and oils.

According to Nir Lobel, 37, Elifaz’s secretary, the kibbutz voted to get into the medical cannabis business in part because it seemed like a natural way to update the traditional kibbutz ethos—and it is hoped, attract a new generation of members.

“We’re pioneers, and this is a new journey. We’re farmers, and this is agriculture. We care about values, and this is a way to help people who are suffering,” he said.

However, Hagai Hillman—one of Israel’s eight

KIBBUTZ ELIFAZ, ISRAEL (JTA) — By all accounts, Eilon Bdil has no personal interest in marijuana.

But as the business manager of Kibbutz Elifaz, he’s a big believer in the herb. Bdil sees medical marijuana as a unique opportunity to revive his remote Negev community.

“This cannabis gold rush has to pan out for us,” he said. “There’s simply no other choice. We need young people with good minds to come here, and medical cannabis is what can draw them.”

Elifaz is one of dozens of kibbutzim—and hundreds of local companies—seeking to join Israel’s new medical marijuana industry. After decades of stagnation, the collectives are betting that the move can revitalize their finances and even their way of life.

Israel’s gold rush—or “green rush,” as some are calling it—took off after the government in February threw its support behind legislation that would allow the export of medical marijuana. An interministerial committee set up to explore the issue recently recommended in favor of export, though Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan is opposed.

The Knesset is expected to pass the measure into law in the coming months. If that happens, Israeli companies would suddenly have access to a rapidly growing multibillion-dollar global industry.

Export is part of a larger government plan to make Israel a world leader in medical cannabis.

Yuval Landschaft, the director of the Israeli Medical Cannabis Agency, said well over 700 companies have applied for official permission to grow, produce, distribute and dispense medical cannabis. By the end of the year, he said, the agency would give the OK to the first new medical marijuana farms and factories.

“We are really about to enter the medicalization of the Holy Land,” Landschaft said. “The Torah once spread out from Israel.

Now medical cannabis will spread out from Israel.”

After playing a powerful role in founding and building Israel, the kibbutzim slid into social and economic crisis during the national financial crisis of the 1980s. Many young members decamped for the cities. By shifting Workers sitting away from their socialist roots—embracing on tractor on differential salaries, members working off the Kibbutz Ruhama, kibbutz and nonmembers working on it—the Israel, October kibbutzim, which number about 250, have 2016 largely stabilized. Many are looking for new COURTESY OF RAN FERDMAN investments.

14 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

licensed cannabis growers, who co-owns a marijuanacentered pharmaceutical company called BOL Pharma—says most of the kibbutzim and companies rushing into the industry are being overly optimistic.

“For those kibbutzim that don’t have money, medical cannabis is not going to be the answer. To survive in this market you need very deep pockets, and without vertical integration you’re lost,” he said, suggesting that profitable companies will control the medical marijuana supply chain from farm to pharmacy.

“A lot of farmers think it’s like growing melons. But the future of this industry is medicalization.”

Kibbutz Gezer, a largely American immigrant community located south of Tel Aviv, is exploring joining Elifaz in a medical cannabis business partnership with an Israeli pharmaceutical company.

Laura Spector, a 62-year-old New Jersey native who immigrated to the kibbutz in 1977, is a leader of the project.

Spector said Gezer had only recently paid off the debt that it, like most kibbutzim, wracked up during the Israeli financial crisis in the 1980s, and was ready to invest. She shares Bdil’s interest in making a principled profit.

“I believe in medical marijuana because I believe in the plant, which can help in so many different ways,” she said. “At the same time, I think there will be a huge financial advantage to Kibbutz Gezer.”

In contrast with Elifaz, Gezer is not motivated by a need for more members. The kibbutz is about 240 strong and expanding. It is building 16 houses for the founders’ children and new members, with plans to add 22 more in the coming years.

Rather, Spector said, she wants Gezer to enter the medical marijuana industry to create communal employment opportunities. For young people, the business could mean a career close to home, and for pensioners, it could provide the purpose and extra income of part-time work, she said.

“I was one of the people who pushed privatization on the kibbutz, but I think there’s a certain social and economic spirit that we should keep in some ways,” Spector said. “I mean, we came here for a reason.”

Few kibbutzim embody the spirit of the movement better than Kibbutz Ruhama, which was established near the border of the Gaza Strip in 1943, several years before the state of Israel’s founding. Today, the kibbutz’s main business is the struggling KR Hamivreshet brush factory, and most of its some 200 members are of retirement age.

According to kibbutz secretary Ran Ferdman, a 40-year-old third-generation member, Ruhama voted overwhelmingly to partner with researchers to enter the medical marijuana industry, mostly in hopes of filling up its pensions funds, which were emptied during the kibbutz debt crisis.

“They believed the kibbutz would exist forever, and the younger generation would take care of the older one,” he said. “But everyone has to take care of himself these days.”

