The Jewish Star

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Mishpatim • Friday, February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778 • Luach page 16 • Torah columns pages 16–17 • Vol 17, No 6

The Newspaper of our Orthodox communities

Far Rock’s Rav Feiner delivers a Super Bowl kiddush Hashem The Jewish Star We should carry words of Torah everywhere we go — even to the Super Bowl.

Rabbi Eytan Feiner of Far Rockaway’s White Shul drove that point home during halftime on Sunday in a webcast shiur that provided football enthusiasts with an alternative to Justin Timberlake’s mid-game entertainment on NBC TV. In a vort inspired by the Chasam Sofer, Rabbi Feiner said there’s a time when klal Yisroel will learn Torah “in the theaters and stadiums of the goyim.”

“You’re going to have Jews learning Torah like never before in the history of the world,” he said. “But you know what’s missing? The excitement, the geshmak, the enthusiasm.”

Country’s media lash out at Jews

By Katarzyna Markusz, JTA WARSAW, Poland — Debate over a Polish law that proposes to outlaw rhetoric blaming Poland for Nazi crimes has prompted a wave of antiSemitic comments in the Polish media.

RMF, one of the largest Polish commercial radio stations, suspended a journalist who wrote about the “war with the Jews.” Poland’s state-owned television station apologized to the Israeli ambassador for a tweet alleging that the Jewish opposition to the law was part of an attempt to seize Polish property.

Also, a former priest began selling See Polish denial on page 2

By Andrew Gershman, JNS As thousands descended on Minnesota for Super Bowl LII on Sunday, they likely did not expect to meet those who greeted them in the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport: Minnesotans who survived the Holocaust.

The survivors were featured in “Transfer of Memory,” a full-color photo exhibition showcased in terminals 1 and 2 through Feb. 5. The exhibit has been traveling to venues throughout Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa since 2012.

Travelers who stopped to look at the exhibit learned about Joe Grosnacht, 94, who survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald and several other camps, and whose tattooed number is visible on his arm, and about Eva Gross, 90, See Shoah thoughts on page 20

Part of the “Transfer of Memory” portrait display at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.

Trump-friendly Hoenlein: Don’t dump Dems The Jewish Star American supporters of Israel, pumped by pro-Israel pronoucements by President Trump, should not discount the importance of keeping and building alliances with Democrats, Malcolm Hoenlein said on Monday.

The Democratic Party should not be “written off,” Hoenlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told the Jerusalem Post.

“We can’t afford in the United States right now to lose the Democratic left,” he said. “We are working hard all the time, reaching out and trying to build connections.”

Meanwhile, Hoenlein told the Post, “We welcome the support of President Trump. We are not going to sacrifice that, and say that because they don’t like it, we should dismiss him or not express appreciation for the good that he is doing. It is a big change from where we were.”

“We should not sacrifice our friends because it alienates people,” he said, but at the same time, “we should be smart about how we embrace them, how we manifest it. We should be open to everybody.”

While some on the left are lost to Israel, most of the “Democratic left” is still in play, Hoenlein said.

He told the Post that an effective way to reach

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The remains of a chimney at Auschwitz site, outside of Oswiecim, Poland.

Rabbi Feiner during his halftime shiur on the White Shul website.

“Think about these meshuganahs who spent five-, ten-, 15,000 dollars on a ticket,” he said.

“And … imagine the people in our neighborhood who spent $1,000 dollars for a pastrami sandwich to enjoy the SuperBowl [with Truffles, foie gras, gold leaf and a flute of Champagne, at DOMA Land + Sea in Cedarhurst]!”

The Philadelphia Eagles were ahead at halftime, so Rabbi Feiner explored Torah precepts involving eagles. “With G-d carrying us on the wings of eagles, on his Clouds of Glory, He said, don’t be afraid to take risks. Let me see your mesiras nefesh, your excitement, your enthusiasm … for yiddishkeit,” Rabbi Feiner said, concluding with the hope that Hashem will “take us on the wings of eagles [to] where we really want to be, to the building of the third Bais Hamikdash.”

younger, left-leaning people is to invite their celebrities to visit Israel and spread the good news — the truth — about the Jewish state.

“When they say or tweet to their millions of followers that Israel is the exact opposite of an apartheid state, or write about their time in a Tel Aviv bar and tweet about what a great place it was, that has more of an effect, frankly, than me or Israeli leaders speaking,” he said.

Hoenlein applauded changes that the Trump administration brought to the United Nations, to how we relate to Iran, and to how we deal with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

President Trump “has had an impact,” he said.

Polish denial puts Jews under fire…

Continued from page 1 T-shirts denying Polish responsibility for a pogrom against Jews by their non-Jewish neighbors during the Nazi occupation.

All three events came after the Polish Senate approved an amendment to the National Remembrance Act levying a penalty of up to three years in prison for those who blame the Polish nation for the crimes of Germany committed during World War II. It also outlawed the phrase “Polish death camps.” The bill was subsequently signed by the president.

Historians of the era, Jewish groups, the U.S. State Department and the Israeli government are all critical of the law, which they said could inhibit academic freedom and distort the historical record of World War II. “Poles, we are at war! We are at war with the Jews! Not for the first time in our history,” wrote Bogdan Zalewski, an RMF journalist, on his Facebook page on Thursday. “We can find ourselves in a state of absolute isolation that completely exhausts us down to annihilation. In my opinion, it is necessary for Poles to be aware and to work on the development of the national spirit.”

His statement appeared just after the Senate approved the amendment.

He went on to blame Jews for the “iron fist” of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe, and accused the Jews of a reign of terror against the British and Arabs in prestate Israel.

“The U.S. authorities were full of Jews in many key positions. Many of these Jews have been actively engaged in espionage in favor of the Soviets,” he said.

An RMF colleague denounced Zalewski’s statements.

“I can only condemn these words,” said Bogdan Frymorgen, a producer and journalist. “I can only show contempt for a man who in the 21st century, with full awareness of the horrors of the previous century, goes to ‘war with the Jews,’ regardless of being a public figure. Virtually, I can

Two “Askaris” or “Trawnikis,” in the the Warsaw Ghetto. The SS subsidiary included Poles as well as Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Kazakhs and Tartars. WikiCommons

spit in his face.”

The radio station suspended Zalewski, who apologized and deleted his post.

On Feb. 2, the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw condemned a tweet from the state-owned TVP Info Channel claiming that Israel’s reaction to the new law was part of an attempt to reclaim properties in Poland.

“It’s hard to find a brighter example of an antiSemitic fake news,” the embassy statement read.

The public television station apologized to Israeli Ambassador Anna Azari, saying that the tweet “was a mistake” and relied on an unverified source of information.

“Disciplinary consequences will be drawn against this person,” TVP said in a statement.

Last week, a TVP host and a guest mocked critics of the legislation, suggesting that Jews were in part responsible for their own slaughter during the Holocaust and joking that the death camps should be referred to as “Jewish death camps.” The host apologized, but the guest, Rafał Ziemkiewicz, said he didn’t regret using the term “Jewish death camps.”

Ziemkiewicz, a writer and journalist, also demanded the resumption of the exhumation of victims’ remains in Jedwabne, the site of the 1941 massacre of hundreds of Jews by their nonJewish Polish neighbors. The controversial plan was proposed in 2014 in an effort to provide conclusive forensic evidence about the massacre.

“Since we already have a war, I appeal to the

Institute of National Remembrance to take this opportunity to finally make exhumation in Jedwabne, blocked effectively over 10 years ago by the pressure of Jewish organizations,” he wrote on Facebook.

Ziemkiewicz said exhumation could provide evidence the crime “was committed by the Germans.”

The head of the Polish Press Agency, Wojciech Surmacz, also blamed Jews for the deaths of other Jews during the Holocaust, sharing on Twitter a photo of Jewish ghetto police. He said the police were responsible for the deaths of “millions of Jews” in Poland.

The Nazis often forced Jews to police the ghettos, usually under threat of death.

Surmacz is the author of a 2013 Forbes article accusing Polish Jewish leaders of personally benefiting from the restitution of prewar property. Forbes later apologized.

Also last week, a former priest, Jacek Miedlar, began producing T-shirts and sweatshirts with the inscription “I am not sorry for Jedwabne.”

Counterprotesters chanted the slogan during an anti-racism march in Bialystock in 2011. Two years later a court said the chant was incitement to hatred and sentenced those counterprotesters to prison terms of six to 10 months, which were suspended. Their lawyer said that “research shows that nearly 50 percent Poles do not want to apologize for Jedwabne.”

Miedlar is associated with Polish nationalists and last year was indicted in the western Poland city of Wroclaw for “public incitement to hatred based on religious and national differences.” In 2016 he gave a speech in which he called for hatred against Jews and Ukrainians.

Michał Szczerba, a member of the parliament from the opposition Platforma Obywatelska party, said he would report Miedlar to the prosecutor’s office for selling the shirts.

“In my worst nightmares I never expected to hear jokes about Auschwitz, Jews and gas chambers on state-owned television,” Piotr Kadlcik, a prominent Warsaw Jewish leader, told JTA. “I sincerely hope that the Polish president will veto this law and we will be able to start the process of putting back together Polish-Jewish relations.”

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Century-old Siberian shul back in Jewish hands Built by abducted child soldiers, it’s a story of faith, courage and revival

By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA TOMSK, Russia — When two strange men approached 8-year-old Herzl Tsam in an alley of his hometown in what is now Ukraine, he knew that he had to run as fast as his legs could carry him.

In 1851, as a Jewish boy from a poor family in a shtetl near Volyn, he knew he was in danger of becoming a Jewish Cantonist — the Russianlanguage term for forcefully conscripted child soldiers. For 29 years, until 1856, these children had fallen victim to one of the cruelest measures ever applied against the Jewish population of Russia.

Like approximately 75,000 Jewish children who were abducted and turned into Cantonists, Tsam could not outrun his captors — likely professional kidnappers who enforced the 1827 act handed down by the czar, Nicholas I, obliging Jewish communities to provide 10 Cantonists per 1,000 residents.

But unlike most of the other victims, Tsam resisted pressures to convert to Christianity, instead climbing through the ranks on pure merit.

One of only a handful of Jewish officers in the czar’s army, he retired in 1876 with honors as a colonel at the age of 41 and started a thriving Jewish community and a synagogue for other army veterans like him in this Siberian city.

On Thursday, the present-day Jewish community of Tomsk — a sleepy city of 500,000 residents located 2,000 miles east of Moscow — honored Tsam’s memory during a solemn ceremony in which the municipality returned to the community the synagogue that he had built nearly 120 years ago. Known as the Soldiers Synagogue, it one of the few wooden synagogues of its kind still standing today, a dilapidated structure covered in snow and ice whose windows are boarded up to keep out squatters.

“It’s an important day,” Levy Kaminetsky, a Chabad emissary who moved with his wife, Gitty, to Tomsk in 2004, told JTA at the Great Synagogue of Tomsk, the community only functioning shul, amid preparations for the ceremony. “His story, the story of the Cantonists, is a story of endurance, faith, courage and revival.

And in that sense, it’s one of the major stories of the Jewish people in Russia and beyond.”

Today, the synagogue that Tsam and his comrades built is a shadow of its former self.

Dwarfed by the adjacent public prosecutor’s office, the cedar structure is surrounded by leafless bushes and a host of huts that used to be storage units but now are full of trash and rusty tools. The interior of the synagogue was gutted decades ago. After its confiscation in 1930 by Soviet authorities, it was turned into a theater and later a crowded and poorly heated apartment

The entrance hall of the Tomsk’s Soldiers’ Synagogue building. (Pictured right) The Soldiers Synagogue building in Tomsk.

building where 17 impoverished families shared a communal kitchen.

The city found alternative housing for the tenants in 2014 ahead of its planned return, but homeless people took over the property in the interim, delaying the return and further deteriorating the building’s condition. The trash-littered floor now has deep holes and exposed wiring that require from the local community of 1,000 an investment of funds it does not have.

“We are being offered this building now, so we need to take it,” Kaminetsky said in the Great Synagogue, which is located a mile away from the Soldiers Synagogue. “Honestly, it’s not perfectly timing, but we owe it to Tsam’s legacy.”

He said the community “will have to find a way to restore” the building, possibly by appealing to donors outside Russia.

In addition to the 75,000 Jewish Cantonists, Russia had hundreds of thousands of nonJewish ones, according to Rabbi Yosef Mendelevitch, a Soviet refusenik now based in Jerusalem who in 2010 published a comprehensive book about the Jewish Cantonists.

“In its neutral sense, the term Cantonists simply means youths who were taken by a czarist decree to a military boarding house,” he said. “It was a prestigious institution dating back to the 18th century and a good opportunity for poor boys to get an education and income. Many non-Jewish families wanted their children to be Cantonists.”

Under the czar’s laws on Cantonists, of which Jews were initially exempted, seven youths older than 16 were to be placed in a military boarding house for every 1,000 residents. But in 1827, Nicholas I scrapped the exemption for Jews and lowered the conscription age for that community alone to 12. He also upped the quota, requiring from Jews 10 children per 1,000 A view of the main prayer hall of the Great Synagogue of Tomsk. residents.

Photos by Cnaan Liphshiz

Left: Stars of David are worked into the facade of the Soldiers Synagogue in Tomsk, Siberia, which was built by conscripted Jews and only recently returned to the local Jewish community.

Right: Tomsk Historian David Kuzhner and Chana Safarova-Nikitenko reviewing archive material at the library of the Great Synagogue of Tomsk, on Jan. 30.

Photos by Cnaan Liphshiz

It was part of an attempt to convert as many Jewish boys as possible to Christianity. Many boys younger than 12 were drafted by professional Cantonist hunters, according to David Kuzhner, a Tomsk Jewish historian who has studied the community’s origins.

Dubbed “Hapuns,” these hunters received bounties for each boy they delivered. Some Hapuns worked for rich Jews, who sent them to prey on poor ones to fill the quota.

Some of the families of the boys snatched

by Hapuns were allowed to see them just one more time before they were shipped to boarding schools in Siberia and beyond.

“Weeping mothers brought food to give to their boys,” Kuzhner said. “More often than not it was the last kosher meal they ate in their life.”

But Tsam and hundreds of other Jewish Cantonists stuck to their faith, either resisting efforts by teachers and commanders to convert them or returning to Judaism once they were discharged.

“They and the synagogues they built are a testament and inspiration for the Jewish people,” Rabbi Mendelevitch said.

The Soldiers Synagogue is also part of its Siberian region’s crumbling legacy.

Built in typical Siberian style, the building features elaborate window frames and a roof with a thorny crown of wooden pegs. Uniquely in Tomsk, the woodwork on the facade has dozens of Stars of David and an annex that faces westward, to Jerusalem, because it used to house the Torah ark.

This city, which has world-famous ice sculpture gardens in winter, when temperatures often drop to 22 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, has hundreds of broken-down wooden houses of the same period.

