The Jewish Star

The

Shavuot

LIers on 5th for Israel

June 7, 2019

4 Sivan, 5779 Vol 18, No 21

JEWISH

STAR

Serving LI’s Orthodox communities

Students at SKA HS in Hewlett Bay Park joined tens of thousands of other LIers at Sunday’s Celebrate Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. More photos next week.

Steamed Rice: Dump Trump Five Towns rep says it’s time to impeach the prez Rep. Kathleen Rice, whose district includes the Orthodox Jewish communities of the Five Towns, is calling for the opening of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

Rice tweeted: “For over two years the President has systematically dismantled our democracy and defied the rule of law. This cannot stand. Congress has a moral obligation to put our politics aside and take action. We need to start impeachment proceedings.

The President is not above the law.”

After Special Counsel Mueller failed

to exonerate Trump, Rice said on Twitter that Mueller’s “hands were tied. But ours are not. Congress has full authority to hold the President accountable, and it’s past time that we exercise it.”

The New York Times reported on Monday that 56 House Democrats supported opening an impeachment inquiry, 59 either did not support it or were undecided, and 120 had not responded to the Times’ question.

In a letter to a constituent, Rice explained that Mueller’s report showed that “Trump’s actions were not just divisive, reckless and morally reprehen-

sible, they were also potentially illegal. … Mr. Mueller also made it clear that it was a long-standing Department of Justice policy — and not a lack of evidence — that prevented him from charging the president with a crime.”

While Rice may differ with many of her Five Towns constituents on impeachment, she sought this week to emphaize her pro-Israel bona fides, speaking on Shabbos at Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence.

A spokesman added that Rice supported Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Rice’s support for Israel is unequivocal: Page 21

Five Towns Rep. Kathleen Rice is one of 56 House Democrats calling for impeachment.

YU told: Donald trumps O

Joy was in the air as YU graduates celebrated their commencement in Madison Square Garden.

Ambassador to Israel David Friedman slammed the Obama administration’s treatment of Israel compared to how the Trump administration is dealing with the Jewish state, in an address to graduates of Yeshiva University last Thursday in Madison Square Garden.

Friedman, a resident of Woodsburgh, asked, “Should Israel still negotiate with the Palestinians even though Israel did not steal their land?

Of course it should, precisely

because we are not suggesting, as our predecessor [President Obama] did, that Israel return to the bargaining table as a thief returning to the scene of a crime. Precisely for that reason, there is a basis for discussion.”

“The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are not consumed by hatred nor are unwilling to live in peace,” Friedman said. “Many are well-educated, many of them want what everyone wants — peace, security, good schools, and a better and

more dignified way of life. We need to help them get there — not by perpetual handouts that create a culture of dependency and corruption.”

The ambassador said he will participate in the upcoming economic summit in Bahrain that’s part of the administration’s Mideast peace plan rollout.

U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt is a YU alum.

More on the Yeshiva University commencement: Page 23.

Rabbi at Normandy, 75 years on

In Normandy, France, site of the decisive Allied landing on D-Day that turned the tide of World War II, from left: Letters are written in a sefer Torah in the local World War II military museum; students take part in an on-scene history lesson; Rabbi Mordechai Lewin with students in the Jewish section of the military cemetery; Rabbi and Zlata Lewin and their children watch a military flyover.

Chabad.org

Chabad.org Seventy-five years ago this week, Normandy was the site of one of the largest military invasions ever staged — D-Day, June 6, 1944. It marked the turning point of World War II as 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops stormed 50 miles of fiercely defended beaches in northern France.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump was set to headline a flurry of ceremonies, presentations and memorials to mark the 75th anniversary. Planning to be there were Rabbi Mordechai and Zlata Lewin, co-directors of Chabad of Caen since 2014.

Rabbi Lewin shares what it’s like to serve as the only rabbi along the beaches soaked with blood and hallowed with bravery.

Tell us about the local Jewish community.

Normandy is a large area served by five Chabad couples, each in a different community.

My wife and I are in Caen, which is on the coast, the site of the D-Day invasion.

Historically, the Jewish community was Ashkenazi, from Alsace, birthplace of French Jewry in the Middle Ages. Most have since passed away or moved on, and the current community,

approximately 100 strong, are Sephardic immigrants from Algeria and their descendants.

There is a synagogue here with services every Shabbat. Our Chabad House serves as a center for classes, communal events, women’s programs, kosher catering and activities for kids.

We operate a small day school for children from throughout Normandy and a Gan Israel day camp, where we expect 50 children this summer.

Who else do you serve?

Caen is home to 30,000 students distributed between four public universities and 20 recognized private schools. Of course, there are Jewish students among them, and we operate a Chabad on Campus for them.

And then there are the tourists. Caen has dozens of museums, memorials and educational programs dedicated to D-Day that attract Jewish visitors from all over the world.

Shortly after we arrived, we set up a kosher catering facility so that Jewish groups are able to come here and enjoy a full Jewish experience.

With time, we educated ourselves about the history of the place, and we now offer our own tours.

What’s it like to show people around the site of so much death and destruction?

It’s actually quite touching. No matter how many times I see and say the same thing, it hits me again. These were young men — boys, really — who traveled 8,000 miles and willingly put themselves in grave danger for the greater good.

Jew or non-Jew, they all put their lives on the line.

Knowing full well that they might be taken prisoner of war, many Jewish soldiers chose to keep their Jewish identification and carry their siddurim and tefillin with them.

We have a collection of artifacts that we share with visitors, including a siddur that an American soldier carried with him during the invasion.

I received it from the Rabbi Shmuel Lewin, the Chabad rabbi in Deauville, another city in Normandy. There was an abandoned building there that had once been a military hospital for Allied troops. They were renovating the building, and the workers found the siddur. Recognizing it as a Jewish artifact, they gave it to the rabbi, who passed it on to me. You can see that the soldier had marked off the pages for Tefilat Haderech and Havdalah.

Your plans for the 75th anniversary?

For one thing, there will be a group of American chaplains present who asked us to help them with kosher food and other accommodations, which we are glad to supply. In addition, we hope to be present at the ceremonies, representing our fellow members of the local Jewish community and Chabad.

As much as we celebrate the past, we are also focused on the present. The Chabad Houses of Normandy are in the process of writing a brand-new Torah scroll in memory of the soldiers who died here. We have written letters of this Torah in many significant locations, including a Nazi bunker and cemeteries. Whenever a large group comes, we bring a sofer to write another letter in the Torah with them, literally writing them into history.

Torah is a living entity, and the Jewish people are alive and flourishing. When the Jews of Caen and our guests study Torah and follow Torah, we become a living testament to our people’s eternal nature. Hitler came and went, but with G d’s help, the Jewish people live forever.

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For Jeff Seidel, 40 years of kiruv in Israel

By Deborah Fineblum, JNS Jeff Seidel cheerfully admits to having a terrible sense of direction. “It’s the worst,” he says with a grin. “I get lost coming out of the shower.”

But if there’s one way his sense of direction is unerring, it’s when it comes to the next generation. After nearly four decades of working with college students, Seidel can spot from across the Western Wall plaza those who could use a home-cooked Shabbat meal or a warm family embrace — the kids with the potential for a deeper connection to their Jewish souls, their people and their homeland.