Building a Healthy New York

BY MICHAEL TOBMAN

“It’s the quality of care that’s supporting expansion,” shared James Crispino and Rich Steimel, co-chairs of the Healthcare Committee of the New York Building Congress. “Ultimately the strong reputation of New York hospitals is what’s driving their organic growth.”

Focused primarily on building, real estate, architecture, construction and engineering, the Building Congress may seem an unlikely spot for discussing healthcare, but New York is a hospital state, and the New York City metropolitan region is an especially vital part of the healthcare economy.

Our interview was wide-ranging, discussing the wider economic conditions in the state and city, the strengths and weaknesses of the Affordable Care Act, and the recent opening of a Downtown Brooklyn healthcare facility developed by and for members of the Hotel Trades Council, an active labor union.

“Healthcare is now in systems, so when we talk about the region’s healthcare facilities, we’re talking about systems of hospitals and facilities that stretch from Staten Island to Westchester to eastern Long Island.

One system, for example, is in Nassau County, Queens and in Manhattan.”

This is precisely the wider area that the New York Building Congress represents and advocates for. And the issues of healthcare delivery—quality, safety and efficiencies—are the same as in building construction.

“The period we’re going through is nothing short of remarkable. Demand for top care is constantly growing, and we’re seeing growth in all the boroughs.

“It’s expansion with consolidation: fewer hospitals but more access through facilities that don’t necessarily have thousands of beds. Out-patient, scheduled procedures, neurological, transplants—all happening in appropriate settings.”

Building Congress members also build hospitals.

“There is no more complex environment than a hospital in New York—the economic conditions of the place, the patients, the staff. Building hospitals is heavily regulated, and those who do that work specialize in it.

“As an organization, the Building Congress advocates for resources and support for the hospitals in the region.

Whether new buildings or rebuilding after disasters like Sandy, healthcare providers and hospitals are a large part of New York’s construction landscape.”

Requiring Women to Get Rabbis’ OK for Sterilization?

(JTA) — Israel’s health ministry is probing hospitals that required women to obtain rabbinical approval for birthcontrol procedures.

According to an exposé published Thursday by the news site Ynet, officials from two state-funded institutions— Laniado Hospital in Netanya and Ma’ayane HaYeshua Hospital in Bnei Brak—are recorded telling women who sought tubal ligation to obtain permission from what officials called “the hospital rabbis.”

Tubal ligation is a permanent form of sterilization, which is generally prohibited according to halacha, or Jewish law, except in cases where it is meant to save the life of the mother.

At Laniado, only Jewish women who said they sought to undergo the procedure were referred to the rabbi, whereas at the Bnei Brak hospital all women were referred to him.

“We do not agree with these practices,” a ministry spokesperson

told Ynet about the procedures’ involving rabbis. “We intend to get to the bottom of this issue as soon as possible, possibly with the ombudsman of the medical professions, to inspect the disciplinary and ethical aspects of this affair, and will act according to the findings.”

A spokesperson for Ma’ayane HaYeshua defended the practice.

“Since tubal ligation is not a lifesaving procedure and is irreversible, the hospital believes it requires reflection and so we do not perform it at the patient’s request only,” the spokesperson explained. “We must find a clear medical reason requiring intervention, and we make sure the woman in question has considered the procedure.”

Non-Jewish women are evaluated by a social worker or psychologist, the hospital added.

Laniado did not respond to Ynet’s questions.

Attention Manhattan, Queens & Brooklyn Families

New FAMILY REIMBURSEMENT PROGRAM! Program Details

Do I Qualify?

and services, which are not funded through other sources, for family members who have a child diagnosed with a developmental . disability.

Families qualify by completing an application and their child must be OPWDD eligible.

Reimbursement eimbursement is based bas on a as funding is limited. limi d. d

For more information: 718-686-3474 Communityservices@ ohelfamily.org

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 15

How to Make Cold Borscht A smooth, pureed soup of beets garnished with mint and citrus

BY RONNIE FEIN

THE NOSHER — I can’t eat borscht that comes from a jar that’s been sitting on a supermarket shelf for who knows how long. So sue me. Tell me I’m a snob. I just can’t. It’s the wrong color; it’s too thin and has these shimmering chopped-looking things on the bottom that I suppose are beets but remind me of pocket lint.

But I do love borscht—all kinds.

Years ago I was surprised when a friend served me a version that wasn’t at all like the simple beet soup so familiar to Ashkenazi Jewish families. Hers was a thick, marrow-bone–based dish laden with vegetables that included lots of cabbage, carrots, parsnips, potatoes and, of course, beets.

She told me this was the “real thing,” and after doing a little research I learned that borscht covers a lot of ground and can be vegetarian or made with meat and even poultry. It may or may not be chock full of vegetables, but it’s always a slightly tart or sour soup with beets as the common denominator—whether

it’s Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Jewish or any other type.