Eclipsed by communist-era housing projects, they stand on the brink of collapse, leaning like drunkards in strange angles and literally groaning under the hundreds of pounds of snow and ice that accumulate here on rooftops for months without melting. On long winter nights, the sound of trees breaking under that weight echoes in seemingly deserted streets.

Against this desolate background, Jewish community life is thriving.

During the High Holidays, 300 people flock to

the main and only functioning synagogue. Confiscated from the Jewish community during communism and turned into a courthouse, it was returned 15 years ago, renovated and reopened in 2010.

It has a mikvah and a preschool, where small children, cocooned in colorful overalls as thick as space suits, happily scamper about the snowed-in playground. There’s even a tiny Jewish elementary school with 15 students, and the third floor has a recreation room for teenagers and young adults.

“Despite its remoteness, Tomsk is a renowned university city and Jewish students enjoy a space with a ping-pong table and free WiFi,” said Boris Ramatsky, chairman of the Jewish Community of Tomsk. His grandfather was the last shamash, or custodian, of the Soldiers Synagogue, he said.

Tomsk’s intellectual character has been good for Jewish community life.

Banned during communism from universities in present-day Ukraine and Russian major cities, Jews were allowed to enroll in Tomsk’s universities, and especially its polytechnic institute.

Many of them stayed.

But this intellectual character also created friction between Tsam’s congregation of army veterans and the established community, with its many doctors and businessmen, according to the historian Kuzhner. This tension was the trigger for building Tsam’s synagogue in the first place, he said.

The trigger came in 1905, when one of the veterans, Moshe Gurevich, came with Tsam and a few of his friends to what was then the main synagogue of the city to make an aliyah – giving a blessing before the reading from the Torah scroll – to celebrate the birth and circumcision of Gurevich’s son.

But the men, who were likely happy and probably somewhat inebriated, were turned away from the Kaminersky Synagogue by the rabbi’s son, who suggested they go read from the Torah “outside or in a locker room somewhere,” said Kuzhner, who has the memoirs of Tsam, who died in 1915.

The former soldiers, who had withstood threats and humiliation in the army as children to hold on to their Judaism, “were deeply offended and decided then and there to start their own synagogue.”

See Siberia on page 7

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Russian Jews study Judaism, win trip to Paris

Rabbi Berel Lazar placing tefillin on a participant of a Eurostars trip to France.

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Participants in a Eurostars trip at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

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Moscow for a weeklong trip costing many millions of dollars that was paid for in donations to Chabad of Russia.

With visas pre-arranged for them by the Chabadaffiliated Federation of Jewish Communities of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the approximately 1,000 participants boarded two chartered airplanes to Barcelona, Spain. They toured the sites connected to that city’s rich Jewish heritage.

Traveling in 20 buses, they boarded a Grandi Navi Veloci cruise ship to Italy and Monaco, giving the latter’s tiny Jewish community the largest Jewish event in its history. Then they flew from Nice to visit Auschwitz before returning to Russia.

Matchmaking is part of the Eurostars raison d’etre, according to Rabbi Mendy Wilansky, head of the Yahad special programs platform, which is responsible for Eurostars within the Federation of Jewish Communities. The cruise featured popular speed dating evenings, he said.

“In a huge country like Russia with massive assimilation, of course it’s an opportunity for shidduch,” he said.

Among those seizing the opportunity were Yosef and Sarah Vasilyev, participants on the 2015 Eurostars trip.

Yosef, a Jew from the Siberian city of Tyumen, became engaged to Sarah from the nearby city of Chelyabinsk just days after returning from France.

Their wedding in the synagogue of her hometown was a rare celebration for her graying community and featured prominently in its newsletter that month.

Zolotov also came on the Eurostars program hoping to meet his “other half,” but it was the visit to Auschwitz that ended up changing his life, he said.

“It burned a hole in my soul,” Zolotov recalled.

“It made me think of how we, Jews from Russia, walked and sang in Hebrew in Spain, before remembering our brothers killed in Poland,” he said, referencing the bloody history of anti-Semitic persecution in all three countries. “It made me feel what the Jewish tradition of survival and renewal is about.”

To Berel Lazar, a chief rabbi of Russia, the program’s success — participation has quadrupled over the past six years — is indicative of a major shift in European Jewry.

It was vividly on display during the 2015 trip to France, Lazar said, when he led participants on a solidarity visit to the Hyper Cacher kosher shop

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“I remember a time when the Chabad emissary to France would go around kosher shops to collect nearly expired products to send them” to Russia, he told JTA. “Now we are returning to France to extend our support to that community.”

Some Eurostars participants had a better idea than Zolotov of what to expect, including Lev Aryeh Osifov of the Siberian city of Tomsk. A graduate of the Taglit-Birthright program of subsidized trips to Israel for young adult Jews, he had been to Western Europe before coming with Eurostars.

“I didn’t need Eurostars to see Europe, I can afford going on my own,” Osifov said. “But liked that feeling of togetherness.”

Despite having little knowledge about Judaism, Zolotov had a “powerful connection” with Jewish texts early on in the study program, according to Rabbi Wilansky.

Nonetheless, financial incentives are a necessity in a poor country where Jewish life had been driven to the point of near extinction amid communist repression, assimilation and mass emigration. The Eurostars program, he said, grew out of an earlier framework in which rabbis offered cash payments to Jews who agreed to take part in Jewish studies programs.

“Some rabbis were having trouble attracting people to class even with payments; other rabbis felt it tainted their congregations,” Rabbi Wilansky said. “That’s how we arrived at the idea of giving a trip, though in many cases the social dynamic that forms in the study groups is its own reward.”

That was the case for Ruth Galeyeva, a participant on the 2015 trip. She hails from Orenburg, a city located 800 miles east of Moscow, near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan.

As a former design student, she wanted to see Paris.

“Everything was so beautiful there,” Galeyeva recalled. But all that beauty, she added, “seems so superficial now compared to the feeling I got just by being surrounded again by my own people.”

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By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA MOSCOW — Growing up in a working-class family in Russia’s Far East, Sergei Aryeh Zolotov knew the French Riviera only from what he’d seen in James Bond movies.

A student in his 20s from the city of Khabarovsk, 4,000 miles east of Moscow, Zolotov had neither the means to travel to the sunny beaches of southern France nor to obtain the visa Russian citizens need to enter the European Union.

Zolotov didn’t need to worry about any of that.

All he had to do was to show up for a few months of weekly Judaism classes at his local synagogue, thanks to the Eurostars program for young Jews from the former Soviet Union.

Launched in 2012 by Russia’s branch of the Chabad Hasidic movement, the program takes hundreds of Jewish men and women aged 18 to 28 on fully subsidized trips to Europe.

The Eurostars trip features a visit to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in Poland along with different destinations every year. But to earn a free ticket, participants must attend 85 percent of a yearlong program studying Torah and Jewish traditions.

Coming from Khabarovsk — a landlocked and icy place situated 800 miles northeast of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — “I never thought I’d get to go on a Mediterranean cruise,” Zolotov told JTA last week in Moscow, where he moved last year to work as an economist.

“Frankly, I signed up because a friend told me it’s a classy cruise with guys and girls for free,” he said.

But as he connected to Rabbi Yaakov Snetkov and his small but warm community, it “changed me forever, more than any cruise ever could,” he said.

Following the trip, Zolotov had a belated circumcision.

For eight months in 2016, Zolotov joined a handful of other Eurostars participants in Khabarovsk studying the weekly Torah portion on Sundays. Last May, they and groups like theirs from more than 40 cities across the former Soviet Union gathered in

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Continued from page 4 Ironically, the Kaminersky Synagogue was destroyed without a trace during communism, whereas Tsam’s synagogue is still standing, even if just barely. During the Soldiers Synagogue’s 24 years in existence, it attracted many congregants who were not army veterans, partly because it was more centrally located than the Kaminersky shul from which the soldiers had been turned away.

Unlike Tsam and Gurevich, many Jewish Cantonists did not withstand the pressure to convert to Christianity in the military frameworks to which they were forced, according to Rabbi Mendelevitch, himself a former prisoner of Zion in Soviet Russia who was jailed for planning to hijack a plane to Israel. He went on hunger strikes over the refusal to provide him with kosher food in jail.

“What’s striking in the story is not that many converted but that some children, young as 8 and 10, were able to resist,” he said. “They are an inspiration for the entire Jewish people, if not for humanity at large.”

Notwithstanding, many Cantonists started families that eventually assimilated. But thanks to social networks and growing interest in the Cantonists’ story, some of their descendants are retracing their Jewish roots today.

Like Ludmilla Lvovna, a history teacher in her 60s who found on Facebook distant relatives in Israel. The discovery made her research her family tree and find her maternal great-great-grandfather, Wolf Bulwachter, was a Cantonist Jew who married a Jewish woman named Hannah.

“It seems I am descended from Kohens,” she told JTA during her first visit ever to a synagogue, referring to the priestly class of Judaism.

But standing at the women’s section of the Tomsk synagogue, Lvovna said she neither feels Jewish nor identifies as such.

“I mean, clearly I am,” she said. ”But for me the discovery was more about finding knowledge than readjusting my sense of identity.

“A person should know where they come from. That’s why I made the research. And it’s nice to suddenly have relatives in Israel, Canada, Australia — a big Jewish family!”

Interested in visiting Tomsk? Roundtrip Aeroflot flights via Moscow, taking 16 to 26 hours, are currently running around $800.

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Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal, 29, of Har Bracha, was stabbed multiple times at a bus stop near the entrance to the Ariel settlement on Monday afternoon. He died on the way to the hospital.

Hundreds attended his levaya.

The attacker, Ais Abed El-Hakim, 19, is an Israeli citizen and resident of Jaffa, the son of an Israeli mother from Haifa and a Palestinian father from Nablus.

“Itamar, my dear, we will continue settling the land and raising our family,” his wife, Miriam, said in her eulogy. Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein also eulogized the teacher and father.

did you reserve yet?

JERUSALEM (JTA) — U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman accused unnamed Palestinian leaders of praising a terror attack that left an Israeli father of four dead.

Friedman’s tweet said: “20 years ago I gave an ambulance to Har Bracha hoping it would be used to deliver healthy babies. Instead, a man from Har Bracha was just murdered by a terrorist, leaving behind a wife and four children. Palestinian ‘leaders’ have praised the killer. Praying for the BenGal family.”

Several other countries’ ambassadors to Israel also used Twitter to condemn the attack.

THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778

Friedman rips PA leaders for praising stab attack

7

Germany recognizes Algerian Jews as survivors

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen, JTA Nearly 80 years after being persecuted by the Nazi-allied Vichy French government, some 25,000 elderly Algerian Jews are being recognized for the first time as Holocaust survivors by the German government.

Algerian Jews had their French citizenship stripped in 1940 by the Vichy government, which then ruled the area. Nuremberg-like laws banned Jews from working as doctors, lawyers, teachers and in government. Children were kicked out of French schools.

On Tuesday, 78 years after they endured suffering that left families penniless and starving, and pariahs in their own country, the Conference on Material Claims Against Germany will begin taking their applicaIn undated photo from the Yad Vashem Archives, Algerian Jews celebrate Passover. tions for recognition as survivors, mak- A World Jewish Congress meeting on North African Jewry in 1952. ing each eligible for a one-time “hardship acknowledgment of their suffering, he told JTA and acknowledgment, for so many people that’s umentation they need in order to establish that grant” and additional services like food in an interview from Paris, where he was getting what this will stand for.” they lived there between 1940 and 1942. vouchers and in-home care.

Satellite centers to serve another 8,000 Jews The Claims Conference has negotiated with “For the first time they’re being recognized as the Help Center set up.

“They weren’t murdered,” Schneider said, the German government for about five years to will soon open in Marseille, Lyon and other Nazi victims by the German government,” said Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the “but there were lots of deprivations” under the get this done, Schneider told JTA. Being recog- French cities in the next few weeks. The Paris nized as victims of the Holocaust now entitles center will be open through April. After that, on Claims Conference. It is the last settlement anti-Semitic Vichy laws.

“There weren’t extermination camps in Alge- survivors to social services like home care, food people will be able to apply by downloading a Germany will make with a large group of Holocaust survivors, he added, since it was the only ria, but a person’s childhood was turned upside and transportation to doctor appointments in form from the website and mailing it in.

Some 4,000 surviving Algerian Jews live in major population remaining without that recog- down because of this persecution targeting Jews. local communities funded through the Claims Israel. Since the Israeli government keeps a regIt becomes a huge part of a person’s identity. The Conference. nition.

The vast majority of people affected — about istry of survivors, their addresses were available Each survivor approved will receive a hard- experience during the war for so many people ship grant of 2,556 euros, the equivalent of ap- defines them, is the seminal experience of their 20,000 — now live in France. On Monday morn- to the Claims Conference. Letters to them were proximately $3,100. The euro figure is the equiv- lives. All these decades it’s never been acknowl- ing, the Claims Conference opens a website mailed out on Sunday.

The rest of the survivors live in Francophone where survivors can make an appointment to alent of 5,000 Deutschmarks, a sum the Claims edged.”

Israel had earlier recognized Algerian Jews go to a Help Center. The first Claim Help Center Canada, mostly around Montreal, according to Conference negotiated with the German governthe Claims Conference. Eventually they, too, will ment in 1980. The money will be distributed be- as Holocaust survivors. But the German gov- opens in Paris on Tuesday morning. ernment did not, and not being acknowledged Located across the street from the U.S. Em- get assistance in applying for the new German ginning in July.

The youngest Algerian survivors, born in as survivors has “undermined their core sense bassy, just a block from the Seine in the 8th Ar- recognition.

The German government has spent nearly 75 1942, would today be 76 years old. Most, how- of self, especially when they see all the other rondissement, the center in the French capital will have a staff of 24 to assist the Paris area’s billion euros, about $93 billion, on compensation ever, are in their 80s and 90s, Schneider said. As groups getting recognized,” Schneider said.”

See Algerian Jews on page 9 “It’s a psychological trauma. The validation 12,000 Algerian survivors in assembling the docimportant as the money is, even more valuable is

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Continued from page 8 and restitution to Holocaust survivors between 1953 and 2016, the most recent year for which there is a record, according to figures provided

by Martin Chaudhuri, a spokesman for the German Finance Ministry.

Chaudhuri confirmed the compensation settlement for Algerian Jews.

“There is now the possibility of compensation in the framework of the so-called Hardship Funds. The JCC [Jewish Claims Conference] and the German Federal Ministry of Finance estimate that around 30,000 people might be concerned,” he wrote to JTA. “The JCC will decide about the individual cases, considering the guidelines which were decided upon together between the JCC and the German Federal Ministry of Finance.”

Today almost no Jews remain in Algeria — fewer than 50, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

But in 1940 it was a different story. A Vichy government census showed about 118,000 Jews there, according to Wesley Fisher, the Claims Conference’s director of research. They had been citizens of France since 1870. It was a community full of professionals and artists and writers.

