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Parsha Ki Tisa • March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 • 5 Towns Candlelighting 6:46 pm, Havdalah 7:47 • Luach page 21 • Vol 16, No 11

Read, listen, party

Jews throughout the world united last motzei Shabbos and on Sunday to celebrate Purim with countless readings of Megillat Esther, costume parties, feasts, the sending of shaloch manos, and the joyous giving of tzedakah. Rabbi Aaron Raskin of Congregation B’nai Avraham of Brooklyn Heights chants the megilla as congregant Eric Roth and his daughters Leah and Rebecca follow. Karen and baby Itai Sutain (center) joined festivities in the Temple Israel Ballroom Long Beach. More Purim photos inside.

The Jewish Star photos by Ed Weintrob and David Jeffrey

Trump sends Greenblatt to restart peace process looks forward to working with the new U.S. administration and that he believes achieving peace between the Jewish state and its regional neighbors, including the Palestinians, is possible “under President Trump’s leadership.” Greenblatt reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to safeguarding the Jewish state’s security and to achieving lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israel “through direct negotiations.”

Greenblatt and Netanyahu discussed Israeli settlement construction and how to approach that issue from a vantage point that is “consistent” with the goal of advancing security and peace.

In early February, responding to Israel’s announcements of intentions to build nearly 6,000 new settlement units, the White House had said, “While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”

Moreover, Greenblatt underscored “how important enabling the growth of the Palestinian economy and improving the quality of life for Palestinians are to President Trump.” Netanyahu assured Greenblatt of his commitment to increasing Palestinian prosperity “as a means of bolstering the prospects for peace,” the Israeli leader’s office stated.

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Following his meeting with Netanyahu, Greenblatt was scheduled to meet Tuesday with PA leader Abbas in Ramallah. According to Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, the meeting between Greenblatt and Abbas would primarily focus on the Palestinian leader’s upcoming trip to Washington.

Greenblatt, an Orthodox Jew from Tea-neck, worked as a real estate lawyer with Trump over two decades and advised Trump on Israel during the election campaign.

Lending insight into his approach toward negotiations, Greenblatt had said in a June 2016 interview that “you need to listen to the other side, you have to try to piece together everything to try to ad-dress Jason Greenblatt meets Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during a visit to Jeas many issues as you rusalem on Monday.

Israeli GPO can, with both sides satisfied that a fair and appropriate deal has been struck. Not everyone is happy all the time.”

“I am not diminishing the concept of a peace deal or a U.S.Israel relationship; they are complicated and there are lots of layers,” he said, “but people like Donald [Trump], who are skilled negotiators, and people on his team who have worked on transactions large and small over the course of their careers, are well-suited to these things.”

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By Adam Abrams, JNS.org Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met with President Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, for more than five hours in Jerusalem Monday night amid the Trump administration’s efforts to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which have been frozen since 2014.

One of the first signs of the Trump administration’s interest in pursuing a new peace initiative occurred last week, when the president held his first phone conversation with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. During the conversation, Trump invited Abbas to visit the White House and, according to a statement released by the White House, “emphasized his personal belief that peace is possible and that the time has come to make a deal.”

Monday’s meeting between Greenblatt and Netanyahu covered a broad range of issues, from settlement construction to bolstering the Palestinian economy.

According to an official statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu and Greenblatt reiterated their nations’ mutual desire to develop a comprehensive framework for an enduring Israeli-Palestinian peace “that strengthens the security of Israel and enhances stability in the region.”

Netanyahu, the meeting readout said, told Greenblatt that he

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Setbacks for BDS in U.S. and abroad

March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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By Adam Abrams, JNS.org Israel’s Knesset last week passed landmark legislation against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, representing just one of several setbacks this month for BDS around the world.

The bill, which passed its third and final reading with a 46-28 vote, grants the interior minister authority to deny entry visas to nonIsraeli citizens who actively support boycotts of the Jewish state.

Conveying the rationale for the anti-BDS measure, Member of Knesset David Amsalem (Likud), chairman of the Knesset Interior Committee, said that “if someone demeans me, I do not let them into my home.”

Responding to critics of the legislation, Amsalem clarified that the new law is not intended to stifle free speech, but was implemented to combat anti-Semitism and enemies of the Jewish state. These opponents of Israel he said, “are not talking about boycotting only the settlements; they are talking about boycotting the state as a state, without any distinction. We are talking about anti-Semites here.”

One of the bill’s initiators, MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home), expressed similar sentiments, saying, “In recent years, a new anti-Semitic front has been initiated against Israel. Our enemies carry out a campaign to delegitimize and boycott Israel. Banning BDS supporters that come here to harm us from within is the minimum we can do against those Israel-haters.”

Left-wing Knesset members and several American Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Reform and Reconstructionist movements, were highly critical of the new anti-BDS law. MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) said the law “is against freedom of expression” and “is meant to silence people.”

The left-wing J Street lobby claimed the law “damages Israel’s democracy and helps the BDS movement.” The American Jewish Committee, a centrist group, said that it is

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“troubled” by the legislation.

Despite the controversy, Israel’s new antiBDS law represents just one of several recent setbacks for the global BDS movement. Last week, the Republican-led New York State Senate passed its own anti-boycott legislation with an overwhelming 49-11 majority. The bill seeks to withhold state funding from any student group that engages in hate speech and actively calls to boycott Israel or other “allied nations.” The bill will now move to the State Assembly, where it is anticipated to encounter some opposition.

Much like Israel’s anti-BDS bill, the New York measure has come under scrutiny. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the proPalestinian group Palestine Legal asserted that the law unfairly denies public funding to students practicing constitutionally protected political speech. State Senator Todd Kaminsky of Long Beach responded to the bill’s critics by saying, “We don’t have to stand by and give taxpayer money to groups that sell such hate.”

Setbacks for BDS also extended to Europe.

Spain’s ruling Partido Popular party approved new amendments that categorically reject the BDS movement. Partido’s move represents the first initiative explicitly opposed to BDS by a Spanish political party. Angel Mas, the president of Spanish pro-Israel group ACOM, told the Jerusalem Post that “the time has come to end the impunity, force accountability and create real deterrence against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Spain.”

Also last week, Christian Imark—a member of the conservative Swiss People’s Party and deputy leader of the National Council, the lower chamber of Switzerland’s legislature— introduced a groundbreaking anti-BDS bill that passed in a 111-78 vote in his chamber.

The legislation seeks to halt government funding of organizations that support BDS and contribute to the spread of anti-Semitism. The bill must now clear the legislature’s upper chamber, the Council of States, before it can be enacted into law.

PARIS (JTA) — European rabbis have condemned an E.U. court’s ruling allowing firms to prohibit employees’ religious clothes and symbols, saying the ruling amounts to saying that “faith communities are no longer welcome.”

The ruling Tuesday by the European court of justice in Luxembourg also said that customers cannot simply demand that workers remove headscarves if the company has no policy barring religious symbols. “An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination,” the court said in a statement.

The ruling, which came amid a rise in the popularity of anti-Muslim politicians in Europe over the proliferation of jihadist attacks on the continent and ethnic and religious tensions, was on two lawsuits filed by Muslim employees who were sanctioned for wearing religious symbols or prohibited from doing so.

“This decision sends signals to all reli-

gious groups in Europe,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement Tuesday.

“With the rise of racially motivated incidents and today’s decision, Europe is sending a clear message; its faith communities are no longer welcome,” the head of the Orthodox organization said. See Euro garb on page 21

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Bans on religious garb worry Euro rabbis

Surprise! Jews are good at baseball

Cody Decker, a member of Team Israel at the World Baseball Classic, poses with the Israeli team’s mascot—the Chanukah Mensch on a Bench.

Cody Decker via Twitter • Card: Bell Brand via Wikimedia Commons

Court justices and successful entrepreneurs, rabbinical scholars, Olympic athletes—and Sandy Koufax.”

Koufax is widely considered one of the greatest pitchers of all time, Jewish or not. He earned his place in Jewish history, though, thanks to his decision to sit out game one of the 1965 World Series game because it coincided with Yom Kippur. He later won that year’s World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers and was named series MVP. David Trager, a Brooklyn judge who also taught at Tel Aviv University, succinctly explained the meaning of Koufax’s Yom Kippur act. He said, “Our parents’ generation was religious, but they still worked on the Sabbath. … In the workshops and even at respectable companies, if you didn’t work on Yom Kippur you were fired. Koufax didn’t justify his decision with big words about religious faith. He was a completely secu-

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lar man. He simply said, ‘The Dodgers know I don’t work on Yom Kippur.’ He set the precedent that, like any American, Jews can tell their employers that there are days when they don’t work.”

But Koufax wasn’t the first. Thirty years before him, Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg also sat out a crucial game on Yom Kippur, at a time when Michigan faced a wave of anti-Semitism that was fanned by industrialist Henry Ford.

Israel’s sports landscape American Jews are far better at sports than Israeli Jews.

Jewish-American athletes have racked up more than 100 Olympic gold medals—to Israel’s one gold medal. It isn’t about the quality of Jewish life in America. Even the Jews of Hungary won 50 gold medals under terrible anti-Semitism.

Rather, an athlete performs well when the athletes in the surrounding environment are highly skilled. No Chinese child plays soccer as well as Argentine children. Similarly, Israel won’t produce American-caliber baseball stars.

Yet there’s no need to bash the Israeli sports landscape, and no need to slam Israel’s national soccer or basketball teams for not being as prolific as this newly renowned baseball team. The players that comprise the baseball team hail from a baseball superpower, America, even if they represent a different country at the WBC, Israel, that isn’t an athletic superpower of any kind.

The Israeli baseball team’s American players, meanwhile, aren’t likely to become heroes in Israel anytime soon. But due to their achievements on the international stage, the world finally knows that Jews are good at baseball.

This op-ed first appeared in Israel Hayom, whose Englishlanguage content is distributed in the U.S. by JNS.org.

THE JEWISH STAR March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777

By Ronen Dorfan, JNS.org Aly Raisman has been one of America’s biggest Olympic stars in recent years and a huge celebrity in the gymnastics arena. When she’s not on the television program “Dancing with the Stars” or gracing the covers of magazines, she also “represents” Israel, as she proudly announced at the Rio Olympics last year.

Yet unlike the athletes currently comprising Israel’s new national baseball team, Raisman obviously represents the U.S., and it was the American national anthem that sounded when she received her Olympic medals. She simply believes that her Jewish identity is inextricably linked to Israel, making her proud to also represent Israel symbolically.

I was reminded of Raisman last week when Israel’s World Baseball Classic (WBC) team scored an incredible international surprise by defeating host nation South Korea’s squad in the opening game of the WBC. The Israeli team, which is made up of 25 American Jews, also defeated Taiwan and the Netherlands, and advanced to the next round of the tournament.

This achievement has nothing to do with American immigration to Israel—in fact, relatively few American Jews make aliyah. Some of them are not even considered halachically Jewish. But many of them wear Star of David and Chai necklaces, and even tattoo Jewish symbols on their bodies. One of them, despite attending church regularly, feels Jewish because of his grandmother.

Sandy Koufax precedent On a completely different note, why is this team so good?

Aren’t Jews in the Diaspora supposed to be studious scholars who pore over books all day? So first, a clarification: The fact that a team of American Jews has been winning at an international baseball tournament is surprising because the team doesn’t include the most successful Jewish players in Major League Baseball—like Alex Bregman, Ryan Braun and Ian Kinsler. Actually, this Israeli team is just a footnote in the glorious Jewish history of America’s pastime.

At the inaugural Jewish American Heritage Month celebration in May 2010, President Barack Obama remarked, “We’ve got senators and representatives, we’ve got Supreme

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Media confab defends Israel from fake news

By Bradley Martin, JNS.org Christians who promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel were chastised last week at the International Christian Media Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB).

“There is no place in the Bible … that any of these people can hang their hat on,” Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder and president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, told the gathering in Orlando. “It is fake theology, like it is fake news!” she said to thunderous applause.

“The DNA of NRB is pro-Israel, because it is a biblical DNA,” said NRB President Dr. Jerry Johnson. “If you’re a scriptural kind of a [Christian] believer of any kind, you’re going to be pro-Israel.”

This love for the Jewish state was apparent in NRB’s exhibition hall, which featured hundreds of vendors representing a number of Christian media organizations and ministries. Pilgrimages to Israel were marketed to Christians, along with the sale of Jewish ritual items such as tallitot and shofarot.

As part of its resolutions for 2017, NRB’s board of directors was unequivocal in its support of Israel. The board called on NRB members to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” and affirmed Israel’s adherence to democratic principles. The board also urged the U.S. to “continue to stand by Israel,” and called on all Christian organizations and denominations to reject and guard against the BDS movement.

“We’re one of the first states in the United

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States to support Israel with resolution after resolution. In fact, Tennessee believes Israel should be the 51st state!” said U.S. Rep. Judd Matheny (R-Tenn.).

Another major theme at this year’s NRB conference was Israel’s distinction as the only place in the Middle East where Christians can prosper and practice their religion without fear of discrimination. An Israeli Greek Orthodox priest, Father Gabriel Naddaf, was the special guest of PJTN. Naddaf advocates for the integration of Israeli Christians into all of Israel’s state institutions, especially when it comes to the military and national service programs.

Naddaf added that Middle Eastern Christians are becoming more open about their support for Israel, despite the threat of retribution by Islamic extremists. In 2013, Naddaf’s eldest son, Jubran, was beaten up in Nazareth due to his father’s outspoken support for Israel. Despite the head and body injuries he sustained in the beating by a young Arab with an iron rod, Jubran proceeded to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces the next year, making his father proud.

“As children of [Israel], we are obligated to defend her,” said Father Naddaf. “Israel is the only country that stands for Christians in the Middle East. No one else is standing against the eradication of Christians.”

Bradley Martin is a fellow with the Haym Salomon Center news and public policy group and deputy editor for the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.

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March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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Karaite Jews keep an ancient movement alive

By David A.M. Wilensky J. The Jewish News of Northern California

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ALY CITY, Calif. — Show up on a Shabbat morning at Congregation B’nai Israel in this Northern California suburb and, if you’re a typical American Jew, you will see plenty that’s familiar.

At the front of the sanctuary is an ark, and inside the ark are several Torah scrolls. There is a memorial wall at the back listing the names of the community’s lost loved ones.