My friend’s borscht is a hearty dish, fit for cold-weather comfort. But now, in the hot weather, I want a lighter, beets-only version—more like the kind sold in the jars, but thicker, richer and more flavorful. I’ve experimented with several recipes and I love this version with orange and mint. There’s enough orange peel and apple to give it that familiar borscht “tang,” which is balanced by sweet beets.

You can make it with or without dairy, and you can serve it hot or cold.

You can add half-and-half, cream or coconut milk as an enrichment. Make it more substantial by placing slices of hard-cooked egg or boiled potato into each serving, or top the soup with fresh mint, an orange slice, or a blob of dairy sour cream or plain Greek-style yogurt.

You can make this soup two to three days ahead. It’s a good family dish and makes a lovely first course for Shabbat dinner.

Ingredients: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

3 large or 4-5 medium beets 2 Tbsp olive oil 1 Tbsp butter, margarine or olive oil 1 medium onion, chopped 1 tart apple, peeled, cored and chopped 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 tsp chopped fresh ginger 2 Tbsp grated fresh orange peel 2 Tbsp chopped fresh mint salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 4 cups water 1 cup cream, coconut milk or soy milk, optional Dairy sour cream or unflavored Greek style yogurt, optional Sliced hard-cooked egg or potato, optional

Directions: 1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Scrub the beets, wrap them in aluminum foil and roast for about an hour, or until the beets are tender.

2. When the beets are cool enough to handle, remove the skins. Chop the beets and set them aside. Reserve any natural liquids that have accumulated.

3. Heat the olive oil and butter in a soup pot or large saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, add the onion, apple, garlic and ginger and cook for about five minutes, or until the ingredients have softened.

4. Add the beets (plus any accumulated juices), orange peel, mint, salt and pepper and stir. Pour in the water.

5. Bring the soup to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes.

6. Puree the soup with a hand blender or in a food processor or blender.

Return the soup to the pan to heat through. For a creamier, thinner soup, add the cream.

7. Serve garnished, if desired, with sour cream or yogurt for a dairy meal, or cooked egg or potato.

16 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

HEA LT H Y A ND H EA RT Y L I V I NG

Moroccan Orange and Black-Olive Salad Recipe Salty and sweet, this beautiful salad from Leah Koenig is sure to wow your guests.

BY LEAH KOENIG

THE NOSHER — Moroccan cuisine brilliantly uses oranges as the base for many different sweet-savory salads, but oranges and olives are perhaps the most iconic duo. While it may sound unusual, the combination of sweet citrus and briny, velvet-textured, oilcured black olives is nothing short of magical.

In Moroccan Jewish homes, this salad is often served as part of the sprawling mezze course—a refreshing opener to Shabbat dinner. A drizzle of oil (traditionally Moroccan argan oil) and a sprinkle of salt are all that’s needed to pull the flavors together. But why not gild the lily with a little smoky spice, bright lime juice and a drizzle of honey for extra sweetness?

This recipe is excerpted with permission from Little Book of Jewish Appetizers.

Ingredients: • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil • 2 Tbsp fresh lime juice • 1 Tbsp honey

Directions: 1. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lime juice, honey, garlic, cumin,

paprika, red pepper flakes and salt. Set aside.

2. Using a sharp serrated knife, slice off the ends of each orange. Stand one

• 1 small garlic clove, minced or pushed through a press

orange upright on one of its flat ends. Starting at the top, cut away a section of the

• 1/2 tsp ground cumin

peel, following the curve of the fruit to the bottom and taking care to remove all

• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika

the white pith. Continue in this manner around the fruit until all the peel is gone.

• 1/8 tsp red pepper flakes

Lay the orange on its rounded side and cut into 1/2-inch wheels. Repeat with the

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

remaining oranges.

• 6 navel oranges • 1 cup oil-cured black olives, pitted and coarsely chopped

3. Arrange the orange slices on a platter. Scatter the olives and parsley over the

top and drizzle evenly with the dressing. Serve immediately.

• Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley for serving

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017| NYJLIFE.COM | 17

A Bit of Joy, A Bit of Oy:

Amerike Plays the Museum

BY MAXINE DOVERE

Amerike—The Golden Land, playing an extended run at at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, brings the story of Jewish immigration to life in a series of musical vignettes covering 50 years of Jewish immigration in New York. Twelve amazingly talented performers—six women and six men—sing and dance through time and space revealing characters and culture in 90 minutes of humor, humanity, emotions and experiences.

Amerike is familiar and funny, filled with the pathos and privilege of becoming American.

There is a special poignancy in hearing Emma Lazarus’ words of welcome sung as some in America seek to close the Golden Door through which generations of Jewish immigrants walked, especially in a place virtually facing the Lady with the Lamp. “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” That’s what America is about—or is it? In a scene set in the late 1930s, an anti-immigration American shouts, “Live and let live— none of our business!” at the Jews asking for changes in immigration law that would have allowed them to escape the spreading horror of the Holocaust.

