December 15 Edition of New York Jewish Life

Nicole’s New York City: Election Analysis Reveals Real Tale of Two Cities

Our Dispatch: Bannon, Adelson Rift on Display at ZOA Dinner

Shaare Mizrah-The Manhattan East Synagogue Opens Under Leadership of Rabbi Elie Abadie

VOL. 1, NO. 32 | NOVEMBER 15-21, 2017 | NEWS THAT MATTERS TO JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN THE NEW YORK CITY METROPOLITAN AREA | NYJLIFE.COM | FREE

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

Hold On to Your ’Stache— And Ask for Help If it’s November, a lot of guys I know are growing mustaches. They may look ridiculous, and believe me when I share that many do, but they’re styling for men’s health and I applaud them.

For this autumn month, the Movember Foundation sponsors and provides the social media platform for charity fundraisers throughout the world, encouraging men to raise money from friends, colleagues and family in celebration of the designer facial hair they grow. Powered “by the mustache’s ability to generate a conversation,” Movember is about promoting awareness and raising research funds for men’s health, specifically prostate and testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention.

From 30 friends inspired by a 2003 talk at a pub in Melbourne, Australia, to five million participants in over 20 countries in 2016, Movember has been named a “Top 100 Nongovernmental Organization.” None of the statistics and accolades matter to my friend Keith Mossberg. He wants to do some good (he does) and, laughably, thinks he looks awesome with a ’stache (he doesn’t).

Men are dying too young, and they aren’t talking to their friends about their health. Some 70 percent of men say their friends can rely on them for

support, but only 48 percent say that they rely on their friends, Movember instructs. In other words: We’re here for our friends, but worried about asking for help for ourselves. That silence is costing lives.

Within the wider context of historical medical discrimination against women and ongoing health disparities in communities of color, talking plainly about men’s health is appropriate and refreshing. My daughter is already focusing on issues pertaining to women’s health, and I’d like my son to be similarly open about his health concerns and worries.

Social media helps, especially among younger men. Being able to post, promote and celebrate the fun of the effort makes the actual work of it—scheduling a doctor’s visit, talking about mental health, making healthy lifestyle decisions—much easier. Perhaps you’ve seen that old New Yorker cartoon that depicts the stages of life as “your doctor is older than you; you’re the same age as your doctor; your doctor is younger than you.” That kind of humor presupposes you’re making it to your doctor at all.

The folks at Movember have the statistics. When detected early, prostate cancer survival rates are better than 98 percent. Find it late, and those survival rates drop below

26 percent. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in young men aged 15-34 in the United States. One in four adults in the United States will experience a mental health problem in a given year, and three out of four suicides are committed by men.

Clearly there is a need for more talk, and more outreach, concerning men’s health.

We need to slow down and take care.

Addressing traffic safety on Route 17 headed up to the Catskills, Jewish and Yiddish newspapers used to promote a clever public-safety message: “Better Dr. Feinberg be late than the late Dr. Feinberg. Don’t drive tired; don’t rush; arrive alive.”

As we navigate through increasing professional, familial and personal demands and responsibilities, we’d do well to take that advice. Wherever you’re going, whoever you are and whomever you’re with, arrive alive.

Whether or not you’re growing a mustache this month—get checked; get screened; ask for help.

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

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CANDLE LIGHTING

Michael Tobman, Publisher

Friday, Nov. 17 Candles: 4:18 p.m.

Shabbat Ends: 5:19 p.m.

Friday, Nov. 24 Candles: 4:14 p.m.

Shabbat Ends: 5:15 p.m.

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 3

SCHUMER IN THE NEWS

Schumer, Chabad-Lubavitch Mark Return of Schneerson Text Recently Discovered in ISRAEL SENATOR SAYS HE WILL CONTINUE TO PUSH FOR RETURN OF ENTIRE SCHNEERSON COLLECTION FROM RUSSIA U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer met on Thursday with rabbis of the ChabadLubavitch community to mark the recovery of a sacred text from the Schneerson collection.

Since 1992, eight volumes of the collection have been located in Russia.

Earlier this year, Schumer and members of the entire U.S. Senate sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin requesting the return of the Schneerson collection of sacred texts from the Russian State Library and the Russian State Military Archive.

While Russia has not yet returned

4 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017

these sacred texts to Chabad, one volume was recently discovered at Kedem Auction House in Israel and returned to the Chabad. On Thursday, Schumer celebrated the return of this book, alongside members of the Chabad-Lubavitch community. He said that he will do everything in his power to secure the return of the rest of the Schneerson collection.

“The discovery of this sacred text in Israel is a simcha for Chabad and the entire Jewish community, and I am grateful to have been a part of this joyous occasion,” said Schumer.

“However, we will not rest until the entire Schneerson collection is returned to Chabad, and I will continue to fight for its return from Russia.”

Those in attendance at Thursday’s celebration in Schumer’s office included Rabbi Chaim Cunin—Chabad House Publications; Rabbi Yosef Cunin—Beverly Hills Jewish Community; Rabbi Mendel Cunin— Chabad of Larchmont; Rabbi Zushe Cunin—Chabad of Pacific Palisades; Rabbi Levi Cunin—Chabad of Malibu; Rabbi Tzemach Cunin—Chabad of

Century City; Rabbi Avrohom Litvin— Chabad of Kentucky; Zev Cunin—son of Rabbi Yosef Cunin (age 8); and Chabad pro bono legal advocates Steve Lieberman, Nat Lewin, Alyza Lewin and Nechama Potasnick.

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 5

THIS IS WHAT PUERTO RICO LOOKS LIKE 50+ DAYS AFTER HURRICANE MARIA An aerial view of the damage from Hurricane Maria; blue tarp is used to temporarily repair houses whose roofs were damaged by the storm.

PHOTO BY JOSEFIN DOLSTEN

BY JOSEFIN DOLSTEN

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (JTA) — “Feeling lucky today?” reads a flier for a casino tucked into the seat pocket of Adolfo Vasquez’s car. The car actually belongs to his wife, Vasquez explains.

He borrowed hers, which is bigger, to drive a group from the San Juan Airport to the neighborhood where they are delivering humanitarian supplies.

Since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, Vasquez only gets about one ride request a day. After work he goes home to a dark house.

Power has been out for nearly 50 days, and he doesn’t have a way to refrigerate food. At night, Vasquez, his wife and three sons sleep on the floor, where it’s cooler than in their beds.

Like the Vasquez family, the majority of households are still without power since Hurricane Maria struck the island—which is home to 3.4 million U.S. citizens—causing massive destruction and widespread power outages. Some haven’t had power since Sept. 6, when Hurricane Irma hit. Many stores and businesses are closed, leading to shortages in food, basic toiletries and cleaning supplies.

“Puerto Rico is under remodeling,” reads a white flag waving in the wind.

The local Jewish community, which numbers about 1,000 and whose members are mostly well off, did better than most. Many left the island prior to the storm, and the majority of those who stayed

6 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017

behind have generators to provide power. The Jewish community center in the capital suffered moderate damage and has since been repaired.

The community has come together, with the help of the UJA-Federation of New York and its partner organizations, to provide aid to other Puerto Ricans.

“We were very concerned about people suffering because we saw it and at the same time we understood that as a Jewish community we had to lead these efforts. We had to be there,” said Diego Mendelbaum, director of the Puerto Rico JCC. “We call [it] ‘tikkun ol am’— there was no other way for us to go.”

UJA-Federation, in partnership with the Greater New York Hospital Association and the Afya Foundation, a nonprofit that delivers healthcare supplies, has sent some 65,000 pounds of humanitarian supplies to the island by way of private jets lent to it by donors.

On Nov. 7, seven UJA-Federation staff members and volunteers and the founder of Afya loaded some 2,500 pounds of supplies onto a Gulfstream 400 luxury jet

provided by an anonymous donor. The shipment included supplies provided by Afya, such as water bottles, diapers and hygiene products, along with medicines donated by the hospital association, including asthma inhalers, IV fluids and pediatric flu medication. It was the 10th such flight to Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria hit. (UJA has also flown twice to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.)

Local communities are depending on aid from nongovernmental organizations to get by, said Carmen Villanueva Castro, a leader of the Hill Brothers neighborhood in San Juan.

“The help has not come to assist us and provide us with the things we need, so we’re trying to obtain that help in a private manner instead of from the government,” Castro said.

Homes in her neighborhood sustained significant damage from the hurricane, and many lack power. Debris has not been removed in a timely manner.

“Community leaders like me feel frustrated because we cannot help our people,” she said, describing the Nov. 7 delivery as “a really big miracle.”

Also on Nov. 7, the UJA-Federation delegation visited two nursing homes in the Hill Brothers neighborhood to deliver supplies and meet with residents. Though locals said the nursing homes were usually in bad condition, the storms had only made things worse. One small facility, home to about 10 people, had been without power since Hurricane Irma. They were short on sanitary supplies and residents lay in soiled diapers. Many were weak and unable to communicate.

At a nearby home, Irma Acevedo, 80, was one of many residents suffering from untreated medical conditions.

Her foot was badly infected and she appeared to be suffering from elephantiasis, a disease that affects the lymph nodes. A representative

UJA-Federation of New York is working with the Afya Foundation and the Greater New York Hospital Association to deliver supplies to Puerto Rico by way of private jets.

PHOTO BY JOSEFIN DOLSTEN

from Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s office who joined the mission gasped in shock when she saw the old woman’s condition. Yet Acevedo cheered up when the delegation came to greet her, telling them that she loved them.

Mark Medin, UJA-Federation’s executive vice president of financial resource development, described aiding people affected by the storm as “an obligation as Jews, as individuals and as an organization.”