At the center of the bulls-eye is the cadre of students in Israel for a semester or year abroad, as well as Birthright travelers and those on gapyear programs.

Seidel, 61, is recognizable by his trademark saddle shoes and Midwestern friendliness. He has been a fixture at the Kotel since 1980, when he arrived in Israel with a master’s degree in psychology and a determination to give young Jews the taste of a traditional Shabbat. But these days, Seidel doesn’t just rely on catching college kids there and sending them off; he runs a multi-pronged operation.

On his desk in the hole-in-the-wall office in the Old City is a heavily annotated printout of Shabbat meal matches between students and over 50 families who volunteer to host. It’s in constant flux, with last-minute edits until sundown on Friday.

Jacob Nemeth was walking through the Old City last year with his Birthright group when a man came up to him with a gift: a prayer book.

“Before I knew it, he was sending me Facebook messages asking when I was coming back to Israel,” relates Nemeth. It didn’t take Seidel long to size him up and arrange an internship for him in Israel, which turned out to be “an absolutely amazing experience,” says Nemeth.

While in Israel, he was taken under Seidel’s

Jeff Seidel with students outside of his Student Information Center in Jerusalem.

wing. Shabbat meals and invitations to parties and events materialized.

“I tell my friends that when they get to Israel, they have to meet Jeff,” says Nemeth, who is back in the United States finishing up at the University of Hartford and waiting to hear if he lands an AIPAC fellowship. “If it weren’t for Jeff, none of this would have happened — not my internship, and not my connection with my Judaism and Israel.”

Nemeth is one 13,605 young Jews reached each year through three Jeff Seidel Student Centers, where students get a hot meal and an inspiring program, and the trips he leads to Poland and around Israel. But it’s the Shabbat and

Facebook

Yom Tov meals he has arranged that have made him a household name.

Twenty years ago, Mindi Zissman was a University of Wisconsin undergraduate spending her junior year at Hebrew University. “It was my first week in Israel, and Jeff was waiting for us when we walked out of a bar. He called out, ‘Who wants to go for a Shabbos meal?’ she recalls. “For me, that was the beginning.”

Seidel usually picks up the phone in the office by the second ring. On a recent afternoon, his end of the conversation went: “No Seder plans yet? Young lady, don’t you worry. We are going to take care of you. Shoot me an SMS, and I’ll get you a great family. You’re going to love ’em.”

Three students from South Africa pop in.

Does he have an extra tallis? One’s a kohen and wants to do the mass blessing at the Kotel over Pesach. (Why yes, says Seidel, he does.)

Making sure they’re set for the Seder, he invites them to drop by afterwards.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll still be up.”

A seat at the table In 1980, a 22-year-old fresh off the plane from Chicago, Seidel started hanging out near the Kotel looking for kids without a Shabbat meal and scouring the area for families willing to host.

Even as a kid, he had a taste for kiruv. He was 11 when three medal winners at the 1968 Olympics raised their fists in a black power salute. “I asked myself, ‘Where’s Jewish power?’”

Two years later, he insisted on having his bar mitzvah on a Sunday Rosh Chodesh, “so none of our guests would break Shabbat by driving.”

But even this Energizer Bunny can’t be everywhere. Seidel, not content with the Jews fate sends his way, has erected an entire scaffolding of programs to catch as many as he can.

Each year thousands of young adults flock to his student centers near Hebrew, Tel Aviv and BenGurion Universities. There they find a variety of programs and services, from kosher meals to computer rooms — even an on-site laundry.

A newcomer to Hebrew University on a oneyear program, 22-year-old Gilly Mizrahi heard about a challah-baking event at the center.

Soon she was attending lunch-and-learns and weekly activities. “It’s a home away from home for me,” she says.

Other Seidel brainchildren include JeffsTravelGuide.com, which provides Jewish contacts around the world and GetShabbat.com, a website for finding a Friday night meal nearly anywhere in the world.

“I left Jeff’s office with something that changed my life forever,” says Lauren (Miriam) Nades, who See Seidel on page 13

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stephen M. Flatow

I

n what crazy, upside-down world does a Palestinian Arab randomly stab Jews in Jerusalem, get shot dead by Israeli policeman and then become the focus of an Associated Press article with a headline about Israelis killing Palestinians?

In our crazy, upside-down world, that’s where.

The latest craziness began on Friday morning, when the terrorist was strolling through the Old City of Jerusalem and happened to see a Jewish man. So the Arab stabbed the Jew. He then went a little further along until he spotted a Jewish child.

So he ran up and stabbed the child in the back.

You can already imagine Excuse #1 bubbling up in the fertile minds of the rationalizers and justifiers: The Old City is “occupied Arab East Jerusalem” … meaning that the Jewish victims actually were “settlers,” which makes them “legitimate targets” for “resistance.”

Resistance to what? Why, to the existence of Jews, of course.

Israeli policemen approached the terrorist.

He was caught with the bloody knife in his hand. Instead of surrendering, he ran, which is why the police shot him. It’s about as blackand-white a case as one can imagine. Yet, incredibly, the Associated Press characterized him as “an alleged Palestinian attacker.”

It seems that as far as the AP is concerned, when it comes to Palestinian terrorists, they’re always “alleged,” never “terrorists.”

Isn’t that curious?

The would-be murderer turned out to be 19 years old. Get ready for Excuse #2. Technically the terrorist was a teenager. And the word “teenager” can be morphed into “child.”

Which brings us to a pending congressional resolution about “Palestinian children.”

The bill in question, H.R. 4391, was authored by a congresswoman from Minnesota, Betty McCollum. It’s called the “Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act.” It calls for slashing U.S. aid to Israel as punishment for arresting “Palestinian children.”

According to McCollum, it is immoral and illegitimate for Israel to ever detain a “Pales-

tinian child.” Even if the “child” was caught trying to stone, stab or shoot Jews to death.

Children must never be detained, including the “child” holding a bloody knife in Jerusalem on Friday.

When McCollum introduced the bill last year, it attracted 30 co-sponsors, all Democrats. One was Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton, now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. It will be interesting to see if Moulton again signs on to the re-introduced resolution. lsewhere on Friday, another Palestinian Arab tried to cross into Israel by infiltrating the security perimeter near Bethlehem. When he refused to halt and desist, Israeli soldiers shot him.

Now the folks at the AP had their headline: “2 Palestinians Killed by Israelis in Separate Events.” They took a story about a Palestinian Arab terrorist attack and a potential second attack, and turned it into a story about trigger-happy Israelis murdering Palestinians.

And here comes Excuse #3. Why would a Palestinian Arab try to penetrate the security perimeter instead of just applying for a permit to enter Israel?

The AP found a way to excuse the suspicious behavior: “Younger Palestinian men must request an entry permit from the military, which are [sic] hard to obtain.”

Oh, well, that’s different, then. If it’s “hard” to obtain a permit to enter another country, then certainly you have a right to break into it. Or so the AP wants its readers to believe.