The Algerian Jewish community was the most assimilated of any Muslim country, said Haim Saadoun, a professor at Israel’s Open University and director of The Documentation Center of North African Jewry During WWII. Though they were generally less religious than Jews in neighboring Morocco and Tunisia, there were still hundreds of synagogues in hundreds of cities, towns and villages.

Anti-Semitism had been a strong force in Algeria since the late 19th century. It was far worse even than in France during the Dreyfus Affair, said Saadoun.

Despite that, Jewish life was vibrant. Jews, he said in an interview, “were part of all the political life, the artistic life, in music, they were very involved in French and in Muslim society. The first local novels written in French were by Jews.”

Saadoun said over one-third of doctors in Algeria were Jewish, as were nearly one-quarter of the lawyers.

Vichy anti-Jewish laws, issued first in early October 1940, stripped Jews of French citizenship and forbade them from working in army, press, civil service, industrial and commercial jobs. They were then prohibited from working in education, law and medicine.

It was deeply traumatic, said Saadoun. The community did not know then that it would last just two years. Jews opened their own schools in Algiers, Oran and Constantine: 70 elemen-

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9 THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778

Algerians...

tary schools and five secondary schools, he said, which were run by Jewish administrators but regulated by the Vichy government, which did not permit the Jewish community to open its own university.

The Claims Conference has tried to keep this story under wraps until now, in part to make sure a system was in place to pay claimants directly without them having to pay attorney’s fees.

“On a communal level, we are unfortunately reaching the time when the stories of the Shoah pass from memory to history,” Schneider told JTA. “Germany recognizing the persecution is very important for the historical record. It helps combat Holocaust denial. Fifty years from now, 100 years from now, it will be much harder to refute.

“In the 1930s and ‘40s, Jews were abandoned by their towns, their friends, society and even the Jewish communities” in other places, he said.

“We will never do that again.

“Even though it’s 70 years later, we’re still fighting. I wish it had been sooner.”

February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

10

The JEWISH STAR

School News

Send news and hi-res photos to Schools@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline Mondays at Noon

Rabbi Zev Leff speaks at YOSS

Harav Zev Leff, shlita, of Moshav Matityahu in Yisrael, graced motzei Shabbos learning at Yeshiva of South Shore, saying he was moved by the hundreds of “Tinokos shel beis rabban” learning with “geshmak.” Rabbi Leff greeted each talmid personally and gave each a bracha and divrei chizuk.

SKA girls picked for Stern honors

Six Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls seniors have been accepted to Stern College for Women Honors Program, early decision. From left with Head of School Helen Spirn: Neima Inslicht, Shoshana Reichman, Aliza Lerman, Shoshana Rockoff, Ayelet Aharon, and Yael Scheinman.

HAFTR siddur event

HAFTR first graders received their first siddurim at a memorable chagiga where they performed for families and guests. Their Koren Youth Siddur includes questions that lead to a deeper understanding of our tefillot. After a joyous shehecheyanu was recited, the children and their guests created one-of-a-kind siddur covers, practiced saying their brachot on scrumptious snacks, played a tefillahrelated game on iPads, created bookmarks, and participated in a scavenger hunt in a model shul.

HAFTR Torah to IDF

In honor of their bar and bat mitzvahs, HAFTR seventh graders donated a sefer Torah to the IDF, in partnership with Oz Ve’Hadar. Rabbi Dovid Kupchik, Menahel K–8, is pictured dancing with the Torah, which will be housed at a Navy base in Ashdod.

HANC Plainview food run

Throughout the week, youngsters at HANC Plainview brought in soup for the Mid Island Y JCC pantry’s Great SOUPerBOWL. Students are shown enroute to deliver some of the items themselves.

Kavod Awards at HANC High School

Each month, HANC High School faculty selects four students, one from each grade, who exemplify the character trait of respect, as recipients of the school’s Kavod Award. Honored at the most recent assembly, from left: 12th grader Jordan Ehrenhaus,10th grader Aaron Afrahim, 11th grader Sharona Kataev, and 9th Grader Lilah Dublin.

5 Towns Yachad Yachad LI held its first Tu B’Shvat Supermarket Challenge, hosted by the Kosher Guru (at right). Yachad members and high school peers arrived at J2 Pizza in Lawrence where they split into seven teams, each representing one of the seven species in Israel, and given the task to creatively purchase an item from Seasons to represent their species. With a ticking clock and a tight budget, Kosher Guru blasted music and MC’d the event, bringing smiles to participants and shoppers. Later, Yachad LI threw a Big Game party in North Woodmere. Yachad thanks Dina and Jonathan Ohebshalom for their generous sponsorship of the event. For more info, contact Sametm@ou.org.

By Ariel Kahana, Makor Rishon via JNS For several months now, Israel’s National Security Council has been examining multiple plans that would change the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. Each proposal tries to deal with the demographic red line towards which the city is racing at full speed: a population comprised of 60 percent Jews and 40 percent Arabs.

It’s unclear when the National Security Council will conclude its work, which is an urgent national strategic matter by all standards.

Any decision will require overcoming political and bureaucratic obstacles. Since the Trump administration—which takes a more sympathetic stance on Israeli construction in disputed territories than preceding U.S. administrations— might have only three years remaining, those who place Jerusalem’s Jewish character before all other considerations need to speed up their advocacy process.

One of the plans to cope with the demographic crisis, proposed by Member of Knesset and Minister of Intelligence Yisrael Katz, suggests including communities surrounding Israel’s capital under the umbrella of metropolitan Jerusalem, driving up the number of Jews in the city. The chief opponents of the plan are haredi Jews, who fear losing the electoral control that they hold in the capital.

Two other plans, one proposed by MK Anat Berko and the other by Minister of Jerusalem Affairs MK Ze’ev Elkin, deal with the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

Berko proposes transferring some neighborhoods in a gradual process to the Palestinian Authority, thereby achieving three goals with one move: to gain political cachet with the international community, to improve the demographic balance of Jerusalem and to remove the responsibility for the negligence in the development of large portions of the Arab side of the

city. Under Israel’s current right-wing government, this plan has no political feasibility.

Elkin’s plan focuses on the Arab “encircled neighborhoods,” which are officially part of municipal Jerusalem but have been located beyond Israel’s Judea and Samaria security fence for 15 years. The proposals are mainly aimed at the Shuafat and Kfar Akev refugee camps north of the city. For years, Elkin has maintained that “practically speaking, these areas are extraterritorial.”

In his book “Urshalim,” journalist Nir Hasson describes that Israeli police “have ceased to provide security and law enforcement services” to the encircled neighborhoods.

“The police don’t enter the neighborhoods,

even when a murder has occurred, and certainly not for lesser calls of distress,” Hasson writes.

“Following their lead, the other Israeli authorities have also abandoned them: the municipality, the infrastructure suppliers, firefighting and rescue services, ambulances, construction supervisors and road planners. They all stay on the other side of the fence…and to every one of them, from the mayor and government ministers to the last of the residents of the refugee camps, it was clear that they left the area never to return.”

Elkin’s plan is based on a map delineated several years ago by Nadav Shragai, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs think tank. At the heart of the map is

the creation of two independent regional councils to manage the encircled neighborhoods, placing them within Israeli sovereignty and leaving political borders untouched. Several weeks ago, Shragai completed an updated version of his plan, and it is published here for the first time. Among the new revelations are statistics about the shocking population explosion in the encircled neighborhoods and the chaos that reigns there.

First, the demographics: Since the security fence was built around Jerusalem in 2003, the study reveals that the number of Arab residents in the neighborhoods outside the fence has tripled to 140,000, which is 14 percent of Jerusalem’s total population. Compared to this incomprehensible leap, the Arab neighborhoods within the fence grew 71 percent, a number high in its own right, but still much lower than the 300-percent growth outside the fence.

It’s no less important to note that the skyrocketing population growth in the encircled neighborhoods is happening because of a lack of governance. Without supervision, buildings of 10-12 floors are constructed in extremely crowded spaces, violating the law.

The construction and service standards are extremely low, including the budgeted supply of water, which sometimes arrives only twice a week. The infrastructure for sewage and water mingle with each other, and the roads are far too narrow to carry the traffic load.

“The conditions in these neighborhoods have depressed the prices of apartments to 400,000 shekels ($116,000) and less, which turns them into magnets for residents of Judea and Samaria, as well as for residents of other See Jerusalem fix on page 21

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February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778

Sale Dates: February 11th - 16th 2018

February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

14

The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

Honestly, what doesn’t go better with chocolate!

JONI SCHOCKETT KOSHER KITCHEN

F

ebruary is national chocolate month. While Ashkenazic Jews came to chocolate a bit late, Sephardic Jews enjoyed it for centuries. My grandmothers never used chocolate in their baking, but they both kept Hershey’s chocolate bars in drawers in their bedrooms and both were convinced Hershey was Jewish!

The love of chocolate is universal. Every country in the world eats some form of chocolate, from the rich, smooth Belgian chocolates, to the spicy and cinnamon-laced Mexican chocolate (the Aztecs, who were instrumental in its development as a common food, called chocolate “the food of the gods”). Europeans consume the most chocolate followed by North America.

Countries, such as China and India, that until recently never consumed chocolate, now gobble it up to the tunes of billions of dollars’ worth.

The demand for chocolate — the cocoa that makes it — is so great that consumption is outpacing demand and cocoa stores are being depleted.

There are so many pithy sayings about chocolate that the plant-based, relatively healthful delicacy has cult followings throughout the world. Chocolate memes often populate Facebook and other social media. Here are a few: “The answer is chocolate — who cares what the question is.”

“A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands.”

“The four food groups are: Dark, milk, white and truffles.”

“Chocolate is nature’s way of making up for Mondays.”

“Chocolate comes from cocoa which grows on a tree which makes it a plant. Therefore, chocolate is a salad.”

“There is nothing better than a friend — unless it’s a friend with chocolate.”

As you can see, chocolate has entered pop culture as well as the food chain. Chocolate takes up more real estate in a market than ever before and there are more recipes for things chocolate than practically any other food I can think of. While a steady diet of chocolate is not recommended for anyone, a small piece of dark chocolate is healthy for almost everyone.

Dark chocolate — 60 percent or more cocoa solids — is filled with many nutrients that can

help with anything from blood pressure to cardiovascular health and more. A one-ounce piece of dark chocolate has about 160 calories, 15 grams of carbs, some fiber and even some protein. You can even chew on organic cocoa nibs for a chocolatey flavor and very few calories.

Let’s celebrate chocolate month with some delicious very dark treats.

Deep, Dark, Chocolate Pudding (Dairy)

Darkest Fudge Torte with Amaretto Ganache Topping (Dairy)

You can make this with a liqueur infused ganache or a plain one.

I love this. I put it into very small cups (four ounces, but I only fill it about 3) and have a delicious treat with not a too terrible number of calories.

1/4 cup dark brown sugar 1/4 cup white sugar 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, not Dutched 2 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp. cornstarch 1-3/4 cup whole milk 1/3 cup cream or half and half 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter, room temperature and softened 5 ounces dark chocolate, finely chopped -I use 72%, but anything over 60% is dark 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract OPTIONAL: whipped cream or whipped topping; chocolate shavings, white for a dramatic effect, dark for health and deliciousness Place the sugars, cocoa powder and cornstarch together in a heavy, medium sized sauced pot. Whisk in about 3 to 4 tablespoons of the milk and mix to form a paste. Whisk in the rest of the milk and the cream or half and half. Place over medium-low heat and whisk until smooth.

Then use a wooden spoon to stir constantly until bubbling. Cook for 1 minute more. Add the butter and the finely chopped chocolate and mix quickly until all the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Whisk in the vanilla. Bring back to steaming and barely bubbling. Immediately pour into 4 to 8 heat-proof dishes. Cover with plastic wrap and chill. Serve with whipped cream and/or chocolate curls. Serves 4 to 8.

TORTE: 1 cup butter, cut into pieces. Additional 2 tbsp. for the pan 8-1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate (at least 70 percent cacao), chopped 1 cup sugar 4 large eggs 1/3 cup unbleached flour OPTIONAL: 2 tbsp. instant coffee or espresso crystals Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 9-inch spring form pan and duct with cocoa powder. Shake out any excess. Set aside. Place 1 cup of butter in a microwave safe bowl and add the chocolate and instant coffee if using.

Melt in 10 second increments until almost completely melted. Remove from the microwave and stir until the chocolate is completely melted. Set aside to cool. When cool, scrape into the bowl of an electric mixer and add the eggs one at a time, beating on medium speed until each egg is completely incorporated.

After all the eggs are added, beat until the mixtures is the consistency of chocolate mousse or whipped cream, about 1 minute. Reduce the speed and slowly sprinkle in the flour. Beat until smooth. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top and place in the oven. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until the edges are a bit darkened and the top is firm. Remove from the oven and let cool completely before removing from pan. Top with ganache.

GANACHE TOPPING (Dairy) 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate (70 to 82 percent cocoa), finely chopped 1/2 stick butter, cut into small pieces 1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup liqueur such as crème de cacao, Amaretto, or Cassis OR 1/4 to 1/2 cup cream or half and half Melt the butter and chocolate in a small, heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring constantly. In another saucepan, heat the liqueur or the cream until very hot, but not boiling. Add to the chocolate and whisk to blend until very smooth. Whisk in the sugar and vanilla until smooth, thickened and cooled a bit. Set aside to cool.

ASSEMBLY: Remove the cake from the pan and place on a platter. Smooth the ganache over the top of the cake so some drips down the sides. Let cool and then refrigerate. Remove from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before serving. Garnish with chocolate curls or fresh raspberries. Serves 8 to 12.

Darkest Chocolate Bark (Pareve)

You can use any fruits and nuts that you like in this snacking chocolate.

8 to 10 ounces dark chocolate at least 70 percent 1/4 cup shelled pistachios 1/4 cup chopped cashews 1/4 cup chopped dried cranberries 1/4 cup chopped dried apricots OPTIONAL: 1/4 cup unsweetened flaked coconut Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Chop the chocolate and place in a microwave safe bowl. Melt in 10-second increments until almost melted.

Remove from the microwave and mix until completely melted. Let cool until about 98 degrees.

Pour in an even layer in the middle of the parchment lined pan. Use an offset spatula and smooth to an even thickness. Sprinkle the chopped fruits and nuts evenly over the top and then sprinkle with the coconut, if using. Let cool and then refrigerate to chill until solid. Break apart.

It’s adorable! Roasted winter squash with tahini

By Shannon Sarna, The Nosher via JTA I recently fell in love with honey squash, a new variety of hearty winter squash bred specifically to be concentrated in flavor and adorable in appearance. OK, maybe it wasn’t specifically grown to be adorable, but the result nevertheless is the same.

I found honey squash at several New York area markets, but even if you cannot find this super sweet squash, you can substitute regular old (delicious) butternut squash, acorn squash or delicata squash.

Drizzling tahini over roasted vegetables just adds a richness to the dish and makes it feel a little extra special, especially for a Friday-night dinner or Thanksgiving celebration. You might also add some pomegranate molasses for sweetness and tang, or some pomegranate seeds or chopped fresh herbs for color and brightness, or nothing at all.