“When you see elderly people in a state of utter hopelessness and despair, lying in a bed, unable to leave the bed, with bodies that are literally skin and bones, atrophied away, it rips your heart open and you say, ‘How can I not do something to provide a small amount of relief or support, or help or love or care to these people that are left here with no support system and in very, very poor medical conditions?’” he said.

Providing hands-on disaster relief is a first for the UJA-Federation.

The philanthropy usually provides aid by allocating funds to partner organizations, but aid groups were having trouble dispatching supplies to Puerto Rico. The UJA-Federation realized it could use private jets provided by donors to deliver resources directly to the island, which is about a 3 1/2-hour flight from New York.

“We had an opportunity to act,” Medin said.

The UJA-Federation and the JCC in Puerto Rico aren’t the only Jewish groups providing aid. Chabad has also been partnering with relief groups to deliver food, water and supplies to villages hit hard by the hurricane.

“Your neighbors are in need; they need our help. It’s our duty to respond,” said Chabad’s executive director, Rabbi Mendel Zarchi. He had just returned from delivering supplies to some 250 families in a nearby community.

“The Jewish community has been outstanding,” Zarchi said.

Michelle Carlo Newman, a Puerto Rican physician working with the UJAFederation to deliver supplies and evaluate medical needs, said she was proud of the resilience people were displaying.

“She’s a great example,” Carlo Newman said, referring to Castro, the neighborhood leader. “She’s a community leader that could be crying in her room about what’s going on. You saw her house—it’s half destroyed— but she’s like, ‘Let’s get people here.

Let’s get help here.’”

Here Are Four Jewish Takeaways from Election Day

BY RON KAMPEAS

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The big post-Election Day headline is the stunning Democratic sweep in Virginia’s gubernatorial and House elections, coupled with the predicted Democratic win of the governor’s mansion in New Jersey.

Republicans are wondering what this says about the train that was Trumpism.

In Virginia, Ed Gillespie was an establishment Republican who ran a campaign modeled after President Donald Trump’s shocking win a year ago. Gillespie focused on social hot-button issues like preserving Confederate statues and the alleged proliferation of illegal immigrant gangs.

And the GOP candidate lost, big time.

Democrats, meanwhile, are marveling at a unity they had believed was dissipating following last year’s contentious primaries clash between Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Hillary Clinton, who defeated Sanders but came up short in the general election to Trump. Sanders’ pick in Virginia, Tom Perriello, lost in the primaries but went all in for the establishment-backed winner, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. Both the party establishment and the leftists who buck it were hailing the close post-primaries cooperation between Perriello and Northam as a model for the Democrats ahead of next year’s midterm congressional elections.

No Jews won major contests — but there are Jewish takeaways in this offyear election. Here are five:

NOVA rocks—the vote

Virginia over the last couple of decades seems to have transitioned from Republican red to Democratic blue, with the Democrats close to taking the House of Delegates in a result no one anticipated.

A big reason for the flip? The professionals crowding into Northern Virginia—“NOVA” to initiates — attracted to the Washington suburbs because of the proliferation of jobs in government, lobbying and the high-tech sector; and to Virginia’s D.C. suburbs, particularly because of the high-quality schools and bucolic settings.

It’s enough to drive a prominent Trump backer, Jerry Falwell Jr., to call for secession—of northern Virginia to the District of Columbia.

“DC should annex NOVA and return the governance of VA to Virginians!”

Falwell, the president of the evangelical Liberty University in the state’s southwest, said on Twitter.

The influx of blue voters is also a result of a sharp growth in the Jewish population. (Non-Orthodox Jews overwhelmingly trend center-left and left.) Synagogues report burgeoning membership growth. Ahead of the 2012 elections, an official of the Washingtonarea Jewish federation told the JTA that Northern Virginia’s Jewish population grew to some 100,000 in 2010 from about 60,000 a decade earlier.

Did white supremacists get out the vote?

Virginia’s Albemarle County was closely watched this election: It includes Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia and a liberal enclave in conservative central Virginia.

Democrats are notoriously tough to get out in off-year elections, and Albemarle was seen as a bellwether of the party’s get-out-the-vote operation. Get the vote out here, the thinking went, and Democrats have a shot.

The vote got out. Northam carried the county with a 12,000-vote majority, compared to Terry McAuliffe, the

Ralph Northam, Virginia’s governor-elect, greeting supporters at an election night rally in Fairfax, Nov. 7, 2017 PHOTO BY WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

incumbent Democratic governor, who won it by 6,500 votes in 2013.

We can’t know why Democratic polling surged unless and until the county’s voters are polled. But it’s not a stretch to conclude that the Aug. 12 march in Charlottesville by white supremacists and neo-Nazis, which culminated in a suspected one of their number ramming his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one, galvanized liberal turnout.

A virtual poster, in Yiddish

In Mea Shearim, a haredi Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, the best way to take the political pulse is by looking up—at the stone walls, where densely written posters break down the issues in Yiddish.

Not so much in 21st-century New York City. The battle between two Orthodox Jewish candidates for the Borough Park seat on the City Council there was fought on WhatsApp, the messaging app. And the issues in Brooklyn were not the esoterica that often drives divisions among the fervently Orthodox in Israel.

The virtual barbs in the Borough Park race, the Forward reported, were sharp and prosaic. Loyalists to Yoni Hikind, son of the veteran state lawmaker Dov Hikind, alleged, without proof, that his rival, Kalman Yeger, had ties to pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour. Hikind, in turn, was dinged for being single.

Some political traditions die hard, though: The WhatsApp messages, like those Mea Shearim posters, were more often than not anonymous. And in

Yiddish.

Yeger, handpicked by the incumbent, David Greenfield, who is leaving the post, trounced Hikind.

How a Jewish woman paved the way for New Jersey’s first Sikh mayor

Dawn Zimmer made headlines when she became mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, in 2009: She was Jewish, and a woman, in a city on the Hudson River known for a large Italian American community and its views of the New York City skyline. As president of the City Council, she became acting mayor when her predecessor resigned in a corruption scandal, and then was elected in her own right in a special election.

Five years later she made headlines again when she revealed that the administration of Gov. Chris Christie tried to make Superstorm Sandy recovery funds contingent on her backing a real-estate project favored by the administration. Coming soon after reports that the governor’s aides blocked access to the George Washington Bridge to punish another Democratic mayor, Zimmer’s 2014 allegation prompted an FBI investigation.

This year, the popular Democratic mayor surprised her constituents by opting not to run again, saying she preferred to focus on climate change.

Instead, she endorsed City Councilman Ravi Bhalla.

Bhalla won, becoming the state’s first Sikh mayor.

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 7

GLOBAL BRIEFING

A view of the Dutch parliament building in The Hague, Netherlands, March 14, 2017 PHOTO BY CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES

I Was Just Accused of Being an Israeli Spy in the Dutch Parliament

BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ

8 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — This week, only six months after I became a Dutch citizen, my wife congratulated me for being mentioned in parliament for my reporting on the Netherlands’ relations with Israel.

Flattered, I looked it up, expecting to find praise for my work. I was already kind of drafting, as journalists instinctively do, some grateful Facebook post on my integration success story.

There was just one tiny problem: The mention, which local Jewish leaders later condemned as antiSemitic, was by a pro-immigrant, Muslim-rights party that insinuated that I am a Zionist spy for Israeli intelligence.

The charges appear in a set of questions submitted to the chamber by Denk (“think” in Dutch), a party founded by two Dutch-Turkish politicians. Citing my reporting for the JTA and prior service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), they suggested to Cabinet ministers that as a former member of the military, I am part of an effort by Israel to “spy on pro-Palestine activists in Europe.”

Seeing this elicited a rash of emotions, from disbelief and anger at my accusers to gratitude when strangers publicly leapt to my defense.

Let me back up. When I became a citizen earlier this year, I had both hope and doubts. Would a country defined by centuries of tolerance continue to show respect and acceptance for its religious minorities?

Or would it succumb to pressures from the far right on the one hand and Islamists on the other?

To me, Denk’s attack demonstrated that my roots can be used against me—and maybe against my children, too—even in the once-tolerant society into which I thought I had integrated.

What seemed to have inspired the party’s attack was my reporting about the appointment of Cabinet minister Sigrid Kaag, a former staffer for UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, who is married to a former ambassador of the Palestinian Authority to Switzerland.

In an article about her appointment, I wrote that in 1996, she accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of using racist language. Denk accused me of misquoting Kaag in a “campaign of libel,” arguing that she was merely quoting Israeli critics of Netanyahu while expressing no opinion herself.

(I had quoted from her remarks, made during a heated debate on a television panel, slightly shortening her verbatim statement, in which she said, “Fortunately, there were yesterday night demonstrations by pro-peace Israelis who said Netanyahu’s way is of soundbites with blatantly racist, demagogic overtones about the Palestinian peace partner.”)

This prompted Tunahan Kuzu, a Denk lawmaker, to flag me in a query sent to the minister of general affairs and the minister of foreign affairs. Such queries, like congressional resolutions in the United States, are often used by lawmakers to draw attention to an issue and usually disappear into a digital archive.

Among the nine questions, Kuzu asked, “Is it true that Liphshiz worked for the intelligence services during his service as researcher for the Israeli army?” followed directly by, “How do you view the fact that Israel uses its intelligence service to spy on proPalestine activists in Europe?”

For the record, I was born in Israel and served nearly one year in an elite commando unit in the IDF before completing my three-year compulsory service as a counterintelligence analyst, ending my service but for compulsory reserve duty, which I last had in 2009. After my discharge, I became a translator and then a journalist for Maariv and, later, Haaretz. I joined the JTA in March 2012. My work as a journalist has remained wholly unconnected to my service in the army, which is the only government body I have ever served. I moved to the Netherlands in 2011.

My editors in New York regard Denk’s charges as “preposterous.”