Near the entrance is a rack of tallitot.

But before you come in, you must remove your shoes, as Moses did when he approached the Burning Bush. Examine the rack of tallitot and you will find that the fringes are dyed, knotted and wrapped in an unusual way. In front of the pews is an open space covered in rugs. Some worshippers sit or kneel on the floor; when they bow, they touch their heads to the ground. The prayers follow a unique structure, and the sound is very Middle Eastern.

B’nai Israel is the only Karaite synagogue in North America, serving the Diaspora’s largest community of Jews carrying on the traditions of a movement that diverged from the rabbinic mainstream as far back as the eighth century C.E. About 800 members live within driving distance of the synagogue.

Karaite Jews differ from Rabbanite Jews, as Karaites call Jews who follow rabbinic tradition, in that they rely on what is written in the Torah and reject practices and interpretations derived from the oral law — the Talmud and other rabbinic literature. The two communities coexisted until the 10th century, when the (Rabbanite) sage Saadia Gaon denounced Karaites as apostates and sought to exclude them from the Jewish community.

Relationships between the two Jewish communities have varied across time and place, but the initial antagonism has long colored the relationship.

In the Bay Area, where few Rabbanite Jews are aware of Karaite Judaism, the relationship is cordial, though not always close on an institutional level. But on a personal level, many Karaite Jews are involved with the wider Bay Area Jewish community. Many have had bar and bat mitzvahs in Rabbanite synagogues.

Still, B’nai Israel’s is a small, closely knit community drawn together by the Egyptian ancestry of many of its members as well as their Karaite practice. Like many other small Jewish communities, they are concerned about the future. Who will induct their children and other interested Jews into Karaite traditions? o ensure that future, the congregation has embarked on a relatively small construction project that will have a large and visible impact on their community: They are renovating their existing 3,500-square-foot prefab building and creating a 1,000-square-foot Karaite Jewish Cultural Center, attached to the synagogue, which will serve as a combination education program, museum and social center.

There is a Karaite Heritage Center in Israel, but this will be the only similar institution in the Diaspora.

For a community this small, a lot is riding on the project.

“If this current generation of Karaite Jews in the United States fails, it’ll be very difficult to kick-start the movement in any organized fashion,” said Shawn Lichaa, a pillar of the local Karaite community.

Karaite practice is usually defined by its differences with rabbinic Judaism, whose acceptance of the oral law is considered foundational by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews, even if Reform Judaism does not consider its rules binding.

The rabbinic kosher practice of not mixing

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hile others in his community have feared for its future, Ovadia’s faith never wavered.

“I never doubted that this is going to continue,” he said. “This is making sure that there is going to be a tradition kept alive. We will live for a thousand years and more.”

Himell-Ovadia sees herself as part of a bridge between the Karaite and mainstream Jewish communities of the Bay Area — a bridge that she hopes will grow.

“This is not just about improving or facilitating things within the Karaite community, but to build bridges to the larger world and to make this a welcoming place for others who want to come and learn about this unique culture within the branches of the Jewish family tree,” she said.

With groundbreaking set for the end of this month, the B’nai Israel community has already raised $1.1 million of its $1.2 million goal.

The cultural center campaign is an apIt is a custom among Karaite Jews to pray kneeling on the ground, as seen here in the sanctuary of proved grantee of the San Francisco-based Congregation B’nai Israel in Daly City, Calif.

Karaite Jews of America Jewish Community Federation’s donormilk and meat, for example, is derived from ite quarter of about 5,000 people adjacent advised funds, though it only accounts for verses in the Bible that one should not cook a to the mainstream Jewish quarter. Relations a small percentage of the money raised. In between Karaite and Rabbanite Jews in Cairo about six weeks, the congregation will move young goat in its mother’s milk.

The rabbinic tradition expanded the pro- were close; the Cairo Genizah, a vast store out of its building and be hosted by other hibition to prevent the mixing and consump- of Jewish writings discovered in a Rabbanite congregations until the High Holidays, when tion of any kind of dairy with any kind of synagogue in Cairo in the 19th century, in- it expects to be back home again. meat, including chicken, and created an array cluded a number of Karaite documents.

A Blue Thread blogger Lichaa, 37, is also In what Karaites sometimes call “the sec- the creator of the Karaite Press. Launched in of laws about separating cooking utensils and ond exodus,” they left Egypt en masse during February 2016 with the publication of a 12thwaiting between eating meat and dairy.

In the Karaite view of kashrut, one may the last century after Israel became a state century Karaite commentary on the Book of mix meat and dairy products that come from in 1948. More left after the 1956 Sinai War. Esther, the Karaite Press aims to make great different animals, and each community — During the 1967 Six-Day War, the remain- historical Karaite writings — many of them and individual — has autonomy to decide ing Jewish men in Egypt were put in camps, written in Arabic and until now locked up in manuscript form — available to the global Karaite community and the public at large.

Lichaa, a San Francisco native and the son of Karaite parents from Cairo, grew up in Foster City, where he attended Hebrew school at Peninsula Sinai Congregation. n Cairo, members of the Karaite community lived close together. But, Lichaa said, “When we came to the U.S. we didn’t have proximity, a central place where a critical mass lived where we could do education with our own teachers. The easiest thing to do was join local synagogues.”

Today, the Daly City congregation offers some education proLeft photo: Karaite Torah scrolls are done in the Eastern style, with the scroll enclosed in a hard case. Right photo: A rack of tallitot at Congregation B’nai Israel shows the unique style of tzitzit used by Karaite Jews. David A.M. Wilensky grams, but none specifically for kids. how strict or lax to be. Karaites also do not where they were held for over two years; “We do train them in prayers, one on one. accept rabbinic loopholes that ease various they were the last to leave. Over the years — I do some of that,” Lichaa said.

Shabbat restrictions.

A recent bar mitzvah at B’nai Israel was a mostly because of relatives already in the Bay Karaite Jews have embraced some Rabmajor affair, drawing a crowd of 150 to the Area — many of the Egyptian Karaite Jews banite traditions, such as b’nai mitzvah, while small sanctuary. wound up here. rejecting others, such as celebrating ChanuThe new center will offer a range of proIn 1994, the Bay Area Karaite commukah (which marks events that occurred 1,000 grams, “everything from cooking classes, hisnity bought the Daly City building from an years after those described in the Torah). tory classes, to arts,” he said.

Karaites also include a blue strand in their existing Congregation B’nai Israel that was “I see a Tuesday night open house where tzitzit, giving their tallitot a distinctive look — closing. The Karaite congregation adopted we’re open to the community. People can and informing the name of A Blue Thread, Li- the name B’nai Israel because it was already drop by, there will be food and beverages. painted on the side of the building. chaa’s long-running blog on Karaite Judaism.

And maybe Thursday nights we’ll have a speThe cultural center would have been no cific learning opportunity.”

In the B’nai Israel sanctuary, most women sit off to one side, though there is no mechitza more than a dream were it not for the forLichaa is working to make sure all of the to separate them formally from the men. As tuitous union, in their 60s, of David Ovadia classes will be live-streamed, making the each Karaite community is empowered to set and Maryellen Himell-Ovadia, who are lead- learning available to a wide audience. its own standards, American mores rubbed ing the fundraising and renovation efforts.

The center also will include a rotating off on the community, and some women now Ovadia is a Karaite Jew by heritage and a exhibit of Karaite Torah scrolls, art, manustructural engineer by training; Himell-Ova- scripts and the like. prefer to sit in the main area. oday there are an estimated 30,000 dia is a former member of San Francisco’s Lichaa views himself as Jewish first and Karaite Jews in Israel, 1,500 in the Congregation Emanu-El and an experienced Karaite second.

United States and small communities fundraiser.

“I made an active decision that my preOvadia came to the Bay Area from Egypt ferred form of Judaism is Karaite Judaism,” in places like France, England, Turkey and Russia. But until the mid-20th century, many at age 13 in 1963. he said.

“During that time, a lot of my other uncles lived in Arab lands. For centuries, one of the “If you’re an Orthodox Jew, I understand most prominent Karaite communities in the and everybody else was feeling the pressure why you follow the rabbinic tradition. But for world was in Cairo, where the first Bay Area and everything that was going on in Egypt,” everyone else, I wonder why Karaite Judaism Karaites came from. Cairo once had a Kara- he said. can’t be one of the menu options.”

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Rabbi binny FReedMan The hearT of jerusalem

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few weeks ago I joined about 35 students from Yeshivat Orayta for a week in Poland. We had a remarkable guide named Rav Yitzchak Rubenstein who shared the following story with us: The Nazis understood the power of hope.

They always left the glimmer of a possibility that it might get better, perhaps because it often kept the Jews from risking it all in rebellion.

Before the war there were 250,000 Jews in Lodz, which was 40 percent of the city; today, there is barely a handful. In 1943, the Nazis were emptying the ghetto of Lodz, and Jews by the thousands were rounded up and forced onto cattle cars.

A Jewish woman, whose husband was in charge of a work detail in an important factory that was contributing to the Nazi war effort, was exempt from the roundups and allowed to live in the ghetto with her baby. One day, her baby started crying and could not be calmed; she knew of a black market store where for the right price she could get milk for her baby. Desperate to get there before curfew, she ran out in her bathrobe — and forgot her papers. She got to the store just in time, and after bargaining with the owners for some milk, came back outside, to find the street full of SS soldiers.

They had closed off the block and were rounding up all the Jews for the transports, and she realized to her horror she had forgot-

ten her papers. She tried to explain to the Nazis that she had papers and was exempt from the roundup, but these were Lithuanian SS who did not speak Polish. “My baby! My baby!” she kept repeating, but no one was listening. Those who understood may well have thought she was mad; perhaps the Nazis had just murdered her child; such things happened every day in the ghetto.

Desperate, she tried to explain that she had to get her baby, to no avail.

She was herded into the umshtagplatz (the central square) with everyone else and eventually forced onto one of the cattle cars. And as the cattle cars pulled out of the station her cries filled the air: “My baby! My baby!” she kept repeating; but no one was listening. e turned a corner in the Lodz train station and stepped inside one of the actual cattle cars the Nazis had used to take the Jews of Lodz to their deaths, first in Chelmno and later in Auschwitz. We were stuffed in a third of the cattle car at one end, so we could try to imagine how crowded it must have been as they forced sometimes as many as 120 people inside, for days; and I kept thinking about that woman, being taken further and further away from her baby, crying out for her baby though no one was listening, having completely lost control of her life.

Did anyone ever go and find that baby, crying and eventually screaming, in a now

empty room in an empty apartment building on an empty block in the Lodz ghetto?

How many times must that woman have torn herself up: if she could only have that moment back, to simply take her papers with her when she went out the door.

Moments that change everything, they come in an instant, and you have to grab them, because if they pass you by, they don’t come back. Sometimes we miss them and don’t even realize they were there, until it’s too late.

I vividly remember such a moment in my life quite vividly. My brother and I were riding our bikes up Broadway; I was in the sixth grade and my brother must have been in eighth, two kids having fun on a lazy Sunday afternoon. We were at a traffic light when suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by a gang of kids, mostly around our age, ten or 15 of them at least. Two of them were holding my bike’s handlebars and a couple more were holding me or pushing my back; they were laughing and I heard a couple of antiSemitic slur, and realized they were trying to push us onto a side street so they could steal our bikes and who knows what else.

I was terrified, but my older brother, with a little more presence of mind, yelled at me not to let them steer us off Broadway; there were plenty of people on the street, so there was a limit to what they could do there. I guess my face must have given away how terrified I was, because a jogger running by

This, says Mordechai, is your moment, and you need to grab it.

Once it passes, it will not return.

W

stopped and started at yelling at these kids and I realized they had loosened their grips on my bike; we took the opportunity and pushed away, biking as fast as we could, all the way home.

I can still hear the sounds of those kids yelling as they ran, trying to keep up with us, their voices falling further and further behind. That was the day I decided to listen to a good buddy of mine who had been saying I should join him in a local Tora-Dojo to study Karate.

And the subsequent years of studying the martial arts through high school most probably led me to the decision to stay in Israel after a year of yeshiva study and join the army, eventually becoming an officer.

It was, looking back, absolutely a seminal moment in my life though I had absolutely no clue at the time just how significant a moment it would prove to be. On that Sunday afternoon in the seventh grade, with Hashem’s help, I took control of my life. As a kid, I had been beaten up countless times in the Wild West that was New York City in the ’70s, and looking back I guess that was the day I got tired of being afraid. am writing this article on a plane headed home to Israel from South Africa where I was privileged to share in a magnificent experience the South African Jewish community has labelled Sinai Indaba. Five thousand Jews came together in Johannesburg to share and study Torah and there are no words to describe the passion, excitement, warmth and inspiration we shared for 24 magnificent hours.

One of the speakers, Charlie Harari, shared an idea that got me thinking: We See Critical moments on page 21

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HEALTH, MIND & BODY Section sponsored by Alina Bergan DDS • 650 Central Ave, Suite F • Cedarhurst • 516-203-4556

Ultimate Jewish wedding gift: a kidney and a life

By Deborah Fineblum, JNS.org When it comes to acts of loving-kindness, plenty of rabbis talk a good game. But Rabbi Ari Sytner has put his entire self into the endeavor.

When Rabbi Sytner met the person in the adjoining surgical suite in Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx on Dec. 19, 2011, a few days before the surgery was scheduled, she was still a virtual stranger. He knew that Ronit Havivi was a 45-year-old single Israeli mom with three kids and Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), which had sapped her strength and kept her increasingly tied to a dialysis machine.

Havivi had been a teenager when her own mother died of the disease at age 34. Her own prognosis? Not good, unless a donor could be found quickly.

Fast forward five years. Against all odds, in a wedding hall outside Netanya in central Israel on Feb. 20, Rabbi Sytner’s voice sang out the

Kidney donor Rabbi Ari Sytner with his recipient, Ronit Havivi, at the recent wedding of Havivi’s daughter.

blessing under the chuppah as Havivi’s daughter, Dana, married her childhood sweetheart, Moshe Nawe—an occasion Havivi might not have lived to see without the rabbi’s kidney.

That evening, Ronit Havivi took the rabbi around and introduced him to the guests at her daughter’s nuptials. “You’re Ari?” they’d say, with family and friends alike throwing throw their arms around him. “We’ve been wanting to thank you for so long!”