The AP interviewed the infiltrator’s father, one Louai Ghaith. Odd how they couldn’t manage to find any of the stabbing victims’ relatives. Or friends. Or neighbors. Or any other Jew in the Old City of Jerusalem. I guess they were all busy.

The father insisted that his son was just “going to fulfill his religious duty; he was going to worship” at the Al-Aqsa mosque.

What a coincidence — a knife-wielding man entered Jerusalem on a permit to pray at Al-Aqsa. Maybe the Israelis do have a reason to carefully scrutinize and restrict the foreign citizens they allow to enter their capital city after all.

New Jersey attorney Stephen M. Flatow is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.

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Prof. Doron Aurbach: Winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize For Innovation

THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

P’stinian stabs Israelis, and the excuses follow

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They’re always ‘alleged,’ never ‘terrorists.’

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School News

Send news and hi-res photos to Schools@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline Monday noon

West Hempstead breakfast supports CAHAL programs HANC’s vals and sal

From left: Valedictorian David Reitano, valedictorian Adena Cohen, and salutatorian Jonah Rocheeld.

West Hempstead turned out on May 26 for a breakfast in support of CAHAL. CAHAL’s Executive Director expressed gratitude to Program Director Naomi Nadata and Educational Coordinator Alice Feltheimer. Program Coordinator Shira Cohen helped organize the event.

Rabbi Elon Soniker, rav of Congregation Anshei Sholom, presented an award to the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County in recognition of its partnership with CAHAL over 27 years (left). HANC, represented at the breakfast by its principal,

Rabbi Yaakov Sadigh, opened the first CAHAL class 27 years ago and continues to partner and support CAHAL. Mrs. Sondra Gottesman, wife of former HANC Dean Rabbi Moshe Gottesman z”l, was in attendance.

Rabbi Sadigh spoke about the unique relationship between CAHAL and HANC. An inspirational video was then shown.

Rabbi Yehuda Kelemer, mara d’asra of the Young Israel of West Hempstead, presented the Hakarat Hatov award to Chani Nadboy (right), an accomplished social worker who

has been counseling CAHAL students and their families for 18 years. She is clinical director of the Counseling Department of Yeshiva Darchei Torah.

Nadboy delivered an emotional speech about her relationship with the CAHAL children she services at Darchei Torah.

CAHAL is the local yeshiva-based and sponsored community program for children with learning challenges. The breakfast raised much-needed money for its scholarship fund.

For the 2019-20 school year, CAHAL is anticipating the largest enrollment in its 27 years.

HAFTR mentors The HAFTR Middle School hosted TEDx speaker Deborah Heiser, formally launching a partnership with The Mentor Project. Irene Yachbes gave the students insights into the field of robotics, speaking about her work on the Mars Rover.

Shulamith math win Five Shulamith seventh-graders placed second in the Michael and Irina Kimyagarov Math Tournament at Bnos Malka Academy. Team member Miriam Schreier won second place in the individual competitions. From left: Sari Gross, Adina Baum, Miriam Schreier, Tamar Abittan, and Chani Heimowitz.

Lag BaOmer at Darchei Rav Eliyahu Saldinger, second grade rebbi at Yeshiva Darchei Torah, kindles the fire on the Far Rockaway campus, as Rav Dovid Morgenstern, menahel, looks on.

The Hebrew Academy of Nassau County announced its Class of 2019 valedictorians and salutatorian.

Valedictorian David Reitano is an academic star. A member of the National Honor Society, David was named to both the General and Judaic Studies Honor Roll every quarter of his high school career. He is a National Merit Commended Student and recipient of the University of Rochester’s Bausch & Lomb Honorary Science Award. David will graduate with eleven AP courses and Scholar with Distinction honors. He is also a student of the Beit Midrash program.

Currently, David is co-captain of the Mathletes and College Bowl Teams, a member of the Chess Team and Model UN, and a contributor to the STEM Journal. David enjoys reading, writing short stories, and has studied martial arts for the past twelve years.

Last summer, David volunteered for Rescue Israel and trained as an Emergency Medical Responder. This summer, he plans to continue toward certification as an EMT. After a year at Sha’alvim in Israel, David will attend Binghamton University as a member of the Scholars Program.

Valedictorian Adena Cohen is a young woman of supe-

rior intelligence and steadfast determination. She challenges herself to enroll in difficult classes each year, including AP, Honors, and the Beit Midrash program. She has been on the Honor Roll every quarter of her high school career.

Adena has been a member of the National Honor Society for two years; she was elected vice president in 11th grade and co-president in 12th. She is a recipient of the University of Rochester George Eastman Young Leaders Award and of HANC’s Nechama Leibowitz Passion for Education Award.

It might be easier to list the extracurricular activities Adena is not involved in. She is the chairwoman of the Yachad Committee, editor of the HANC Herald, and editor of the yearbook. Adena is the founder and editor of the STEM Journal. She is also chairwoman of HPAC, captain of the Girls’ Torah Bowl and hockey team, and a student senator who was elected vice president as a junior. She is a Mathlete, a member of the Astronomy Club, a volunteer with the Jewish Elderly Committee, a member of Mock Trial, a College Bowl competitor, and a writer for Midrashei HANC. Next year, Adena will attend MMY in Israel, and Brandeis University in the fall of 2020.

Salutatorian Jonah Rocheeld can always be counted on to learn and engage.

He is very proud to have learned Masechet Shabbos on his own time — not that he doesn’t learn anything during the school day, given his three-year Judaic studies average of 100, a remarkable achievement as a student in the Beit Midrash program.

Jonah is a member of the National Honor Society and an AP Scholar with Distinction who will graduate with ten AP classes. He was named to both the General and Judaic Studies Honor Roll every quarter of his high school career and has received the Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook Passion for Education Award, the Rensselaer Medal, and the Yeshiva University Torah U’Madda Book Award.

Despite time constraints, Jonah finds time to take on leadership roles, including the Torah Bowl Team. Last year, after an undefeated championship season, Jonah was named MVP. Jonah is also co-captain of the Mathletes Team and is the gabbai for HANC’s minyan Sephardi. Out of school, Jonah serves as the ba’al koreh at his local Chabad, where he runs a teen minyan.

Next year, he will attend Yeshiva University’s Honors Program.

Top grads at NSHA North Shore Hebrew Academy Valedicatorian Dalia Etessami made the most of her high school experience by participating in a variety of activities: she was president of the National Honor Society, captain of the Mock Trial team, and the editor-in-chief of her school newspaper, the North Shore Notes, while editing and writing for Ravioli, the school’s satirical newspaper. After taking a gap year to study in Israel at the seminary Amudim, she will attend Columbia University.

Commencement speaker Andrew Gottlieb describes his four years at NSHA HS as “amazing.” He was engaged in many extracurricular activities and was a member of the Varsity Soccer team, He will attend Cornell University this fall.