Note: You will want to go easy on the olive oil, so that the squash develops a nice caramelized texture and isn’t too oily.

Ingredients: 2 honey squash (or 1 medium butternut squash) 1 tablespoon olive oil Salt and pepper 3 tablespoons good quality tahini, at room temperature Pomegranate molasses, pomegranate seeds, chopped fresh herbs (optional) Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 425 F. 2. Peel the honey squash, cut off the ends and cut into 1/2-inch thick rings.

3. Spread squash out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and olive oil, and using your hands, make sure squash is evenly coated.

4. Cook on first side for 10 to 15 minutes.

Turn over the rings and cook another 10 to 15 minutes, until just caramelized.

5. Drizzle with tahini. Top with additional pomegranate molasses, pomegranate seeds or fresh herbs if desired. Serves 6.

Judy Joszef

who’s in the kitchen

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y apologies for playing hooky the last few weeks. On Jan. 21 at 7:20 am I became a grandmother for the very first time. And yes, it is everything that everyone described it would be.

There was absolutely nothing like that feeling — of seeing the child that you gave birth to having a child of his own.

The first time I set my eyes upon my granddaughter, it was about two hours after she was born. I know at that point she was not able to see anything, but her eyes were wide open and it was as if she was following her saba and me.

It was so wonderful to hold her in my arms, a feeling that I just can’t describe. Although it took her over 24 hours to make her appearance, via a C-section, she looked absolutely beautiful.

After visiting with the new mom, Darya; my son, Jeremy; and the guest of honor, adorable Arielle Emma (Rifka Miriam), it was time to let them get some needed rest.

Darya’s parents, our wonderful mechatonim, Bonnie and Igal, Darya’s sisters and my kids sat in the waiting room gushing about how adorable she was. While other grandparents in the waiting room were equally gushing about how beautiful their grandchildren were, our’s, of course, was the cutest!

My job now is to entertain my granddog, Penny, for the next week, and convince her to be gentle with her new baby sister … or else, as my son let me know, she’d be living with me.

As much as I love my granddogs, there’s no way I could have dogs of my own because of the guilt I have when I have to leave them by themselves. I brought home a blanket that the baby was swaddled in, and let Penny play on it and get used to the scent, so that she would recognize it when she met the baby for the first time.

Not only was I a grandmother, but my mom a’h now had a grandchild named after her. Rifky was my mom’s name, and Miriam was Darya’s

Clockwise from top left: Baby Arielle Emma (Rifka Miriam) with dad Jeremy and Penny, with Judy, with Jeremy, with Darya, and with saba David.

Mom and baby by LV Photo and Design

grandmother’s name. Rifka Miriam, named after two wonderful women. imes changed since I had my first child Daniel, almost 32 years ago. In those days the only things we did differently during pregnancy was abstain from artificial sweeteners and

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alcohol. Today expectant mothers refrain from eating tuna fish and basically almost every other fish, just to be safe. Most things are better off natural with no preservatives and no additives.

There weren’t hundreds of books and articles filling you in on every detail.

So much has changed. We were excited back then, by the ultrasound picture of our fetus that could have been an image of anything. We made believe, though, that it looked something like a baby. Today they have 3-D ultrasound photos with amazing details. You can even estimate how many grams your fetus likely weighs at any given time.

And let’s not forget the gadgets that cater to the expectant moms. Pregnancy pillows to cushion their ever-growing waists, brain-stimulating music to play to the babes in utero, etc.

Women are now encouraged to exercise, do prenatal yoga and meditate.

Once in the hospital, you can choose what type of birth you prefer. Soft lights, calming music and water births. Call me old fashioned, but I like the idea of having all that modern medicine offers, just case there is a need for it in an emergency, G-d forbid.

So welcome to the world, Arielle Emma aka Rifka Miriam. I look forward to loving you, spoiling you, babysitting for you, and watching you grow.

PS: Penny loves her little sister and is very protective of her!

Talking about babies, this is an easy recipe for babies and everyone else as well.

Veggie Quinoa Baby Bites

By Becky’s Best Bites 1 cup red or tri colored quinoa 1 cup shredded zucchini 1 cup shredded carrots 1/4 cup chopped parsley 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese 4 eggs Instructions: Cook quinoa according to package instructions. Remove from heat and let cool. Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray 2 mini muffin pans (24 count) with nonstick cooking spray or use silicone mini muffin pans and set aside. In a large mixing bowl combine cooked quinoa, zucchini, carrots, parsley, cheese and eggs. Spoon mixture into mini muffin pans.

Bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool.

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

These muffins freeze beautifully.

Best vegetarian matzah ball soup recipe ever

By Vicky Cohen and Ruth Fox, The Nosher via JTA Let’s face it: There’s just something wonderfully soothing about seeing a steaming bowl of matzah ball soup with its pillowy-plump dumplings swimming in a bath of golden broth.

This healing vegetarian matzah ball soup delivers all the “ah” of its traditional cousin with precisely the right amount of goodness (and good-for-you-ness) thanks to a clever use of shiitake mushrooms, tomato paste and a pot full of seasonal vegetables. Whether you add our healthy matzah ball soup to your Friday night dinner routine or prepare a large pot for lazy Sunday afternoons for the family, this soup is certain to satisfy the stomach and soul.

When we first considered a vegetarian alternative to chicken soup, we knew that we didn’t want to use bouillon cubes, powders or vegetable broth. The question was, how could we create a deep, rich taste that would satisfy our family?

The first thing we did was caramelize some tomato paste with olive oil in order to enhance the flavors of the tomatoes and oil; then we added fresh shiitake mushroom tops for their chickenlike texture and rich almost-smoky flavor.

Additional depth came from a cheesecloth bag filled with delicious ingredients — red and yellow onions (skins still on to create a rich-colored broth), carrot, parsnip and celery, dill, parsley and a whole head of garlic. We also cooked the matzah balls in the vegetable broth instead of cooking them separately, so they could absorb the flavor of the broth. The result was a rich, deep-flavored broth where the chicken was not

missed.

This soup is easy to make and can be dressed up or down. Try serving it in an elegant china bowl with a steamed bundle of julienned carrots, zucchini and yellow squash for a sophisticated first course to a formal dinner. You can also cut plenty of root vegetables (sweet potato, turnips, butternut squash) into a large dice and cook together in the soup for a delicious more rustic soup.

Ingredients: For the soup: 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 4 tablespoons tomato paste 16 fresh shiitake mushrooms, thoroughly washed, stems and caps separated and caps sliced 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons salt ( adjust to taste) 1/2 teaspoon turmeric 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 3 medium carrots, cut into chunks 1 large parsnip, cut into chunks 1 yellow onion, unpeeled, quartered 1 red onion, unpeeled, quartered 3 celery stalks, cut into chunks 1 head of garlic, unpeeled, cut in half widthwise 1 bunch of fresh dill 1 bunch of parsley For the matzah balls: 1 pack of matzah ball mix, prepared according to directions (or make homemade) Directions: 1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot.

2. Add the tomato paste and cook for 2 min-

utes over medium high heat, stirring constantly.

Add the sliced shiitake mushroom caps, stir well and cook for another minute.

3. Add 10 cups water, salt, turmeric and pepper (don’t add all the salt at once here, you can adjust to taste later).

4. Place the shiitake stems, carrots, parsnip, onions, celery, garlic, dill and parsley in a cheese cloth. Tie it well with kitchen twine and place it in the soup pot. Bring to a boil and let it cook for 5 minutes.

5. Cover, reduce heat to medium low and simmer for an hour. The broth should be ready and should be flavorful. If it’s not, continue cook-

ing for another 15-20 minutes.

6. While soup cooks, prepare the matzah balls following the package instructions.

7. Remove cheesecloth from the soup and place it in a colander with a bowl underneath.

Squeeze as much liquid as you can from the cheesecloth and pour it into the soup pot (the liquid will be hot, so use a wooden spoon or another utensil). Discard vegetables.

8. Prepare matzah ball according to directions on the box, and chill in fridge for 30 minutes. Or, you can make a homemade version.

9. Place the matzah balls directly into the broth and cook, covered, for 20 minutes. Serves 6.

THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778

‘Bobby’ Judy welcomes Ariella Emma

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February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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‫כוכב של שבת‬

SHAbbAT STAR

Eye for an eye? Literally, it’s not the Jewish way Rabbi binny FReedman

the heart of jerusalem

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had an aunt who was a kindergarten teacher for many years. She once told me about a child who would bite other children. No amount of persuasion seemed to work. Then one day, when he was caught biting a fellow kindergarten classmate, my aunt promptly took his arm — and bit him back!

After a moment of shock the boy burst into tears, but as she described it to me, it was the last time he bit another child! I wonder what such an act would lead to today. Would she have been summarily terminated? Disciplined?

Put on trial? In fact, the boy’s mother actually appreciated her action as it finally put an end to what had been a very difficult and embarrassing dilemma for her as a parent.

A few years ago my men and I were attached to a paratrooper unit for a few weeks of reserve duty in the Gush Etzion and the Hebron region.

Part of an IDF experiment during the “knives intifada” of 2013–14, the idea was to insert seasoned commanders with younger reservists the better to marry the wisdom and calm of older commanders with the physical prowess and high motivation of younger soldiers. For the most part this experiment worked well, although as a 50 year old, keeping up with 25-year-olds proved to be a bit more than some of us had bargained for.

During the hafsadim (hafarot seder, or Palestinian riots), we were sent to El Aroub, a nasty little Arab village on the Northern end of Hebron.

Teens would often throw rocks, bottles, and iron bars at Jewish civilians driving along the highway, and army units would be called in to protect the roads and clear the way so civilians could drive safely. On this day, two rock-throwing teenagers were caught after a Jewish mother and her two children had been severely injured; the culprits were taken to the local army base for processing.

By the time we got there a few hundred people

had gathered including rock throwers and masked Palestinians riling up the crowd, alongside women and children. The fear we felt as soldiers (bear in mind we were not allowed to use live fire unless we could later prove our lives were in danger, and many of us did not even have live ammo in our guns) was in large part due to a story that we had been told about from the reserve unit serving in the area the month before we arrived. Some of the Palestinian kids had become expert in the use of slings and would regularly use large marbles in their slingshots, aiming them with an impressive degree of precision at the IDF soldiers. A deputy commander in an exactly similar situation had been hit in the knee by such a marble. It completely shattered his kneecap and ended his military career, to put it mildly.

We had been warned what such a marble might do to us in the event we were hit and many of us had stuffed wads of thick newspapers into our pants to protect our groins; not exactly a hightech solution but better than nothing. So the men were tense and quite nervous as we arrived on site.

It was then that I noticed one of the guys, who looked to be no more than 22, had a very non-regulation pistol in his belt. When I asked him about it he grinned and showed me it was a lethal B-B gun that held steel pellets. I had never seen anything quite like it and he showed me it even had a laser site with a movie-like red dot that would allow him to hit a target at 50 yards, or so he claimed.

“Anyone I see with a slingshot is getting one in the knee,” he said. “Only way to put a stop to these guys.”

But he had picked the wrong commander to share this with. I confiscated the gun, unloaded it, and left it in the command car with the driver.

A lively debate ensued on the way back to base (fortunately we were able to disperse the riot with tear gas and a few arrests and noone was hurt), with my position being I might well have saved him from a court martial, and from doing something really stupid (imagine if a child got hit with one of his steel pellets).

His position? Quite simply: “There is only one language they will understand, and it’s in the Bible: an eye for an eye.”

So: who was right? his week’s parsha of Mishpatim is famous for many of its laws, one of which is, indeed, the famous exhortation (Shemot 21:24): “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand and a foot for a foot.”

Saudi Arabia appears to have a very low crime rate, perhaps as a result of its policy that thieves caught in the act may be sentenced to the cutting off of their right hand. Maybe if every teenager caught throwing a rock at a moving car was lined up against a wall and a Major League baseball pitcher was employed to fire a 90 miles per hour fastball shattering their elbow, there would be significantly fewer incidents of rock throwing at civilians.

Jewish tradition, however, does not see it this way. As Rashi famously notes (based on the Talmudic discussion in tractate Baba Kamma, perek Hachovel), we are really speaking of monetary compensation — specifically, how much less worth would such a person (minus an eye or a tooth etc.) fetch on the job market.

Maimonides makes very clear (Hilchot chovel u’mazik 1:2-3) that this is a law of monetary compensation, pointing out in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishna that this is a tradition given to Moses at Sinai, which is why there is no debate about it in the Talmud: everyone agrees one cannot literally take an eye for an eye.

Which begs the question: Why didn’t the Torah simply describe it as monetary compensation? One possibility, mentioned by the Rambam (ibid. chovel u’mazik 1:3), suggests that it is important that everyone concerned, and particularly the transgressor, understand that it is not possible to compensate the person who has been hurt. No amount of compensation will ever make up for the loss of an eye, so the Torah tells us that even though the tradition and the law will only extract monetary compensation, he will forever be owed an eye.

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Not everything can be fixed.

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e live in a world where increasingly, we think we can fix everything; it’s just a question of how much it costs. But some things cannot be bought and paid for and can never be fixed. In the world of “me too,” a person who has been violated or abused will never fully be compensated for the pain and suffering they have endured. Long after the perpetrator is sentenced and the media has moved on, the victim will still be leaving with the demons of that abuse.

There is, however, a second approach, possibly based on a Tosafot in Sanhedrin 58b who suggests that in the event the rabbis feel crime is not being deterred, the Torah actually leaves open the possibility of cutting off a person’s hand to deter crime.

Think about it: If the Torah had just written that a person must be compensated for the loss of a hand or an eye, then a wealthy person might decide to cut off a person’s hand and simply pay what the hand was worth! Indeed, this might eventually mean that the poor would be terrified to offend the wealthy for fear of such retribution. So the Torah leaves this opening so that any corrupt and wealthy individual would know that if monetary compensation is not enough of a deterrent, the Beit din has more painful options available.

And while this is a radical suggestion, when looking at the world stage, it is worth considering the value of deterrence. For 50 years, through the cold war, serious deterrents prevented either superpower from doing the unspeakable, keeping the world safe from a possible nuclear Holocaust.

Indeed, this seems to be a major part of Israel’s military strategy, and the reason they respond with significant force every time an errant Syrian mortar shell lands in the Golan, or a Hamas missile lands in an open field in the South.

Perhaps we would do well to create our own deterrents in our search for success in overcoming our own personal challenges. Imagine if every time you spoke in anger, you had to do the dishes, take out the garbage or (horror of horrors) wash the floor?

Something to think about.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.

Point behind Mishpatim’s random list of mitzvot Rabbi avi billet

Parsha of the week

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ccording to the Sefer HaChinukh, there are 53 mitzvot in Parshat Mishpatim. Other than in similarly mitzvah-laden parshas (such as Re’eh, Shoftim, Ki Tetze, and possibly Kedoshim) it is hard to find a more random list of mitzvot that are not overall thematically connected.