The 2017 edition of Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld’s 1984 musical Golden Land, Amerike is presented mostly in Yiddish with English and Russian subtitles. It is, simply put, terrific. It portrays the New York Jewish immigrant experience through a compendium of 40 melodies, each representing a time, an event or an embraceable moment.

Yael Lubetzky’s lighting creates

18 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

almost tangible sets that take the viewer from Ellis Island to the Lower East Side. We witness a Shabbat celebration; mourning for the victims of the Triangle Fire; picket lines and lines of protest; a visit to a Yiddish theater’s rendition of Macbeth (with titles printed in Old English script); survival; resilience; building and rebuilding; finding joy in the stolen kiss; and finally a return to the dock, this time to welcome a Holocaust survivor. Surprisingly, the iconic “Yiddishe Mama,” the song that connects so many to their immigrant roots, is missing.

In a joyful conclusion to the robust evening, the musicians, led by M’lotek, perform a concert of traditional Yiddish music. The audience lingers even after the musicians leave the stage.

Amerike is directed by Drama Desk Award nominee Bryna Wasserman, who has a multigenerational association with Yiddish theater.

She joined the 103-year-old National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene four years ago. Christopher Massimine, also a Drama Desk Award nominee, is the producer.

The cast, who play multiple roles, include Glenn Seven Allen (The Light in the Piazza), Alexandra Frohlinger (Soul Doctor), Daniel Kahn (Death of a Salesman), Dani Marcus (A Gentleman’s Guide), Stephanie Lynne Mason (Fiddler on the Roof) and David Perlman (Baby It’s You!). Jessica Rose Futran and Christopher Tefft are understudies. Grant Richards, Maya Jacobson, Alexander Kosmowski, Raquel Nobile, Isabel Nesti and Bobby Underwood complete the ensemble.

Menashe Lustig, left, and Ruben Niborski in the film Menashe PHOTO BY FEDERICA VALABREGA/A24

This Yiddish Film Is a Rare Look into Hasidic Brooklyn Life

BY CHARLES MUNITZ

BOSTON (JTA) — With more than a decade’s worth of experience in the film industry, mostly in documentaries, director Joshua Weinstein has released his first feature-length narrative film.

What’s surprising is that Weinstein, a secular Jew, has made a movie entirely in Yiddish.

Menashe, about Hasidic Jews in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, is among the first full-length Yiddish language films to hit the big screen in more than 70 years.

“I love going into small, closed societies and trying to understand and to represent them, and to tell all sides of their stories—the good and the bad— with honesty,” Weinstein, 34, told the JTA recently when he and the film’s Hasidic star, Menashe Lustig, attended a screening at the Boston International Film Festival.

Though Weinstein knew he wanted to do a film about the Hasidim, he was not sure at the outset about the topic.

He began to spend time among them in Brooklyn—to gain their trust and become familiar with their world.

“You can’t cast a film like this in the

usual way—you put on a yarmulke, hang out and show up every single day,” he said. “I was researching and meeting people. I was also trying to find actors because you can only make a film if you can cast it.”

Lustig said a minor miracle occurred when he and Weinstein crossed paths.

“I had been acting very locally in the Hasidic community in a nonprofessional way when Josh approached me after he saw me appear in a short Hasidic commercial,” Lustig said. “We talked together and he said he’d like to make a film with me.”

As Weinstein got to know Lustig and began to hear the details of his life, Weinstein realized he had found his story. A recent widower, Lustig had been pressured by his religious community of Skver Hasidim to yield the raising of his 9-year-old son to others until he remarried.

Menashe tells the story of a 30-something widower and single father, and contrasts the title character’s urge toward self-sufficiency with the demands of traditionalism in a small, tightly knit religious community.

“The whole movie is a 95 percent true story,” Lustig said. “We just touched it up a little bit.”

The film focuses on the decision by

the community’s rabbi that Menashe yield the raising of his son, Rieven, to the family of his late wife’s brother.

The decision causes Menashe much anguish, which is made considerably worse by his brother-in-law’s severe and self-righteous demeanor.

In the eyes of the community, Menashe, a grocery clerk, is a schlemiel.

He bucks authority but, at the same time, does not carry himself in a way that garners respect. Menashe doesn’t want to marry just anyone, however, and he wants to prove he can adequately provide a home for his son.

“It is an emotionally true story,” Weinstein said. “The film expresses how Menashe Lustig actually felt when he went through what he did.”

With the exception of a few lines in English and Spanish—this is Brooklyn, after all—the film’s dialogue occurs entirely in Yiddish.

“The sheer challenge of making a new and unique film about Hasidim in Yiddish was very exciting,” Weinstein said.

It was just one of many challenges facing Weinstein.

Production, for example, was frequently thrown off schedule— some actors who originally signed up, including Lustig, were pressured by their communities not to participate.