7 THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

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 June 23, 2019 / 20 Sivan, 5779 at The Young Israel of Woodmere  Aish Kodesh, MAY, Bais Tefilah, Beth Sholom, BA, BKNW, Central, DRS, HAFTR, HALB, Hakotel, HANC, HaRova, OU- JLIC, Kaylie, Kneseth Israel, Kulanu, Lander, Mesorah, Michlalah, M' Basya Rochel, M’ Lindenbaum, MMY, Morasha, Moshava (I.O.), MTVA, YTVA, NCSY, Ohr Yerushalayim, Rambam, Shalhevet, Sh’eefa, Shulmaith, SKA, SFW, Project YES, YILC, YIW, YIWH, Y.U. YOSS

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Shacharit Rabbi Hershel Schachter Shlit”a Shul Rabbonim

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10:40

11:20

12:00

Rabbi Ephraim Polakoff

High Schools Rabbi Yisroel Kaminetsky

E”Y Yeshivot/Seminaries

Women Speakers

Rabbi David Katz

Rebbetzin Lisa Septimus

Planting & Building: Rav Wolbe’s Approach to Chinuch

Functional Illiteracy and 'Edutainmemt' - Balancing Substance and Excitement with our Children

Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum Imbuing RuchaniyutWarmth For a Cold World

Rabbi Tsvi Selengut Resilience and Reward: Teaching Our Children To Thrive in a World of Challenges

Rebbetzin Shani Taragin

Mrs. Debbie Greenblatt

Rabbi Yehuda Kelemer

Mrs. C. B. Neugroschl

Rabbi Reuven Taragin

Rebbitzen Aviva Feiner

Ahavat Yisrael Starts at Home

From FOMO to JOMOStrategies for Disconnecting From Social Media

Mrs. Ester Wein

Mr. Charlie Harary Esq.

End stage illness and sudden therapies (immunotherapy): A perspective from Halacha and Hashkafa

Rabbi Eytan Feiner 'Bas Ploni L'Ploni': In Pursuit of the Perfect Marriage

Embracing Questions: Making Space for the Conversations that our Teens Need to Have

Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman Religious Zealotry: Pros and Cons

Avoiding and Managing Marital Arguments

Rabbi Shalom Rosner

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Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz TBA

The Blended Family “Beautiful New Beginnings” An Analysis of the Blended Family in Halacha and Machshava.

Using Kavod to Create a New Parent Child Dynamic

The Shabbos Table: Bringing Potential to Reality

Chinuch: What should we emphasize? Innovation or Tradition?

Rabbi Hanoch Teller

Rebbitzen Dr. Adina Shmidman

Rabbi Ira Wallach

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The Master of Positivity: Reflections on the Life of Avi Mori Horav Dovid Kaminetsky ZT"L on His First Yarzheit

Parenting in Repair : From Passivity to Prayer (Yiftach, Manoach, Chana)

From the Desert Tents to Bungalow Colony- how Jewish families navigate privacy and community.

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Climbing Spiritual Ladders (and the Fear of Heights)

Patterns and Pathways of Mothering

Why the Ten Commandments Matter to You and Me - Every Single Day

Rabbi Isaac Rice

It's Not the Message That's the Problem, It's the Messenger

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Understanding the Power of Narrative to Inspire Others

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Wine & Dine

Celebrating Shavuot with dairy and sweetness Kosher Kitchen

Joni SChoCKett

Jewish Star columnist

I

t is almost time for one of the few holidays that allows us to put away the chicken soup. Shavuot is the holiday of cream and cheese and white foods. It is a sweet holiday celebrated with lots of sweet foods and all that the joy that they bring us.

There are lots of reasons to eat dairy products on Shavuot. One story says that the Jews, living in the desert, gave up meat as a sacrifice just before Moshe went up the mountain to receive the Commandments.

The story of that ascension is one of the most interesting in the entire Torah, at least to me. I got most of my understanding of that event through the Cecil B. DeMille movie, with its thunder and lightning-filled scene that I have watched dozens of times. But the story covers over a hundred chapters in the Bible.

Moshe was chosen to be the conduit between G-d and the people, but the food part is a result of the events that created the rules of kashrut and the times when the Israelites did not eat meat, which corresponded to receiving the Torah. This was a joyous time, so the Israelites celebrated with honey and the sweet milk they had. Thus a tradition began.

My grandmother made all kinds of dairy foods during Shavuot. Mostly she made hundreds of blintzes. She also made cheese Danishes and cheese kugels. But she never made a cheesecake — that culinary delight never made it into her extensive repertoire. But her paper-thin crepes for blintzes, and her cheese kugels, were incredible. Nothing I have ever made has come close to what I remember, even if my memory is gilded by the passage of time.

I made my first cheesecake when I was newly married and the couple who lived downstairs from us invited us for dessert. It was a lemon cheese pie, and it was delicious.

I doubled the recipe for the filling and made it in a spring form pan. It was not as high as a cheesecake, but it had a requisite crack in the center, which I thought was a good thing. It turns out that cheesecake cracks because it is too dry, and the goal is to have a cheesecake that does not crack!

Dairy and honey on Shavuot. What a celebration! What a story! However you celebrate this joyous holiday, do it with some dairy and some sweetness!

Blueberry Bread Pudding (Dairy) This is delicious cold or warm, with whipped cream or ice cream.

10 to 11 cups challah bread cubes, each about 1 inch square 8 large or extra-large egg yolks (reserve the whites for omelets) 1-1/2 Tbsp. pure vanilla extract 1/2 tsp. salt 3/4 cup granulated sugar 2-1/2 cups cream, or 2-1/2 cups regular milk for a lower fat version 2-1/2 cups milk, or 2-1/2 cups skim or 2% milk OR 5 cups half-and-half or 5 cups 2% milk 1 to 1-1/2 cups blueberries 4 Tbsp. melted butter 1/3 cup demerara sugar Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cut challah into inch-thick slices, then into cubes. You can discard the crusts if you like. Place the cubes on two rimmed cookie sheets and place in the oven. Your goal is to dry the bread, not toast it, so stir the cubes often, rotate the trays and remove from the oven when the cubes are dry and firm, maybe just a tiny bit golden in some places. Let cool.

Whisk the egg yolks in a large bowl. When well blended, add the vanilla, salt, 3/4 cup sugar, the milk and cream (or half-and-half).

Whisk well.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Reserve 2 cups of bread cubes and place the remaining cubes in a 9 by 13 well-greased glass baking dish. Pour the custard over the bread cubes and gently push the bread cubes under the custard. You will have to do this for several minutes, as the dried cubes are quite buoyant. As they begin to absorb the liquid, they will sink. Cover lightly and place the dish in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

Remove from the fridge and let sit 10 minutes. Scatter the blueberries over the bread and press them gently into the mixture so they are interspersed evenly. Scatter the remaining bread cubes over the dish. Press them gently into the liquid. Drizzle with the melted butter and sprinkle the demerara sugar mixture over the dish.

Place the glass dish on a rimmed baking pan and place in the center the oven. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is firm and no liquid comes out when the top is pressed.

Serve with some creamy vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Serves 8 to 12.

Cheese Veggie Lasagna (Dairy) You can add any vegetables you like. I have used cooked eggplant slices, roasted cauliflower and roasted red peppers. The more veggies, the better!