Considering the opening verse of the parsha, “And these are the laws you shall place before them” (21:1), one wonders when Moshe told these laws to the people, on the one hand, and when they were told to him, on the other.

Ibn Ezra is of the opinion that Moshe’s fatherin-law’s visit, as recorded in last week’s parsha, actually took place well after the giving of the Torah, even several months later after the Mishkan was built. As proof, he notes that Moshe had a court system set up (albeit a primitive one of one man), that Moshe’s tent was “lifnei haElokim” (before G-d), which meant next to the Mishkan, and that Torah law was the arena in which Moshe was presiding.

So how are we to understand the placement of the laws of Parshat Mishpatim? The end of the parsha, chapter 24, describes Moshe going up the mountain to be there for 40 days. The chronology

is extremely difficult to grasp, especially since at the beginning of the parsha Moshe seems to not be on a mountain, and the verse does not even clarify who is speaking. We assume G-d is speaking to Moshe, but actually the text is vague. e have laws here that relate to owning servants or slaves (depending on how the word “eved” is translated and understood), murder, kidnapping, destroying someone else’s field with fire, bestiality, and Shmittah. None of these seem relevant to their lives in the wilderness. And they don’t yet live in Israel, which will come with a set of mitzvot dependent on living in the land.

There is a popular debate between Rashi and Ramban as to the order of the Torah’s narrative.

Ramban is of the opinion that the Torah is presented chronologically, while Rashi is of the view that it is not — “Ein Mukdam U’m’uchar BaTorah.”

For many years I preferred the view of Ramban, but as I study more and more, I am convinced that Rashi’s contention is correct. There are too many holes in Ramban’s approach and perspective that make it impossible to accept that the Torah as presented chronologically every time.

So what are to take from the random assignment of mitzvot?

I think there are grounds to suggest that even in-

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sofar as the Torah’s narrative goes there was room for free will to have the history of the Israelites be different from how it turned out. In other words, had they not made and worshiped the Golden Calf (in whatever form they worshiped), things would have turned out differently. If the spies had reported directly to Moshe in parshat Shlach, history would have been different as well.

Parshat Mishpatim demonstrates a healthy optimism that certain laws associated with living in a diverse cultural environment — in which, for example, the Torah’s law is the rule of law, but Jew and non-Jew alike accept the Israelite authority in the living of the land — was not too far away in the immediate future. They truly thought they’d be in the land soon, and needed to live with each other and with whichever non-Israelites might remain in the land, who needed to be contended with in a societal manner, under the rule of law.

We don’t expect the Torah-community of the Jewish people to be thieves, murderers, etc., but we recognize the possibility that people are flawed and can commit terrible crimes, or have normal monetary disputes which need to be adjudicated.

Just before writing this thought, I heard the news of the murder of Itamar ben Gal in Israel, and saw the security video of the cowardly, sense-

There must be a way to eradicate the cancer of terrorism.

less attack. While the non-Jews who accept the authority of the State of Israel’s laws are welcome to live there, within the law there must be a way to eradicate the cancer of terrorism that plagues the minds of those who will randomly kill a lone figure standing innocently at a bus stop. If there isn’t enough deterrence, which is what the Torah law is supposed to create, then the ordered society the Torah aims to create can never be fully actualized.

luach

Fri Feb 9 • 24 Shevat Parshas Shekalim, Mishpatim Shabbos Mevarchim Candlelighting: 5:04 pm

Havdalah: 6:14 pm

Thurs-Fri Feb 15-16 Rosh Chodesh Adar

Fri Feb 16 • 1 Adar Parsha Tetzaveh Candlelighting: 5:21 pm

Havdalah: 6:31 pm

Five Towns times from the White Shul

AlAn JAy Gerber

Kosher BooKworm

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ust in time for Purim, Megillat Esther Mesorat HaRav, published by OU Press and Koren Publishers, is a welcome addition to the literature about Megillat Esther. The book contains, alongside the text of Megillat Esther and the Maariv service for Purim, a running commentary drawn from the teachings of the Rav (Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik), collected from a variety of published writings, notes and lectures. In addition, the volume also includes a section of Reshimot, with more extensive halachic analyses based on the Rav’s learning, and a derasha by the Rav on the nature of Purim.

The Rav, whose dazzling brilliance and profound philosophical insight left an enduring impact on Jewry in America and around the world, finds in the Megillah not only a story of political intrigue but a timeless drama of Jewish, and indeed human, existence. Taking note of the political, social and cultural setting of the events of the Megillah, the Rav asks how it was possible that the pluralistic Persian society, which accepted the Jews and many other nationalities, suddenly

decided to commit genocide. The Rav sees the answer in Judaism’s view of the duality of man.

The answer to this riddle can be found in our philosophy of man as a dual, dichotomous being, burdened with an inner contradiction. On the one hand, Judaism looks upon man with a sympathetic, appreciative eye —with admiration.

Time and again, Judaism expresses faith in man and belief in human uniqueness, in man’s royal status, in his contemplative, meditative power.

On the other hand, Judaism has also treated man with extreme caution, even suspicion.

The Judaic skepticism concerning man is due to our historical experience and memory — that man, though endowed with divine rationality, may turn at a moment’s notice into either a nonrational or an irrational being. In the opinion of Judaism, there is no element of surprise in man’s abrupt changes and transformations; his unpredictability is a part of his humanity, and I would say that his unpredictability is quite predictable. nother example of the Rav’s insight is his focus on the importance of Esther’s role as a woman and the significance that Judaism accords to women. With a prescient sense of some of the issues that are roiling our own society, the Rav has this to say about the episode with Vashti: Ahasuerus did not grasp the meaning of human dignity in general and the dignity of the woman in particular. Judaism displays enormous

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As we read the parsha, understanding mishpatim rAbbi dAvid etenGoff

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sense, they are “natural laws” that stand in stark contrast to chukim, whose underlying reasoning is beyond the scope of human understanding. e must be very careful, however, regarding the mishpatim, precisely because “their rationale is revealed and the value that obtains as a result of their performance is manifest in this world.” This can easily lead us to the false conclusion that we observe the mishpatim because “they make sense to us.”

Nothing could be further from the truth! In reality, we observe all of the mitzvot solely because G-d commanded us to do so. In other words, one of our basic obligations as Jews is to view the entire Torah in its proper light. This means that whether or not we understand a mitzvah, or believe we have discovered its rationale, its absolute demand upon us is exclusively based upon the Voice that eternally issues forth from Mount Sinai.

On the most basic level, therefore, we must recognize that a tripartite nexus forms the background of each mitzvah: Hashem the metzaveh (the Commander), the mitzvah (the commandment), and the metzuveh (the commanded). As a result, each time we fulfill a Torah precept, whether it is one of the chukim or mishpatim, we demonstrate our unswerving loyalty to our Creator and His holy Torah. Moreover, we are declaring to all mankind that the relationship the Holy One blessed be He forged with our forebears continues in full force until our own historical moment.

As such, when we fulfill the mitzvot, we are proclaiming: “Hashem Hu HaElokim.” (“Hashem is our G-d and Master,” Sefer Devarim 4:35) In sum, we need to approach every commandment with a sense of awe, and an ever-present recognition that we are fulfilling G-d’s will. Humility, especially regarding the mishpatim, must ever be our watchword. As Michah the prophet declared so long ago: “O man, what is good, and what does the L-rd demand of you, but to do justice, to love lovingkindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d.”

(6:8) With His loving help, and our fervent desire, may this be so. V’chane yihi ratzon.

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he mishpatim are most often viewed as a category of laws the Jewish people theoretically could have formulated on their own. In many instances, Torah contrasts these with the term chukim, as we find in Talmud Bavli, Yoma 67b: “Our Rabbis taught: ‘You should perform my mishpatim’ (Vayikra 18:4). These are matters that were they not actually written [by G-d] it is logical that they would have been. They include: the prohibitions of idol worship, illicit sexual behavior, murder, stealing, and cursing Hashem. ‘Chukim,’ these are matters wherein the Satan [Rashi, yetzer harah, the “evil inclination”] attempts to disprove their validity and veracity, including: the prohibitions of eating pig flesh, wearing garments comprised of a mixture of linen and wool threads, the act of relieving a brother-in-law of his obligation to marry his widowed sister-in-law (chalitzah), the ritual purification of the individual afflicted with tzarat, and the scapegoat rite [of Yom Kippur]. [Since you cannot understand them] perhaps you will say that they are completely worthless and devoid of meaning! Therefore the Torah states: ‘I am the L-rd your G-d.’ I am He who has decreed it [the chukim] and you do not have permission to question them.

The Rambam codifies the distinction between chukim and mishpatim: “The mishpatim are those commandments wherein their rationale is revealed and the value that obtains as a result of their performance is manifest in this world. For example: the prohibitions of stealing and murder and the obligation to honor one’s father and mother. [In contrast,] the chukim are those commandments whose rationale is unknown.” (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Meilah 8:8) In sum, mishpatim are laws we could have derived on our own if left to our own devices. In this

Humility regarding mishpatim must be our watchword.

sensitivity vis-a–vis the woman, particularly when she is put on exhibit as a sex object whose task is to gratify man’s brutish drives. Many Jewish laws pertaining to separation serve one objective, namely to convince man that woman is of equal worth. Quite often I have the impression that the Torah considered woman of a higher existential caliber than man.

Rabbi Joseph B. Another intriguSoloveitchik ing theme considered by the Rav is that the events of the Megillah occur after prophecy passed from the scene. G-d, as it were, has gone into hiding, and we experienced hester panim: The Megilla contains the story of events that occurred in the twilight hour of Jewish history.

At that time, the covenantal community was losing, slowly but surely, the most precious of all gifts: prophecy. … “Where is there an allusion to Esther in the Pentateuch?” asks the Talmud (Hullin 139b). The answer is given immediately: “And I shall hide (haster astir) My countenance on that day” (Deut. 31:18). What did the Talmud mean to express by this question and answer? …

Where is there in the Torah an allusion to the silent, mute confrontation between mighty historical events and the Jew in the Diaspora, between a wicked, cruel monster and a lonely Jewish maiden on whose frail shoulders Providence placed the heavy load of historical responsibility? How can the Jew triumph over his adversaries and enemies if G-d has stopped speaking to him, if the cryptic messages he receives remain unintelligible and incomprehensible? The answer to this question is more a statement of facts than an explanation.

Even during the non-prophetic era, at a time when the divine countenance is hidden (hester panim), man is elected by G-d to carry on, to make decisions, to undertake difficult tasks courageously

and implement them superbly. Of course, it is a superhuman task for a young, inexperienced maiden.

However, the spirit of G-d will descend on her and inspire her to defy danger and to make the right decisions. G-d asks of man to reach maturity and independence. He wills man to act with courage and wisdom, allegedly as his own master. “This song shall answer” (Deut. 31:21); the song of the Torah will never be terminated. All communities, prophetic and non-prophetic, will join in.

These and many other themes are treated by the Rav with his inimitable depth and eloquence. Megillat Esther Mesorat HaRav is destined to grace many a library, both as an original perspective on the Purim holiday and as part of the growing body of the Rav’s works published

by OU Press.

A thinking Judaism rAbbi mArc d.

AnGel

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his week’s parsha, Mishpatim, begins with G-d commanding Moses: “And these are the ordinances that you shall set before them.”

Rashi comments that G-d instructed Moses not to teach the Israelites by rote, but to explain the reasons for the laws. If the people had the opportunity to study the reasons behind the laws, they would more likely internalize and fulfill them.

Rashi’s comments relate to mishpatim, ordinances that are apparent to reason and common sense. But what about hukkim, laws whose reasons are not readily apparent? Was Moses expected to offer reasons and explanations for these ceremonial, ritual laws? Or was he to state the commandments and have the Israelites obey them even if they did not understand the underlying reasons for them?

In his Guide for the Perplexed, Rambam devoted serious discussion to the reasons for mitzvoth.

He believed that since G-d is all wise, all of the mitzvoth contain divine wisdom. G-d’s commandments aim at perfecting us, inculcating proper beliefs, improving society. G-d would not issue commands in an arbitrary, irrational manner.

Rambam writes: “There is a group of human beings who consider it a grievous thing that causes should be given for any law; what would please them most is that the intellect would not find a meaning for the commandments and prohibitions (book 3, chapter 31).” He refers to the sickness in

the souls of such people, who prefer to observe commandments blindly rather than to imagine that G-d had reasons for giving these commandments.

Rambam insists: “Every commandment from among these 613 commandments exists either with a view to communicating a correct opinion, or to putting an end to an unhealthy opinion, or to communicating a rule of justice, or to warding off an injustice, or to endowing men with a noble moral quality, or to warning them against an evil moral quality.”

Rambam was displeased with those who thought Torah’s teachings should be accepted blindly and unthinkingly. This tendency of mind leads inexorably to a superficial view of religion, even to superstition. A mind trained to accept information without analyzing and questioning it, is a mind that can be controlled by demagogues.

Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn, an important rabbinic figure of the early 20th century, offered a fascinating interpretation as to why the Torah often uses the word leimor, e.g. and G-d spoke to Moses leimor (saying). The Torah added this word to indicate that G-d did not want the words of Torah to be given in an absolute fixed form, but rather to be subject to discussion and explanation. The word leimor is, in a sense, an invitation to participate in the analysis of the text.

Instead of demanding blind obedience, G-d invited all students of Torah to use their rational faculties to try to determine truth.

A thinking Judaism is an intellectual and spiritual adventure that elevates us as Jews and as human beings.

Rabbi Angel is interim spiritual leader of the Lido Beach Synagogue and rabbi emeritus of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York.

THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778

OU releases ‘Megillat Esther Mesorat HaRav’

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February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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Z Street, pro-Israel group, beats IRS in bias suit Jeff Dunetz politics to go

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mistaken belief regarding the Obama administration’s IRS scandal was that it only targeted Tea Party and conservative groups. One of the organizations targeted by the IRS for denial of tax-exempt status was a proIsrael organization called Z Street. After a sevenyear court battle, Z Street won its lawsuit against the IRS. During the Obama presidency, the IRS was a political tool bent on quieting organizations that disagreed with its the administration’s policies. The only reason Z Street was able to see its lawsuit through to completion is that its founder, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, and her husband were both attorneys, so they had no lawyer fees.

Representing the IRS, the Department of Justice entered into a settlement with Z Street, a non-profit corporation dedicated to educating the public about various issues related to Israel and the Middle East. The IRS delayed Z Street’s

501(c)(3) tax-exempt application because its viewpoint regarding Israel was different from that of the administration. For example, the Obama administration called territory outside he 1949 armistice lines “occupied territory,” Z Street had the nerve to call it “disputed territory.”