“Cnaan’s military service has had absolutely no bearing on his long track record as an independent, professional, accurate, fair and award-winning journalist,” they wrote in a statement. “Cnaan reports on Jewish life across Europe and beyond in a now 100-year-old tradition of JTA correspondents who have provided comprehensive and unimpeachable reporting on Jews and Jewish issues throughout the world.”

My accusers entered the parliament in the March elections, courting Muslims with a platform that resists integration in favor of a multicultural vision of Dutch society. Denk has been accused of antiSemitism, and of countering discrimination against immigrants with its own radical vision of a Balkanized Holland.

Earlier this year, Denk’s leader, Kuzu, refused to shake Netanyahu’s hand during his visit to The Hague.

On Sept. 28, another party member, Selçuk Öztürk,

GLOBAL BRIEFING

said during a plenary debate on ritual slaughter that other lawmakers should watch out for “the long arm of Israel and the Jews.”

In a statement last week, CIDI, Dutch Jewry’s main anti-Semitism watchdog, came to my defense, rejecting the idea that “because a journalist served in the Israeli army,” he must be a spy. (I had worked briefly for CIDI as a researcher in 2011-’12, compiling several reports for them.)

And it described an illustration on the party’s Facebook page, accompanying a draft of its charges against me, as anti-Semitic. The illustration featured the silhouette of a man in a yarmulke shaking hands with a man wearing a top hat—the kind one associates with 19th-century bankers.

CIDI Director Hanna Luden, who took up the position long after I had finished my work for CIDI, said her organization is “deeply concerned at how this sort of imagery and text are expressed and have found their way into the political arena. Increasingly, antiSemitism is being relabeled as anti-Zionism.”

Luden also wrote that “it appears that Denk’s parliamentary query is not about its concern for Minister Kaag, but is rather an opportunistic abuse” of journalists reporting on her. Luden, who neither consulted nor informed me in advance about her statement, called on members of the Dutch parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee to speak out against the Denk query.

To my knowledge, none has. Nor did the Dutch journalists’ union, of which I am a member.

I’m tempted to laugh off the episode. (On Twitter, I suggested that my moonlighting for the Mossad should entitle me to a raise—which has drawn no reaction from New York or Jerusalem so far.) But in truth, it showed me that I am more isolated and distrusted in my new country than I had previously thought.

Above all, I am saddened by the fact that the query accusing me of treason or disloyalty came from a party that represents mainly immigrants from the Middle East. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that our common enemies accuse them of exactly the same thing.

On a personal level, I wonder what the people I interview—and more crucially for my extensive travels, immigration officers with no knowledge of the affair—might think when they Google my name, only to find an accusation on the Dutch parliament’s website that I am a spy. Or what an Islamist terrorist in search of a quality target might think upon reading my name—singled out publicly by his favorite party— which is also listed in the Dutch White Pages.

And what this would do to potential clients of my wife, who also is Jewish and has an Israeli last name.

Or simply what the Dutch classmates of my children would make of it in a decade or so.

Then again, maybe I needn’t worry over that last scenario.

After all, with each new incident like this one, I and many other Jews across Western Europe are finding it increasingly difficult to imagine a future here at all for our children.

A set of questions to parliament members by Holland’s Denk party, which charges JTA reporter Cnaan Liphshiz and the “Israel lobby” with defamation, included an illustration deemed anti-Semitic by the country’s top antiSemitism watchdog.

COURTESY OF DENK

British Government Minister Resigns over Secret Meetings with Israeli Officials (JTA) — A government minister in the United Kingdom resigned over secret meetings she had in Israel with government officials while on a family vacation there.

Priti Patel, 45, a lawmaker with the ruling Conservative Party, stepped down Nov. 8 after being called back earlier in the day from an official trip to Africa.

In August, she had met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials including politicians, businesses, tech startups and humanitarian NGOs while in Israel on a private vacation.

Prime Minister Theresa May was not aware of the meetings, which were arranged by a Conservative peer, Stuart Polak. Polak, a baron, also attended 11 of the 12 meetings. Government ministers are supposed to tell the government when they are conducting official business overseas.

British media had reported that May would fire Patel, the secretary of state for international development, upon her return to London from Africa.

Her resignation letter did not mention Israel.

Patel apologized on Monday for not informing the Foreign Office of the unauthorized meetings, and for suggesting that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson knew about her plans to hold the meetings. Johnson did find out about the meetings, but not in advance of them.

After the Israel visit, Patel suggested that some of Britain’s aid budget go to the Israeli army and inquired if Britain could support Israel’s humanitarian operations for Syrian victims of the country’s civil war.

She was recalled from Africa following questions about two other undisclosed meetings held in September—one with the Israeli public security minister, Gilad Erdan, in Westminster; and the other with an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, Yuval Rotem, in New York.

The opposition Labour Party had called on Patel to be investigated or resign.

In a statement released Nov. 6, Patel wrote: “In hindsight, I can see how my enthusiasm to engage in this way could be misread, and how meetings were set up and reported in a way which did not accord with the usual procedures. I am sorry for this and I apologize for it. My first and only aim as the secretary of state for International Development is to put the interests of British taxpayers and the world’s poor at the front of our development work.”

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 9

OBITUARY

Tzipora Jochsberger Dies at 96 A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR WHO FOUNDED THE K AUFMAN MUSIC CENTER IN NY (JTA) — Tzipora Jochsberger, In 1947 she was elected a director of founder of the Kaufman Music Center the New Jerusalem Conservatory and in New York and a director of the Rubin Academy of Music, later known as the Academy for Music and Dance in Israel, Rubin Academy, where she ran the school’s music program. Now known as has died.

Jo c h s b e r g e r, a c o m p o s e r, the Jerusalem Academy of Music, it is musicologist and educator who survived located on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University of the Holocaust due Jerusalem. to her musical She left Israel for abilities, died Oct. 29 the United States in Jerusalem at 96, in 1950 with the the Kaufman Music assistance of the Center announced.

Culture Department Lydia Kontos, of the Jewish Agency who succeeded in New York, where Jochsberger as the she planned to use center’s executive music to strengthen director in 1985, Jewish identity. announced the death.

She founded “Working with the Hebrew Arts Tzipora taught me to believe that anything Tzipora Jochsberger survived the School in 1952 with is possible if you have Holocaust to become a legendary 16 students in two borrowed classrooms a mission to which music educator. at the Ramaz School you are committed,” PHOTO COURTESY OF KAUFMAN MUSIC CENTER with assistance from Kontos said.

Moshe Davis, provost Jochsberger was born in Germany in 1920, studied of the Jewish Theological Seminary music from the age of 8, and in 1934 and president of the Hebrew Arts entered the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary Foundation. The school doubled in in Wüerzberg—one of the few schools size in the first two years, and as the of higher learning available to Jews in “Kaufman Music Center” has become a major city institution, housing the Germany at the time.

In 1939 she left Nazi Germany Merkin Concert Hall, a community to accept an invitation from the arts school and a New York City public Palestine Academy of Music to study in school for musically gifted children.

Jerusalem. Her parents stayed behind She served as the head of the center for and were later deported to Auschwitz, 33 years until her retirement in 1985.

After her retirement, Jochsberger where they died. The Jewish Women’s Archive described her acceptance to returned to Israel and founded the the Palestine Academy as “good fortune Israel Music Heritage Project, which produced the 10-part, award-winning that ultimately saved her life.”

She graduated in 1942 with a diploma video series A People and Its Music from the Palestine Academy of Music, illustrating the music and lifestyles of and another from the Music Teachers’ Jewish communities in Israel.

Jochsberger, who lost most of her Seminary in Jerusalem. She earned a master’s degree in 1956 and a doctorate family in the Holocaust and never in 1972 in sacred music from the Jewish married, wrote music that has been performed in Israel and the United Theological Seminary in New York.

In the 1940s, Jochsberger built a States. This includes Jewish choral music program for Arab girls at the works; music for piano, recorder and Women’s Teachers’ Seminary for Arab violin; chamber music ensembles; and Girls in the British Mandate of Palestine. music for children.

10 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017

Attention Manhattan, Queens & Brooklyn Families

FAMILY REIMBURSEMENT PROGRAM! New

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. eimbursement is based bas on a Reimbursement

limi d. d as funding is limited.

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

From left to right: Yuval Machlin, Kfir Eyal, Daniel Shaked and Alon Matas in front of Plug and Play, a Silicon Valley incubator in Silicon Valley where they all work; all have been in California for different lengths of time, but all talk about returning to Israel someday.

PHOTO BY BEN SALES

Meet the Israelis Bringing the “Start-up Nation” to Silicon Valley

BY BEN SALES

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — When he brings Israeli entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley, Gili Ovadia gives them a list of what not to do.

Don’t interrupt. Don’t yell. Don’t condescend to the marketing team. Don’t show up late. Don’t leave typos in your emails.

It still takes them awhile, said Ovadia, before they understand how Americans work.

“Whenever I talk to Israeli companies, I say if you want to succeed [in tech], get your suit and come here,” said Ovadia, who heads the Israeli government’s economic and trade office on the West Coast. “You won’t succeed with emails, phone

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conversations and websites. At the end of the day, it’s personal relationships.”

Ovadia works alongside an ecosystem of Israeli entrepreneurs who have made it their mission to draw Israeli techies from Tel Aviv to the Bay Area— and to help them thrive once they are here. Even as Israel has built a reputation as a tech hotspot, these entrepreneurs say the Jewish state is small potatoes compared to Silicon Valley, which acts as a fount for the latest innovations and startups—and, crucially, the cash that funds them.

“If you want to be a movie actor, you need to be in Hollywood,” said Daniel Shaked, who moved

from Israel to Silicon Valley two years ago and is the founder of ClipCall, which connects homeowners to service professionals like plumbers and electricians.

“This is the Hollywood of high tech. In Silicon Valley there are thousands of startups looking for the same funding sources, and they’re here, next to them. They can ride a bike and meet people.”