1-1/2 16-oz. boxes lasagna noodles or no cook lasagna noodles 1 container (2 lbs.) ricotta cheese 2 egg yolks 1 egg 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 to 1 tsp. pepper 2 Tbsp. parsley flakes 2 cups grated Parmesan cheese, divided 4 garlic cloves, grated or very finely minced 1 small onion, very finely minced 3 zucchini 1 to 2 boxes (10 oz. each) sliced white mushrooms 2 to 3 zucchini thinly sliced on the diagonal 4 to 6 oz. baby spinach leaves 12 oz. mozzarella cheese 1 to 2 jars marinara sauce If using traditional lasagna noodles, prepare as directed until they are a little firmer than al dente. Place on a rimmed backing sheet that has been sprayed with non-stick spray.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the ricotta cheese with the 2 egg yolks and 1 egg. Add the salt, pepper, parsley flakes, and 1 cup of the grated Parmesan. Mix well. Set aside.

Heat a large skillet and add 2 Tbsp. of olive oil. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the mushrooms and cook until they are golden. Add the garlic and mix for 1 minute, until fragrant. Set aside.

Pour about 1 cup of sauce in the bottom of a deep lasagna pan and spread to coat the bottom. Lay in the lasagna noodles. Dot the noodles with small spoons of the cheese mixture and gently spread them together. Top with the mushroom mixture and spread evenly.

Top with small dollops of sauce and then a layer of lasagna noodles. Add more cheese and the thinly sliced zucchini. Top with some sauce and another layer of the noodles. Add some cheese and the baby spinach leaves.

Add sauce and another layer of noodles. Press down gently and top with a good amount of sauce, which will help weigh down the spinach leaves.

Cover tightly with foil and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until bubbly. Remove from the oven and remove the oil. Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese over the top and sprinkle the remaining Parmesan over that. Place back in the oven just until the cheese melts completely. Remove from the oven, let sit for 10 minutes and serve. Serves 8 to 12.

Dulce de Leche Chocolate Chip Cookie Cheesecake (Dairy)

You can use any cookie recipe for the base.

Try oatmeal, sugar cookies, gingersnaps, or even peanut butter cookies!

1 recipe chocolate chip cookies 20 oz. jar dulce de leche 2 8-oz. brick style cream cheese, softened at room temperature 2/3 cup sugar 3 extra large eggs 1/2 cup sour cream 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Make your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and press enough dough into a 9 by 13 pan to a thickness of about 1/3 to 1/2 inch.

Use the rest for cookies.

Bake until the cookie base is cooked through and golden. Remove from the oven and let cool until just warm to the touch. Pour a thin layer of the dulce de leche sauce over the cookie dough and spread evenly. Let cool completely.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Place the cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on low until creamy, scraping the sides and bottom as needed. Add the sour cream and vanilla and beat to blend, scraping the bowl as needed. Add the eggs and beat until smooth, scraping the bowl as needed.

Pour the cheese mixture over the cooled cookie base and place back in the oven. Bake until puffed and lightly golden, about 40 to 50 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Refrigerate.

Remove 10 minutes before serving. If you like, drizzle the top with some dulce de leche.

Makes 18 to 24 squares.

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Wine & Dine

Making friends (and quiches, too) Who’s in the Kitchen

JudY JOSzef

Jewish Star columnist

A

s most of you know, I am a pastry chef and party planner. I not only plan the parties, I am in charge of all the food, drinks and setup. As you can guess, there is a lot that has to be planned, usually with the mother of the bride or groom. Every now and then a father might be involved, but usually it’s the women that I deal with. Not only do the men usually not get involved, they usually have no clue whatsoever.

A while back I was planning a shower for a delightful bride-to-be. I had planned her engagement party as well and really liked these clients. My husband Jerry really liked them too. What would Jerry have to do with my clients, you might ask? One Tuesday a few nights before the party, Jerry loaded my and his cars with all of my setup supplies — extremely large and heavy boxes which he insists on loading and then bringing into the homes that I set up. He spends a decent amount of time in the gym and is happy to help and put his strength to good use. Then the bride’s dad and Jerry realized that they both had parents who went through the Holocaust, and a friendship was forged.

I realized that I was in trouble. The week of a party, I work every night except Friday, and I’m usually up into the wee hours of the morning preparing. I can’t afford to lose time.

I gently nudged Jerry, reminding him that we had to move along and bring the rest of the boxes inside.

Alas, it was not to be. Each time Jerry brought in another box, another conversation ensued … and there were eight boxes. They spoke about being children of survivors, and then about sports. Usually children of survivors are not ball players, but they both were.

When Jerry heard that his new friend had gone to Ramaz, he was shocked. “Seriously?” Survivors’ kids went to BTA and RJJ; they didn’t go to Ramaz! At that point I dragged him out, promising another play date later.

Sunday came and went, and the party was a success. During the party, the bride’s dad told me to call Jerry so that he could join him for a l’chaim. I told him not to worry; he would see Jerry later when he picked up the boxes to load them back into the cars!

Fast-forward about six months. I got a call from the bride’s mom; she wanted me to do her daughter’s bridal shower. It was my pleasure, as I really liked this family. Once again, I told my husband that I needed him to help me deliver the party setup. After loading everything into the car, he turned and asked for the address.

“That sounds familiar,” he said. I told him who it was, and he was so excited to see his friend.

But when we got there, the bride’s father had already gone up to bed, not realizing that Jerry was coming. (He was upset when he found out later that Jerry had been there and nobody had called him down.)

Everyone was happy, though, when two nights later I packed up a huge box of unused supplies and had Jerry come pick it up (I couldn’t even lift it). Jerry’s pal was in the kitchen, sitting in a corner near the counter and eating dinner. I had told everyone in the house that come Wednesday, they would not be able to use the kitchen table and counters because the house would be set up for the shower. So

there he was tucked into a corner, using the foot of space that was available. Jerry asked if he was all set for the party.

He laughed. “I’m not even going to be at the party. It’s only for women. I was told it would be a small party with my daughter’s friends and a few of my wife’s friends and some relatives.

Next thing I know, my wife gave me a list of instructions. I had to order 60 chairs … 60 chairs for a small party? Then I’m told I have to pick up a case of champagne for the mimosa station.

I guess that’s standard for a shower these days?

Oh, and I had to have a check ready for the balloon wall. What’s a balloon wall? I was told it would be set up right near the backdrop for the photo ops. Photo ops? Yes, the ones the photographer would take as each guest came in…”

Showers have come a long way since mine.

The only constant is the ridiculous hat made for the bride out of a piece of wrapping paper from each present.

Truth is, the dad was an amazing sport about everything. And when his younger daughter has her bridal shower, he won’t be in the dark.

Having nothing to do with bridal showers, here’s a delicious rich quiche recipe for Shavuot.

Spinach, Mushroom and Onion Quiche with Swiss Cheese 5 eggs 10 oz. Swiss cheese, cut up, dusted in flour Half a package onion soup mix 5 heaping Tbsp. caramelized onions 12 oz. frozen spinach, thawed and drained of water 8 oz. fresh mushrooms sautéed in oil or Pam 1 cup whole milk (you can substitute 2%) 1 cup French’s fried onion crisps (optional) Mix all ingredients and place in a ceramic or glass dish of your choice. This recipe works for a round 11-inch dish, 2 inches high. You can use an alternate size that would fit the same amount.