“Come and sit with the family,” Havivi told Rabbi Sytner. Accordingly, in all the group photos from the night, the rabbi—a slight young man with a huge smile—can be seen as very much a part of the family.

The journey to the operating room had not been a simple one for the native of Monsey, who was 34 at the time. His life, as the father of four children with a demanding job as a pulpit rabbi in Charleston, S.C., was already a full one.

But when he read that 100,000 Americans

are waiting for kidneys and will likely die within the next 10 years unless they receive one, he asked himself if he’d be willing to do it. His answer: “Maybe I would.”

He knew, however, that the decision could not be his alone. He took his wife to a coffee shop and asked her what she would say about him donating a kidney. “I expected her to tell me I was crazy: a busy rabbi with four little kids, so I was surprised when she said, ‘Why not go through the testing and we’ll decide one step at a time’,” he recalled.

Rabbi Sytner heard, through a Jewish organization working on making matches for kidney transplants, about a single mom in Israel whose kidneys were rapidly failing due to a genetic disease that had killed her mother. “I wanted to save a Jewish life if I could,” he said. “In the ever-widening circle of tzedakah, responsibility goes from our family to our community, to the See Wedding gift on page 9

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more kidneys, encouraging others is one way I can still help save lives.”

Five years after that fateful meeting in adjoining operating rooms, Rabbi Sytner has both a new job—helping congregations as the director of leadership and community development for Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future—and a new “sister,” Havivi, who insisted on meeting him at Ben Gurion Airport before his flight home following her daughter’s wedding.

“She said that every time we’re together, it’s a simcha (joyous occasion) surrounded by lots of people, and she wanted us to spend some quiet time together,” Rabbi Sytner said. “I told her that I wouldn’t have missed this wedding for anything.

Just think what it would be like if every kidney donor could have this kind of experience.”

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Initially, the family’s oldest son Reuven, who was 11 at the time, was strongly opposed to his father’s transplant. But when he heard the recipient was a single mom in Israel, he changed his mind. “If you die, Abba, we would be so sad, but we would still have Ema. But if that single mom dies, her children would have no parents. They would be orphans. So I think you should do it,” Reuven had said.

“I took his answer to be a divine message giving me the go-ahead,” said the rabbi. “It’s emunah—faith—which empowers you to do what ordinarily you could not do. You simply ask G-d to help you, to strengthen you.”

“We know it wasn’t easy for him,” said the kidney recipient’s aunt, Simcha Alone. “He has a family and he’s young, but still he gave of himself. When he sang the blessings under the chuppah we all cried. We know that because of him, Ronit is here to celebrate this day.”

After waiting in the Philippines for eight months for a cadaver kidney that never materialized, Havivi felt the clock ticking. “I knew my only hope was to find a transplant but, having waited so long, I didn’t know how good my chances were,” she said.

Yet Havivi heard through a Jewish transplant organization about a potential donor.

During the Purim holiday in 2011, her phone rang with good news: “There’s an American rabbi who might be willing to give you a kidney. Come in for blood tests.”

After nine months of cross-testing and processing, Havivi flew from her home in Petah Tikva to New York with her significant other, Gabriel Kovac, and her daughter. “When I met Ari a few days before the surgery I was speechless,” she recalled. “I just cried and I told him that ‘thank you’ sounded so weak for someone giving you back your life.”

“With the transplant, I was able to have what my mom could not,” added Havivi, who celebrated her “fifth birthday’’ since the transplant last December. “Suddenly I was off dialysis and feeling well for the first time in years.”

She was feeling so well, in fact, that at age 45 and with renewed strength, Havivi fulfilled her lifelong dream of completing law school.

She is now an attorney specializing in labor and family law.

“I’m 50 now and off dialysis, so I can work, be with my kids, have the joy of helping plan my daughter’s wedding and not worry if I’ll survive,” she said before the Feb. 20 wedding.

That is also good news for Havivi’s boyfriend. “We had dinner with Ari last night and the guy just radiates goodness,” said Kovac. “I was raised religious and after talking with him a while, it crossed my mind that, had he been a rabbi when I was younger, I would probably still be religious.”

The rabbi said his family has suddenly expanded exponentially.

“Having [Havivi] and her kids at my son’s bar mitzvah here in Israel last year made me realize that she is now and always will be part of my family,” Rabbi Sytner said. “With us, it’s gone way beyond the kidney. Every Friday I get a call or text from Ronit wishing me ‘Shabbat shalom’.”

“I told her, ‘I’m a man and you’re a woman.

I’m American and you’re Israeli. I identify as Orthodox and you don’t. I’m Ashkenazi and you’re Sephardic. But none of that matters.

We’re family,’” he continued. “At the wedding, I realized that this mother standing under the chuppah with her daughter has become very dear to me.”

Rabbi Sytner has also written a book on his experience, “The Kidney Donor’s Journey: 100 Questions I Asked Before Donating My Kidney.” He also blogs about the subject at akidneydonor.com.

“I wish [such a book] was around when I was making this decision; it shows how you don’t lose something, you gain something,” Rabbi Sytner said. “And since I can’t give any

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By Ariel Ben Solomon, JNS.org With recent reports indicating that the Trump administration’s planned budget cuts could extend to the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, the potential nixing of the position shines a light on questions regarding the specific nature of the envoy’s work and the future utility of the position.

Pressure to salvage the envoy and its associated bureau—the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism—is mounting from members of Congress and others familiar with the special envoy’s work. Among other duties, past envoys have met with representatives of various countries to discuss issues of anti-Semitism or other Jewish-related concerns, such as proposed European bans on Jewish ritual circumcision.

The envoy’s office “was crucial in documenting human rights abuses against Jewish communities abroad as well as developing and implementing policies designed to combat anti-Semitism,” a bipartisan group of members of Congress stated in a draft of a letter that was to be sent to President Donald Trump as early as March 14.

The envoy position was created by the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, which was initiated by the late Rep. Tom Lantos (DJANUARY 14—APRIL 10, the 2017 only Holocaust survivor to ever Calif.), serve in Congress, in an effort to help curb the rising tide of hate crimes against Jews.

In August 2011, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) received a $200,000 State Department grant to help expand the de3pm partment’s documentation on anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world.

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MEMRI research “has been used to get the television channels belonging to Hamas and Hezbollah removed from satellite TV carriers in the U.S., Europe and Asia, as well as Egyptian and Saudi channels disseminating anti-Semitic content,” according to MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky. The research has led to arrests and expulsions of anti-Semitic sheikhs in Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Australia.

When Hannah Rosenthal, the special envoy from 2009 to 2012, met with Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time, Adel alJubeir, she gave him a book that debunks “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a Russian-published anti-Semitic fabrication that is a popular book in the Arab world. In July 2011, Rosenthal explained how she used MEMRI research to confront Arab states on anti-Semitism.

The latest envoy, Ira Forman, traveled to Europe to deal with anti-Semitism, including in 2013, when he spoke with the Polish government about a law banning kosher slaughter and hate crimes. He also spoke with Morocco’s ambassador at large for Jewish affairs about issues such as the rehabilitation of Jewish cemeteries.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS.org that with global anti-Semitism increasing, it is important to have a special envoy “that would especially deal with Muslim anti-Semitism in America and Europe.”

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By Gabe Friedman, JTA How do people behave when they visit a concentration camp or a Holocaust memorial?

Do they act as if there are in place of reverence or mourning? Or do they behave as crowds do at any tourist attraction — taking selfies, goofing around, snacking and drinking as they amble along?

Just what constitutes appropriate behavior at a Holocaust memorial site has been a hot topic recently. Last month, the Israeli-German writer and satirist Shahak Shapira reignited the public debate about “Holocaust tourism” with a website “shaming” tourists who appear in flippant selfies taken at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Shapira’s site, titled Yolocaust, superimposed smiling tourists with gruesome images from the Holocaust, such as piles of corpses.

“I find it dangerous that this is becoming normal,” Shapira told a German news program shortly before shutting down the project, saying it had served its purpose. “It kind of suggests that people are not dealing with the real purpose of this memorial.”

Last summer, the smartphone game Pokemon Go raised eyebrows for guiding some of its users into the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum as well as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. This followed a few years after an American tourist took a smiling selfie at Auschwitz, drawing outrage on Twitter and calling attention to other online chronicles of inappropriate selfie-taking, such as the Facebook group “With My Besties in Auschwitz.”

And now the behavior of tourists at Holocaust memorial sites — and the tough questions surrounding it — is explored in a probing documentary film, “Austerlitz,” by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa. The film will have its U.S. premiere at the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight festival on Sunday and Monday in New York City, but it has already garnered praise after showings last year at major international film festivals in Toronto and Venice.

Presented without commentary, the 90-minute black-and-white film is a series of long, lingering shots of tourists walking around Dachau and Sachsenhausen, a former concentration camp near Berlin. Loznitsa placed stationary cameras around the camps, capturing thousands of visitors sauntering in and out of the frame. It is unclear whether Loznitsa hid his cameras, although the tourists seem oblivious to them.

Most of the visitors seem as if they are walking in a shopping mall or perhaps an art museum. They mostly look aimless, restless, tired and bored. Some laugh and smile as they file into a room, like they are headed to

Tourists in are oblivious to Sergei Loznitsa’s cameras (left) and a scene from “Austerlitz,” a documentary on the tourist experience in former concentration camps.

a party. Some stand out due to their unfortunate sartorial choices — one wears a T-shirt with an image of a skull, another with the phrase “Cool story, bro.” Some take smiling selfies or lighthearted group photos in front of Sachsenhausen’s “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate.

Despite its lack of narrative or plot, the film is oddly compelling. The disconnect between setting and character provokes a range of feelings. The sight of crowds pouring into a room is creepily reminiscent of Holocaust prisoners being shepherded into train cars or gas chambers. Footage of visitors trying to get their tour headphones to work is amusing -until it isn’t. The fact that some visitors joke around or act like they’d rather be anywhere else inspires feelings of anger (at least for this viewer).

“The people who came to these places 40 years ago came with a different purpose than people now,” Loznitsa told the New York Times last year. “Now people don’t remember, and sometimes I think they don’t even understand where they are and what the places are about.”

The film takes its title from German writer W.G. Sebald’s final novel, “Austerlitz,” about an eponymous academic whose parents were killed in the Holocaust. The protagonist visits the Theresienstadt camp in the Czech Republic to learn more about his parents’ deaths, ruminating there on memory and history.

Loznitsa has said his documentary is a “variation” on the novel. (The filmmaker was traveling this week and declined a request for an interview.)

The only dialogue comes in a few scenes involving tour guides — in the first, about 25 minutes in, a Spanish-speaking guide at Sachsenhausen begins to tell a group of tourists about the camp’s prison-within-a-prison system used to interrogate Jews.

But shortly after he starts his talk, a group of English-speaking tourists crowds the

screen, obscuring the Spanish group. A British voice overlaps with the Spanish one. As the English group grows, one young woman balances a water bottle on her head. Eventually the Spanish group disappears almost entirely from view — shrouded by the nonchalant, English-speaking crowd — even though the viewer continues to hear parts of the guide’s talk.

The scene represents what could be seen as Loznitsa’s powerful thesis: It’s easy to be swallowed up by the tourist experience and forget to engage with the significance of a place — even at sites that commemorate one of history’s most horrid tragedies.

Still, none of the tourists captured by Loznitsa’s cameras are blatantly disrespectful.

Nonchalant, yes, and somewhat self-absorbed in the 21st-century way. There are plenty of selfies in “Austerlitz” (including one particularly funny one involving an overweight man slowing rotating a selfie stick); even a man

wearing a kippah happily poses for photos in front of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate.

By the end of “Austerlitz,” most viewers will likely feel conflicted about how to judge these unwitting tourists. After all, is it fair to judge someone by how they are captured on camera for a few minutes? And shouldn’t Jews be encouraged by the fact that Holocaust sites continue to draw record crowds?

Doesn’t that signal increased interest in learning about Holocaust history?

Loznitsa’s point, however, is not about individual tourists -- whether they choose to take a silly selfie or reflect deeply throughout their visit. The message, he has said, is that visiting a concentration camp should not be presented like any other mundane tourist experience.

“I think it must be like a church,” he told the Times. “If you want to pray for the souls of all the people who are in the ground in this place, then come.”

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THE JEWISH STAR March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777

‘Holocaust tourism’ probed in a compelling flick

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March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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THE JEWISH STAR March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777

Sale Dates: March 19th - 24th 2017

March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

14

JEWISH

STAR SCHOOLS

March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar 5777 • Every week in print and online at TheJewishStar.com • Send news and photos to: Schools@TheJewishStar.com • Weekly deadline: Monday 5 pm

Purim sendup for HAFTR’s new sports complex

From left, at the opening of the HAFTR Glaubach Family Student Center sports complex on Sunday: HAFTR Athletic Director Joey Hoenig; Baruch Glaubach, speaking on behalf of the Glaubach family; HAFTR Executive Director Reuben Maron; and the Purim-ready Blitman family — Jimmy, Jonah, Sara, Nikki and Jesse.

The Jewish Star / Ryan Hedlund

By Jeffrey Bessen A winning hockey team, cheering fans and teachers prepping for their next class are what Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway envisioned as it opened, on Purim Sunday, the school’s second sports complex in less than five years.

The 8,000-square-foot, $1.1 million HAFTR High School Glaubach Family Student Center — on the school’s Cedarhurst campus — not only has bleachers for 400 and a court with basketball hoops and a penalty box for floor hockey, but also a 243-inch screen with internet capability for videoconferencing The new facility includes locker rooms and restrooms, conference space,a teachers’ lounge and a prep room, and space for students to livestream games.

“Basketball will be played here during gym, floor hockey can be played here, and we will host College Night and science fairs, all school events,” said an excited Yaron Kornblum, a HAFTR parent who is co-chair of the school’s board of trustees “Our high school is growing by leaps and bounds. This is an awesome opportunity for us.”

Kornblum also helped shepherd HAFTR’s first sports complex into existence in the summer of 2012. That 7,500-square-foot building, on the Lawrence campus, is connected to the building that houses its lower and middle schools. The basketball teams play there, and, using money from the fundraising for that project, a new floor was installed in the middle school’s old gymnasium, and lighting was upgraded.