In the past five years, a network of Israeli-focused organizations has emerged in the Bay Area. The Israeli Executives and Founders Forum, or IEFF, facilitates discussions among 1,200 Israelis who work in the area; UpWest Labs seeks to bring early-stage Israeli companies to the Valley. The Israeli Collaboration Network, or ICON, connects Israeli and American entrepreneurs. J-Angels brings together Israeli and American Jewish investors.

As such, Israelis who come to Silicon Valley land in friendly territory: IEFF counts more than 100 Israelirun startups in the Bay Area. The Israeli Consulate estimates that there are anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 Israelis in the region, which comprises San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and the cities around them. And as a possible sign of just how entrenched Israeli entrepreneurs have become in northern California, after a lobbying campaign by Israeli expatriates, United Airlines began a direct flight from San Francisco to Tel Aviv last year.

“The Bay Area has a very unique activity of Israelis,” said Oded Hermoni, IEFF’s co-chairman. “Israelis can feel at home because you don’t have to be Americanborn to be successful in Silicon Valley.”

moved to Silicon Valley two months ago, noticed the Plus, said Raccah, Israelis have names that can be difference in decibels. In Israel, when techies meet hard to pronounce. they immediately begin talking over each other. In “Our names, [like] Kochavit, how do you say that?”

America, Machlin said, he has walked into meetings he said. “Even if it’s a bias people would never admit, where 30 employees are just sitting there in silence. it’s still a challenge.”

“Sometimes you see someone who says something To overcome these issues, Israelis are forging you disagree with,” said connections in everyday Machlin, who works at life as well. Palo Alto’s JCC, Tangent Logic, a product for example, has made a services company. “In Israel, special effort to cater to three seconds wouldn’t have Israelis, and many now passed and you would have gather there to barbecue on interrupted him and started Israeli Independence Day or a discussion, which I think plant trees on Tu b’Shvat, is more efficient. The people the Jewish arboreal new here know what they’re year. There’s an apartment doing, and that’s proven, but complex in the town of it’s different. I didn’t expect Sunnyvale that has so many it to be that different.”

Israeli expats that they’ve Israel sees itself as the nicknamed it “the kibbutz.”

“Start-up Nation,” the Near the kibbutz is a title of the popular 2009 falafel shop that serves book on the country’s relatively obscure Israeli entrepreneurial bent, but Moshik Raccah moved to Silicon Valley from Israel food like sabich (an egg many Israelis find it an eye- in 2001 and co-founded the Israeli Executives and eggplant sandwich) opening experience when and Founders Forum, which brings together and a chickpea dish called they realize just how small groups of Israeli techies in Silicon Valley. masabacha. In Palo Alto, the their role in the world of PHOTO BY BEN SALES more mainstream Oren’s tech really is. The Jewish Hummus, founded by serial state might have a good reputation, but it’s still tech entrepreneur Oren Dobronsky, offers creamy foreign to Silicon Valley, said Moshik Raccah, a co- Israeli-style hummus in several styles, as well as founder of IEFF. The qualifications that so impress coffee—Turkish and instant—imported from Israel.

Israeli investors—like service in the Israel Defense But such comforts can’t erase the challenges of Forces’ elite 8200 intelligence unit—mean nothing to living an ocean and 10 time zones away. Raccah said most American venture capitalists or employers. he sees fewer Israelis making the move than in past years. In part, that’s because telecommuting has made communication easier. Also, the growth of New York’s tech scene has drawn Israelis who want to be close to the action and money, but “only” an 11-hour flight away.

“If you’re sending your CEO or BizDev team to the U.S., it’s much easier to work from New York,” Raccah said.

In San Francisco, he added, “you have no overlap of workday and the flight is much longer.”

Still, for many Israelis, the opportunities and creature comforts provided by the Bay Area are unparalleled. There’s also the bonus of residing in one of America’s most liberal states—a situation not lost on the mostly secular and left-wing entrepreneurial set, who see the distance from Israel’s right-wing government as a bonus.

Despite these perks, however, for most of these techies, Israel is home. It’s where their families and childhood friends live; it’s where they can joke in Hebrew; it’s where they can talk over each other without getting dirty looks. The Israelis living in the Bay Area don’t rule out moving back someday—even Raccah, who moved to the area in 2001.

“We find it harder to adapt here, to say, ‘I’m American,’” Raccah said. “We’ve been so indoctrinated.

I’m Israeli. I want my kids to go to the army. I want to Oren’s Hummus, founded by serial entrepreneur Oren Dobronsky, serves Israeli-style food and drink in Palo see my family every week. I want to joke in Hebrew.

Alto.

PHOTO BY BEN SALES That’s the stuff that we miss.”

After inventing many of the tools that make telecommuting and smart investing possible, it’s somewhat ironic that the the tech industry still places such a high premium on in-person meetings.

But several Israeli techies said that old-fashioned networking is the best way to advance a career.

“It’s like saying you’re a bride and you want to find a groom in Silicon Valley,” said Darya Henig Shaked, who founded WeAct, which brings Israeli women entrepreneurs on missions to meet with investors in the Bay Area. “You need to get to know each other, to look each other in the eyes. That’s not how it works, that you ask for investors a continent away.”

After founding two successful startups and a kindergarten in Tel Aviv, Kfir Eyal, 43, figured it would be easy to land a job at a Silicon Valley tech giant like Apple or Facebook. But when he moved to the Bay Area five years ago, he spent months sending out résumés without getting any bites. In the end, he took a senior position at a financial tech company—but only after making a connection at an Israeli poker game.

His lesson: Israeli contacts are valuable, but they shouldn’t be that difficult to make. So four years ago he started an organization called TechAviv that brought Israeli entrepreneurs together every couple of months to eat, drink and network.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to go through this experience of ‘What do I do now that we landed?’” said Eyal, who now serves as vice president for sales and business development for CreditStacks, a startup offering credit cards to recent expats to the United States. “Now it’s become more of the norm to help people.”

But Israelis still face the acclimation challenges that Ovadia is trying to combat. Yuval Machlin, who

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 13

POLITICS

Nicole’s New York City?

ANALYSIS OF ELECTIONS REVEALS THE TRUE TALE OF TWO CITIES

BY HOWARD GRAUBARD

This week, in his New York Magazine blog, Andrew Sullivan noted an interesting trend in the voting in Virginia’s governor’s race, which he saw as a sign of hope for Democrats: “Demographically, the only real shift outside of turnout was in white votes. Clinton won blacks and Hispanics by 88 and 65 percent, respectively.

Northam’s compatible numbers were 87 and 67— barely distinguishable. But Clinton won only 35 percent of the white vote, while Northam won 42 percent.”

It was a trend replicated elsewhere, but not in New York City.

In 2013, mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio pounded the point that New Yorkers lived in a divided city.

Calling out the incumbent, Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio stated: “On a whole range of other issues he simply neglected our neighborhoods and failed. And those who would seek to continue those policies are destined to fail millions of New Yorkers as well. So let’s be honest about where we are today. This is a place that in too many ways has become a tale of two cities, a place where City Hall has too often catered to the interests of the elite rather than the needs of everyday New Yorkers.”

But, despite his campaign’s being based upon New York’s being “The Tale of Two Cities,” in large measure we voted as if we were one. De Blasio won almost everywhere that year in both the primary and general election. After eight years of Rudy Giuliani’s “tough love” without the love, and 12 years of Mike Bloomberg’s technocratic version of “Rudy with a human face,” New Yorkers of all colors and classes had had enough of Bloombergism and enthusiastically embraced course correction, heading due left.

But that was then. These days, in contrast to his campaign rhetoric emphasizing our divisions, incumbent Mayor de Blasio now calls us “one city, built to last.”

Nonetheless, despite the mayor’s implication that he has united us, the election results reveal we are now more divided than before he took office.

The purpose of this article is to compare the results of the seemingly similar 2013 and 2017 mayoral elections and show how different they really were, and what impact those differences made.

The executive summary is that, in 2017, white outer-borough voters flew the coop on the matter of Mayor Big Bird.

Four years ago, Bill de Blasio won primary and general-election victories of enormous scope. Though

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he did not claim a majority of the primary vote, the breadth and depth of what can only be described as a de Blasio landslide was almost breathtaking. De Blasio beat his nearest opponent by nearly 15 percentage points and by over 100,000 votes.

De Blasio carried every borough. Of the city’s 65 assembly districts (ADs), de Blasio ran first in 55 of them, and second in the 10 ADs he lost.

Much has been made of de Blasio’s strength in black areas in a contest where his strongest primary opponent was a black man, and of his strength in other minority communities. But that wasn’t the whole story.

Twenty-two NYC Assembly seats had a white majority in the 2010 census. In the 2013 primary, de Blasio carried 17 of them.

The white-majority ADs de Blasio carried in 2013 ran the gamut. De Blasio won Brownstone Brooklyn and every white-majority AD in Manhattan outside of the affluent Manhattan Silk Stocking, but he also won Dov Hikind’s 48th AD (in spite of, or perhaps because of, Hikind’s support of Bill Thompson); and Southern Brooklyn’s conservative 45th AD, represented by Steve Cymbrowitz.

And the general election was more of the same.

Four years ago, I struggled to find a story in the results for the general election for mayor. De Blasio received 795,679 votes (73.15 percent) to Joe Lhota’s 264,420 (24.31 percent), with 27,611 votes (2.54 percent) going to everyone else. Finding any detail that proved anything to the contrary was a daunting task.

I started my search for a story by looking at who won where.

In the 2013 general election, de Blasio carried 55 assembly districts and lost 10. The ones he lost were the 45th, 46th and 48th in Southern Brooklyn; the 64th in Southern Brooklyn and Staten Island; the 62nd and 63rd on Staten Island; the 23rd and 26th in Queens; and the 73rd and the 76th on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

All were white-majority.