Fortunately, Weinstein said his background making documentaries, which often depends on bending to the unexpected, gave him the flexibility to see the process through.

Another challenge: Weinstein doesn’t speak Yiddish. And yet, “You couldn’t really make this film in English,” he said.

“If it weren’t going to be in Yiddish, then why not just make Home Alone 7?” (As it happens, one of the executive producers of Menashe is Chris Columbus, the director of the wildly successful 1990 movie Home Alone.)

Much of the script was written, in English, before filming started, said Weinstein, with translators providing a Yiddish version. Lustig developed some scenes by improvising in English—so Weinstein could understand—and then translating them into Yiddish. After that, with the help of translators, the dialogue was again reviewed carefully.

The accuracy of the words was not taken lightly. In postproduction, a team of translators worked on the subtitles.

Many debates over word choices ensued.

“It was almost like translating the Talmud in some way,” Weinstein said.

Charles Munitz publishes the blog “Boston Arts Diary.”

THIS HOLOCAUST MONUMENT IN BELARUS IS HAUNTING—AND SUBVERSIVE

“The Unbowed Man” statue at the Khatyn Memorial in Belarus commemorating Yuzif Kaminsky, a survivor of Nazi atrocities, and his slain son Adam PHOTO BY JOHN OLDALE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ

KHATYN, BELARUS (JTA) — Even

by Soviet standards, the massive memorial complex near Minsk to the victims of Nazi atrocities stands out for its immense scale and ambition.

Spread across half a million square feet—roughly the size of 10 football fields—the haunting Khatyn Memorial is essentially a graveyard not for people, but for entire villages wiped out by the Nazis in Belarus. Byelorussia, as it was then known, was one of the few places in Europe where German brutality toward non-Jews matched their antiSemitic savagery.

The memorial features soil from each of the 186 villages razed by the Nazis in Belarus—three million civilians here were killed by Nazis, including 800,000 Jews—and a symbolic tombstone for each village. Bell towers toll here every hour for each of the houses that the German and Ukrainian troops burned in the former village of Khatyn in the massacre of March 22, 1943. And there’s a bleak, black-marble monument called the Wall of Sorrow.

The monument “was revolutionary,” said Chaim Chesler, founder of the Limmud FSU Jewish learning group.

“There is nothing quite like it anywhere in the former Soviet Union, not in terms of scale, design and concept.”

But the Khatyn monument is unusual not only for its size and the scale of the tragedy it commemorates.

The complex’s chief architect was

Leonid Levin, an uncommon honor for a Jew at a time of virulent state anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. It also features a rare Soviet depiction of individual, unglorified grief and suffering by ordinary people: a statue called “The Unbowed Man.” Designed by sculptor Sergei Selikhanov, the work depicts Yuzif Kaminsky, the only villager who survived the Nazi massacre in Khatyn, cradling his dead son, Adam. The Kaminsky family wasn’t Jewish, but the father’s grief stands for all the suffering inflicted on the region—and in stark contrast to typical Soviet-era statues of defiant soldiers or a glorious Mother Russia.

“The inclusion of such work was revolutionary when my father decided on it,” said Levin’s daughter, Galina Levina. Leonid Levin died in 2014.

The Soviet rulers selected Levin along with two other partners to head the project in 1967. State anti-Semitism reached new heights that year with Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War against Moscow’s Arab allies.

“I think it was a recognition of Leonid Levin’s excellence, and a realization that he was the best man for the job,” she said.

In 1970, Levin won the prestigious Lenin Award, the highest civil distinction of excellence conferred by the Soviet Union, for his work on Khatyn. He became one of only a handful of Jews who received it.

Chesler of the Limmud FSU group said he found this honor “the most astonishing element of the whole story” of the Khatyn monument. “Clearly, it

shows Levin had a great deal of trust from Belarus’ Communist rulers.”

Simon Lewis, a historian and research fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin who has written about the Khatyn monument, told the JTA that Levin was probably selected for the job because he was trusted by the government to deliver a monumental, patriotic message.

It didn’t hurt that Levin had nationalist credentials to offset his Jewish ethnicity, Lewis noted.

“He was a very prominent architect before he made Khatyn,” Lewis said of Levin, “and his work shows a commitment to Belarusian nationality.”

Levin headed projects in Minsk commemorating Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas, two of Belarus’ greatest poets.

To Lewis, Levin’s case is indicative of how individual Jews who did not engage in Zionism or other activities frowned upon by Moscow could be promoted within the Soviet system, despite its anti-Semitism.

After the fall of Communism, Leonid Levin became the head of the Jewish community of Belarus and devoted much of his professional efforts to projects commemorating the Jewish genocide.

The Pietà-like Kaminsky statue, Lewis said, may have been a concession

by Moscow to the population of Belarus, in recognition of the scale of atrocities committed against their nation. A third of its population perished.

To Galina Levina, the architect’s daughter, this loss forever binds Jews and Belarusians. “It is even appropriate that the man who designed the main monument for the tragedy of the Belarusian people be Jewish,” she said.