The new sports complex will be home to the floor hockey team. Like the Lawrence complex, it is attached to the existing high school building.

The brick walls of the older structure give an oldfashioned look to a state-of-the-art facility.

“Our enrollment is trending upward, and we started to feel that with that growth we needed more space,” said Executive Director Reuben Maron. “We can offer a lot more educational opportunity, from advanced placement to special remedial courses.”

Maron said that enrollment is expected to be 400 next fall, and described the incoming ninth-grade class as “very large.” The old high school gym, a cramped space in a downstairs room, is slated to become a science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, laboratory.

Athletic Director Joey Hoenig said that if high school sports fans had never watched a floor hockey game, as played by the HAFTR Hawks — and their rivals in the Metropolitan Yeshiva High School Hockey League, including Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High Schools for Boys in Woodmere — they should. The games are exciting and the fans passionate, he said.

“This is great for the [sports] program,” Hoenig said of the new sports complex, “and gives HAFTR so much more flexibility, and gives the hockey program an amazing home.”

Keeping classes small and offering the courses that students need to succeed are HAFTR’s goals, Maron said. “Now we’re able to spread out, and that helps to build toward success in a school like ours. The key is offering the best possible education.”

Certificates for NSHA ‘Gantze Megilla’ readers After chanting Megillat Esther for their fellow Middle School students, faculty, and their families and friends, 18 Ashkenazic and Sephardic North Shore Hebrew Academy display certificates attesting to their individual accomplishments. In back row from left: NSHA Head of School, Rabbi Jeffrey Kobrin; NSHA Middle School Principal;, Rabbi Adam Acobas; Dr. Paul Brody of Great Neck, who has instructed 275 NSHA students in reading the Megilla over the past 16 years. Brody is wearing the tallit of his maternal zayde, Rabbi Jacob Brown zt”l, who convinced him that learning to read the “Gantze Megillah” was not insurmountable.

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Purim at Shulamith

March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

16

HANC HS chagigah

Students from all divisions of the Shulamith School for Girls in Cedarhurst celebrated Purim in style!

In the Early Childhood Division, costumed talmidot learned about the upcoming chag.

In the Lower Division, the annual Mitzvah Masquerade was a resounding success. Third and fourth graders worked in groups to create costumes related to brachot, mitzvoth or Chumash.

Each group was allotted three minutes to present their costumes, and the creative results were impressive.

Eighth graders took charge of the annual SWO sponsored Purim Carnival. Led

by Shoshana Brunner, Ahuva Langsam and Elana Weiss, the carnival afforded each student the opportunity to greet Adar with unbridled simcha. This year’s carnival had a Western theme, so there were cowgirls running the moon bounce, obstacle course, and booths that included the ever-popular Fluff ’n Chips, Pickle Race, and Ring Toss, and the newly-created Photo Booth and Pin the Tail on the Donkey. As they noshed on cotton candy and popcorn, it was evident that a great time was had by all.

Students from Rambam and HANC join Albany parade

Students from Rambam Mesivta got up early on March 1 to trek to Albany and participate in the OU’s Teach NYS mission to advocate for additional funding for private school education. After davening Vasikin and eating a quick breakfast, the boys boarded their bus. Currently, the state provides over three billion dollars for public education, while spending one tenth of that on private education. Rambam was represented by students Michael Akhavan, Avraham Balsam, Dovi Breuer, Eli Deutsch, Benjamin Kattan, Aaron Moradi, David Rabinovich, Akiva Schuck and Uriel Sussman.

Thirty-five HANC students, along with Assistant Principal Tziporah Zucker and AP History Teacher Laura Eisner traveled to Albany with the OU’s Teach NYS mission to advocate for more funding for New York private school students, specifically for STEM education. HANC had the largest high school student delegation, but joined dozens of other day schools to express the importance of religious schools system to the state education system overall. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, and other legislators addressed the mission of about 600 people, reiterating their support for the right of New Yorkers to choose a religious education for their children.

Sports news from YU

THE JEWISH STAR March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777

The Skyline Conference announced its 2016-17 men’s basketball all-conference teams and Yeshiva University earned two major awards. Freshman guard Simcha Halpert was named the Rookie of the Year, while head coach Elliot Steinmetz (pictured), a Five Towns resident, was awarded Coach of the Year. Sophomore guard Judah Cohen earned a spot on the all-conference first team.

Halpert was named the Skyline Conference Rookie of the Week on four separate occasions. He was second on the team in scoring, with an average of 13 points per game.

The rookie phenom shot .449 (102-for-227) from the field and .382 (58-for-152) from beyond the arc. Defensively, Halpert forced

17

24 steals and blocked 12 shots this season.

Steinmetz (‘02) has led the Maccabees to a berth in the Skyline Conference Championships all three years he had been at the helm, so far. This season, he led Yeshiva to a 15-10 overall record and 11-5 in Skyline play. Last season, the YU alumnus led the men’s basketball team to its first home playoff game and victory since 2002. Steinmetz has coached three all-conference players so far in his career, as well as the new Rookie of the Year, Halpert.

Cohen was inducted into the Skyline Conference Weekly Honor Roll five times this season. The Englewood resident finished the season tenth in the Skyline in scoring with an average of 14.9 points per game. nsha dinner poster 17_Layout 1 2/10/2017 9:40 AM Page 1

By The Rambam Interview Crew See photo on page 29 Hours after leading the Oilers to their fourth Stanley Cup in five years, Wayne Gretzky learned that he was going to be traded to the Detroit Red Wings, Vancouver Canucks, or LA Kings. He was traded to the Kings with two teammates for two players, $15 million, and a first-round pick.

He was upset. All of Canada was upset, so much so that the government almost stopped it. At first, he was upset because he would not be an Oiler for life. But after contemplation, he realized that the move was a great one for hockey. The competition would be better, and more importantly, his name could spread hockey all across the West Coast, which was in dire need of some hockey help. He did just that, and now some of the best NHL players, including Auston Matthews, are from the West Coast. Without Gretzky, we may not have any West Coast teams in the NHL at all.

This story can be compared to that of Zack Rosen, whose original plans did not work out (he wanted to be drafted into the NBA), but he found out what was most important to him: becoming a religious Jew. Itai Eliach: What was your connection to Judaism like growing up?

Zack Rosen: Growing up, I was raised I would say Conservative-ish. … We only got together for the main holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach. … I went to Hebrew school, and had a bar mitzvah and that was it.

Itai: How did you progress to a national powerhouse and play for Benedict’s Prep in Newark, NJ? Zack: Besiyata Deshmaya. I hurt my elbow really badly and the doctors looked at my elbow and said there’s no way I’m coming back.

I just kept working, and never took “NO” for an answer. That was my greatest quality.

Itai: What was it like spearheading Coach Danny Hurley’s team that was the #1 ranked team in the country, and which had many future NBA players?

Zack: We were good at all positions and [the experience] was amazing. But every single day, to fight for your spot and to become a real authentic, genuine competitor was an amazing experience.

See Transition on page 29

‫ב”ה‬

The Officers and Board of Trustees of the

NO RTH SHO R E HE B R EW ACADEM Y E L E M E N TA R Y S C H O O L • H I G H S C H O O L

‫ישיבת חוף הצפון • ישיבה תיכונית חוף הצפון‬

cordially invite you to attend our

Annual Dinner Celebration Celebrating 62 Years of Excellence in Yeshiva Education

GUESTS OF HONOR

GUESTS OF HONOR

Cheryl and Drs. Laura and Ronald Silverman Scott Danoff In loving memory of

DISTINGUISHED FACULTY AWARD

Susan Newborn

Markus Orbach, z"l

SUNDAY APRIL 2

5PM

‫ו’ ניסן‬ ‫תשע”ז‬

OLD WESTBURY HEBREW CONGREGATION

‫“ ”והשיב לב אבות‬And He shall turn the heart of the ‫ על בנים ולב בנים‬parents to the children, and the heart “‫ על אבותם‬of the children to their parents.” ‫ו‬:‫ מלאכי ד‬Malachi 4:6

For further information, please contact Mr. Arnie Flatow, Executive Director (516) 487-8687 Ext. 2

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Transition from UPenn stardom to observance

March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

18

Rambam shows its talent DRS Purim There was more than enough fun to go around during DRS’ Purim chagiggah. There was also work: In just 30 days, the boys at right learned to read the megillah.

HAFTR joins ‘twinning network’ For over two decades, the Jewish Agency’s P2G Global School Twinning Network has paired hundreds of Jewish schools in diaspora communities with schools in Israel, in order to create direct connections between educators, young Jews, and their Israeli counterparts, thereby strengthening the participants’ sense and understanding of belonging to a worldwide Jewish community.

Through the undertaking of joint program-

ming, educators and students engage in vibrant dialogue that deepen their understanding of Jewish and Israeli identity and their sense of connection to Israel, and develop meaningful long-distance relationships.

HAFTR High School’s ninth grade Hebrew language honors students recently joined the network, connecting with two schools in Israel.

In Israel, Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi approached Amihai Bannett of the Jewish Agency

to connect schools from his region with Jewish schools abroad. When HAFTR was looking for a twin school, they were paired with the Orot Yehuda Yeshiva for boys in Efrat and the Oriya Ulpana for girls in the nearby Gush Etzion Region.

The program is run by the English language teachers in Israel, Roochie Sinai in Oriya and Nellie Klein in Orot Yehuda, and the Hebrew language teacher at HAFTR, Mia Rubin.

The connection is coordinated by Amihai Bannett of the School Twinning Network, who also gave sessions in all three schools (in New York via Skype) about the challenges facing the Jewish people today, and ways to strengthen connections between Jews worldwide.

The students have already exchanged letters, and Ms. Rubin, Ms. Sinai and Ms. Klein are planning to upgrade the connection in the coming months with videos and joint study as well.

Pictured from left: Morah Mia Rubin, Nechama Hillel, Emily Siri, Shani Aizelman, Emily Silverstein, Molly Vashovsky, Matthew Jedwab.

Jadyn Harari, Rami Rudensky, and Joshua Wiener.

Rambam’s Annual Purim chaggigah featured tremendous ruach and dancing, a costume contest, talent show, comedy shpiel video, and a surprise guest musician.

With most of the school dressed up in creative costumes, it was difficult narrowing down “The Final Three.” In the end, though, Yoni Szpigiel, dressed as Alexander Hamilton, faced off against Sir Josh Koegel in full armor, and Benji Weiner sporting a homemade “Chrome” costume with an actual working QR Code on the back. Based on the scientifically proven Donny Moskovits applause-o-meter, Yoni Szpigiel won the highly coveted “Best Costume Plaque.”

The talent show highlighted the diverse talents at Rambam Mesivta. It started with a Nate “The Great” Rosenberg Comedy Routine, followed by: Rabbi Noam Singer Jump-Rope and Juggling expedition, Rabbi Avrum Haar Original Song, Jon Welgrin Devil Sticks, Oren Teeter Body Twisting, Yoni Szpigiel and Sam Hofstetter “Hamilton” Medley, Craig Speiser Interpretive Dance, Eli Roth Yo-Yo, Eliyahu Levy Yo-Yo Challenge, Yoni Auerbach on the ukulele, Yaacov Feiner Stand-up Routine (and song!) and Avram Balsam Solo. The talent was awe-inspiring and MC Gavriel Haviv did a wonderful job introducing each act.

One of the highlights of the event was when the crowd chanted for Eli Roth and Eliyahu Levy, originally scheduled for separate yo-yo acts, to return for the stage for a “Yo-Yo Duel” They obliged and the audience was treated to a back-and-forth exchange that wowed the imagination. After tallying the votes, Rabbi Haar’s spoof on “Minyan Man” won in the “Best Rebbe Talent Show” category, making Rabbi Haar a two-time talent show champion, and Eliyahu Levy won the “Talent Show Champion Award.”

Natan Alon and the Guitar Club, featuring Yoni Saffra, then turned down the lights and played “One Day” with the whole school joining in before announcing that surprise guest, Yisroel Williger, was there to lead everyone in dancing and song.

The Purim Extravaganza concluded with the annual Purim shpiel video, created this year by Charlie Grill, Gavriel Haviv, Yair Oppenheimer, and Rafi Lowe.

Mordechai HaTazdik program at Rambam This Purim, 19 students from Rambam Mesivta in Lawrence gathered in the upstairs Bais Medrash of the Young Israel of West Hempstead for a special Rambam Mesivta Yeshivas Mordechai HaTzadik program.

Led by 11th Grade Rebbe, Rabbi Aryeh Young, these students committed to learning an intensive, 90-minute morning seder after Shachris on Purim morning and spent the morning learning b’iyun the sugya of Kriasa zu Halleila.

On a day when most of the Torah world is (rightfully) busy with many mitzvos and other family obligations, these Rambam students decided to do their share to add an extra boost of Limmud HaTorah to the world on a tremendously auspicious day.

Almost eight years ago, Habochur HaChoshuv Yeshaya Dov Eckstein a”h was killed in a tragic car accident during the summer of 2009. L’ilui Nishmaso, his parents and a group of the family’s loyal friends, have committed to sponsoring bochurim to learn each Purim. Each participating talmid receives a modest financial stipend to encourage his participation.

When Rabbi Young reached out to Yeshaya Dov’s father, Itzy, to ask if Rambam students could join the program, Mr. Eckstein immediately worked to incorporate the Rambam talmidim into this groundbreaking nationwide initiative, even though he had

no prior connection to the anyone from the Rambam Mesivta community.

The talmidim each learned with tremendous energy and

hasmada, and walked away truly proud of their tremendous Purim accomplishment. May their learning be a zechus for Yeshaya Dov a”h.

CONCERT

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Annual

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Yosef as the prelude to Pesach AlAn JAy Gerber Kosher BooKworm

I

t is three weeks till Pesach, the feast of our liberation, and it all started with Yosef. And it is the biblical story of Yosef that is at the center of a unique musical production of that title in our community.

The show, which opened March 4 and continues this weekend, centers on the legacy of Yosef and of his journey to slavery in Egypt, a fate that was to be destined for his descendants to experience, too, and of his ultimate co-rulership of Egypt.