In August of 2010, almost three years before Lois Lerner announced at a law conference that the IRS had indeed targeted certain groups, Z Street filed a lawsuit contending they were being targeted by the IRS because they disagreed with the president’s policy on Israel. They filed their suit against the IRS after an agent allegedly told them his direction was to “give special scrutiny to organizations connected to Israel,” and that the files of some of those “organizations were sent to a special unit in Washington to determine whether the activities of the organization contradicted the public policies of the administration.” n a consent order that is part of the settlement, a series of facts are agreed to by Z Street and the Department of Justice. Most of

the information in this column comes from that consent decree, and some comes from conversations with Ms. Marcus.

The IRS claims the Z Street application was flagged because Z Street’s mission related to Israel, a country with terrorism. The IRS manager in their case said in sworn testimony that the IRS needed to investigate whether Z Street was funding terror.

However, Z Street discovered that between 2009 and 2016, while their application was being delayed, the IRS granted numerous applications for tax-exempt status that explicitly proclaimed donations would be spent in Gaza — a territory formally under the jurisdiction of Hamas, which the U.S. State Department designates as a terror organization.

And during the time they were supposedly investigating whether Z Street was funding terror, the IRS never asked how or where the organization spent its money. Even when the IRS finally granted Z Street a 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt status in October 2016, they didn’t anything about ter-

Even the IRS has to obey the First Amendment.

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ror, money, or anything else it hadn’t known seven years earlier.

Z Street and other applications for tax-exempt status were sent to IRS headquarters in Washington for more intense scrutiny. They were selected because of the organizations’ viewpoint.

In 2010, Z Street spoke by telephone with the IRS employee who was reviewing its application.

The IRS employee informed Z Street that the IRS is carefully scrutinizing organizations that are in any way connected with Israel. The employee further informed Z Street: “These cases are being sent to a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the administration’s public policies.”

During the trial, Z Street provided proof that four Jewish cultural or Israel-related organizations including Z Street applying for tax-exempt status were asked by the IRS to “explain their religious beliefs about the Land of Israel.” ithin weeks of President Obama’s inauguration, IRS and State Department officials began considering whether they could deny or revoke the tax-exempt status of organizations that provided material support to Jews living across the 1949 armistice line. The See Pro-Israel on page 20

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Considering Poland: Who owns the Holocaust?

Ben Cohen Viewpoint

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ho owns the Holocaust? That, ultimately, is the key question posed by the impending legislation in Poland that will criminalize any discussion, or investigation, or mere mention, of incidents of Polish collusion with the Nazi occupiers during World War Two. My goal here is not to look into the details of the Polish dispute — save for noting that Warsaw’s impassioned claim that its ire is driven by the phrase “Polish death camp” to describe Auschwitz is actually a straw man argument.

Nearly all reputable scholars of the Holocaust — including those at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial — have repeatedly said, over several years, that this form of words is insensitive and inaccurate. It should be purged from our Shoah lexicon, but through education, not legislation.

This dispute is about who sets the parameters for our understanding of what the Holocaust was and what it represented — and it is a problem that extends far beyond Poland’s borders.

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n a purely conceptual level, molding a particular historical event to fit a particular interpretation always involves simplification.

Look at our own Civil War 150 years later — as we often do, and with great anger — and we still see it as North against South, a society of free individuals against a society built on slavery. All that is basically true, and yet it doesn’t easily explain why there were so many Northern Democrats more loyal to Jefferson Davis than Abraham Lincoln, or why the citizens of Eastern Tennessee threw in their lot with the Union.

This is why the study of history is only possible in free societies where all avenues of inquiry are open, and where knowledge is “owned” by all.

Here in the West, our understanding of the Holocaust’s complexities has been hugely enriched by the histories, bibliographies, oral testimonies and images patiently collected and interpreted by scholars in Israel, the U.S. and Europe.

But in the nations that were until 1989 under the boot of the Soviet Union, like Poland, the

situation is the exact opposite; over there, “Holocaust education” for decades consisted of lies, distortions and shameful cover-ups.

It began with the Soviets, for whom there was no ideological or political room for something called the “Holocaust” in their account of the “Great Patriotic War.” In his monumental poem “Babi Yar” — a searing critique of the official Soviet representation of the Nazi massacre of 33,000 Jews by a ravine in Kiev in September 1941 — the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko summoned up the ghosts of native Russian anti-Semitism when he imagined himself as young Jewish boy in the midst of a pogrom. (“To jeers of ‘Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!’/My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.”)

Yevtushenko’s goal was to remind his readers of the difficult, painful truth that the Communist Party’s enforcers sought to suppress. The Holocaust was defined by the anti-Semitic legislation, persecution and eventual genocide — under the gaze and sometimes with the active participation of

In the East, Shoah education consisted of lies, distortions and cover-ups.

their non-Jewish neighbors — that defined the fate of the Jews under Nazi rule. ut just as the Communists sought to undermine this core truth at every turn, so do today’s ultranationalists. It’s not just Poland, after all. Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Latvia are just a handful of the other European countries where similarly ugly disputes have arisen, always involving ultranationalist political leaders promoting the deceitful rewriting of history. In all these cases, the end has been the same: to portray the occupied non-Jewish populations as facing exactly the same trials and perils as their Jewish neighbors, and thereby launder their own soiled records of past Nazi associations.

Here, I believe, is where the rub lies. The Holocaust scholarship engendered in the open societies of the west is robust enough to withstand these political campaigns to rewrite history. In that sense, the current Polish dispute is just a particularly nasty example of a clash we’ve seen before, and not much more than that. The real losers in all this are the very people these ultranationalists claim they represent.

Consider the following sentences. “The conditions in those trains defy coherent language…

They were packed in a standing position in sealed, windowless, and unheated cattle wagons, for a See Holocaust on page 20

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I.

It is the overarching goal of the Orthodox Union to maximize the religious involvement, and spiritual growth and fulfillment, of every woman and man in our community. Observance of Halacha and increased Torah study are fundamental to this aspiration, as we each strive to enhance our Avodas Hashem. With these fundamental imperatives in mind, on February 2, 2017, the Orthodox Union issued a statement adopting, as the policy of the organization, the Responses of our Rabbinic Panel to questions regarding the halachic propriety of (i) synagogues hiring women to fill rabbinic clergy positions; and (ii) synagogues hiring women to fill a wide range of professional non-rabbinic clergy positions.

Since the issuance of the Rabbinic Responses and the OU Statement, there has been widespread discussion within our community about the issues presented in those documents. Preliminarily, two fundamental facts must be emphasized: (i) the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of OU synagogues conform — and wish to continue to conform — to the guidelines established by the Rabbinic Responses; and (ii) as indicated in the OU Statement, and consistent with the Rabbinic Responses, the OU is committed to maximizing female involvement in the professional life of synagogues and communities, consistent with halachic norms and our mesorah. It is this latter commitment that we believe is and should be the focal point of the OU’s attention, energy and resources.

II.

As reflected in our Statement, of the hundreds of OU member shuls only four currently employ women in clergy positions. With respect to these shuls, our statement noted: We adopt as a statement of OU policy the Responses of the Rabbinic Panel transmitted herewith and anticipate that Orthodox Union member synagogues will act in accordance with these Responses. The OU, through its Synagogue Standards Commission, will enter into a dialogue with synagogues to encourage and facilitate implementation of the Responses.

Following the issuance of our Statement, OU leadership met with lay and rabbinic leadership of each of the four OU member shuls that employ women in clergy positions. We appreciate the constructive and candid discussion that ensued, as well as the dedication and commitment of the highly skilled women we met with to the welfare and spiritual growth of their congregants — and that of the Jewish community at large.

We also recognized, and conveyed to each of these shuls, that a significant portion of the functions and services admirably performed by these women — particularly in the areas of Torah education, and family and pastoral counselling and guidance — fall, in our understanding, within the parameters of the Responses of the Rabbinic

Joe Winkler

NEWS: The Orthodox Union, after a year of discussions with various stakeholders and in the face of some opposition, has established parameters for a three-year period during which the umbrella body for American Orthodox congregations will work to bring its member synagogues who employ female clergy into compliance with OU standards, which stipulate that a woman cannot serve as a rabbi.

According to a new statement issued by the OU last week, women can (and already do) work in OU member synagogues in other roles, including as high-level Torah teachers, scholars, yoatzot, social workers and pastoral counselors; those roles have been expressly delineated in previous OU statements. —JNS EDITOR’S NOTE: To provide our community with an opportunity to dispationately consider the OU’s entire position, with all relevant nuances, The Jewish Star is presenting below (as we did last year with the OU’s initial report) the complete unedited OU statement on the leadership role of women in our Orthodox shuls.

OU is allowing Maharat Ruth Friedman (left, at her Yeshivat Maharat graduation in 2013) and three other Orthodox women clergy to remain in their positions without their shuls facing a penalty, at least at this time.

Panel. However, certain of their activities do not; and the concept of female rabbinic clergy itself falls outside the parameters of the Responses of the Rabbinic Panel.

We recognize, however, that each of the four shuls has had female clergy in their employ for a considerable period of time — and certainly well before the issuance of the Rabbinic Responses and the OU Statement. Moreover, we are taught that communal unity and darchei shalom are significant core Jewish values that must be weighed, advanced and nurtured; in this regard, we were guided by the views expressed by our Rabbinic Panel.

Consequently, after considerable deliberation, during which we heard the strongly held, yet competing, views of numerous members of our community, both rabbinic and lay, and after full consultation with our Rabbinic Panel — we will not take action with respect to these congregations based on their existing arrangements in the employment of female clergy. This determination is not — and should not be viewed — as an endorsement of such arrangements. To the contrary, we will continue to urge these synagogues to modify their practices out of respect for the guidelines we have adopted. Our dialogue with these congregations will continue, and we will share with them the alternative approaches we have identified (and will, in the future, continue to identify) to maximize the participation of women within the ranks of synagogue professionals in a manner consistent with the Responses of our Rabbinic Panel. It is our fervent hope that such continued dialogue will result in adherence to the Responses of the Rabbinic Panel.

[Footnote: The particular circumstances of each of the shuls employing female clergy are different. At least one shul believes that its female clergy has not been functioning in a Rabbinic capacity, and we are in productive and ongoing dialogue with the shul with a view toward reaching an understanding in this regard that meets the requirements of the Responses of the Rabbinic Panel. Yet another shul has indicated its desire to engage in a similar dialogue. These discussions, undertaken in manifest good faith, highlight the need for the measured approach we have outlined.]

Under any circumstances, it is our intent, after a three-year period (i.e., in the first quarter of 2021), to evaluate the results of these discussions, and to issue a further determination at that time.

We note the following additional determinations: First, on a going-forward basis, applications for OU membership will not be considered absent the synagogue’s clear commitment to adhere to OU standards, as determined by the OU’s Synagogue Standards Commission and approved by the Board of Directors.

Second, except as noted above, as a condition of continued membership, all current OU synagogue members will be expected to adhere to OU standards, as determined and administered by the OU’s Synagogue Standards Commission on behalf of the Board of Directors, in accordance with the provisions of the OU Constitution. It is important to stress that OU leadership, and the OU’s Synagogue Standards Commission, stand ready to consult with any OU member shul, or prospective member, that seeks guidance regarding the application of OU Standards (including the Rabbinic Panel Responses) to any proposed course of action.

Third, we want to stress that the OU does not seek — nor does it have the authority — to impose its standards on any individual congregation. Every congregation, acting through its rabbinic and lay leadership, must determine for itself the guidelines, including the halachic guidelines, under which it chooses to function.

At the same time, as a lay-based membership organization, the Orthodox Union must identify the halachic and other standards it applies to define its membership eligibility.

Fourth, there may be shuls — now, or in the future — who determine that the membership guidelines established (or that may be established) by the Orthodox Union do not match their particular halachic or hashkafic determinations, and therefore determine that membership in the OU does not align with their circumstances and hence opt to resign their membership.

Surely, that is their choice. For our part, and consistent with our mission to offer our resources to as broad a spectrum of Klal Yisroel as we can, OU membership is not and will not be the sole criterion for eligibility to participate in various OU programs and services.

In sum, we are deeply and unequivocally committed to our halachic standards and the halachic process, as interpreted by Gedolei Yisroel over the millennia, and in our sacred Mesorah. We recognize that others may hold differing halachic and hashkafic viewpoints. We urge, however, that regardless of the intensity of the disagreement, at all times we must be respectful and consistent with the twin imperatives of achdus and darchei shalom that animate our religious values.

At the same time, we urge all to appreciate that achdus and darchei shalom are reciprocal obligations. Just as the OU is cognizant of the need to consider communal unity in its decisions, those who seek to depart from well established and consistently maintained communal norms should similarly embrace such considerations.

American Orthodox Jewry is a small community, and its unity is its strength. Community institutions can choose to test that unity, or we can all recognize that darchei shalom requires a deep commitment by us all, in both thought and deed.

Allen Fagin, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.

OU

III.

Finally, and of particular importance: we intend to continue a process of dialogue and exploration to identify and evaluate approaches to maximize the participation of women within the ranks of synagogue professionals in a manner consistent with the Responses of our Rabbinic Panel, and communal needs and sensitivities.

Those Responses identified broad and significant areas of halachically acceptable involvement by women in synagogue life and leadership — including as teachers of Torah and as pastoral counsellors. It is our determined intent to help delineate clear pathways for women’s involvement in these, and other, critical areas, for those synagogues and communities that determine that such pathways are appropriate for them.

We recognize that there are significant variances in the needs and approaches of the broad range of communities encompassed by the Orthodox Union. In that context, we will continue, and expand our consultation with communities, synagogues and their rabbinic and lay leadership. It is our hope that this consultative process will include, among other topics: i. The needs of Orthodox women generally within our communities and synagogues; ii. The unique needs of particular segments of Orthodox women, including young women returning from seminary; singles; widows, divorcees and others; iii. Ways and means to encourage women to assume greater lay and professional roles within communal and synagogal life; iv. Ways to support the sincere quest of many women for growth in limmud Torah or in communal participation, including opportunities for female Torah scholars to share their Torah knowledge more broadly; v. Developing appropriate titles for women of significant accomplishment, holding professional positions within the synagogue, educational and communal structure, thereby acknowledging their achievement and status. Consideration of the related issues of tenure, compensation (including pay equity) and benefits accorded such roles. vi. Fostering spiritual engagement of women in synagogue services; vii. Considering how the physical structure of shuls can be enhanced to foster greater engagement by women (e.g., mechitza; making the ezrat nashim more hospitable for weekday and Shabbat services, etc.).

We intend to report to the community on an ongoing basis regarding our efforts in each of these critical areas. It is our prayer to Hashem that these undertakings will lead to the spiritual and religious growth of each woman and man in our community, and for shalom and achdus among us all.

THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778

Full text of new OU statement on halachically valid roles for women in synagogue leadership

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Public Notices 999

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LEGAL NOTICE PUBLIC NOTICE OF NASSAU COUNTY TREASURER’S SALE OF TAX LIENS ON REAL ESTATE Notice is hereby given that commencing on February 20th, 2018, will sell at public on-line auction the tax liens on certain real estate, unless the owner, mortgagee, occupant of or any other party in interest in such real estate shall have paid to the County Treasurer

by February 15th, 2018 the total amount of such unpaid taxes or assessments with the interest, penalties and other expenses and charges against the property.