Today, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren each year visit the Khatyn monument, where the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, delivers speeches on memorial days.

“It is a great honor that my father created the site that is responsible for the main effort of genocide education in the country he loved so much,” she said.

When Levin died, he was working on a memorial for the victims of Maly Trostenets—an extermination camp where the Nazis killed the Jews of Minsk—which he was never able to finish. When Levin passed away, his daughter took over from him. The project was completed in 2015.

She said the monument was not only her father’s last project, but also “the most important” one to him.

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 19

OPINION

Donald Trump Isn’t Funny.

Sad! upcoming vote in the Senate on repealing Obamacare.

“By the way, are you going to get the votes? He better get them. He better get them. Oh, he better. Otherwise (JTA) — On the afternoon of Aug. 8, President I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired.’”

Donald Trump tweeted something that surprised me: That’s not a joke; that’s a catchphrase—Trump’s “I think Senator Blumenthal should take a nice long “Git-R-Done!” or “I’m a wild and crazy guy!” And vacation in Vietnam, where he lied about his service, Trump’s delivery, with one too many “he betters,” so he can at least say he was there.” made him sound more ominous than jocular. (He There was nothing unusual about his target or ended the sequence by saying, “I’ll get somebody”— his bullying. Earlier in the day, presumably a replacement for Price.)

Trump had sent off a flurry of In the background, Price and tweets about Richard Blumenthal, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry the Connecticut Democrat who can be seen laughing, but with the famously suggested that he served strained, please-God-not-me smiles in Vietnam when he did his Marine of the mobsters in The Untouchables, Reserve duty stateside. That as Robert De Niro as Al Capone morning, apparently angry after gives his after-dinner speech while Blumenthal criticized him on CNN, gripping a baseball bat.

Trump called Blumenthal a “liar,” a I don’t doubt that Trump himself “baby” and a “con artist.” thinks he’s being funny. I even What is notable about the believe his spokeswoman, Sarah afternoon tweet is that it actually Huckabee Sanders, was telling the takes the form of a joke. Because for truth when she said the president all of his skills as an entertainer and had been “making a joke” when, in a a showman, Trump is no comedian. talk to police officers on Long Island, He gets laughs, yes. Some are Donald Trump at a rally at the he suggested that they shouldn’t be intentional—crowds at his rallies Big Sandy Superstore Arena in “too nice” to suspects. Trump’s cackle and whoop appreciatively Huntington, West Virginia, Aug. statement even sounds like a joke: when he rolls out his stock phrases. 3, 2017 “Like when you guys put somebody His style of rhetoric—raise an PHOTO BY JUSTIN MERRIMAN/ in the car, and you’re protecting indignation, lance it with insults, GETTY IMAGES their head, you know, the way you welcome the audience’s approval— put your hand over [their head], I owes a debt to certain comedians. (New Yorker writer said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’” David Denby hears in Trump “uncanny echoes of Alan But one test of a funny person is whether he King and Don Rickles, the New York-born Jewish understands both his audience and the occasion. comics of the sixties and seventies.”)

Maybe a comic at a club could get away with a joke But wit? Wordplay? Misdirection? Self-deprecation? about roughing up prisoners, but not a politician, and None of these are in the Trump arsenal. certainly not a president, and certainly not a president His last Blumenthal tweet isn’t exactly ready for late when allegations of police brutality are a current and night, but it’s got some comedic structure, including searing topic of debate. Trump’s cop joke wasn’t just a set-up (“I think Senator Blumenthal should take a too soon—it was not ever. nice long vacation in Vietnam”) and a punch line (“so Trump also has the inept comedian’s habit of he can at least say he was there”). Ba-dump-bump. ruining a joke by pressing too hard, like when he spoke He could do without the unnecessary middle phrase: to the Republican Jewish Coalition back in 2015. “where he lied about his service.” (It’s the difference “I’m a negotiator like you folks, we are negotiators,” between “Take my wife—please” and “Take my wife— Trump told the presumably moneyed audience. When with whom I do not get along—please.”) that line—not a joke exactly—drew some appreciative Otherwise, you’d be hard pressed to find an laughter, he milked it: “Is there anybody that doesn’t example of Trumpian wit. Even his insult “humor” is renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates heavy handed and obvious: “Crooked Hillary.” “Little them—perhaps more than any other room I’ve ever Marco.” “Lyin’ Ted.” spoken in.”

Consider the laugh lines during his cringe-inducing Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree. Turning to Tom Trump’s nadir as a joke-teller came during the Price, his secretary for Health and Human Services, campaign, at the Al Smith Dinner in October 2016.

Trump tried some joke-like banter in referring to the Trump started out with a pretty good one-liner about

BY ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

20 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

his opponent: “I wasn’t really sure if Hillary was going to be here tonight because, I guess, you didn’t send her invitation by email.” Pointed, topical, cutting but not vicious. In other words, it didn’t sound like Trump.