Yosef, the biblical figure, has been the center of numerous contemporary works detailing his historical and religious importance to our faith, thus making a dramatization of his life at this time of year on the Jewish calendar all the more important.

Please consider the following: From the play we witness the importance of the role that Yosef’s robe plays in his life, a source of envy to his brothers. In the commentary, “The Passover Haggadah” by Rabbi Yoef Marcus (Kehot, 2011) we learn of our sages’ interpretation of the robe.

“There is one event that one can point to as the very first in a long sequence of events that led to our enslavement: Jacob giving Joseph a beautiful robe. This ignited the jealousy of his brothers and ultimately led them to sell Joseph as a slave. This led to Jacob’s descent to Egypt, which led to the enslavement of all of Israel to Pharaoh [see Shabbat 10a].

when G-d commanded us to dip a hyssop into blood and place the blood on our doorposts prior to the plague of the firstborn [Maasei Hashem].”

Much of this, which is at the center of the Pesach Seder ritual and liturgy, are beautifully dramatized on stage in the play, “Yosef”.

The importance of the saga of the Yosef narrative is further detailed by theologian Yoram Hazony in his book, “G-d and Politics in Esther” (Cambridge University Press, 2016) in a chapter appropriately titled, “JoShmuel Jacobs at Yosef (left) and Sruli Greenberger as Potiphar. seph.” This narrative centers “This robe was called ‘ketonet pasim,’ a upon the confrontation of Joseph with an atfine woolen robe. Commenting on the word tempted seduction scene by Potiphar’s wife, ‘pasim’, Rashi relates it to the word ‘karpas’… an action foiled by the G-d fearing Joseph.

The Karpas at the Seder thus evokes Joseph’s his scene is discussed by Hazony and he coat, the object that led to the exile [Rabconcludes his narrative with the followbenu Manoach].” ing teaching: Further on in his commentary, Rabbi “Since Joseph does succeed in remainMarcus teaches us further of this connect be- ing a Jew to the end of his days, and one tween Yosef and the Pesach experience. whose children themselves stay Jews and be“Two Dippings: The first dipping [karpas] come leaders in Israel, the rabbis recognize alludes to the events that led to our descent this first spiritual victory as being symbolic into Egypt. The second dipping [marror] al- of his far greater achievement of wielding ludes to the mitzvah for which we merited power in Egypt and yet using it in the service to ascend. of his people. It is thus the refusal of Poti“Descent: The first dipping alludes to the phar’s wife that, according to Rabbi Johanan brothers dipping Joseph’s coat into animal in the name of Rabbi Meir, earns Joseph his blood to fool Jacob into thinking that Joseph place as a Jew: ‘From this was he worthy to had been devoured by a wild animal. be made a shepherd.’” That is, a leader of his “Ascent: The second dipping alludes to people.

T

Thus, the greatness of Yosef, as demonstrated in the biblical narrative is put on full and dignified display on the theatre’s stage for all to see and be inspired.

The local take that I wish to bring to your attention centers primarily upon the performances of three very unique people whose roles as historical personages are truly enhanced by their talents.

Below I shall briefly detail their backgrounds to help you to better appreciate their performances. Each involves not just acting, but also a strong and impressive musical component as befits a musical. What follows below are written expressions based upon these performers written take to this author, impressions that based upon my observations reflect my opinion, too.

A lead performer, playing Jacob, is Dr. See Yosef on page 21

Torah’s a ticket to freedom, for better or worse rAbbi dAvid etenGoff

O

ne of the many well-known pasukim found in our parasha, Ki Tisa, refers to the totally Divine nature of the first set of Luchot HaBrit: “Now the tablets were G-d’s work, and the inscription was G-d’s inscription, engraved on the tablets (charut al haluchot).”

(Shemot 31:16) Among its many intriguing aspects, our verse contains the Tanach’s sole instance of the word “charut” (engraved).

The original Hebrew words in Tanach are written without vowels — therefore, they can be pronounced in a variety of ways that differ quite significantly from the Masoretic vocalized versions found in our standard texts. On occasion, Chazal homiletically utilize one of these potential alternative readings in order to underscore a major concept or idea. Thus, in a variety of Talmudic and Midrashic passages our pasuk’s words, “charut al haluchot,” receive the following reframe: “Do not read the word ‘charut’ (engraved) as ‘charut,’ instead, read it as ‘cheirut’ (freedom).”

Therefore, rather than, “engraved on the tablets,” the reading becomes “freedom on the tablets” — in other words, the Torah is freedom.

What do Chazal mean when they say, “the To-

rAbbi Avi billet Parsha of the weeK

Rabbi Billet returns next week

rah is freedom?” I believe we can begin to answer this question by examining two terms developed

by Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) in his 1958 Inaugural Lecture at the University of Oxford. In this celebrated presentation, published under the title, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Berlin uses the terms “liberty” and “freedom” interchangeably.

“Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, the meaning of this term [freedom] is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist,” Berlin begins. Therefore, in order to address the amorphous nature of the terms, “liberty” and “freedom,” he identifies and defines two categories of freedom, namely, negative and positive freedom.

Berlin suggests the following definition for negative freedom: “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or it may be, enslaved. … Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings.”

In stark contrast, he defines positive freedom in the following manner: “I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doerdeciding, not be decided for, self-directed and not

acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. … I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes.” ike Berlin, our Sages viewed the Torah’s concept of freedom as being comprised of both negative (freedom from) and positive aspects (freedom to). The Midrash Rabbah on Shemot (32:1 and 41:7) and Vayikra (18:3) focus on the freedom from aspect of the Torah, in the sense that it will ultimately free the Jewish people from exile (Rabbi Yehudah), the Angel of Death (Rabbi Nechemiah), the hegemony of other nations (Rabbi Nachman) and from the trials and tribulations that we face on a daily and ongoing basis (the rabbis). This eschatological vision is reminiscent of the prophet Isaiah’s magnificent prophecy and all that it entails: “And many peoples shall go, and they shall say, ‘Come, let us go up to the L-rd’s mount, to the house of the G-d of Jacob, and let Him teach us of His ways, and we will go in His paths,’ for out of Zion shall the Torah come forth, and the word of the L-rd from Jerusalem. And He shall judge between the nations and reprove many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Yeshayahu 2:3-4) In contrast to the Midrash Rabbah’s emphasis, Rabbi Yehoshuah ben Levi’s statement in Pirkei Avot 6:2 underscores the positive free-

talmud torah is the most positive of all conceivable definitions of freedom.

L

dom that is inherent in the Torah: “It says in Shemot 32:16: ‘And the tablets were the work of G-d, and the writing was the writing of G-d (charut) engraved upon the tablets.’

Do not read the [non-vocalized] word as charut (engraved), instead read it as cheirut (freedom).

[This is so] since there is no one who is truly free except for one who engages in Torah study.”

For Rabbi Yehoshuah ben Levi, the study of the words of our Creator and Chazal, His earthly representatives, is the ultimate act in which a truly free individual can engage. Why? Perhaps because by challenging ourselves to understand His Torah, we encounter Hashem. ith awe and humility we recognize the total otherness of our Creator, while simultaneously striving to comprehend His words and the thoughts and concepts they contain. Like Yaakov Avinu, we know that when we study Torah, we are entering into a place that is so holy and so filled with the Divine Presence, our innermost-beings must declare: “Mah norah hamakom hazeh” (“How awe-filled and awe-inspiring is this place”) (Bereishit 28:17).

Torah study is the ultimate act of intellectual and spiritual creativity that enables us to hear and heed the word of our Creator. Thus, Talmud Torah emerges as the most positive of all conceivable definitions of freedom. Through it, lowly man is able to rise to the highest heights.

Through Talmud Torah, we are able to actualize our true potential and enter into the grandest and most noble dialogue that is humanly possible; as such, “there is no one who is truly free except for one who engages in Torah study.”

May we be zocheh (merit) to have Hashem’s holy words of the holy Torah engraved upon our hearts, as they were upon the Luchot Habrit. Then, with G-d’s help and blessings, may we experience freedom in its most majestic sense, and finally be truly free. May this time come soon and in our days. V’chane yihi ratzon.

W

Critical moments…

Continued from page 7 were about to read the book of Esther and celebrate Purim. It’s interesting that we call the story of Purim the book of Esther, because Esther is a pretty unlikely heroine, to say the least; if there was ever a person not in control of her life, it was Esther.

At the start of the book, Esther seems to have absolutely no will of her own; in fact her name Esther comes from the Hebrew word seter, which means hidden; she is as far under the radar as you can imagine.

When the Persian King Achashverosh has the queen executed and decrees that he will inspect all the women of the land to find a new queen, all the other beautiful Jewish women go into hiding. After all, this is not simply a talent interview, this means being sequestered for six months in the king’s harem, until he has a chance to “sample the goods.” But Mordechai suggests she should sign up so she does. No argument, no debate, just “OK!” After she is crowned queen, with Mordechai watching from the sidelines, she just … disappears. Even when Haman gets the king to decree that all the Jews be murdered in a single day, Esther, who is the Jewish queen, does … nothing! And even when Mordechai tells her she has to go save the Jewish people and speak with the king, Esther’s response is basically, “Who, me?” Her plan is to do … nothing?!

And yet the next thing we know, it all turns around. Esther not only petitions the king at risk of her own life, she confronts the most powerful adviser in the realm, in the process revealing herself as a Jew, and puts everything on the line. She will then tell Mordechai what he should do (“Go and gather all the Jews…”) and subsequently suggest to the king himself: The Jews of Shushan need another day … to kill more Persians!

And she will ultimately decree to the Jewish leadership what the Jewish people should do … forever!

Luach Fri. March 17 • 19 Adar

Continued from page 2 Political leaders need to act to ensure that Europe does not isolate religious minorities and remains a diverse and open continent.”

One of the lawsuits that led to the ruling was by an employee of the Belgian branch of G4S, the London-listed outsourcing and security company. After three years at the firm she decided she wanted to start wearing a headscarf at work for religious reasons. She was fired in June 2006 for refusing to take off her scarf. The company said she had broken unwritten rules prohibiting religious symbols.

In the second case, design engineer Asma Bougnaoui was fired from a consultancy firm, Micropole, following a complaint from a customer who claimed his staff had been “embarrassed” by her headscarf while she was on their premises giving advice. Before taking the job she had been told that wearing a headscarf might pose problems for the company’s customers.

In the summer of 2016, dozens of French municipalities banned, with the backing of the French government, bathers from wearing a full-body swimsuit favored by Muslim women that is known as the burkini. While the move, which a French court ruled was unconstitutional, was opposed by many Europeans who believed it violated personal and religious freedoms, it was supported by many others who regarded the burkini and other clothing favored by Muslims as a political statement.

Marine Le Pen, the leading candidate in the presidential race in France, said she would ban all Muslim head-covering gear if she is elected. Asked whether she would do the same for the kippah, she has said that she would do so to preserve equality.

Parsha Ki Tisa • Shab. Parah Candlelighting: 6:46 pm

Havdalah: 7:47 pm

Fri. March 24 • 26 Adar

Parsha Vayakhel-Pekudei Shabbos M’varchim Candlelighting: 6:53 pm

Havdalah: 7:55 pm

Fri. March 31 • 4 Nisan Parsha Vayikra

Candlelighting: 7:01 pm

Havdalah: 8:02 pm

Fri. April 7 • 11 Nisan Parsha Tzav Shabbos HaGadol

Candlelighting: 7:08 pm

Havdalah: 8:09 pm

Mon. April 10 • 14 Nisan

Erev Pesach • First Seder Candlelighting: 7:11 pm

Tues. April 11 • 15 Nisan Second Seder

Candlelighting: 8:12 pm

Fri. April 14 • 18 Nisan Shabbos Pesach

Candlelighting: 7:15 pm

Havdalah: 8:16 pm

Five Towns times from Hebcal.com Havdalah is 42 minutes

S

o how, asked Charlie Harari, does meek, malleable Esther become the powerful queen who will change the course of history and become ensconced in Jewish lore forever? Simply put: She has a “moment.”

Mordechai comes to the front of the palace in sackcloth and sends Esther a message: “We need you! Go to the King!’ And Esther seems horrified, even embarrassed: Mordechai is a mess, so she sends him nice clothes and it is his response to her (Esther 4:14) which changes everything: “And if you will now remain silent, salvation will come to the Jewish people from some other place and you and your family will be lost; Who knows but that for this moment you have reached the Palace?!” (Esther 4:14) This, says Mordechai, is your moment, and you need to grab it. Because once it passes, it will not return. In this moment you will make your mark, you can change destiny, if you will but confront your greatest fears.

Mordechai tells her she is living a life of mediocrity, swept along by the different forces that have come her way. She needs to seize control of her life, because the Jewish people … the world … deserves better. It’s time to come out of hiding; it’s time to shine.

It is interesting that we call the book of Esther a megillah, a scroll, not a book. The word megillah also comes from the word nigleh (revealed); Purim is all about the hidden-ness becoming revealed. That’s why we unroll the whole scroll and it’s all laid out when we read it, because Purim is all about revealing the hiddenness. Hashem’s name is not mentioned in the story of Esther because we have to find G-d even though he seems to be hidden, we have to see Hashem’s hand in history though it may be hard to discern.

And lost in the culture of Persia, the Jewish people’s greatness needs to be revealed as well.

And most of all, we need to find the hidden greatness within ourselves.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.

in the Jerusalem hills near Beit Shemesh

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Continued from page 20 Stuart Rappaport, a leading Cedarhurst optometrist by day and a singer, actor, and lyricist by night. During the Jewish high holiday season he serves as the cantor at Congregation Beth Shalom of Providence Rhode Island, a position he has held for over the past quarter century.

As he tells it, he teamed up with his good friend Zvika Bornstein to put together this play that was designed ultimately to serve as a retelling of the story of Yosef that would be true to the Bible and traditional Jewish interpretation of the text and commentaries.

In essence, Stu, playing Jacob and the show’s theme is related in its plot as a flashback as Jacob tries to teach his grandchildren that the only way the Jewish people will survive is if they all “stand as one.”

It was Kulanu that wanted to bring this show to our community with its precious message of unity for all to listen to and be inspired by. And so they did.

Sruli Greenberger of Woodmere plays the role of Potiphar with humor, elegance and spirited and at times comical song. According to Sruli, this is a very personal experience for him.