My original intent was to look at the results by dividing the ADs into categories based on the 2010 census (White Majority, White Plurality, Black Majority; Latino Majority, Latino Plurality, Asian Majority and Asian Plurality). But as I did the work, it became clear that proceeding with this was pointless. The results indicated Lhota had gotten his clock cleaned everywhere, except, possibly, in whitemajority ADs. Life seemed too short to expend the time required to do a detailed autopsy, so I instead went hunting in the ponds where the big white ducks resided. I restricted myself to looking at the white-majority ADs. There were 22 and Lhota had won 10. It seemed

possible there might be a story there.

The 2013 story was that de Blasio won the city’s white-majority ADs 263,485 (57.95 percent) to 177,002 (38.93 percent), a margin of 19 points. Of course, this looked like a tiny margin when one compared it to the vote in the 43 ADs where whites were not a majority, which de Blasio took by a vote of 532,194 (84.07 percent) to 87,418 (13.81 percent).

Anyway, using the white totals I came up with really wasn’t fair—Manhattan didn’t count. What about the city’s heartland, the four outer-boroughs, where the real white people lived?

Lhota had won eight of those 15 ADs; surely there was a story there.

Well, there was a real quantitative and qualitative difference in those results. In the city’s 15 whitemajority outer-borough ADs, de Blasio beat Lhota 150,271 (54.34 percent) to 117,594 (42.54 percent), a spread of merely 12 points.

But that included brownstone and hipster enclaves—surely Joe Lhota had won the real white New York of Vito Battista, John Marchi, Mario Biaggi and Mario Procaccino.

So, the next measure I took was to determine who won the outer-borough, white-majority ADs that lacked a bridge or tunnel to Manhattan. Lhota won eight of those 12 ADs. And I was right: Archie Bunker Land, B’nai Brak and Little Minsk had combined to give Joe Lhota a landslide over de Blasio of 106,063 (49.04 percent) to 103,619 (47.91 percent), a stunning victory of just over 1 percent.

Ironically enough, non-hip, outer-borough white NYC couldn’t manage a margin for Lhota that was one tenth as wide as the nearly 13 percent victory Lhota managed in Manhattan’s Silk Stocking ADs, where Lhota won 28,570 (53.75 percent) to 22,030 (41.45 percent).

Those people obviously knew where their bread was buttered and decided that they preferred to keep that bread in their pockets.

In the 2013 general election, we were not a “Tale of Two Cities”; we were more like a tale of one and two-thirteenths.

But that is no longer true.

This year, unofficial results posted by the NYC Board of Elections show that de Blasio received 726,361 (66.16 percent) to Nicole Malliotakis’ 303,742 (27.67 percent), with 77,743 votes (6.17 percent) going to everyone else.

The mayor lost 13 ADs to his 10 the last time, but his losses were somewhat different.

Last time, every AD he lost was white-majority. This time, he also lost two ADs that were Asian majority (though probably still with a large white vote) and one that was white-plurality (with strong Latino and Asian minorities, but still probably white-majority in its vote). On the other hand, two white ADs went in the opposite direction. Last time out, the mayor lost the two ADs in Manhattan’s Silk Stocking. This time, instead of losing the Silk Stocking ADs by nearly 13 points, he carried them by nearly 11 points: 22,860 (50.81 percent) to 18,026 (40.07 percent).

But overall, the mayor’s vote in the white neighborhoods dropped. In 2017, the mayor won

POLITICS

the city’s white-majority ADs not by 20 points, but by nine: 228,356 (50.66 percent, a loss of over seven points) to 187,812 (41.67 percent). The mayor was again stronger in areas where whites were a minority.

In the 43 ADs where whites were not a majority, the mayor won by a vote of 498,005 (76.96 percent) to 115,930 (17.91 percent).

As already noted, the mayor’s drop in white neighborhoods was not universal; in fact, the mayor’s surge in white Manhattan was not restricted to its richest area. The mayor’s margin improved in Manhattan’s white-majority ADs as a whole as well, going from a 62.44 percent-to-32.77-percent victory over Lhota in 2013 (a margin of nearly 30 percent) to a 65.53-percent-to-25.10-percent victory over Malliotakis (a margin of nearly 40 percent).

But what about white outer-borough voters?

Where Lhota had won eight of the white-majority outer-borough ADs, Malliotakis won 10 of them.

Moreover, Lhota lost those 15 ADs by nearly 12 points, while Malliotakis carried them by over eight: She took 147,337 (50.90 percent) of those votes to de Blasio’s 122,672 (42.38 percent), a loss of nearly 12 points.

And if we take out the brownstone and hipster enclaves and just measure who won the white-majority outer-borough assembly districts without a bridge or tunnel connection to Manhattan, the change in the white vote becomes even more profound. Where last time Lhota carried those ADs by barely over a point, Malliotakis won them by nearly 25 points, 136,095 (59.42 percent) to 79,021 (34.50 percent), a loss of over 13 points. Malliotakis won 10 of the 12 ADs in the category.

And such a hemorrhaging of white outer-borough votes had real consequences, which The New York Times has gone out of its way to obscure.

In the most questionable piece of NYC postelection commentary published last week, J. David Goodman of The New York Times gave Mayor de Blasio credit for Democratic victories in heavily contested council races: “The outcomes, based on early returns, also indicated that in some of the closest races, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s successful campaign provided enough coattails to propel fellow Democrats to wins around the city.”

Specifically, the author cited the council races of Justin Brannan (43rd District) in Greater Bay Ridge and Kalman Yeger (44th District) in Greater Borough Park.

Let’s get real here.

Yeger got 11,061 votes in that district (66.81 percent); de Blasio got 6,465 (39.00 percent). Even if we compare just the votes Yeger got on the Democratic line to de Blasio’s combined vote on the Democratic and Working Families lines, Yeger still outpaced the mayor by over 1,500 votes or almost 10 percent, taking 8,064 votes (48.69 percent).

But aside from the extremely limited degree that Yeger can be said to have benefited from de Blasio’s “coattails,” he also benefited from those belonging to Malliotakis, as both Yeger and Malliotakis shared the Conservative Party line.

In fact, on Election Day, I personally heard a few voters tell Yeger campaign workers that they would not vote for any Democrat, and then come back after

voting to inform the Yeger workers that since there was no Republican, they made their protest known in the council race by voting for the Conservative.

In fact, if the Conservative Party votes secured by Yeger had gone instead to his strongest opponent, Yoni Hikind, the race would have gone from a Yeger landslide to a near dead heat.

As for Brannan, he scratched out a victory of 12,516 (50.51 percent) to 11,621 (46.89 percent) over his Republican opponent, John Quaglione—a close race and a stunning contrast to the race four years before, when Quaglione lost 62.76 percent to 35.50 percent.

And there may be an explanation for Quaglione’s improvement.

In the same area where Brannan barely won, the mayor managed only 9,330 votes (36.56 percent) to Malliotakis’ 14,302 (56.05 percent). Sal Albanese, who represented almost all of that area on the council from 1982 to 1997, got 1,119 (4.39 percent) on the Reform line.

However, those looking for larger meaning can take this to the bank: In many areas of white outerborough New York City, the mayor is box-office poison.

For local Democrats, he is not a credential to be displayed, but an obstacle to be overcome.

How badly was the mayor repudiated here? Well, in the same area, the incumbent councilman, Vincent Gentile—who’d recently run fifth in the countywide district attorney primary while still winning that area—managed to get 48 percent of that district’s votes on the Reform line, without campaigning.

In other words, the mayor ran 14 percent behind a political zombie.

But if one believes The Times, the mayor lent Brannan coattails by getting nearly 3,000 fewer votes and running behind him by almost 14 percent.

Those were not coattails; they were nearly a noose.

So, dragging a local down to only 51 percent in a district Hillary Clinton carried is considered “coattails”? Apparently, if you only wound a Democratic council candidate, that is considered successful “coattails.” Other merely wounded victims of the mayor’s “coattails”—like Paul Vallone (19th District: de Blasio 31.74 percent) and Chaim Deutsch (48th District: de Blasio 31.01 percent), who both faced tough races where they were attacked as puppets of

the mayor—will be happy to learn this.

But let it be clear: The mayor’s coattails did, in fact, actually (and likely mortally) wound one City Council member.

In 2013, Elizabeth Crowley was re-elected to her council seat (District 30) with 58.94 percent of the vote to her Republican opponent’s 40.91 percent.

This year, preliminary returns have Crowley at the bottom end of a 10,221 (50.25 percent) to 10,088 (49.49 percent) defeat to Republican candidate Robert Holden.

Whether Crowley will suffer the hell of defeat will ultimately be decided after a visit to recount purgatory.

But if Crowley is defeated, perhaps the cause can be described as death by asphyxiation, after choking on mayoral “coattails.”

Crowley managed to outpace the mayor’s abysmal showing in her district by over 3,400 votes and over 17 percent, but not even that could save her.

So, we are once again “A Tale of Two Cities.” It might not be fair to say that the mayor of White– Outer-Borough New York City is Nicole Malliotakis, but it would be less unfair to say that in that fourth of the city, the mayor is not really Bill de Blasio.

While the numbers tell us how, they don’t really tell us why. But here are some things to chew on.

The first is the daunting reality of what local government can accomplish in 21st-century America; the second is what local government can ever accomplish in the city of New York.

Many New Yorkers who support what they think of as liberal policies on a state or federal level believe municipal government should be about providing municipal services. New Yorkers often define “municipal services” broadly, to include things in realms like public health, sanitation, infrastructure, public safety and education. However broadly New Yorkers define what city government should be about, 2017’s numbers show that many balk at the idea that municipal government should be about creating “socialism in one city”—a goal many feel de Blasio has embraced and taken on international road shows.