When I make this quiche, I prepare it without pastry dough on the bottom. I think it tastes fine without it and it works for people who are on low-carb diet. If you like, you can absolutely put pastry dough on the bottom — I would just suggest that you bake it halfway before putting the filling in.

Once the dish is filled, you can top with French’s fried crisp onions, or bake without. I find the onions give it a crunchy, yummy topping. People who are watching their carbs can just brush them off the top.

Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes to an hour, depending on the oven and how high your dish is. Can be made a day or two ahead, but best when fresh out of the oven.

If preparing ahead, warm in a very low oven at 180 to 190 degrees so that it doesn’t get dried out, or use a warming drawer.

Shavuot dairy tests fortitude of lactose intolerant

By Sarah Gold, JTA Even non-religious Jews who celebrate Shavuot may know the holiday as a day for eating cheesecake, along with other creamy, dairy-rich dishes, like cheese blintzes and kugel for Ashkenazim and soutlach and boyikos de keso for Mizrachim.

There are varying theories about the significance of dairy in Shavuot celebrations.

Some invoke the idea that since the Torah laid out the dietary restrictions on non-kosher meat for the first time, the Israelites celebrated with the only foods that conformed to the new laws of kashrut (until they purchased meat-only dishes, that is). Others involve mystical numerology (in particular, the Kabbalistic interpretation of the Hebrew letters spelling “milk”) or scriptural passages in which God promises the Israelites a “land of milk and honey.”

Still other theories offer a more practical explanation: The holiday falls during the spring, when calves are weaned and cows produce a surfeit of milk.

Whatever the reason, dairy dishes have become part of Shavuot celebrations among nearly all parts of the Jewish Diaspora. According to the New York-based culinary authors and Jewish food historians Jayne Cohen and Jennifer Abadi, while cheesecake, blintzes and kugel are traditional Ashkenazi preparations, Sephardim and Mizrahim mark the holiday with similarly creamy dishes. These include bourekas (flaky, originally Turkish pastries filled with sweet and savory cheeses), Syrian calsones (ravioli-like, cheese-filled pasta dumplings), buttery North African couscous and Levantine mujaderrah — a

Shavuot foods like cheesecake are hard for lactose-intolerant Jews to digest.

sort of pilaf made with rice, lentils or fava beans, generously slathered with labneh. Soutlach is a Turkish rice pudding, and boyikos de keso are cheese biscuits.

What’s ironic about the apparently universal love for dairy-rich dishes is, of course, that Jews are largely predisposed to lactose intolerance.

Several studies suggest that 60 to 80 percent of Ashkenazim are lactase-deficient (lacking the enzyme that allows for easy digestion of the lactose sugar in milk products). Though less studied, the condition is also considered prevalent among Sephardic and Mediterranean Jews.

Explanations for this genetic tendency

Pixabay

abound, but many seem to indicate that pastoral peoples, who stayed rooted in place long enough to cultivate and graze livestock, more easily developed dairy tolerance, while more nomadic subcultures — whose members may have relied more on sheep and goats than cows, and who may have preferred fermented dairy products for portability purposes — did not.

According to Jeffrey Yoskowitz, a Brooklyn-based author specializing in Jewish foodways, that particular clue — about how our ancestors likely enjoyed dairy foods that were fermented or cultured — may actually hold the key to how Jews developed our paradoxi-

cal affinity for, and intolerance of, the dairyrich dishes enjoyed on Shavuot.

“The issue isn’t that we’re somehow destined to have bad digestion,” Yoskowitz says — or that we’re doomed to have a tortured relationship with the dairy dishes we love. “It’s how bastardized Jewish food — especially Ashkenazi food – is today in this country.”

Centuries ago, he says, Jews had a lot of gustatory wisdom about how to produce, and pair, foods for optimal digestion — making cultured dairy products like sour cream, and fermented foods like pickles and horseradish, at home. But mass-produced versions of these items, especially pasteurized dairy products, are a far cry from those our ancestors likely consumed. Little wonder we’ve inherited the love, but not the same tolerance, for dairy.

As a way to savor the original traditions of Shavuot, Yoskowitz recommends that modernday Jews try making some of these preparations from scratch.

“Making your own farmer’s cheese, or cream cheese, or even your own butter, and using them to make hamantaschen or pierogi is a great way to see how different these dishes can taste from what we’re used to,” he says.

Such treats may also go down a bit easier than their more convenient counterparts. Studies have shown that fermented or cultured products, like kefir, sour cream and labneh, tend to have less lactose and more lactase than the noncultured varieties.

Of course, for those who aren’t keen to get creative in the kitchen, there’s also always the fallback option plenty of us already use: popping a dietary aid along with our cheesecake.

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Sweet cheese buns for Shavuot

By Rachel Ringler, The Nosher You’ve probably heard of cheesecake or blintzes as traditional foods to enjoy for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, but get ready to fall in love with a cheese-filled carb treat you have never heard of: Bessarabian cheese buns.

This family recipes come to us from the Jewish community of Bessarabia — today’s Moldova, which is situated between Ukraine and Romania and close to the Black Sea — by way of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where the author of the recipe moved upon her arrival to the United States in 1902. They are light and fragrant, buttery and rich, and filled with a variety of white cheeses, sugar and butter. They taste a little bit like a dairy noodle kugel but instead of noodles, they are bound by briochelike pastry dough.

They look like a bun or a muffin, but they taste unlike either: America meets the Old World in a baked treat. Alisa Doctoroff, whose grandmother, Nancy Robbins, learned to make them from her mother, kindly shared the recipe with us.

I suggest serving these sweet buns with a dollop of sour cream and sliced strawberries.

Ingredients: For the dough: 1/2 cup warm milk 1 Tbsp. sugar 1 tsp. salt 2 packets dry yeast 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter 1/2 cup sugar 3 eggs 1/2 cup sour cream 5 cups all-purpose flour For the filling: 1 lb. farmer cheese 1/3 cup sugar 2 eggs Pinch salt

1 Tbsp. flour 1/4 lb. cream cheese 1/2 tsp. vanilla Directions: 1. To make the dough: Proof the yeast in the warm milk with sugar and salt. While yeast is proofing, cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, and sour cream.

2. Make a well in the flour. Add the yeast mixture and mix a bit with spatula or spoon.

Then add the egg mixture. When dough starts to come together, place on floured surface and knead until smooth, 5 to 7 minutes.

3. Put in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

4. Mix filling ingredients together in mixer.

Refrigerate until ready to use.

5. When dough is ready, cut off small pieces

(about 2 oz.) and flatten into rounds (approximately 5 inches wide). Make sure the center of the rounds is not too thin or the filling will burst through the top. Put 1 heaping Tbsp. of filling in the center and gather the ends together, crimping shut so the filling doesn’t come out.

Place upside down (with crimped end facing down) in greased muffin tin. Let buns rise at room temperature in a warm spot for 4 hours.

6. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them after 15 minutes to make sure they don’t get too brown too quickly. Depending on your oven, you may need to turn down the temperature.

7. Brush with 1 beaten egg mixed with a little water 10 minutes before the end. Makes 24 buns.

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‘Jeff Seidel? You fixed me up with my first Shabbat meal!”

Although he’s an optimist (laugh lines give him away), there are a few irritants that get to Seidel. Things like the “BDS lies” they’ll hear back on campus, and the young Jews who never get to Israel and don’t know what they’re missing.

He realizes that not everyone is a fan of his style or even outreach itself, particularly parents who are worried about their children heading to Israel in the first place.

“Sure, I get criticized, but look at it this way,” he says. “If a kid comes home from Birthright and tells his parents he’s joining the IDF, are his parents going to scream at Hillel for organizing the trip? Something he saw in Israel touched something inside him, and that’s what he needs to do.”

The same principle, he says, applies to the young Jews who attend his programs or go to a Shabbat dinner. “When it changes the way they see Judaism and themselves, it’s something inside them or they wouldn’t have responded. Besides,” he adds with a grin, “criticism means we’re having an impact, so we must be doing something right.”

There are stories that haunt him. But for every sad tale, there’s one that keeps it all going.

“There was a fella at Hebrew University years ago, and I would try to get him to go to programs and he never would. I’d book him for Shabbos meals and he’d cancel. At the end of the year, he said to me, ‘Jeff, I know you tried very hard to get me, but I have a friend coming next year and you’ve got to meet him.’ In the back of my mind I’m thinking to myself, ‘Not another guy like you; you pulled my kishkas out.’ But six months later, I get a call from a kid who says, “My friend told me I’ve got to come to the center.’ The kid loved it, starting coming two, three times a week. And today, he’s a rabbi.”

It’s a fine line to walk. “I know they’re hungry for it, but I don’t squeeze ’em. It may take some time, but on some level, they’re all going to get it.”

The power of Torah “When you’re in college, you’re open to new identities and beliefs, which is why kiruv during those years is so important,” says Zissman, in Israel for her son’s bar mitzvah. “And Jeff is super warm and actually hilarious — a regular guy they can connect to.”

But all kibitzing aside, the man never takes his eyes off the prize, she adds. “He knows the power of Torah and mitzvot, and connecting young Jews to them and their Jewish selves is his life mission.”

Seidel sees them for both who they are and who they can become. “I know it has to come from them — that only they can become passionately Jewish enough to resist the temptations back home.

“But you know what? Nobody gave me a license to do kiruv,” he says. “I just know I have to help Jews bring out Jewish souls. I just go out to work every day and do that.”

“We may only be 2 percent of the population, but when we’re together we’re so much more,” Zive says. “And Jeff gives us the opportunity to do that, to be that.”

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Samantha Zive pictured with Jeff Seidel on her trip to Poland.

THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

Continued from page 4 stopped by last year after her Birthright trip ended.

“I use the siddur he gave me every day. It’s changed the direction of my life.” Seidel helped her find a host for Sukkot back in Florida and has been instrumental in her plans to return to Israel next year to learn.

“Before I came to Israel, I was a spiritual seeker but not religious at all,” says Nades. “Jeff helped me discover that Judaism had all the answers I was searching for.”

Seidel is ringmaster of a lively Facebook group with 26,000 members and runs Scholarship to Israel, which helps with the costs of Jewish learning programs, as well as the Max Steinberg Israel Diplomacy Program, advocacy training named for the American lone soldier killed in 2014.

But one of Seidel’s highest-impact initiatives are the student trips he runs throughout Israel, as well as to the Nazi death camps in Poland.

“When I heard about the Poland trip, I knew I wanted to do it for my grandmother, who lost her whole family in Auschwitz,” says Dylan Goldberg.

“To see the names of my great-great aunt, uncles and cousins listed there, to stand on the rubble of their barracks brought it all home to me. It made it so much more important to marry someone Jewish and raise my children Jewish.”

Since returning to the University of Michigan, Goldberg has upped her connection to the Jewish community. “In Israel, they told me I’d always have a seat at their table. Someday, I want to be able to do that for others.”

Growing in understanding “Jeff told me to keep my eyes open — that the kids you least expect will be the ones, and he was right,” says David Sultan of New York, who met Seidel 25 years ago and now helps subsidize the Poland trips. “The trip gives them a whole new perspective on what it means to be part of this Jewish people and shows them where they come from. And on so many campuses, where it’s not cool to love Israel, this strengthens them.”

Traveling with Seidel to Poland gave Samantha Zive insight into what drives him. “He’s so passionate about Judaism that we jumped out of our comfort zone.”

Standing in the gas chamber in Majdanek, with the only sound Rabbi Ezra Amichai chanting a solemn “Gam Ki Elech”(Psalm 23: “Even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me”), Zive says “everyone was bawling [their] eyes out. It wasn’t a visit to an historic place; it was a very personal journey.”

Through those tears, Seidel sees them growing in their understanding of themselves as Jews.

But when it comes to working his magic, someone’s got to pay the fare. That gets Seidel on the plane three or four times a year to fundraise (and visit his 90-year-old parents in Chicago). He estimates that he raises and spends about $1 million a year, nearly all of it donations from North American Jews. This money runs the centers, covers payroll (of 10 staff members) and rent, underwrites trips and replenishes his supply of books.

Between his trips to raise money and Jewish consciousness, Kotel matchmaking, visiting his centers and prowling the bars on Thursday nights for kids who could use a Shabbat meal, the man isn’t home much.

His wife says she should have gotten the picture the moment she met her future husband in 1982. “He introduced himself, then turned to the young woman sitting next to me and asked, ‘Do you have a place for Shabbat?’”

Thirty-seven years and five kids later, they’ve served thousands of meals to students in their Old City home, where the door is always open.

The lifestyle didn’t come as a shock to Peninah Seidel. Growing up in a Chabad family in Minneapolis-St. Paul, “having lots of guests was always our norm, and it still is. With kiruv, it’s not a job.

It’s an adventure.”

Still, that adventure can be stressful for this intensive-care nurse. “It’s not always easy being married to Peter Pan,” she sighs. “Every year when the new students come, he presses the reset button, and we get to make friends with sophomores again. Sometimes, our home feels like [the film] ‘Animal House.’”

Then a reminder of its importance appears.

“A woman came up to us in the airport and said,

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June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

14

Parsha of the Week

Rabbi avi billet Jewish Star columnist

The firstborn exchange G

-d tells Moshe, “I have separated the Levites from the [other] Israelites so that they may take the place of all the firstborn (who initiate the womb) among the Israelites, and the Levites shall be Mine.

This is because every firstborn became Mine on the day I killed all the firstborn in Egypt.

I then sanctified to Myself every firstborn in Israel, man and beast alike, [and] they shall remain Mine. I am G-d” (3:12-13).

In Shemot 13:2, G-d told Moshe, “‘Sanctify to Me every firstborn that initiates the womb among the Israelites. Among both man and beast, it is Mine.’” In Shemot 13:12-13 He told Moshe, “You will then bring to G-d every [firstborn] that initiates the womb. Whenever you have a young firstling animal, the males belong to G-d. Every firstling donkey must be redeemed with a sheep. If it is not redeemed, you must decapitate it. You must [also] redeem every firstborn among your sons.”