Such tax liens will be sold at the lowest rate of interest, not exceeding 10 percent per six-month period, for which any person or persons shall offer to take the total amount of such unpaid taxes as defined in Section 5-37.0 of the Nassau County Administrative Code.

Effective with the February 2017 lien sale Ordinance No. 175-2015 requires a $125.00 per day registration fee for each person who intends to bid at the tax lien sale.

Ordinance No. 175-2015 also requires that upon the issuance of the Lien Certificate there is due from the lien buyer a Tax Certificate Issue Fee of $20.00 per lien purchased.

Pursuant to the provisions of the Nassau County Administrative Code at the discretion of the Nassau County Treasurer the auction will be conducted online. Further information concerning the procedures for the auction is available at the website of the Nassau County Treasurer at: https://www.nassaucountyn y.gov/526/County-Treasurer Should the Treasurer determine that an in-person auction shall be held, same will commence on the 20th day of February 2018 at the Office of The County Treasurer 1 West Street, Mineola or at some other location to be determined by the Treasurer.

A list of all real estate in Nassau County on which tax liens are to be sold is available at the website of the Nassau County Treasurer at: http://www.nassaucountyny .gov/DocumentCenter/View/ 17674 A list of local properties upon which tax liens are to be sold will be advertised in this publication on or before February 15,2018.

Nassau County does not discriminate on the basis of disability in admission to or access to, or treatment or employment in, its services, programs, or activities.

Upon request, accommodations such as those required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will be provided to enable individuals with disabilities to participate in all services, programs, activities and public hearings and events conducted by the Treasurer’s Office. Upon request, information can be made available in Braille, large print, audio-tape or other alternative formats.

For additional information, please call (516) 571-2090 ext. 1-3715.

Dated: January 23, 2018 THE NASSAU COUNTY TREASURER Mineola, NewYork _____________________ TERMS OF SALE Such tax liens shall be sold subject to any and all superior tax liens of sovereignties and other municipalities and to all claims of record which the County may have thereon and subject to the provisions of the Federal and State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Acts.

However, such tax liens shall have priority over the County’s Differential Interest Lien, representing the excess, if any, of the interest and penalty borne at the maximum rate over the interest and penalty borne at the rate at which the lien is purchased.

The Purchaser acknowledges that the tax lien(s) sold pursuant to these Terms of Sale may be subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/or may become subject to such proceedings which may be commenced during the period in which a tax lien is held by a successful bidder or the assignee of same, which may modify a Purchaser’s rights with respect to the lien(s) and the property securing same.

Such bankruptcy proceedings shall not affect the validity of the tax lien.

In addition to being subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/or the Federal and State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Acts, said purchaser’s right of foreclosure may be affected by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act(FIRREA),12

U.S.C. ss 1811 et.seq., with regard to real property under Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation(FDIC) receivership.

The County Treasurer reserves the right, without further notice and at any time, to withdraw from sale any of the parcels of land or premises herein listed. The Nassau County Treasurer reserves the right to intervene in any bankruptcy case/litigation where the property affected by the tax liens sold by the Treasurer is part of the bankruptcy estate. However, it is the sole responsibility of all tax lien purchasers to protect their legal interests in any bankruptcy case affecting their purchased tax lien, including but not limited to the filing of a proof of claim on their behalf, covering their investment in said tax lien. The Nassau County Treasurer and Nassau County and its agencies, assumes no responsibility for any legal representation of any tax lien purchaser in any legal proceeding including but not limited to a bankruptcy case where the purchased tax lien is at risk.

The rate of interest and penalty at which any person purchases the tax lien shall be established by his bid.

Each purchaser, immediately after the sale thereof, shall pay to the County Treasurer ten per cent of the amount for which the tax liens have been sold and the remaining ninety per cent within thirty days after such sale. If the purchaser at the tax sale shall fail to pay the remaining ninety per cent within ten days after he has been notified by the County Treasurer that the certificates of sale are ready for delivery, then all amounts deposited with the County Treasurer including but not limited to the ten per cent theretofore paid by him shall, without further notice or demand, be irrevocably forfeited by the purchaser and shall be retained by the County Treasurer as liquidated damages and the agreement to purchase shall be of no further effect. Time is of the essence in this sale. This sale is held pursuant to the Nassau County Administrative Code and interested parties are referred to such Code for additional information as to

terms of the sale, rights of purchasers, maximum rates of interest and other legal incidents of the sale.

Furthermore, as to the bidding, 1. The bidder(s) agree that they will not work with any other bidder(s) to increase, maintain or stabilize interest rates or collaborate with any other bidder(s) to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the random number generator in the event of a tie bid(s) on a tax certificate. Bidder(s) further agree not to employ any bidding strategy designed to create an unfair competitive advantage in the tiebreaking process in the upcoming tax sale nor work with any other bidder(s) to engage in any bidding strategy that will result in a rotational award of tax certificates.

2. The tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) bid, will be arrived at independently and without direct or indirect consultation, communication or agreement with any other bidder and that the tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) to be bid, have not been disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder, and will not be disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder prior to the close of bidding. No attempt has been made or will be made to, directly or indirectly, induce any other bidder to refrain from bidding on any tax certificate, to submit complementary bids, or to submit bids at specific interest rates.

3. The bids to be placed by the Bidder will be made in good faith and not pursuant to any direct or indirect, agreement or discussion with, or inducement from, any other bidder to submit a complementary or other noncompetitive bid.

4. If it is determined that the bidder(s) have violated any of these bid requirements then their bid shall be voided and if they were the successful bidder the lien and any deposits made in connection with said bid shall be forfeited.

Dated: January 23, 2018 THE NASSAU COUNTY TREASURER Mineola, New York 91250

Place a notice by phone at 516-569-4000 x232 or email: legalnotices@liherald.com

Shoah thoughts…

Continued from page 1 and her mother, Ella Weiss, who died in 2011.

Together, the two survived six concentration camps, including Auschwitz, forced labor and death marches.

The Super Bowl’s connection to the Holocaust has its roots in the personal history of the owner and president of the Minnesota Vikings, Mark Wilf. The son of two Shoah survivors from Poland, Wilf co-chairs the Jewish Federations of North America’s National Holocaust Survivors Initiative. The Vikings, Wilf Family Foundations and Delta Airlines supported the Transfer of Memory exhibit at MSP Airport.

Photographer David Sherman, who had pitched the idea of a Holocaust survivor exhibition to the JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas about eight years ago, said his objective in taking the photos was “to create formal portraits of Holocaust survivors to ensure that survivors are remembered in a respectful and beautiful way — by face and by name — with an additional objective of documenting the stories of each of these survivors.”

Laura Zelle, one of the exhibit’s curators, said Sherman grew up hearing stories of survivors, often accompanied by black-and-white photos. He wanted to carry on the tradition of telling these stories but give them more life through color portraits. Lili Chester, a daughter of survivors, wrote the accompanying text for each portrait, which offers a short history in the survivors’ own words. Each survivor was photographed at home, and each was interviewed and videotaped prior to Sherman taking the portrait.

The exhibit in Minneapolis accomplished one of the program’s key goals — bringing the stories of individual survivors to life. Of the 12 people profiled in Terminal 1, more than twothirds attended the opening reception, along with their children and grandchildren.

Zelle said notes left in the exhibit’s comment books have been “overwhelming.” She remembers one in particular that stated, “This is all of our history.”

Pro-Israel...

Continued from page 18 theory was that a Jewish presence in those areas is inconsistent with U.S. policy. The IRS drew up lists of such organizations based on information from anti-Israel websites such as Electronic Intifada and MondoWeiss.

While no formal policy was released barring U.S. tax-exempt entities from supporting Jewish activity over the Green Line, Obama IRS officials tried three times between 2009 and 2012 to create such a policy, and IRS employees made sure the effort wasn’t documented. One official emailed her supervisor saying that she would answer his questions about IRS policy relating to Israeli settlements only orally. “Not doing email on this,” she explained.

Even if the IRS could legitimately institute such a policy, it would not have applied to Z Street. Their mission is to educate Americans

Holocaust...

Continued from page 18 winter journey of thousands of miles.” You might well think that the subject here is the deportation of the Jews, but in fact, it is the eminent historian Norman Davies’ description of the 1940 deportations of thousands of Poles by the Soviet NKVD to gulags in Siberia. So, as we see plainly here, the historical record rarely gives comfort to our preconceived notions and prejudices.

If the Polish government’s goal was simply to encourage greater awareness and education about Polish suffering under the Nazis, that would be a laudable goal. But by tying that aspect

Eva Gross, 90, (right) and her mother, Ella Weiss, who died in 2011. Together, the two survived six concentration camps, including Auschwitz, forced labor and death marches.

David Sherman/Transfer of Memory

Transfer of Memory is unusual in its reach.

While a number of the survivors profiled for the exhibit have also been interviewed by the Shoah Foundation, this exhibit is small, portable and easily understood by middle and high school students, she said. The emphasis, said Zelle, “is a message of hope.”

As JCRC’s description states, “the color images depict the survivors as living full and fulfilled lives—full of life and vitality—not defined by victimhood.”

After the exhibit leaves MSP Airport, the next showing will be through March 11 at the Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis. A complete schedule of upcoming exhibits is available at transferofmemory.org.

More than 20 of 52 Minnesotans profiled are now deceased, according to Transfer of Memory.

about Israel and thus have never spent a penny outside the U.S. The most important part of the court’s ruling was that even the IRS has to obey the First Amendment to the Constitution. The judge wrote “that it is wrong to apply the United States tax laws, including any and all tax rules, regulations, policies, procedures, and standards of review, to any tax-exempt applicant or entity based solely on any lawful positions it espouses on any issues or its associations or perceived associations with a particular political movement, position, or viewpoint.”

Lori Lowenthal Marcus has shown herself to be a tireless advocate, not just for Israel but more broadly for the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. As someone who has known her for years, long before Z Street, I am proud of the work that Lori and her husband have put into this effort to set the IRS straight, to protect the rights of pro-Israel organizations and all 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt applicants with a viewpoint. of Nazi rule so explicitly to the mass enslavement and extermination of the Jews, and by willfully misrepresenting documented evidence of Polish anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazis as a slander upon the Polish nation as a whole, they are engineering their own deserved failure, to the detriment of Poland’s people.

For instead of enlightening the world about how the Soviets and the Nazis collaborated to crush the Polish national movement – and why that matters especially today — Poland’s leaders are disgracing themselves by uncomplicatedly claiming three million Holocaust victims murdered because they were Jews for the general record of Polish wartime suffering.

You’d have thought that the Soviet Union was the last country they would want to emulate.

Jerusalem fix...

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lem’s water utility, extended their services in the Shuafat refugee camp and improved the service to its residents,” reports Shragai.

Israeli security services have also recently changed their mode of operations in these areas. But in Shragai’s view, these changes “are just a drop in the bucket, after the neglect of nearly 50 years. There is no way to overcome the enormous gap, other than by establishing separate municipal authorities. The neighborhoods beyond the fence have become a demographic time bomb and a bubble of distress, crime and terror. In the wave of terror of recent years, the involvement of residents of these neighborhoods is several times higher than their percentage of the population. What the municipality of Jerusalem hasn’t done for the past 50 years, they are unable to do today.”

Opposition to Shragai’s proposal comes from the political right, including influential Jerusalem residents such as Arieh King and David Be’eri, who fear the political implications of the plan.

Shragai and Elkin respond that sitting on one’s hands at a time when all the warning signs are flashing will endanger the capital’s Jewish character. They argue that the proposal is in no way a division of Jerusalem or a surrender of any Israeli sovereignty, but rather, a change in municipal status that will ultimately give Israel even more control than it has today.

“My main concern is demography,” says Elkin. “Establishing a separate municipality is the guarantee that will preserve the Jewish majority and the unity of Jerusalem. If we fail to adopt the program, even more dangerous approaches—like those of Ehud Barak, Haim Ramon and Bill Clinton—may be adopted. Those are dangerous plans.”

Ariel Kahana is the diplomatic correspondent for Makor Rishon, where this article was originally published.

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THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2018 • 24 Shevat 5778

Continued from page 11 neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Prices for apartments in these neighborhoods, as well as other Palestinian cities, are generally much higher,” writes Shragai.

According to Shragai, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the residents of the encircled neighborhoods are not from Jerusalem, but from Judea and Samaria. With the lack of any governance, there is nothing to prevent their migration to Jerusalem, and there is nobody to prevent their inclusion in the Israeli population registry.

“There is a merger taking place between the populations,” Shragai writes. “They marry each other, and the children of the marriages, according to Israeli law, are legal residents of Jerusalem.

On the other side of the enormous growth in the Arab population, the Jewish population continues to shrink. The high birth rate amongst the Arabs, in conjunction with net emigration of Jews from Jerusalem—more than 400,000 Jews have left Jerusalem in the last three decades—has slowly eroded the Jewish majority, which today stands at a mere 59 percent.”

“We are rapidly approaching the danger line of a 50-percent-Arab population in Jerusalem,” warns Shragai.

Public criticism of the neglect of the encircled neighborhoods has recently pushed the municipality to take several steps to remind the residents that they are part of the city. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat is opposed to all plans that attempt to disown the neighborhoods, and it appears that his fear of their progress led to improved garbage removal and establishing police stations that are intended to provide solutions to standard citizen complaints.

“The budgets of both the city and the government were expanded. … Hagihon, Jerusa-

21

CAlendar of Events

Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline noon Friday • Compiled by Zachary Schechter

Sunday February 11

Erev Shabbos Kollel: [Weekly] Eruv Shabbos Kollel starting with 6 am Chassidus shiur with Rav Moshe Weinberger and concluding with 9 am Chevrusah Learning session with Rabbi Yoni Levin. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Timely Torah: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Ya’akov Trump, assistant rabbi of the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst, for a shiur on relevant Halachic and philosophical topics related to Parsha Moadim and contemporary issues. Coffee and pastries.

8 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

Learning Program: [Weekly] At Aish Kodesh led by Rav Moshe Weinberger following 8:15 Shacharis including 9 am breakfast and shiurim on subjects such as halacha, gemara and divrei chizuk. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Gemara Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Moshe Sokoloff at the YI of Woodmere for a gemara shiu.r 9:15 am. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

516-295-0950.

Torah 4 Teens: [Weekly] Yeshiva program for high-school age boys & young adults with Rabbi Matis Friedman. 9:15 am-12:30 pm. 410 Hungry Harbor Rd, Valley Stream. Torah4teens5T@ gmail.com.

Pottery Event: CHAZAQ of West Hempstead is sponsoring a pottery event for women of all ages at Fun Time Pottery in Franklin Square. $36 in advance, $40 at the door. 10 am. 700 Franklin Ave, Franklin Square. 718-285-9132.