The voters most peeved by the mayor seem to be the white middle class. Votes for minor candidates more than doubled from 2013. In white outer-borough assembly districts, they accounted for about 8 percent of the vote.

The message such voters were sending was, enough is enough.

I’m not sure there are any larger implications here for the future. The mayor lost in many places where Hillary won and where Democrats will continue to win national elections (as they did among many Giuliani and Bloomberg voters).

However, those looking for larger meaning can take this to the bank: In many areas of white outer-borough New York City, the mayor is box-office poison. For local Democrats, he is not a credential to be displayed, but an obstacle to be overcome.

Howard Graubard, an attorney, Brooklyn resident and former aide to a state Senate minority leader, blogged about local, state and national politics at Ben Smith’s “Room 8” (and elsewhere) in 2006-’16 under the pseudonym “Gatemouth.” (No one was fooled.)

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 15

Jewish Italy: A (Very) Brief Overview

BY MAXINE DOVERE

Jews have lived in Italy without interruption since Maccabean times. Despite small numbers, the “Italkim”—Italian Jews—are neither Sephardim nor Ashkenazim, instead maintaining unique characteristics and traditions. They do not speak Yiddish or Ladino, but rather one of several JudeoItalian dialects. Synagogue services follow the “minhag italiani”—Italian tradition. Religious law is similar to Sephardic rituals.

In 161 BCE, an ambassador was dispatched to Rome

by Judah Maccabee to conclude a political treaty with the Roman Senate. The early Jewish population were largely merchants and traders. The community’s size increased significantly in 70 CE, when Emperor Titus deported close to 10,000 Jews to Italy after the conquest of Judea. The conquest is memorialized in the arch known by his name.

By the Medieval period, the community had achieved a notable presence. In 1385, Jews were given permission to reside in Venice. By 1394, however, Jews had to wear a yellow badge; a hundred years later (1496), a yellow hat was required. The infamous term “ghetto” was coined in Italy, probably deriving from the island of Ghetto Nuova to which Jews were confined in 1516.

Since 1442, the Kingdom of Naples was under Spanish rule. When Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the Jewish communities in Sicily and Sardinia— both under Spanish rule—were also expelled. Many moved to central and northern Italy, where conditions were significantly better.

The quality of Jewish life during the Renaissance varied, subject to the edicts of kings and popes.

Authorized professions were limited—with merchant, moneylender, physician and scholar among them.

Princes exploited the talents of their Jewish subjects.

In Venice, the senate began to treat the Jews with a little more consideration. Venice became a center of Jewish learning and book printing. Jews were allowed to engage in commerce and trade. The Venetian Republic was regarded as the most welcoming state for Jews—for a short while, at least.

In 1553, Pope Julius III ordered the confiscation and burning of all copies of the Talmud, saying it blasphemed Christianity. For almost two centuries (from approximately 1600 until 1800), Jews were confined to the ghetto. They were locked up at night and allowed out only when wearing a yellow badge.

The Jewish population numbered about 30,000

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throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, with many destitute.

By 1800, the walls of the ghetto literally came down, demolished as part of the new revolutionary spirit emanating from France. That year, Napoleon brought freedom to the Jews for a brief period.

The Italian Jewish community was fully emancipated in 1870. For almost 70 years, Jews enjoyed general freedom and full participation in Italian society.

During the Second Aliyah (immigration)—from 1904 to 1914—so many Italian Jews moved to Israel that an Italian synagogue and cultural center was established in Jerusalem.

Jews had a measure of protection during World War II. Despite pressure from the Germans, the Italians did not surrender their Jews. When Mussolini capitulated to German pressure, diplomats and high-ranking military officers disobeyed orders to surrender them. Still, 7,000 Italian Jews were lost during the Holocaust.

Politically, the Jewish minority in Italy lived under generally good conditions after World War II. The Italian Jews and their institutions enjoyed full rights guaranteed by the Constitution and by the respect of the majority of the Italian people. Immigrants, mainly from Egypt and other North African and Middle Eastern countries, added to the population.

Religious pluralism became official in Italy on Feb. 18, 1984, when the Holy See and the Italian Republic abolished Catholicism as the “state religion,” a designation it had held for 16 centuries. At its height, the Italian Jewish community numbered about 50,000.

Jewish traditions are in evidence in Italy to this day.

Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome, notes that in the city there are 15 active synagogues representing several denominations. Efforts to preserve Italy’s Jewish heritage are being undertaken by private foundations as well as with government sponsorship.

Vestiges of the Jewish ghetto still remain. Indeed, it is now a desirable, quite chic area that includes Campo dei Fiori.

The main street of Ghetto Rome, renovated in 1990, is still distinctly Jewish. The Great Synagogue of Rome, built in 1914, is at the head of the main street, with Israeli-level security in place at all times.

Kosher restaurants, now popular among sophisticated Romans, abound. Jews still live in the ghetto, albeit by choice.

On warm evenings, residents congregate outside, exchanging greetings, discussing the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, and shopping in the kosher stores that line the streets of the ghetto.

Parliamo Un Po? FLORA CASSEN DISCUSSES HER NEW BOOK, MARKING THE JEWS IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

BY MIRIAM LEVY-HAIM

On Friday, Nov. 10, the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY, hosted a talk by Flora Cassen on her new book, Marking the Jews in Renaissance Italy: Politics, Religion, and the Power of Symbols, recently released by Cambridge University Press.

The book, based on Cassen’s doctoral dissertation, explores the practice of forcing Jews to wear discriminatory marks on their clothing, which started in the Middle Ages but was applied with new vigor in 16th-century Italy as a result of the Spanish conquest and the Counter-Reformation. Cassen is associate professor of history and Van der Horst Fellow of Jewish History and Culture at UNC Chapel Hill.

Cassen began the talk with a story about her grandparents, which she said was a personal story and a badge story. Her grandparents became engaged in Belgium directly before World War II, and the order requiring Jews to wear a badge was issued while they were planning their wedding. The families began arguing about whether or not to wear the badge and proceed with the wedding at the city hall.

They ultimately decided to wear the badge, and her grandmother never forgot how people looked at them when they went out with it. Some people avoided them, others glared but no one was indifferent. Her grandparents’ story, Cassen explained, is a good example of how clothing can be used to impact and regulate society.

The practice of marking Jews by dress began with the Fourth Lateran Council, though distinguishing clothing varied over time and by place. The book begins with a sartorial study of different types of marks and their symbolism. The second half of the book explores microhistories of anti-Jewish discrimination found in archives across three Italian city-states: Milan, Genoa and Piedmont.

Cassen mentioned one particular case of an elderly deaf woman named Laura who was the only Jew of her town. Though the townspeople knew and recognized Laura as a Jew, she was arrested for not wearing the badge. Cases such as Laura’s suggest that these badges were not intended to simply distinguish Jews from Christians, as the Lateran Council states, but also to impart a stigma.

One of the attendees questioned the outsized emphasis placed on regulating the Jewish presence in Northern Italy, when the community was so small. In some instances, local cases involving the Jewish badge were sent to the Spanish governor, or even the Spanish king. But the fear of the “other” is always outsized compared to the actual risk. And conversations about how minorities are otherized and demonized remain starkly relevant in today’s political discourse.

Talmud Italiano Celebrates Publication of First Volume

BY MAXINE DOVERE

Tractate Rosh Hashanah, volume one of the first Italian translation of the Babylonian Talmud, a central text of Rabbinic Judaism, was presented to the Library of Congress by Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome, and Professor Clelia Piperno, director of the Talmud Translation Project and professor of Comparative Constitutional Law, University of Teramo, in a formal ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 23. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, director of National and International Outreach, received the volume on behalf of the library. The event was the first in a series of academic, quasi-religious and festive events in Washington and New York celebrating the publication of the Italian translation’s first volume.

A volume was presented to Rabbi Arthur Schneier at a ceremony at the Park East Synagogue on Oct. 24.

Based on the Vilna edition, the Italian Talmud will be an “entirely new translation— not only a matter of a new translation but making history….We have the duty to translate everything,” commented Piperno.

Di Segni described the occasion as “a very symbolic event [that] we wanted to share with the wider public.”

The text was translated from Aramaic into Italian using the Traduco App, a unique computational linguistics software system that, according to its developers, can be used for translations into virtually any language. The rabbi said the system could be developed to translate the Talmud into additional languages.

“The new translation signals that Italy’s Jewish community is a home for knowledge and cultural exchange,” Di Segni said, a concept generously supported by the Italian government’s Ministry of Education. “Our work in Italy has meaning outside of Italy, and that is why we are here,” he continued.

“Aramaic” noted Piperno, “uses fewer words than most modern languages…a very synthetic language, meaning that translating it takes more words. One page of Talmud is anywhere from four to 12 pages in Italian.”

Rabbi Gabi Decerno, the project manager, described the project as “an innovation for society and democracy, offering knowledge that is important to overcome hate…the best way to connect various cultures.

The first printed Talmud was published in Venice in 1520. Few of the early books printed in Italy survived, however: In 1553 Pope Julius III ordered that the book be burned. The Library of Congress is the depository for one of the few volumes of this central work of Jewish commentary and argument to escape the flames.

“If you want to strike the heart of the Jewish community, strike it by burning books,” said Piperno.

She initiated the project in 2010, securing five million euros from the Italian government’s Ministry of Education. (An additional six million euros has since been granted.) An international team of 60-80 researchers and translators worked on the Talmud Italiano Project.

Among those consulted was Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, director of the Steinsaltz Center in Jerusalem.

He recently completed a 45year translation of the Talmud with commentary in modern Hebrew, translated to English and other languages.

The anticipated time needed to complete the Italian Talmud is about 10 years; the text will fill 25 to 30 volumes.

In comments during each of her presentations, Piperno expressed pride in the project and its implication of wider cultural understanding of Italy’s Jewish heritage.