“The production really tells the story of Yosef with all the important Torah narratives in an exciting and spirited manner. It has a unique modern theatrical reach while playing out to an old traditional scheme of the ‘Yosef Shpeil’ of previous generations.

“My grandfather starred in a ‘Yosef Shpeil’

Euro garb…

21 THE JEWISH STAR March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777

Yosef...

in Slovakia before the war. My father in law had a part in a ‘Yosef Shpeil’ in Montreal.”

Much of this show is enhanced by Sruli’s spirited demeanor and stage prancing that gives life and bounce to the biblically based narrative.

Music being the life of such a production is further enhanced in this play by the talents of one of its youngest performers, soon to be bar mitzvah, Shmuel Jacobs, a seventh grader at Yeshiva of South Shore.

Shmuel at his tender age is already a seasoned performer having performed in numerous concerts with his cantor father, Sholom Jacobs, and as a soloist in the famed New York Boys Choir for several years. In addition, Shmuel served as a junior cantor soloist for the high holidays at the Chabad of the Five Towns. He also accompanied in song, such great musical luminaries as Cantor Benzion Miller, and Yehuda Green.

In this play he plays the young biblical Efraim, son of Yosef. Shmuel was very much impressed with his experience with both the repertoire of the play as well as with the diversity of his fellow actors, an experience that he will forever cherish.

Also to be noted is that being a part of a production of a biblical story that young people all learn, was something that was very special to him.

A personal note, remember Shmuel Jacobs for someday he will become very famous and you will be happy that you saw him “first” here on Long Island’s Five Towns.

This weekend’s production of ‘Yosef’ is Saturday at 9:15 pm, and Sunday at 2:30 and 7 pm. For ticket information, visit YosefTheMusical.com or call 516-218-9067.

Jerusalem Bar Mitzvah: Soup kitchens and trees ing the Hineni Jerusalem soup kitchen.

“They’re feeding poor people. I love supporting what they’re doing there.”

In fact, among the topics Lavi studied leading up to the bar mitzvah with his father, Rabbi Jeremy Gimpel, were the Jewish laws governing agriculture in Israel and tzedakah (charity).

Hineni Jerusalem, a mostly volunteer-run “humanitarian restaurant” (a term manager Benjamin Philip prefers over “soup kitchen”) serves lunch to some 250 people Sunday through Thursday. It’s a feat made possible by donors from near and far as well as the diners who are able to pay—often far more than the suggested 18-shekel (about $5) donation. Now, for the first time, a family

like the Gimpels has hosted a major Jewish lifecycle event there.

For the American-born Rabbi Jeremy Gimpel with his wife Tehila, who live in the Neve Daniel settlement in the Gush Etzion region, the fact that the oldest of their five children opted to emphasize the “mitzvah” over the “bar” doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

“We’re raising our children in the spirit of the land of Israel, without TV commercials,” Rabbi Gimpel told JNS.org. “We want them to know and appreciate what a gift this land is.”

Their love of—and commitment to—the land of Israel is why the Gimpels, along with three other families, are establishing the farm in Gush Etzion’s Judean Hills. Their projected move-in date is Hanukkah 2017. The rabbi

said he envisions the farm as “a center where people can come to experience the land of Israel in a holistic and organic way through the Hebrew Bible.” That includes growing the seven species that the Torah teaches are indigenous to the land of Israel, and holding seminars on everything from Jewish learning and tradition to Jewish prayer and parenting.

Bar mitzvah boy Lavi’s choices also didn’t shock his aunt, Avigail Gimpel.

“He’s a smart kid with a firm belief system, and he knew he wanted something simple and something that helped others,” she said.

Indeed, bar/bat mitzvahs provide youngsters with the opportunity to explore and strengthen their emerging values, and to make choices that reflect those values.

“At a bar mitzvah, you see them and their values beginning to mature. It’s a time of saying goodbye to the boy and welcoming the young man,” said Rabbi Gimpel, a teacher as well as the co-founder of thelandofisrael.com, an English-language broadcast network based in Jerusalem.

One way that Lavi expressed his values was through a crowd-funding campaign on the Indiegogo online platform. Asking $20 for one tree all the way up to $500 for an orchard of 25 trees, he has so far raised $11,000 toward his $20,000 goal, and has gotten 25,000 hits on a YouTube video for which he wrote the script himself.

“I believe we need to see it as a transitional time, a bar mitzvah season,” Rabbi Gimpel said.

Along Lavi’s journey to the Jewish rite of passage, the father-son tandem enjoyed the highlight of receiving tickets for and jointly attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

“It was an experience that fused [Lavi’s] passion for international politics with our values of being involved in events that will impact Israel, along with the entire world,” the father said.

When her son read the Ten Commandments from his Torah portion, Yitro, it struck Tehila Gimpel, who practices and teaches law, that there is a message in the commandments for parents and children alike.

“Even though we received them together as an entire people, the 10 commandments are actually worded in the singular,” she said. “God is talking to each one of us as an individual, and giving each of us a path to find Him. Lavi had to have the kind of bar mitzvah that was meaningful for him.”

“Something has changed about him in the days since his bar mitzvah,” added the mother. “His posture has changed. He stands more like a man.”

But does Lavi himself believe he has changed?

“Maybe a little,” he acknowledged. “I guess I do feel a little different. But it’s too soon to know exactly how. I guess one thing I learned is that, even though it’s hard to be a Jew—all the mitzvahs and stuff you have to do—it’s also cool because the mitzvahs are awesome…they’re not easy, but they’re good.”

Super SpecialS This week on pages 12 and 13

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By Deborah Fineblum, JNS.org At his bar mitzvah celebration, Lavi Gimpel’s great-grandmother handed him a check that she said was “enough for seven trees.”

“One for each member of your family.

When I come to the farm someday, I want you to show each tree to me,” said the greatgrandmother, Chaya Wexler.

Trees, of course, are not a typical bar mitzvah gift. Not only did Lavi ask his guests—and a bunch of crowd-funders, too—to help him populate the farm his family is establishing in the Judean Hills with trees, but he also chose to have his Feb. 19 bar mitzvah party at a soup kitchen in downtown Jerusalem.

“The place is awesome,” Lavi said regard-

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including Palestinians, or none. There’s just no way around it,” Sarsour said.

Sarsour also said that Palestinian-American women in social justice movements cannot be as visible as other women because they are the target of unspecified attacks from “right-wing Zionists.”

“The fact of the matter is that there are hundreds of Palestinian women organizing, but not all of them are visible. And I’ll tell you why,” Sarsour said. “You’ve probably seen that any visible Palestinian-American woman who is at the forefront of any social-justice movement is an immediate target of the right wing and rightwing Zionists. They will go to any extreme to criminalize us and to engage in alternative facts, to sew together a narrative that does not exist.”

Sarsour was responding directly to criticism of the platform’s statement on Israel by Emily Shire, the politics editor of the women’s news site Bustle. Shire wrote about her dilemma as a Zionist feminist in a New York Times op-ed published March 7.

“I find it troubling that embracing such a view is considered an essential part of an event that is supposed to unite feminists,” she wrote. “I am happy to debate Middle East politics or listen to critiques of Israeli policies. But why should criticism of Israel be key to feminism in 2017?”

Shire also criticized the strike for the involvement of Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian woman convicted and sentenced by an Israeli military court in 1970 to life in prison for her role in two bombing attacks, including one in 1969 that killed two Israelis. Odeh was among

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By Josefin Dolsten, JTA Liberal American Jews, many of whom are involved in causes for gender and racial justice, have recently found themselves alienated by those movements’ stances on Israel.

That conflict was seen last year when a platform associated with the Black Lives Matter movement accused Israel of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians and called it an “apartheid state.” The platform drew ire from Jewish groups that had previously expressed support for BLM’s goals of racial justice.

Now the same conflict is playing out with feminist groups whose cause has gained steam since the election of President Donald Trump.

A platform for the U.S. affiliate of the International Women’s Strike — a grassroots feminist movement that organized events around the world last Wednesday — calls “for the decolonization of Palestine.”

Responding Monday to critics of the Palestine plank in a platform devoted to women’s rights, Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, an organizer of January’s Women’s March on Washington who also helped plan the Women’s Strike, came forth with a harsh message: feminism and Zionism simply don’t go together.

In an interview with The Nation, Sarsour said those who identify as Zionist cannot be feminist because they are ignoring the rights of Palestinian women.

“It just doesn’t make any sense for someone to say, ‘Is there room for people who support the state of Israel and do not criticize it in the movement?’ There can’t be in feminism. You either stand up for the rights of all women,

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Israel-hating B’klyn Palestinian firebrand rips Jewish feminists

the eight authors of an op-ed in the Guardian announcing the movement. She confessed to planting the bomb, though in recent years has claimed that the confession was given under torture, which is disputed by Israeli officials.

“While the fairness of Ms. Odeh’s conviction is debated, the fact that she was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was categorized as a terrorist organization by the State Department, is not,” Shire wrote.

Following vandalism of a Jewish cemetery outside St. Louis, Sarsour and another Muslim activist, Tarek El-Messidi, organized a fundraiser for the repair of the burial site.

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To highlight these efforts, we are pleased to provide the Kosher Pantry/Respite Room cosponsored by South Nassau and Achiezer.

This room offers a quiet haven for patients to relax, rejuvenate and enjoy a variety of kosher amenities provided exclusively for their use.

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nearby (walkable within the Eruv), we can always help meet your spiritual and medical needs.

South Nassau also offers a convenient Shabbos elevator, and comfortable overnight accommodations are available year-round at our kosher Shabbat Hospitality House, which is complete with beds, linen, durable kosher food items and a refrigerator. Electric Sabbath candles are available. Access to the Shabbat Hospitality House is arranged through South Nassau’s Spiritual Care Program.

When you find yourself in our hospital, visit the new Respite Room located on the Ground Floor G Wing adjacent to the Volunteer Office, and see for yourself why more and more Jewish families throughout the area are choosing South Nassau.

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ter. Compassionate clowns from Lev Leytzan joined in, manning a photo booth along with comical props, allowing guests to get into the spirit and clown around.

Casino tables were set up by New York Fun Factory with winnings given in raffle tickets – ensuring that the focus would be on the fun and simultaneously supporting the long list of generous businesses that donated luxurious goods and services as prizes to benefit Lev Leytzan. Malka DJ Entertainment kept the party flowing throughout the night with DJ Mario as a superb master of ceremonies.

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Couture for a Cause’s latest benefit was a sell-out fundraiser to benefit Lev Leytzan, the organization with Five Towns roots that brings compassionate clowning to the sick and elderly.

The untimely passing of the father of Couture for a Cause co-founder Esther Silber-Berg the previous day rocked the organization and might well have put the event on hold.

As a beloved pillar of the Jewish communSilber-Berg had dedicated her work for CFAC to her father, Chaim “Lobo” Silber, and credited him for her lifelong passion for charity. As she knew that the cause was bigger than the celebration, Silber-Berg insisted that the show must go on, and it did — dedicated to her father’s memory.

After a dedication by CFAC co-founder Michal Weinstein, guests viewed a short video about Lev Leytzan that offered a glimpse of work done by the organization founded by Dr. Neal Goldberg and its troupe of medical clowns specially trained to bring joy to those most in need.

Actor and comedian Elon Gold kept the crowd in stitches as he kept his promise to stay mostly kosher for “his people.” Joking about the unique Jewish culture, holidays and customs, his appearance couldn’t have been better suited to the cause and certainly provided a much needed opportunity for levity.

With a crowd of 350 in attendance, including Nassau County Legislator Howard Kopel, Temple Beth El in Cedarhurst flawlessly transformed to accommodate the comedy and casino theme and set the stage for the festive fundraising.

The joy of the pre-Purim season filled the atmosphere with eating, drinking and laugh-

25

March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

26

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Here’s the dope on No. Korea, king of the rogues Ben Cohen Viewpoint

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he prospect of all-out conflict between the U.S. and the North Korean regime has loomed large over the last fortnight, as a consequence of the latest round of provocations from Pyongyang.

It’s always a competition between the world’s rogue states as to which one of them can pose the greatest threat to global peace and order at any given moment. Since 2011, the Bashar alAssad regime in Syria, backed by Russian and Iranian military power in the air and on the ground, has wreaked havoc in the Middle East, annihilating around 500,000 people and transforming millions more into an endless column of refugees streaming across the country’s borders. Iran, Assad’s lifeline, is itself a persistent and urgent threat, temporarily held in check by the flimsy nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, which in its most generous interpretation allows the conditions for Tehran to weaponize its nuclear program within a decade.

But it is on the Korean peninsula, that the most present threat to the U.S. and its regional allies manifests. How we deal now with an angry, nuclear-enabled North Korean regime, and whether we

can avoid a perilous confrontation with it, will be decisive when it comes to facing similar flashes of belligerence from Tehran or Damascus.

It was the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of Kim Jong Un, at Kuala Lumpur Airport on Feb. 13 that set off this new series of tensions with North Korea. The manner of the elder Kim’s death—sprayed with a VX nerve agent by two women who appear to have been unwittingly recruited by North Korean agents—was an act of pure terrorism, and one more piece of evidence that North Korea’s current dictator, like his father and grandfather before him, has only contempt for the sovereignty of foreign countries.

The grisly murder in Kuala Lumpur was quickly followed by the launch of four ballistic missiles, three of which landed in Japan’s exclusive economic area 200 miles from its coastline. Fifty-four thousand American troops remain stationed in Japan—one of several reasons why Kim is aggressively baiting his neighbor across the sea.

As the crisis has escalated, China, which supposedly wields the greatest outside influence on the North Koreans, has been powerless to rein in Kim Jong Un. We are duty-bound to do everything in our power to bring down the Kim dynasty, and we should apologize to nobody for declaring this our ambition. he best visual illustration of the nature of Kim’s regime can be found in a satellite image of the Korean peninsula at night. South Korea sparkles brightly, while North Korea is

T

shrouded in darkness—save for a small glimmer around Pyongyang, the capital, where the officials of the ruling party are quartered.

To look upon that image is to be reminded that North Korea isn’t a normal country so much as it is a concentration camp with a seat at the U.N. Indeed, large tracts of the country to the north of Pyongyang are given over to North Korea’s very own gulag system—penal colonies where up to 150,000 people are incarcerated, and are subjected to forced labor, starvation rations, harsh beatings, rape, torture, exposure to extreme weather, disease and repulsive acts of sadism by guards who could just as easily have served in the death camps of the Nazis.