Purim Carnival: KolSave Market is holding a Purim Carnival with live music, pony rides, clowns and more. 1-4 pm. 11 Lawrence Ln, Lawrence. 516-371-6200.

Saturday February 10

Monday February 12

Women’s Shiur: [Weekly] Dr. Anette Labovitz’s women shiur will continue at Aish Kodesh.

10 am. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Breakfast Connect: [Weekly] Breakfast Connect is a business and networking group that meets for breakfast at Riesterer’s Bakery and to discuss business and networking opportunities.

7:30-8:30 am. 282 Hempstead Ave, West Hempstead. 516-662-7712.

Women’s Shiur: [Weekly] Rebbetzin Weinberger of Aish Kodesh will give a shiur on the “Midah of Seder in our Avodas Hashem.” 11 am.

894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Jewish History: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Evan Hoffman at the YI of Woodmere for a talk on Jewish History. 8:15 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

Halacha Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Moshe Sokoloff at the YI of Woodmere for a halacha shiur. 8:40 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

516-295-0950.

Gemara Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt at the YI of Woodmere for a gemara shiu.

9:15 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516295-0950.

Wednesday February 14

Timely Tanach: [Weekly] Rabbi Ya’akov Trump of the YI of Lawrence Cedarhurst for a shiur on Sefer Shoftim. 8 pm. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

Chumash and Halacha Shiur: [Weekly] Shiur with Rabbi Yosef Richtman at Aish Kodesh.

8 pm. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

PURIM CARDS!

Achiezer Tribute of Decade: It’s Achiezer’s turn to say “thanks” at tonight’s major fund-raising gala at The Sands Atlantic Beach. 516-7914444 x113. See ad on page 7.

February 17, 18, 24

Harmony XII: Kol Rayus presents a song and dance extravaganza for women and girls featuring the N’Shei Zimriah Chorale Dance Troupe and benefiting TOVA. Tickets starting at $25.

Motzei Shabbos start time: 8 pm. Sunday night start time: 7 pm. 2 Reilly Rd, Cedarhurst. 888718-4253.

Tuesday February 20

TAG Annual Dinner: The Torah Academy for Girls is having its 55th annual dinner. 6:30 pm.

1395 Beech St. 718-471-8444.

Sunday February 25

Bnos Beis Yaakov Dinner: Bnos Bais Yaakov is having its 24th annual dinner. 1395 Beech St. 718-337-6000.

Wednesday February 28 Purim At the Stadium: Chabad of MerrickBellmore-Wantagh is holding a special Purim “At the Stadium” celebration at the Clubhouse at the Merrick Park Golf Course with Megillah reading, carnival games and a concession stand dinner — a full-court press for the holiday. $12/child, $18/adult. 5 pm. 2550 Clubhouse Rd, Merrick. 516-833-3057.

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Teach our childre n well 5 Towns conferenc e told: Deliver Tora with joy to h

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note remarks that opened the fourth While Torah is nual an- passed down way for the mesorahforever true, the ideal tive Five Towns Community Collaboraaccording Conference on to be conveyed the time, emphasizing to the middah of children — and Sunday.

“What is the Torah how an everlastingto our that the primary of Torah and the kids need now?” ingredent needed in Yiddishkeit is embeddedlove he asked. “What today’s chinuch simcha. their beings — worked in 1972 is in necessarily changes won’t work today.”

Twenty-six speakers, “You’re still talking over time.

Rabbi Weinberger, about what rebbetzins, educators, including rabbis, for you in 1972 and insisting thatworked d’asrah of Congregationfounding morah ers and community leadwhat should work lecturers that’s Woodmere Aish Kodesh in and mashpia at sue that challengeeach addressed a key isMoshe Weinberger, for your kid,” Rabbi the YU, reminded families and parents Shila”a, said in key- that Torah and educators in attendance frum communities. The event, schools in will not be received the Young Israel hosted at of Woodmere, if it’s not was orgaSee 5 Towns Rabbi Moshe hosts on page Weinberger, of 15 Kodesh in Woodmere, Congregation Aish delivered keynote

STAR speech.

while supporting this vital program educating children in our local yeshivas in the Five Towns, Far Rockaway, West Hempstead and Greater Nassau County

Presenting their topics, from left: Baruch Fogel of Rabbi Touro College, “Motivating our children to motivate themselves”; Reb-

The JEWISH

Presenters at Sunday’s conference, from left: Elisheva director of religious Kaminetsky, SKA kodesh, “Empoweringguidance, limudei choices”; Rabbi

TheJewishS

pages 28–29

• Vol 16, No 34

betzin Shani Taragin, 7:53 • Torah columns Tanach coordinator and mashgicha 6:46 pm, Havdalah nika, and Morah”; ruchanit at Midreshet Towns candles Rabbi • Five rah V’avodah, Ephraim 5777 Congregation Polakoff, don’t”; “Miriam: Meyaledet, To• 24 Elul Bais 15, 2017 Rabbi Jesse Horn Tefilah, “Teens Meiech • Sept. technology: What and kotel, of Yeshivat HaNitzavim-Vayeil you know and ognize your bashert”; what you and “Helping children balance ideology Rabbi Kenneth pleasure”; Esther of Congregation Hain Wein, “How to Beth Shalom, rec- A-OK to “When it’s say yes.”

dmere as There’s joy in Woo celebrates new home

Reuven Taragin, Yeshivat Hakotel founder and director of Eytan Community Education Feiner of The Conferences, White Shul, “When Yitzchak met “Torah tips on Rivkah: Torah’s Star tion and maintain to build Jewish first menThe how a strong By marriage”; of martial the Hebrew joined love”; Michal Towns “Ahavas in Horowitz, The FiveRabbi Sunday Yisrael: In theory or Long Beach on at its in pracnew Academy of

Super Spec ialS chanukat habayit Avenue in celebrating a on Church elementary school Woodmere. beginnings that the humble

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a small “From years ago in This had over 50 page 8 HALBweek on pageson8-9 See HALB celebration

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of YI LawrenceYaakov Trump director From left: Rabbi Shenker, executive Cedarhurst; MarvinWeitz; Dr. Herbert Pasternak; of YILC; Dr. Mott Lance Hirt; and Rabbi Aaron / Theresa Press HALB Board Chair The Jewish Star Fleksher of HALB.

t’ is YU prez: ‘Torat eme

value school’s top core The JEWISH STAR

516-295-3666 540-A Willow Avenue sheldon@cahal.org Cedarhurst NY 11516

investiture follows formal the Emet first is “Torat ‘InvestFest’ fair shiva University,”Truth.” in

BALFOUR

Cedarhurst remembers

Star the loss,

By The Jewish to remember Cedarhurst pausedmiracles of 9/11, at the the n on Sunday. the heroism, and commemoratio village’s annual Rabbi Shay Schachter of WoodIn his invocation, of the Young Israel the Master and (top right photo) pray that G-d, all the strength mere said, “we world, grant us Creator of the to stand firm together against of and the fortitude of extremism, of bigotry, all forms of terror, and of all evil that can be hatred, of racism, forms in our world.” who found in different obligation to thosenever solemn a have “We 11th to injured on Sept. died or were said Mayor Benjamin but we also forget what happened,” “We saw evil, Weinstock (bottom).

America.” of best survivor saw the (middle), a 9/11 78,” reAri Schonburn Fate of “Miracle and waitand author of that day. He was called his experiences on the 78th floor when elevators ing to change hit.

Chief the first plane hurst Fire Department Lawrence-Cedar the playing of saluting during victims.

David Campell, 9/11 names of local Taps, read the

TheJewishStar.com

ceremony, YU’s new president, after the investiture for a selfie. sterdam Avenue who happily posed sought-after celebrity

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Arthur James Balfour

t was a minor news story when it broke in the summer of 2016. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced he was suing Great Britain over the Balfour Declaration, issued on Nov. 2, 1917. But as we observe the centennial of the document this week, it’s important to understand that although his lawsuit was a stunt, Abbas was serious. More than that, the symbolism of his See Tobin on page 22

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or the Palestinians, the year zero is not 1948, when the state of Israel came into being, but 1917, when Great Britain issued, on Nov. 2, the Balfour Declaration—expressing support for the establishment of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine.

So central is the Balfour Declaration to Palestinian political identity that the “Zionist invasion” is officially deemed to have begun in 1917—not in 1882, when the first trickle of Jewish pioneers from Russia began arriving, nor in 1897, when the Zionist movement held its first congress in Basel, nor in the late 1920s, when thousands of German Jews fleeing the rise of Nazism chose to go to Palestine.

The year 1917 is the critical date because that is when, as an anti-Zionist might say, the Zionist hand slipped effortlessly into the British imperial glove. It is a neat, simple historical proposition upon which the entire Palestinian version of events rests: an empire came to our land and gave it to foreigners, we were dispossessed, and for five generations now, we have continued to resist. Moreover, it is given official sanction in the Palestine National Covenant of 1968, in which article 6 defines Jews who “were living permanently in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion” as “Palestinians”—an invasion that is dated as 1917 in the covenants’ notes.

As the Balfour Declaration’s centenary approached, this theme is much in evidence.

There is now a dedicated Balfour Apology See Cohen on page 22

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to an — we believe investiture speech Delivering his Wilf Campus in at YU’sThe Newspaper of our Orthodox communities Berman, with many assembly of 2,000 ty, Rabbi Dr. Ari values that personify YeWashington Heights, in by livestream, that of the “five more listening spoke of the Rabbi Berman the five central “Five Torot, or institution.” teachings, of our believe in Tor“We do not just Chayyim — Torat at Emet but also and values must that our truths he said. live in the world,” teachings, YU’s other central Adam,” “Torat he said, are “Torat Tziyyon, the Chesed,” and “Torat Torah of Redemption.” formal cereFollowing the community parmonies, the YU street fair at an “InvestFest” Am- tied street fair on Amsterdam Avenue.

11 was a along at the “InvestFest” See YU on page Star

Jewish of Yeshiva UniversiVayera • Friday, November 3, 2017 • 14 Cheshvan 5778 • Luach page By The president 21 • The fifth Torah columns pages 20–21 VolSunday 16, No 41 said •on

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Corbyn boycotts B’four event

Britain Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn— who in 2009 called Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends” — said he would not attend a dinner commemorating the centennial of the Balfour Declaration. Prime Minister Theresa May she would attend “with pride” and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would be her guest.

“We are proud of the role we played in the creation of the State of Israel and we will certainly mark the centenary with pride,” May said. “I am also pleased that good trade relations and other relations that we have with Israel we are building on and enhancing.”

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IsraAID brings relief to U.S. disasters

By Ron Kampeas, JTA Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and WASHINGTON — For 17 years, the then the wildfires in northern California.

Israeli NGO IsraAID has been performPolizer recalls that he was wrapping ing search and rescue, purifying water, up a visit to IsraAID’s new American providing emergency medical assistance headquarters in Palo Alto on Oct. 8 and and walking victims of trauma back to was on his way to a flight to Mexico to psychological health in dozens of disas- oversee operations after a devastating ter-hit countries.

No 25 earthquake there when he got word of • Vol 16, But no season has been busier than the wildfires. “I literally had Luach page 19 9:15 • to do a Uthis past summer and fall, its co-CEO Yo- turn,” he said Havdalah this week in an interview 8:07 pm, tam Polizer said in an interview — and ting Candleligh at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Polizer spoke with the exhilaration of an executive whose team has come through a daunting challenge. “We’re the people who stay past the ‘aid festival’,” he said, grinning, describing the See IsraAID on page 5

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5777 • Five Tamuz, “The last few months have been un2017 • 20 believable,” he said, listing a succession • July 14, Parsha Pinchas of disasters that occupied local staff and Niveen Rizkalla working with IsraAID in Santa Rosa, Calif., in volunteers since August: Hurricane Harthe wake of deadly wildfires there. vey in Texas, Hurricane Irma in Florida,

Join 201 olim SEE PAGE 27

Leah in sec-t. (with mom of Woodmere for Girls in Cedarhurson Feinberg photos School said. More ar-old Elishevah at the Shulamith now there,” she The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob trip” and a student out. Thirteen-ye came from year-long had been home. magic “on a 30 as olim, to come ond photo) love for Eretz Yisroel Nefesh B’Nefesh’s left Israel of my land. Jonawho flew promised Her parents her family’s journey fulfill “Part was she said.

Long Islanders aliyah to the for a enough to flight page 16. through Al’s charter the smiling in” and making he’s waited long will follow,” to do this it’s time, NBN’s El to Israel the first some of “all said she’s wanted family, friends, “Hopefully, everyone t of boarding boarding the move Here are on July 3, going Hills (left) and was land, said excitemen olim, for others Shpage 16 through on July 1 carpet ride of Kew Gardens While the olim on emerged the promised of the and her school, from teaching See. 201 carpet to Her love of Israel for many than Yehoshua holy land, — he retired palpable time. visits to the the dream

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• May 26,

2017 • 1

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pm, Havdalah

8:58 • Luach

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• Vol 16,

No 20

√ Web and Social Media

ab ups $10M ER reh role 5T St. John’s

√ HS and College Interns

wedding TheJew on the 70th Bonnie ishStar.c EpisStar reported survivors 93rd om ty News s and St. John’s The Jewish and Shoah The Newspape , the Far residents years ago Herald Communi Last March, Woodmere of Jack Rybsztajn’ Bessen, closed five Rockaway Peninsula y of r of our Orthodox in patients Hospital the

By Jeffrey communit On the occasion anniversar hospital on percent jump Rybsztajn. his story continues. ies When Peninsula and Jack to get became the experienced a 35 million on July 12, center was desperatelocated. copal Hospital a $10.15 birthday medical Weintrob obtaining to help complete Jack Rybsztajnrelatives were which Rockaway y services.

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Mr. Jacobs, JN who Yechiel Rybsztajn containson of s, a package plus named RYBSZTA he is the afterward Brussels, man, saying nephew. Not long was received in Mr. Jacobs’ and a pair of tefillinto the United States. Rybsztajn ing a tallis g his travel for five years,” which in Belgium were so nice, papers authorizin Brussels “we stayed Poland. So However, gentile people of went through in Shaydels, the “The what we recalled.

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Editorial • Marketing • Web • Graphics

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son, great-grand holds his he holds his grandson, Jack Rybsztajn in inset below, father.

Years earlier, is Isaac’s Marc, who

Video art

is projected

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walls of Jerusalem

’s Old City

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A Night of 100 Kosher Wines: YI of Long Beach and Lido Beach Synagogue join together to present are night of 100 kosher wines and 36

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Friday February 9

Seeing Things Clearly: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Shalom Yona Weis at Aish Kodesh for a shiur for women and high school girls titled “Seeing Things Clearly- Learning to View Our World and Our Lives Through Positive Lenses. 8:45 pm. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

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Fire Safety: The HAFTR PTA and Board of Education and the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department present a special community-wide fire safety event. $18 per family suggested donation.

8:30 pm. 44 Frost Ln, Lawrence.

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