“I think the job, which is very complicated, is something that will explore new ways of opening culture,” she said.

Di Segni is hopeful that a stronger identity for Italy’s Jewish community is developing.

“The Talmud is the key of the Jewish culture and the Jewish religion,” he said. “Without Talmud, there is no development of the future of the Jewish people.”

Cardozo Law School was host to the program’s penultimate panel discussion, “The Talmud and Western History, Politics and Law.” The Talmud’s position on Noahide/pre-Abrahamic responsibilities was examined, as was its role as a resource for early modern European political thought in the

PHOTOS BY MAXINE DOVERE

contemporary world and for thinking about law in Europe, Israel and the United States. Yeshiva University president Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman led the discussions.

“The Catholic Church burned the Talmud, recognizing it as an expression of culture and religion of the Jews,” noted Professor Emeritus Mario Patrono, University of Rome, La Sapienza School of Law, and a board member of the Talmud Translation Project. “The burning,” he said, was “a case of violent oppression and suppression of religious freedom….

The financial support of the Italian government is an attempt to mitigate that ancient action.”

He continued by saying that the Talmud “promotes the idea of multiple opinions. Even if we choose opinion A we still study opinion B, and we must preserve both minority and majority opinion for consideration—or reconsideration.”

Piperno described the development of the software as “highly collaborative and universally available,” calling it a “powerful research tool…a method of applied thinking.”

The initial programs are in Italian, but the software is applicable to every language. The digital translator app was developed specifically for this project using state-of-the-art technology. Piperno termed the process “simple.”

Translation is a multi-level process. Initially, two people work page by page. The second edit involves a team of 30, many of whom are women, according to Piperno, the female director of this unique project.

The work is reviewed and then passed to a final editor.

Funding for research and publishing continues to be difficult. Almost 10,000 copies have been sold in the 10 months since the first volume was issued. But for the inaugural period, profits go to the publisher who printed the Talmud without initial cost in exchange for a five-year moratorium on digital publication.

In December, the Talmud Translation Project will open a formal office in Rome. The ceremony will celebrate the first mounting of a mezuzah in a public establishment in Italy—“perhaps,” said Piperno, “in all of Europe!”

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 17

Temporary bimah of Manhattan East Synagogue on its inaugural Friday-night service PHOTO BY MAXINE DOVERE

Shaare Mizrah Celebrates Inaugural Shabbat

BY MAXINE DOVERE

Surrounded by his congregation at Manhattan’s newest synagogue, Shaare Mizrah-the Manhattan East Synagogue, Rabbi Elie Abadie intoned the first prayers of the inaugural Shabbat services as the sun set Nov. 10. Feelings of friendship and admiration for the rabbi were clear; many congregants had followed him from his former congregation.

Abadie, who is head of school of the Sephardic Academy of Manhattan, led the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue for a decade and a half, building that congregation from 40 to close to 400.

NYJL asked the rabbi about the whys and wherefores of founding a new congregation.

“Over the summer,” he recalled, “I deliberated about where I would pray during the High Holy Days.

I was looking for a comfortable, spiritually uplifting setting to be able to enjoy traditional prayers and melodies. I decided to form a small minyan [prayer group] with my family and a few friends. More people—friends, former congregants—asked to join me at High Holiday services, suggesting, ‘Why don’t

18 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017

Rabbi Elie Abadie PHOTO BY MAXINE DOVERE

you open it to other people who will enjoy the services with you?’”

Starting with a nucleus of family and friends, the rabbi decided to open the services to anyone who wished to participate in them. A central Upper East Side space was provided by a generous

congregant—Joseph Sitt, principal of Thor Equities— and under the sponsorship of the Sephardic Academy of Manhattan. Services were announced via email.

Reservations soon outnumbered spaces available.

“I was hoping around 100 people would attend,” said Abadie. “As we approached the holidays, the number kept growing. We had to close reservations at 275! The response was completely unexpected. We ended up with standing room only.”

Ambassador Dani Dayan, consul general of Israel in New York, brought greetings and blessings from Israel.

A whirlwind of daily services, classes and services, classes—and deluxe breakfasts—continued throughout the holiday period. Participants described the services as uplifting and meaningful, and asked that the “temporary” situation be continued for Sukkot celebrations. A mobile sukkah (temporary dwelling) was parked on Third Avenue (yes, on a truck!), and the holiday was celebrated with great success, meaningful prayers and meals partaken in the sukkah.

Calls asking for daily and Shabbat services continued, and for the establishment of a “full service” congregation, with daily prayers, classes, events, lectures, guest speakers, Hebrew School, youth services, etc. Life-cycle celebrations—including a brit milah (ritual circumcision)—and community events began to be scheduled.

Shaare Mizrah-the Manhattan East Synagogue took form.

“It’s a play on words,” said Abadie: “‘Manhattan East’ because we are on the East Side of Manhattan, and ‘Shaare Mizrah’—the ‘Gates of the East.’”

The rabbi told NYJL that Shaare Mizrah has special meaning for him.

“It’s the name of the Chicago synagogue I founded 31 years ago. “‘East’ also hints at the Sephardic/Middle Eastern minhag [tradition] that the synagogue will follow.”

A rabbi, of course, often offers a midrash (traditional story) as well as a geographic reference.

“The Gate of the East of the Beit HaMikdash— the temple in Jerusalem—is believed to be the gate through which the Mashiach [Messiah] will enter,” said Abadie. “The reference is also to the gates of the Garden of Eden. Allegorically, the Gates of the East are the Gates of Heaven through which prayers enter.

“This new synagogue is a place for everyone’s prayers. While the minhag is Sephardic/Middle Eastern, as in my previous congregations, everyone is welcome and will feel welcomed. As long as I am the spiritual leader, all Jews are invited to attend and I will make sure they feel at home. We look forward to being an active part of the wider Jewish community.”

As the postservice kiddish (collation) concluded, rebbetzin Esti Abadie told NYJL, “It’s wonderful—a new beginning.”

New York Jewish Life wishes mabrouck, mazel tov and best wishes to Manhattan’s newest congregation, Shaare Mizrah—Gates of the East—and its rabbi, Elie Abadie, M.D. Shaare Mizrah will meet at Third Avenue and East 71st Street until a permanent “home” is found.

From the East Village to Midwives in Malawi

BY AARON SHORT

“May I have your name? Hold on, I don’t have you on our list. Did you RSVP?” Three stylishly appointed women wearing different shades of black business attire shuffled through name tags in plastic sleeves at the Brownstone, a six-story brick building on East 12th Street that hosts Jewish events.

They work for the United Jewish Appeal Federation-New York—a venerable nonprofit with offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island and Westchester—which commandeered the space for the evening.

A bedeviling characteristic of New York City is that Jewish youngsters have a lot of options when it comes to their faith and their time.

Synagogues will always hold Shabbat services, but they’re not the primary place to meet people with similar interests.

Apps that can sort for religion have short-circuited the dating scene, but they may not be the best way to meet people with similar values.

But if you’re searching for a way to meet peers and give back to the community through fundraising or volunteering, there are few places better than a century-old charity that knows how to do both.

The UJA Federation-New York, which functions a little like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army without the militaristic overtones, has perpetually recruited donors from an ever-replenishing pool of millennial yuppies, thanks to an array of appealing social events that fill out the calendar. The group raised over $150 million in the 2016 fiscal year, according to its annual report. Its Emerging Leaders and Philanthropists (ELP) wing has been a particular draw for young Jewish professionals.

And so on a Friday evening

in November, scores of budding philanthropists forked over $50 to attend an ELP Shabbat dinner where they would nosh on fish, turkey and kosher wine. UJA staffers led welldressed attendees to the second floor of the Brownstone, where they huddled around two speakers for the evening—the head of a healthcare nonprofit that collects and ships unused medical supplies from New York hospitals to developing countries, and an FDNY officer who was helping families in Puerto Rico days after Hurricane Maria.

The nonprofit leader spoke about the challenges of setting up a supply chain to collect from operating rooms unopened, clean bandages and other items that would otherwise be incinerated, and then implored the audience to donate “any rain boots you have sitting in your closet” so she could give them to midwives in Malawi.

The FDNY official told a heartwarming story of hitching a private flight from San Juan with UJA leaders to make his son’s wedding, even though the territory was largely out of gas.

Once the speakers finished, half the group filled a long dining table on the second floor, while the other half returned downstairs for their meal on the main floor.

A committee leader asked if attendees needed to wash their hands before the HaMotzi prayer, copies of which were resting on the table. Other leaders passed around challahs the size of small torahs, which were torn into smaller shreds.

Caterers placed platters of baked salmon, stewed tomatoes and chickpeas, sautéed vegetables and roast turkey on the table, while young lawyers, investment bankers and recent MBA grads sitting elbow to elbow introduced themselves to each other.

Hasidic Jews in Kiryas Joel in 2006 PHOTO BY STEPHEN CHERNIN/GETTY IMAGES

NY Town Votes to Let Orthodox Enclave Kiryas Joel Secede (JTA) — The Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel reportedly will become the first haredi Orthodox town in the United States after voters in Monroe, New York, overwhelmingly backed a referendum on secession.

On Tuesday, more than 80 percent of Monroe voters backed the measure on Kiryas Joel, a village of over 20,000 Yiddish-speaking Jews associated with the Satmar Hasidic sect, to form the state’s first new town in 35 years.

The Town of Palm Tree—an English translation of the Satmar rebbe’s surname, “Teitelbaum”—should come into existence in 2020, unless lawmakers speed up the process.

“Today is truly an historic day that will usher in a new era of peace and stability for all the residents of Monroe,” Kiryas Joel village administrator Gedalye Szegedin said in a statement. “We would like to thank all the voters in Monroe

for their overwhelming support. They chose a better path forward, one of diplomacy and compromise instead of angry rhetoric and litigation.”