It’s when he started to sound more like himself— when he appeared to go off script—that the bipartisan audience began booing.

“We’ve learned so much from WikiLeaks,” Trump said next. “For example, Hillary believes that it is vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private.”

That’s not a joke. That’s a description of a joke, like, “It was so hot today that I needed a metaphor to describe it.” When the audience booed, Trump said, “That’s OK, I don’t know who they’re angry at, Hillary, you or I. For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.”

Again: audience, delivery, wit. Trump whiffed on all three.

Too often, Trump’s speeches remind me of a wedding toast that goes off the rails. He’s the best man or father-in-law who feels he has to get some jokes in there, and whose lack of comedic talent is matched only by his unwavering confidence.

Al Franken, the comedian-turned-junior-senator of Minnesota, was asked recently if Donald Trump is funny.

“I don’t think he’s funny at all,” said Franken, a Democrat, and I don’t think he was just being partisan.

Asked recently by Stephen Colbert if there were any other senators with a sense of humor, Franken mentioned Republicans Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

What’s striking, Franken told The New Yorker’s David Remnick, is that Trump himself is never seen laughing. The president, he said, “is like some fairy tale, where if someone can get the king to laugh they’ll get half the fortune and the daughter.” Someone who can’t enjoy a good joke is not going to tell one either.

Franken laughs a lot.

I don’t think it’s necessary to have a comedian in chief, but Trump’s singular lack of a sense of humor— and seeming inability to laugh at himself—strikes me as a clue to his polarizing presidency. A good joke or a smart turn of phrase—at your own expense or your opponent’s—has a way of defusing the opposition or lightening a situation. It can welcome an audience into your enterprise even if they aren’t necessarily inclined to agree with you.

Trump’s style of humor, like his policies and all-toomany tweets, plays directly to the people who already agree with—and enjoy—him in the first place. And it reveals a bullying comic’s instinct to own the room by finding an easy target (a reporter with a disability, a woman with a face lift, a frail judge).

Trump reminds me of the alpha male in school who was considered funny (a “pisser,” in my day) mostly because you didn’t dare not laugh at his jokes. In junior high school, it’s the soul of wit to sneak up on a seventh-grader and yank down his sweatpants. It’s the bully’s closer. But it doesn’t make you Winston Churchill or even Don Rickles. Who knew it could make you president of the United States?

OPINION

Creating a Transit System that Works for New Yorkers

BY YA-TING LIU

If there is one positive takeaway from New York City’s “summer of hell,” it is that delayed trains and subways have created a sense of urgency around what we can do to improve a public transportation system that doesn’t work for many New Yorkers.

One thing that has become abundantly clear this summer is that the city’s subway system—built more than 100 years ago when Manhattan was the economic hub of the city— no longer accurately reflects where people are traveling. Today, people live and work all over the five boroughs, and especially on the rapidly growing Brooklyn-Queens waterfront.

But right now, someone who lives in Long Island City is forced to take a subway through Manhattan to get to work in Williamsburg—a long route, made longer when service is slowed to a crawl due to neglected maintenance. Outdated and inefficient commuting options like this do little to attract new residents or businesses and could stunt growth in an area that is becoming an economic driver in our city.

One project that will provide access to thousands of underserved residents in this bustling corridor is the Brooklyn Queens Connector (BQX), an urban light-rail project that will connect neighborhoods along 14 miles from Astoria to Sunset Park. This emissions-free rail system will serve 50,000 riders daily, connecting people to subway lines, bus routes, ferry landings and Citi Bike stations. The project will be a boon for businesses and people alike: Local shops in the corridor will be more accessible for

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF THE BROOKLYN QUEENS CONNECTOR

people who live in other neighborhoods, and residents will have easier access to employment opportunities.

But perhaps the most appealing aspect of the BQX—and the reason that it is especially relevant when considering our current subway crisis—is that the BQX would utilize

a funding mechanism known as “value capture” to help pay for its construction. The project would not compete with funding for repairs and upgrades that our subway system desperately needs. It also wouldn’t take money away from other important transit initiatives like Fair Fares or Bus Rapid Transit.

As with the new 7 train stop in Hudson Yards, the BQX will be paid for by the increased value it brings to the neighborhoods it serves. Specifically, the largest commercial and residential landlords, those who will see the largest increase in property value once the BQX is built, will pay additional taxes.

The expectation of new value would be bonded and sold to investors to help pay for its construction.

The self-financing nature of the BQX allows this transit asset to be city owned

and controlled. Pursuing projects like these will allow us to move away from our dependence on the MTA—and from quarrels over who is legally responsible for paying for upgrades and repairs of our transit system.

New York City’s subway crisis this summer has put a spotlight on what’s wrong with our current transportation system. But it has also shown just how crucial it is for us to prepare for the future by recognizing new trends in how New Yorkers move around the city, while simultaneously making necessary fixes to our current system.