As is always the case with totalitarian states, there is a ruling ideology that glorifies the fusion of war communism and medieval bloodlust that North Korea represents. In Iran, they call it “velayat-e faqih”—the concept that only Islamic jurists can legitimately rule on Earth. In North Korea, the total concentration of power in the Kim dynasty is expressed in the doctrines of “juche,” meaning self-reliance, and “songun,” putting the military first in terms of resource allocation and placing the armed forces at the heart of the state.

These dogmas scorn those things—like family ties, friendship and independent thought—that give value to the lives of Westerners. In North Korea, fear dressed as ideology penetrates so deeply that parents cannot trust their own children, while children know that the state can seize them

from their parents at any time, for any reason.

For all its talk of socialism, North Korea functions like an unopposed hereditary monarchy, much as Iraq did under Saddam Hussein, and as Syria has done under Hafez and Bashar al-Assad.

Like those countries, North Korea has pursued weapons of mass destruction on the biological and nuclear fronts—only with the success that eluded Saddam and the Assads, and for which Iran eagerly awaits.

The old policy on North Korea, which involved alternately dangling tempting rewards in front of the Kims and then hitting the regime with tough sanctions, has failed to slow North Korea’s military development. The songun doctrine suggests that Kim Jong Un’s sacred duty now is to accelerate that process even further. As Korea analyst Robert E. McCoy explains, “The ultimate goal remains one Korea ruled by the Kim Dynasty. What remains unknown is how and when Kim Jong Un would attempt to achieve that.”

The answer may lie in the speed with which Kim develops intercontinental ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads toward Hawaii or the U.S. mainland. When and how we prevent him from reaching that point could turn out to be the most fateful foreign policy decision since October 1962, when U.S. aerial photographs revealed the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba. And nobody will be cheering on the North Koreans more than Iran.

Ben Cohen is senior editor of TheTower.org

Trump’s wrong: I’m not sick and tired of winning Jeff Dunetz politics to go

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resident Trump said it over and over: The country is going to win so much that we are going to be sick and tired of winning.

Last week, America received two positive jobs reports, one from ADP, the other from the Department of Labor. In between, there was a report from the Department of Homeland Security indicating that illegal immigration was way down. I know that it’s been less than two months since the inauguration and only four months since the election, but so much good has happened in that short time and I don’t even have a twinge of being sick and tired of all of the winning. What President Trump has gotten done in two months — despite the fact that Senator Chuck Schumer has denied him a full cabinet — is astounding.

The winning started before he was inaugu-

rated, during the transition period when the president announced that about 1,000 Carrier jobs would stay in the Indiana. More corporations have followed, the latest last Monday with Exxon revealing its Growing the Gulf program, a $20 billion investment over 10 years that would create 45,000 jobs in the gulf region.

It is too early for any of those announcements to have had an effect on the job market, but the job market is growing anyway.

A labor-market survey on Wednesday provided the latest signal that job growth is strengthening along with business confidence. Payroll processor ADP said businesses added 298,000 private-sector jobs in February, significantly above the 189,000 forecast. The ADP numbers reflect non-farm private sector jobs.

On Friday, the Department of Labor released its job numbers for February, reporting that an impressive 235,000 jobs were added in January.

President Trump can’t take credit for the entire increase, but the promised positive business climate undoubtedly helped.

Strong March numbers would indicate that

the president’s plans for fixing the economy is improving the economy even before the bulk of it is implemented. ot all of last week’s new was good thanks to WikiLeaks. A few weeks ago, my TV died and we replaced it with a Samsung “smart” TV. The picture happens to be great.

But the latest leak from Julian Assange said the CIA had learned how to hack into Samsung TVs had me wondering if when I’m staring at my brand new TV, the TV was staring back. Then early Thursday there was more good news, with the Department of Homeland Security reporting that 23,589 people were caught trying to enter the country illegally in February — the lowest number for February in years and a 40 percent drop from the 42,504 caught in January.

DHS Secretary Kelly attributed the drop to the switch from lax enforcement of immigration laws under President Obama to the imposition of tougher consequences for illegal immigrants under Trump, who has untied the hands of border agents.

“The early results show that enforcement

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matters, deterrence matters, and that comprehensive immigration enforcement can make an impact,” he said.

The number of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children caught by the Border Patrol fell below 2,000, while the number of people traveling as families was just 3,124. In January, that number had been 9,300, and in December, it had been more than 16,000.

Drats! More winning. And I don’t feel sick of it, not even a twinge. What is wrong with me? I’m very happy that the president is doing what he promised and he is getting the results I thought he would get when I cast my vote for him. s the week was wrapping up, Fox broadcast the news that Samsung is going to move manufacturing of some home appliances from Mexico to the U.S., resulting in another 500 Americans being employed. Even more winning from the Trump administration.

Not only is there a feeling of happiness among businesses under President Trump there is more winning. And I fully expect the winning will continue as long as he is in the Oval Office.

A

Currently, the department — shaped like a dumbbell, according to Kugler — lacks a line of sight between its two ends, which disrupts the staff’s ability “to see and feel what is going on in real time.” A machine room, which houses utilities integral to hospital operations, sits in the middle, which makes it harder to “line balance,” he added, or distribute the hospital’s resources — in an instant — to patients in need and changing situations.

Kugler elaborated on the term, comparing it to actions taken by Starbucks staff as a line of caffeine-seeking customers grows too long.

“If the coffee maker is slow, they slide the person over and they make a second coffee maker,” Kugler said. “If the cashier is slow, they put a second cashier in there. It happens

almost in the blink of an eye; that’s called line balancing. It balances it out so that they can get the end result accomplished. [Emergency departments] work the same way.”

Ten beds, separate from the 14 intensive care beds, should be completed in May to kick off the expansion, officials said. The hospital has also begun clearing the 2500-square-foot machine room — to be repurposed as clinical space — by moving the air conditioning, heating systems and other equipment to other areas, according to Andrew Triolo, assistant vice president of design, development and construction.

Hospital officials said the emergency department’s design is still being finalized, and though work will be done in phases to ensure smooth and consistent service during

the construction, the number and details of the phases are unknown at this time.

“With an emergency department, you can’t shut it down,” Calderone said. “We’re obviously open 24/7 and we provide a critical service to the South Shore of Nassau County, so the tricky part is to do renovations while you’re still open for business.”

The medical arts pavilion in Long Beach, along with the southwest addition, which still needs to go through the state’s environmental review process, are projected to be complete by 2020.

“It’s not just a matter of having a box to see everybody in,” Kugler said. “It’s a matter of having a box that’s commachine passionate and commensurate with what the patient needs.”

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By Ben Strack Walking from South Nassau Communities Hospital’s busy parking lot to its main entrance, visitors pass trees and shrubbery lining an inviting path to a lobby with polished floors, snug couches and floor-to-ceiling windows. It is a pleasant way in to one of the region’s largest health care providers, but many more enter from the opposite side.

Seventy percent of all admitted patients pass through the emergency department, according to Dr. Joshua Kugler, chairman of South Nassau’s Department of Emergency Medicine since 2004. The E.D. — last renovated in 2003 — was originally built for 35,000 annual patients, and now sees nearly 70,000 patients per year, he said. South Nassau has taken the first steps of its $60 million expansion project to better handle the influx of South Shore residents in need of care.

Kugler attributed the patient increase to the hospital’s growth in services. The 455-bed facility has more than 900 physicians, and provides care in oncologic, orthopedic, bariatric, pain management, mental health and emergency services. It is also a designated stroke center, an advanced cardiac center and the only Level II Trauma Center in southern Nassau County.

“What one person perceives as a problem, another person perceives as an opportunity,” Kugler said of the department handling more patients than initially built for. “I would say that this has been a great opportunity to have the trust of the communities in this organization.”

South Nassau Communities Hospital received around $170 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds after Hurricane Sandy severely damaged Long Beach Medical Center, which the hospital bought out of bankruptcy in 2014. Though $40 million is slated for a new medical arts pavilion in Long Beach, the other $130 million will go toward a four-story southwest addition to the Oceanside campus for new surgical suites and 14 more intensive-care beds.

Using a majority of the funds in Oceanside, which was protested by many Long Beach residents since last year, was allowed under “alternative use” legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer after Sandy.

“The improvements that we make in Oceanside benefit Long Beach and benefit all the South Shore communities,” said Joe Calderone, South Nassau’s senior vice president for communications and development, who said the hospital serves patients from Queens to Suffolk County.

Though parts of the emergency department’s expansion are included in the southwest addition project, much of the $60 million to bolster the ED’s size from 16,000 to 30,000 square feet is self-funded, according to hospital officials.

South Nassau, in the third year of its fiveyear campaign to garner $10 million of the total cost of the expansion through fundraising, has raised nearly $5.6 million. The hospital had its Casino Royale event on March 9, which last year netted more than $140,000 for the project, and will host a golf tournament on June 12.

The project is expected to implement bedside registration, larger and improved waiting areas, and establish dedicated treatment areas for behavioral health, pediatrics and geriatrics.

The spaces will increase patient privacy and allow staff to better group patients based on their specific needs. The department is expected to accommodate roughly 80,000 patient visits per year once adding space and increases its number of beds from 35 to 60. But Kugler said quality of care is as important as quantity.

“Someone’s heart may have stopped,” he said.

“That person is as important to me as the person who has a broken arm. They both are in acute need. They don’t know what the other person has. We have to meet those needs, and we have to meet them at the level that they deserve. We need to meet them compassionately.”

THE JEWISH STAR March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777

South Nassau expands its emergency department

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who’s in the kitchen Judy’s off this week (getting ready for Pesach?), so we’re reprinting a favorite from 2012. esach! Ahhhh ‌ so many memories. I loved helping my mom clean the house, line the cabinets with shelving paper and the counters with contact paper (I’ll have you know there was not one air bubble left on the contact paper when I was finished with it!).

I helped put away the chametz dishes and unloaded the Passover ones into the cabinets.

I helped her shop, cook, bake and set the table for the seders. I can still remember the excitement of buying new shoes and outfits just for Pesach. Seems that my daughter Jordana inherited my excitement for buying the shoes

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and outfits, but the love of cleaning, cooking and baking seems to have skipped a generation.

If I loved helping my mom when I was younger, why is it that I find it a chore now?

I promise myself every year that this year I’m going to make it simpler. I try to remind myself that half of what I buy I end up throwing out after the holiday.

Yet, when I’m in the store I can’t help but think that I actually might need a kosher for Passover product that I wouldn’t even dream of using as a not kosher for Passover version during the year. There should be a dayenu song version for the women.

If we just had to clean out the cabinets, dayenu (it would have been sufficient).

If we just had to torch our ovens and stove tops, dayenu.

If we just had to kosher or cover our counters and sinks, dayenu.

If we just had to prepare two Seders and countless five-course yom tov meals, dayenu.

Things seemed so much simpler when I was a kid. There weren’t hundreds of food choices as we have today. We ate matzo with jelly, butter or cream cheese. We had cottage cheese, gefilte fish, tuna fish, matzo brei and just about anything you can possibly do with eggs or potatoes. We had homemade noodles that were actually omelets cut into strips, chicken soup, chicken and roasts. We had chocolate, potato chips, marshmallows and those half moon slices of jelly candy sprinkled with sugar.

Today, you can buy cold cereal of your choice, Passover Farina and oatmeal, pizza, rolls, sushi, noodles, lasagna, cake mixes, any

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Ingredients: 6 -8 matzos 24 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese 1 lb of fresh mushrooms lightly sautĂŠed in cooking spray 1 1/2 jars pasta sauce (I use Gefenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s marinara sauce) 1 cup sautĂŠed onions, drained Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F Spray a 9 x 13 oven proo sf dish with nonstick spray.

Pour about a cup of the marinara sauce on the bottom of the dish.

Place 1 1/2 pieces of matzos (or enough to fit your dish) in the sauce and add a bit more sauce so that the matzos are covered in sauce.

Spoon 1/4 of the sauteed onions and mushrooms over the matzos.

Sprinkle 1/4 of the shredded mozzarella cheese onto the mushroom onion layer.

Repeat the steps above till all the ingredients are used up. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for about 45 minutes or until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbly. This dish can be frozen and put directly into the oven. It will just require extra time to heat through.

To those of you not cooking and flying off to Florida, Arizona, Israel, Mexico, Las Vegas, or any other exotic location, or those setting sail on a cruise, seriously, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m happy for you, just try not to lament how difficult it is to pack; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind of hard for me to commiserate with you.

Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to all our wonderful memories of past Seders shared with family and friends and to the new memories weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still fortunate to make.

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type of flavored potato chip, pizza wheels, falafel bits and even licorice. ll right, so youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve, shopped, baked, cooked and set the table for the Seder.

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve dug into corners of the house you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know existed; youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve cleaned out, given away, sold or thrown out all the chametz in your house.

Or so you think. Better take one more look.

And, in Jewish tradition, this is where you get out your hunting-for-chametz tools: Your feather, candle, spoon and hopefully some little kids, because this is supposed to be fun for them.

At this point itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crunch time. Chametz is burned in the morning, last minute preparations and cooking take place, and before you know it, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re sitting at the Seder with family and friends.

Men are leaning on their cushy pillows and when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to wash the women bring them the washing cup and bowl so that they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to stand to wash.

OK, whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wrong with this picture? At this point we have scrubbed, koshered, peeled, grated, shopped, cooked and cleaned. Our hands are chapped, our eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and our feet barely able to hold us up â&#x20AC;&#x201D; so why are you leaning and we are bringing you the washing cup? Was it too taxing on you to burn the chametz, go to shul and don your kittel?

Since we will have been working so hard leading up to Pesach, I thought I would share an easy delicious recipe for matzo lasagna.

My eldest, Daniel, insists that I make it for him when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not Pesach. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s convinced it tastes better than the real version.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Never before in the history of the Jewish people have thousands of women joined together week after week to light Shabbos candles, pray for each other, and give charity as a distinct group. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky

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March 17, 2017 â&#x20AC;˘ 19 Adar, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

With Pesach coming, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home for the holidays

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Transition to observance

THE JEWISH STAR March 17, 2017 • 19 Adar, 5777

Effie: What’s his name?