Monroe officials and Kiryas Joel leaders had finalized a legal settlement in July that allowed for the creation of a new town. Both parties had clashed for years over Kiryas Joel’s rapid population growth and increasing influence over Monroe politics.

In 2015, Kiryas Joel annexed 164 acres of Monroe land and asked for more than 500 more. Monroe challenged the original annexation, but both sides let their requests go through the vote.

Kiryas Joel will get 56 more acres in addition to the 2015 annexation and drop its request for more.

Kiryas Joel’s roots date back to the mid-1970s, when Hasidic Jews began settling in the area under the guidance of Satmar Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum.

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 19

PERSPECTIVE

This Classroom Job in My Kids’ Kindergarten Made Me a Jewish Day School Believer

BY CARLA NAUMBURG

(KVELLER.COM) — For some parents, sending their children to Jewish day school is a given.

Perhaps they went to day school and want that same experience for their kids, or perhaps they didn’t and wish they had.

This was not the case with my husband and me.

He’s a day school grad who felt no particular need to continue that legacy. As the product of a completely secular upbringing, I have often wished for a stronger Jewish education, but I wasn’t sure if that was enough of a reason to justify the financial burden and schlepping required to get my girls across town each day to a Jewish school.

Nonetheless, when my older daughter reached pre-K age, I found myself touring two of the four Jewish day schools within driving distance of our house. During those tours, it was immediately apparent that my girls would get a strong secular education, as well as fluency in Hebrew; a strong Jewish identity; and a deep understanding of Jewish texts, values and practices that I never got as a kid.

Most of all, they’d know where they came from, where they belong and where they could always return. I loved that.

But I wondered if my husband and I couldn’t give our daughters a good-enough Jewish education and identity—with the help of our synagogue, Hebrew school and extended family. We could hire a tutor, send them to Jewish summer camp and visit Israel.

That would be enough, wouldn’t it?

For us, day school would be a leap of faith, and I remember the exact moment I saw clear to make that leap. Josh and I were touring the kindergarten classroom at JCDS, the Jewish Community Day School outside Boston. In many ways, it looked like the public-school kindergarten classroom I remember from my own upbringing—just with more Hebrew.

There was a large circular rug on the floor with each child’s name written on strips of tape. Small plastic chairs were situated at round tables with the

20 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017

kids’ names in English and Hebrew. The walls were covered with the alphabet and Aleph Bet, and kids’ artwork. A toy Shabbat set complete with wooden candlesticks, kiddush cup and challah sat on a small table. There were blocks and legos, costumes and masks, and lots of books in Hebrew and English.

The teacher led us to a board on the wall that listed all the classroom jobs, with a space for a child’s name next to each role. There was the beloved line-leader, of course, and several other fairly common roles.

But I was captivated by one particular job: the class comforter. The class comforter has two primary responsibilities: to accompany a sick classmate to the nurse’s office and, along with the teacher, to call

children who are sick at home to wish them a refuah shlemah (a full recovery).

I felt my eyes welling up as the admissions director described this. I had rarely heard of a school calling a sick child at home to check on him/her, and in the few cases I had it was always the teacher calling, often with a reminder about making up work.

This was something entirely different. This school was not only teaching the Jewish value of bikur cholim—visiting or helping the sick—but it was showing the children how, in the most concrete possible way, to live those values in the context of community.

Being part of a community means helping and comforting those who need it, not because you’re their best friend or you’re bored with math. You walk your classmate to the nurse’s office even if he’s the one who kicked you yesterday, even if she’s the girl you excluded at recess, because that’s what Judaism teaches.

I was thinking about my own daughter, a generally healthy child who was frequently home from preschool because of asthma, croup, ear infections or other illnesses. I was thinking about what it would mean to her to get a phone call from a classmate on a sick day: You matter. We’re thinking about you. We miss you, and we hope you come back soon.

My own experience of becoming a mother had been so much harder than I’d ever imagined. For the previous five years, I had felt confused, anxious and scared. The sheer number of decisions I had to make on a daily basis was overwhelming, and I frequently worried I was making the wrong choice. It was my community—my family and friends, our neighbors, our synagogue and the new-mother support groups I attended each week—that got me through it. They gave me advice and ideas, and sat with me as I cried

PERSPECTIVE

PHOTO BY CARLA NAUMBURG

when there was no advice to be given.

I hadn’t really thought about what being part of a community meant before becoming a mother; it was just something I had fallen into by virtue of the dorm to which I happened to be assigned in college or where I worked. Once I became a mother, I was fortunate to live in a town and be a part of a religion and culture that values community.

When we signed up my daughter for day school, we were choosing to be a part of another community—for ourselves and for our children.

My daughters are now in third and second grade respectively at JCDS, and they are living and learning the values and practices I hoped they would. In addition to studying literacy, math, engineering and other secular subjects,

their Hebrew is better than mine. My younger daughter helps lead services on Friday night. They’re grappling with the Torah’s stories—what they mean and how they’re relevant to life in the 21st century.

Most importantly, they’re learning, in the words of Ram Dass—a spiritual leader who grew up Jewish in the same town where we live—that we’re all just walking each other home. Or, in some cases, to the nurse’s office.

This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with the Avi Chai Foundation, which is committed to the perpetuation of the Jewish people, Judaism and the centrality of the state of Israel to the Jewish people. In North America, the foundation works to advance Jewish day schools and overnight summer camps.

NOV. 15 – 21, 2017 | NYJLIFE.COM | 21

COMMUNITY AND EVENTS

BY MAXINE DOVERE

The annual Louis D. Brandeis Memorial Dinner, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), welcomed more than 500 attendees to the Grand Hyatt in New York on Nov. 12.

Among the many notables attending the event were U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who stressed his expectation that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem was simply a matter of “when” and not “if ”; and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who received the Dr. Wu Kai Shang Lifetime Achievement award, established by Dr. Bruno Wu to honor his father’s work as a rescuer of Jews in Shanghai before and during World War II. Generally, the event reflected the standard ZOA pattern: Honorees responded with grateful and emotional statements; calls for the redemption of Zion through justice; statements defining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism; and a video homage to ZOA President Morton Klein, who had testified in Congress that the American embassy should be in Jerusalem and that Hamas’ “true intention,” the destruction of Israel, was not sensitive to political offers or generous agreements.

One could, however, feel tension in the room. After years of supporting the Zionist Organization of America with their funds and their presence, Sheldon and Dr. Miriam Adelson were absent from the annual Louis D. Brandeis Memorial Dinner. Although they were listed in the evening’s program, the places of honor usually reserved for the couple were occupied by others Their absence was apparently not personal. Rather, it appears to have been political. Sheldon Adelson had a conflict: Among the most significant Republican funders, he was faced with the question of whether to break bread or, implicitly, break with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was, according to the printed program, slated to introduce the Adelsons at the Brandeis dinner.

The GOP funder is known as a supporter of Republicans and Republican incumbents; Bannon appears to be actively working towards replacing several of the Vegas

22 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017

ZOA Swings Political—and Not Just About Israel

TOP: TOP:

Congressman Lee Zeldin (R) from Long Island addresses the crowd.

BOTTOM:

Steve Bannon attended the ZOA dinner and participated in the program.

Ambassador David Friedman speaks to a hometown crowd at his first ZOA dinner as ambassador to Israel.

BOTTOM:

Former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka poses for a photo.

PHOTOS BY MAXINE DOVERE

magnate’s traditional choices in the 2018 election cycle.

Adelson spokesman Andy Abboud was quoted in Politico as saying, “The

Adelsons will not be supporting Steve Bannon’s efforts. They are supporting Mitch McConnell 100 percent. For anyone to infer anything otherwise is

wrong.”

Adelson’s absence was as strong a statement as his presence would have been.

Bannon aides, questioned by a reporter who failed to mention that her questions were “on the record,” bristled at the suggestion that the former White House chief strategist’s appearance at the ZOA event was anything other than an opportunity to present his “Christian Zionist” position and assure those attending of his sincere support of the state of Israel.

ZOA President Klein has been an ardent defender of Bannon, even in the face of Republican-establishment charges that he holds “anti-Semitic views.”

In a press release, Klein said, “We are proud and fortunate to have Steve Bannon on our side fighting for Israel and against anti-Semitism, and we’re honored that he will be a speaker at ZOA’s 2017 gala.”

At the time the release was issued, Bannon was slated to introduce Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson.

The enthusiasm for ZOA’s Fuel for Truth—the Israel advocacy training program that is currently fighting the BDS movement on college campuses and is largely funded by philanthropist Myron Zimmerman—was palpable.

Zimmerman glowed in the warmth of the group’s representatives’ company.

In his summary speech, Klein said, “ZOA has made it clear that there is no occupation. Israel is totally Jewish land and has never been Arab land….If it were Arab, why would they have used a Roman name—‘Palestine’?”

Sounding more biblical than on previous occasions, Klein stated, “We who love Israel…must continue to believe in miracles—that the land [of Israel] flourished only under the control of God. Forty percent of the officers in the IDF, the Israeli army, are religious….There will be a time of regeneration, hope and fulfillment of the promises of the Torah. God keeps his promises….We must never forget and never be silent.”

Rep. Ron DeSantis, Rep. Lee Zeldin, Sen. Tom Cotton and, seated at the head table, New York State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox lent a distinctly partisan air to the event.

“We’d love to have the Democrats,” said Brooklyn ZOA President Rubin Margolis. “But they don’t come.”

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PUERTO RICO NEEDS OUR HELP.

Support the Hispanic Federation’s UNIDOS Fund. One hundred percent of contributions to the UNIDOS Fund goes to help the immediate and long-term recovery needs of children, families and communities in distress from the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria.

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Compose a new text message to number 41444.

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www.hispanicfederation.org/unidos 24 | NYJLIFE.COM | NOV. 15 – 21, 2017