The BQX provides a perfect model for how we can do both even with limited resources at our disposal.

Ya-Ting Liu is the executive director of the advocacy group Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector (on Twitter @yating_liu and @BQXNYC).

AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 21

QJCC Awards Gala Strikes Serious Tone

BY MAXINE DOVERE

The Queens Jewish Community Council (QJCC) held its 21st annual gala on August 15. Stuart Applebaum, Dr. Adinah Pelman (Aishet Chayil Woman of Valor), and the Eduard Nektalov Foundation and the Nektalov family (Community Service) were honored at the event.

Gala awards ceremonies are ordinarily filled with complimentary speeches, and this evening was no exception. However, 2017 has been no ordinary year.

In his opening remarks, Michael

Nussbaum, QJCC president, addressed the issues of rising domestic and international anti-Semitism, neoNazism and white supremacism. He declared, “Staying silent is not an option....As Jews, we have an obligation in the face of history to speak out....As Jews, we must take a stand. We must not forget.”

Honoree Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, received the Steven Pezenik Award, given to “a unique labor activist.”

“I’m involved in the labor movement because of my Jewish upbringing,” Appelbaum said. “The best way to respect our Jewish upbringing is to support those in need. Tikkun olam— repair of the world—is needed now more than in a very long time.”

He further stated, “There is no place in society for bigotry, racism and antiSemitism. They must be condemned at every turn and defeated in the press, on the streets, in the classroom, the workplaces and in the halls of government.”

Roman Nektalov, speaking on behalf of his family, said, “Our unity is our strength. Let’s be together….Ask what you can do for the community….Our community is building bridges.

Dr. Adinah Pelman was praised for her work bringing meals, especially Shabbat meals, to those in need.

Former Congressman Gary Ackerman urged, “Do not let anybody, any time, divide us. Our community is based on a tremendous amount of diversity. We are living through a difficult time. We have to decide who we are.”

Seniors by the Sea HAVING A GOOD TIME WHILE TAKING CARE OF CITY SENIORS “Seniors by the Sea” is an annual celebration that highlights the achievements and lives of Brooklyn’s elderly population, and also congratulates our “golden couples,” who have been together for over 50 years—an incredible achievement that is a testament to commitment, love and mutual respect.

Through this important event, we want to emphasize taking care of our older residents across financial security, healthcare and housing, among other issues. In particular, many of our seniors are living in vulnerable conditions, oftentimes alone and depending on limited pensions to survive. This event is meant to highlight the multitude of services available to them at no cost.

In addition, we want to bring seniors together to enjoy a day of dance, delicious food and musical

22 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

entertainment, and that’s really what this is all about—to celebrate our elders and have a good time. We hope to make it an even bigger celebration next year for the event’s fifth anniversary.

–Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams

PHOTOS BY ERICA SHERMAN, BROOKLYN BOROUGH PRESIDENT’S OFFICE

The Queens Jewish Community Council is part of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC-NY).

Rabbi Michael Miller, executive vice president or the JCRC, said, “This evening we need to focus on ourselves….

What took place in Charlottesville should shake the Jewish community to its core.”

He listed the hate groups, including neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan representatives carrying torches and chanting about their hatred for Jews.

“I thought the march was about blacks. No! It was about Jews,” Miller said.

Calling for unity in the Jewish community, Miller warned, “We are not going to solve the problem of the rise of anti-Semitism by remaining divided among ourselves. There is too much friction. [The Jewish community] must speak out collectively to denounce bigotry.”

Michael Nussbaum closed the evening by saying, “We must stay together to be strong.”

SAVE THE DATE THE BROOKLN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

2018 CENTENNIAL GALA

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10

WWW.iBROOKLYN.COM AUG. 23 – 29, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 23

NEED A RIDE? Book your trip with the Free Carmel Limo App

3 EASY WAYS TO CARMEL IT! NYCT&LC Base Lic# B00256

DOWNLOAD THE APP

get car cash, airline miles & more!

CALL 1-212-666-6666

www.CarmelLimo.com

c.

Sv

LOG ON

Car & Limo e d

World w i

cars are standing by in 300+ Cities Worldwide

Available at:

3

36

App comes with

$

CAR CASH

4

BOOK IT NOW! • 212.666.6666 • www.CarmelLimo.com

BOOK IT NOW! • 212.666.6666 • www.CarmelLimo.com

$

$

OFF

Book It Now!

ANY TRIP To The Airport

Must get code #__________________ upon reserving.

Valid for NYC trips only. One coupon per trip. Expires 12/31/17. 11 24 | NYJLIFE.COM | AUG. 23 – 29, 2017

OFF

Book It Now!

ANY TRIP

From The Airport

Must get code #__________________ upon reserving.

Valid for NYC trips only. One coupon per trip. Expires 12/31/17. 12