Zack: Rabbi Wenglin. He’s actually from Scarsdale. He went to Harvard and became a Baal Teshuva.

Effie: What do you love most about being religious?

Zack: That’s a hard question, it’s all great!

Mainly, the family, commitment, and discipline that pulled me in. I’m amazed by frum Jews, just amazed.

Effie: Do you feel more at home in Israel as opposed to if you’d been in the NBA? Zack: Culturally and religiously, definitely.

Effie: Which former or current NBA players do you see yourself play like?

Zack: Steve Nash was my hero. I watched him a lot and tried to mimic his playstyle.

The interview team is pictured at right.

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Continued from page 17 Itai: How was Danny Hurley as a Coach?

Zack: He can get the most out of people and push the right buttons. I would find it hard to believe that anyone coaching works harder than him. (Danny Hurley led the University of Rhode Island back to the NCAA Tournament this year) Iai: Which future NBA players did you play with on that team?

Zack: Tristan Thompson. Samardo Samuels was our best player, he played for the Cavaliers also. Lance Thomas, who played for the Knicks, was not on that team but in the gym.

Jakey Srulovich: How did you handle being Jewish on a Division I basketball team, and how did people look at you differently on and off the court?

Zack: I wasn’t in touch with the fact that I was Jewish until senior year when I really started questioning things about my life.

Jakey: What other offers did you get from college programs around the country?

Zack: I had around 15 or 20 scholarship offers.

Jakey: Are you in touch with any of your teammates from Penn?

Zack: We were in touch, but being in Israel makes it harder.

Jakey: Who is the best player you played against in your college days?

Zack: Probably Ty Lawson or Brandon Knight.

Jakey: At Penn you were a three time captain, the first ever in Penn history. What advice do you have for young athletes like me about how to be a leader?

Zack: I’d say one of the most important things I learned in my career is that you don’t need to be the guy with the most ability to be a leader. There are many different types of leaders, and my advice to you is to figure out who you are and what type of leader you are.

Jacob Korman: What was your reaction to going undrafted?

Zack: At first, I didn’t expect it. By the start of senior year, I started playing out of my mind.

By draft time I firmly believed that with the class that was in there I could’ve gotten drafted.

Jacob: What did you experience from the Summer League?

Zack: A rude awakening of how much I needed to know basketball on the professional level. I had an amazing training camp with the Seventy Sixers. I got the opportunity to play, but I didn’t play as well as I could’ve.

Jakey: You played for three professional teams in Israel, which one was your favorite and why?

Zack: Ashdod was my favorite, I loved everything about it. My first year was rough- I had a great coach, but I didn’t know how to relate to him, but I learned a crazy amount.

Jakey: You vs. Steph Curry in a three point shoot-out, who do I put my money one?

Zack: I could possibly make about 80 or so.

He’s probably the best shooter of all time. To put my name in would be unfair to him.

Gavriel Haviv: I was told that the General Manager of the Orlando Magic said that he was going to draft you. Can you expand on that?

Zack: Well, the Magic really liked me, they were saying they were going to take me in the second round, and two weeks before the draft, he got fired.

Gavriel: You won two consecutive three point contests in Israel, who taught you your three point shot?

Zack: It was really self-taught, but my father gets credit because he rebounded for me.

Gavriel: Where in Israel do you live? What do you do for a living?

Zack: I live in Yerushalayim; I’m actually getting married in three weeks. I saved a lot of my money from playing, and I come back to America in the summer, and do camps, and speak. That takes pretty good care of me for now. I’m learning in Yeshivas Ohr Someyach currently.

Effie Klein: In sports, you have the defining play of the game. What exactly was your “defining play” in life that made you become religious?

Zack: There was a Rabbi who walked into the Hillel. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life, and we spoke for the next hour. I was very intrigued by what he said, and 6 years later, he was the one who set me up with my wife.

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Iranian FM rips Bibi over history of Purim

By JTA Iran’s foreign minister accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “fake history” for saying that Iran sought the annihilation of the Jews, just as had ancient Persia in the Purim story.

“To sell bigoted lies against a nation which has saved Jews 3 times, Netanyahu resorting to fake history & falsifying Torah. Force of habit,” Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted.

On Saturday, Netanyahu visited an Israeli synagogue, where he told children celebrating Purim that Iran seeks to kill the Jews just as the Persians did.

In an image attached to his tweet, Zarif wrote: “Once again, Benjamin Netanyahu not only distorts the realities of today, but also distorts the past — including Jewish scripture.

It is truly regrettable that bigotry gets to the point of making allegations against an entire nation which has saved the Jews three times in its history.

“The Book of Esther tells of how Xerxes I saved Jews from a plot hatched by Haman the Agagite, which is marked on this very day,” he wrote, referring to the Persian king known in the Purim story as Ahasuerus.

Jews see Queen Esther as the heroine of Purim for dissuading Ahasuerus from killing all the Jews in the kingdom, as his viceroy Haman initially convinced him to do.

Zarif also credited Cyrus the Great, who he called an “Iranian king,” with saving the Jews during their exile in Babylon and Iran with “gladly” accepting Jews who “were being slaughtered in Europe” during World War II. Iran has often been accused of denying the Holocaust.

Earlier Sunday, the speaker of Iran’s parliament said “apparently, [Netanyahu] is neither acquainted with history, nor has read the Torah,” according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. Netanyahu “has distorted the Iranians’ pre-Islam historical era and attempted to misrepresent events. Of course, nothing more than presenting such lies is expected from a wicked Zionist.”

In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday in Moscow, Netanyahu said Iran sought to “destroy the state of the Jews” in the same way ancient Persia had plotted to “destroy the Jewish people.” But Putin rejected the parallel, saying the story of Purim occurred “in the fifth century BCE” and suggesting they discuss the “different world” of today.

7 JCC threats … on Purim At least seven Jewish community centers in the United States and Canada received bomb threats while they were hosting Purim events.

Most of the JCCs were evacuated and searched. None of the threats turned out to be credible.

For some of the centers it was their second threat in the past week.

The threats are part of a wave that has hit JCCs, Jewish schools and other Jewish institutions since the start of 2017. More than 150 threats have been received since the beginning of the year, according to the Secure Community Network, which coordinates security across Jewish organizations in North America.

On Sunday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the State Police to launch a more intense investigation into the threats, and to work with federal and local law enforcement on the investigation.

“As New Yorkers, we will not be intimidated and we will not stand by silently as some seek to sow hate and division,” he said. “New York is one family, and an attack on one is an attack on all.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said he plans to provide additional law enforcement intelligence and staffing to the JCC in Milwaukee so it “continues to be a safe place” after it was evacuated Sunday for the fourth time in six weeks.

Greenblatt’s all ears Jason Greenblatt, President Trump’s adviser on international relations, is touring Israel and the Palestinian areas to gauge attitudes to peacemaking and there will likely not be any developments from the trip, a Trump administration spokesman said.

“He’s really there to listen to both sides and how they perceive getting to a peace process,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner.

“I don’t expect any big developments out of this trip.”

On Friday, Trump spoke on the phone with Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, and the White House readout of the call sounded bullish on the prospects for peace.

Trump on the call invited Abbas to the White House, one month after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

During that visit, Netanyahu appeared to be taken aback by a request from Trump to stop settlement expansion for now. Settlement building was a key point of tension between Netanyahu and former President Obama.

Toner said settlements would be discussed during the trip, but also cautioned against any expecting any pronouncements.

Chelsea Clinton rips King Chelsea Clinton cited the lessons of Purim to chastise Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King after King said that restoring Western civilization could not be done “with somebody else’s babies.”

“Clearly the congressman does not view all our children as, well, all our children,” Clinton said Sunday in a tweet. “Particularly ironic & painful on Purim.” Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky, is Jewish.King in his tweet praised Geert Wilders, the anti-Islam Dutch lawmaker whose party is among those competing in elections this week in the Netherlands.

“Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny,” he said. “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

In an appearance on CNN on Monday, King would not say whether he believed Muslims were “equals,” but defended the tweet from charges that it was racist.

“It’s the culture, not the blood,” King said.

“And if you can go anywhere in the world and adopt these little babies and put them into households that were already assimilated into America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby with as much patriotism and as much love of country as any other baby.

It’s not about race.”

Dutch Muslims shout Dutch Muslims shouted anti-Semitic slogans amid violent clashes with police in Rotterdam over authorities’ refusal to allow a Turkish Cabinet minister to campaign in Holland for a Turkey referendum vote.

Dozens of protesters gathered Saturday night in front of the Turkish consulate in the Dutch city to listen to Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya. Upon receiving a false rumor that she had been arrested, the crowd began roaring “cancer Jews” and “cancer Wilders” shortly before the outbreak of violence that led to the injury of five people, including one policeman, the Algemeen Dagblan reported.

Kaya came to the Netherlands to campaign among Turks living in Europe to vote yes on a referendum next month that would greatly expand the powers of the country’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Touro shul back in court Ownership of the country’s oldest synagogue and its valuable religious and ritual objects is being decided by a federal appeals court.

The hearing of the case by a three-judge

briefs panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is the latest development in a closely watched legal battle pitting New York City’s Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the nation, against Congregation Jeshuat Israel, located in Newport, Rhode Island.

At stake is control of Newport’s 250-yearold Touro Synagogue, the religious home of Congregation Jeshuat Israel and a pair of historically significant silver bells that are used to adorn Torah scrolls. The bells, called rimonim, are late 18th century filials handcrafted by Myer Myers, one of the most prominent silversmiths of the Colonial era. The rimonim are valued at $7.4 million.

The panel heard arguments last week in an appeal filed by Shearith Israel challenging a lower court ruling that held the Manhattan congregation is not the rightful owner of the synagogue.

Shearith Israel has served as trustee of the Touro Synagogue dating back to the early 19th century.

Shoah graffiti in Seattle “The Holocaust is fake history!” was found spray-painted on the wall of the Temple de Hirsch Sinai synagogue in Seattle last Friday.

“There were two things we felt: shock and sadness, and resistance,” Daniel Weiner, the synagogue’s senior rabbi, told NBC News. “We were shocked that this had reached our own community and that such things, such stereotypes had become frequent. But we are also adamant to not give in to the intolerance and growing climate of hate in Seattle and our nation, and will resist.”

With more than 1,500 member families, the synagogue, founded in 1889, is one of the largest in the Pacific Northwest.

Fight hate thru Silicon Val The Anti-Defamation League will build a Silicon Valley “command center” to combat online hate speech and harassment, the group’s CEO announced.

Jonathan Greenblatt made the announcement Sunday at the South by Southwest music and media festival in Austin, Texas. He said the ADL secured seed funding for the project from Omidyar Network, a self-styled “philanthropic investment firm” started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

“Now more than ever as anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other hatreds have exploded online, it’s critical that we are bringing best-in-class technology and resources to this fight,” Greenblatt said.

Brittan Heller, a lawyer who joined the ADL last year, is to serve as the founding director of the new center. She investigated and prosecuted cyber crime and human rights violations at the U.S. Department of Justice and the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

French party: Sorry Francois Fillon’s conservative political party apologized for tweeting an apparently antiSemitic caricature of rival presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.

The Republican Party’s apology on Sunday came a day after Fillon slammed the image as “unacceptable.” He said he understood the outrage it had caused “because it evoked the images of a dark period of our history and exploited an ideology that I have always fought against.”

“Politics is tough but it must remain dignified. I will not tolerate my party using caricatures that use the themes of anti-Semitic propaganda,” Fillon tweeted, saying he had demanded his party chief apologize and sanction the people responsible.

The Republicans last Friday posted — and then quickly deleted — an image of the independent centrist Macron with a hooked nose, wearing a top hat and cutting a cigar with a red sickle. The image was reminiscent of antiSemitic propaganda from World War II, when France’s Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis to deport and exterminate Jews.

Macron is not Jewish, but in the past he was an investment banker at a French bank controlled by the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish family that has long donated heavily to Zionist causes and been the subject of antiSemitic conspiracy theories.

A spokesman for Macron, Benjamin Griveaux, called it “extremely worrying” that the caricature “draws on the anti-Semitic imagination.”

Intel buys Israeli Mobileye The U.S. chipmaker Intel will pay $14.7 billion to acquire the driverless technology firm Mobileye in what reportedly is the largest-ever purchase of an Israeli high-tech company.

In a joint announcement Monday, the companies said the combination “is expected to accelerate innovation for the automotive industry and position Intel as a leading technology provider in the fast-growing market for highly and fully autonomous vehicles.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu called Mobileye CEO Ziv Aviram to congratulate him, calling the deal in a tweet a source of “Israeli pride.”

“This deal proves that the vision we are leading is coming true. Israel is becoming an international technological powerhouse. Not only in regards to cyber, but in regards to vehicles as well,” Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office.

Aviram reportedly told Netanyahu that the company and its research would remain based in Israel.

Mobileye was founded in 1999 with a mission to help cut the number of injuries and fatalities caused by vehicles. It employs 600 people.

Mobileye and Intel already are collaborating with BMW on a project that will see the production of 40 self-driving test cars. They are scheduled to hit the road later this year.

The sale is expected to close in nine months, according to the companies. The boards of both companies have already approved the deal, which is subject to certain regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.

Bibi meet called ‘candid’ A delegation from the Union for Reform Judaism had a “wide-ranging and candid conversation” with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem, the group said.

The delegation, led by the URJ’s President Rick Jacobs, met with Netanyahu for an hour on Sunday. During a discussion of issues of religious pluralism in Israel, Netanyahu told the delegation that he had appointed government minister Tzachi Hanegbi, who attended the meeting, to help resolve issues between the haredi Orthodox parties and the Reform movement and other liberal groups to allow the plan for egalitarian prayer at Robinson’s Arch at the Western Wall to go forward.

Haredi effigies are hung Effigies of haredi soldiers were hung in the Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood.

One of the effigies, which were hung by their necks, had a sign reading “hardak out.”

Hardak is a derogatory term for haredi men who serve in the army.

Police removed the effigies, surrounded by jeering crowds, and turned them over for forensic examination on Monday. Ynet reported that the police have asked the state attorney to launch an investigation for incitement.

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