Rashi’s comment — that the firstborns lost their job on account of their involvement in the Golden Calf — stems from the Midrash, which notes that “originally the firstborns were supposed to do the service, as we see from Shemot 24:5 (which can be translated that the ‘firstborns of Israel’ were sent to the mountain), but once the firstborns participated in bringing offerings before the calf … G-d disqualified them from the service in the Mishkan.” (This is a reference to Parshat Eikev, Devarim 10:8.) hile I don’t have a good explanation for why G-d seems so obsessed with firstborns, it is worthy to note that one of the first things Moshe is instructed to tell Pharaoh is “So said G-d: My son, My firstborn, is Israel.”

One of my teachers once explained that the firstborn turns a regular person into a parent.

It is not just a life-changing moment, it is a status-changing moment. Maybe G-d’s “need” for a firstborn (Israel) is a macrocosm of the need for individual firstborns to be consecrated.

The status conferred on firstborns by dint of birth puts them into a realm of needing to take responsibility for their behaviors and being cognizant of the consequences of their poor decisions.

Seforno notes that the Israelite firstborns were worthy of suffering the same fate as the Egyptian firstborns in Egypt. When you live in a country and conduct yourself in the same manner as the people of that country, you are subject to the same fate as that country.

If Egypt’s firstborns were to die, by all rights Israel’s firstborns were to die.

But G-d had an ulterior motive. And so He saved them, through sanctifying them and making them set aside to do the work and service of G-d. This is why their redemption was required and recorded so soon after their leaving Egypt, to demonstrate their sanctified status.

However, as Shach on the Torah (Rabbi Mordechai HaKohen) records, it was not as simple a move as just sanctifying the firstborns. G-d had said, “Every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die,” and had not qualified

It is not just a lifechanging moment, it is a statuschanging moment.

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Jewish Star columnists: Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed Congregation, Boynton Beach, Florida, mohel and Five Towns native; Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn; Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem. Contributing writers: Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, emeritus chief rabbi of United Hebrew

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There are no atheists at sea From Heart of Jerusalem

Rabbi biNNY FReeDMaN

Jewish Star columnist

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e were driving southeast in Lebanon, from Beirut back down towards Marjayoun, when the shelling started. Our Jeep driver was in a near panic. He was not part of our regular unit; he was a reserve soldier doing a few weeks of duty in Lebanon, and had been assigned to me as a driver. We had just finished escorting a convoy of trucks up to a base on the outskirts of Beirut, and I was counting our blessings that the trip had been uneventful. Clearly, I had gotten ahead of myself. We were barely out of Beirut when all hell broke loose and artillery shells started flying just over our heads.

Logically, the smart thing to do would have been to pull over and take cover; I assumed that they were trying to hit us from the hills above.

But the driver panicked and hit the gas, trying to outrun the shells. We were just two Jeeps with one heavy mounted machine gun each, driving on a mountain road full of hairpin turns. I was more scared of the drive than the artillery shells.

As it turned out, the Druze and Christian Phalangists were shelling each other overhead. It had nothing to do with us, but our driver did not know that, and was not about to slow down and find out. No amount of threats or shouting would stop him. I just hung on for dear life and clutched the safety bar till my knuckles went white. He took a sharp curve, heading down a steep incline with such speed that I was sure we were about to fly off the road and over a cliff. Somehow he kept the Jeep on the road, screaming at the top of his lungs: “Elokim! Elokim!” Oh G-d, Oh G-d…

It was especially fascinating considering how skeptical he had been towards faith and religion during our discussions on the way up. There really are no atheists in foxholes. the statement with a declaration of “except for the firstborns of Israel.” This gave the mashchit (the destroying force) and the angel of death an opening to take the souls of Israel’s firstborns.

G-d sanctifying the Israelite firstborns thus gave an added reason, perhaps the only reason, why the firstborn Israelites could not die during that plague. ormally, we have a principle of “Maalin b’kodesh v’ein moridin” — things can be elevated in their holiness status, never lowered. Around Pesach time, I shared the story of how after Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya was deposed as Nasi, there was a debate whether he could continue to lecture in the Nasi slot. They opted not to deny him the teaching slot, only to give him less frequent opportunities to teach. Why? Because he could not be brought down from the holiness he had been given.

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here is an interesting detail alluded to in this week’s portion of Bamidbar in the manner in which the tribes are counted, placed according to their flags. Indeed, each tribe had their own flag, and rabbinic tradition fills in the symbols that were on each. For example, the symbol of the tribe of Yehuda, from whom the Davidic royal line would descend, was the lion, representing royalty (see Bereishit 49:9). The flag of the tribe of Yissachar, who were the Torah scholars, featured the moon and stars (based on Divrei HaYamim I 12:32) because they possessed astronomical knowledge necessary to determine the New Moon.

Interestingly, the tribe of Zevulun were merchants, their profits in part dedicated to supporting the scholars of Yissachar. Indeed, Rashi (Devarim 33:18) explains that Zevulun had a partnership with Yissachar, supporting them in Torah study. Because Zevulun were merchants, the symbol on their flag was a ship, which was how they plied their trade.

All of which raises an interesting question: Shipping on the high seas was a dangerous business, especially in ancient times. Indeed, a person who survives a journey across the sea is one of the four people who recite the special Hagomel blessing upon their safe return (Brachot 54b), precisely because it is a dangerous thing to do. So why were the members of the tribe of Zevulun, who so selflessly supported their brothers, forced into such a dangerous profession?

Why didn’t G-d set them up as businessmen or landowners, who could just as easily have supported Yissachar without the danger inherent in trading on the seas?

There is an interesting discussion in the Talmud (Niddah 14a) that suggests that all sailors are righteous. Think about it: when a

person is on a ship in a storm, he does not know if he is going to survive. He recognizes that he is not at all in control of his destiny.

Indeed, this is exactly what happens in the story of the prophet Yonah, who sets sail for Tarshish on a boat full of idolatrous pagan sailors. But when a terrible storm hits, they all begin to pray, eventually accepting G-d as the source of the storm and master of their destiny. In such precarious situations, people often recognize that Hashem runs the world, and that we are merely small pieces in a much larger puzzle. erhaps that is why and how the tribe of Zevulun had no qualms when it came supporting their brothers from Yissachar. As sailors, they were constantly reminded of the fact that everything in life is part of a bigger plan, and that Hashem who gives us sustenance can just as easily take it away.

Indeed, the Sefer Hachinuch makes this point regarding the mitzvah of giving tzedakah: “Do not think there is a mitzvah to give tzedakah because the poor person needs the money; if the only reason Hashem commanded us to give tzedakah was to make sure the poor have sustenance, He wouldn’t need us; He could just as easily give the funds directly to the poor. The mitzvah of tzedakah is for us, because we need to practice giving.”

Maybe that is why the tribe of Zevulun, who supported the tribe of Yissachar, were sailors — a job that inevitably leads one to accept that there is a higher power at work in the world.

As we navigate the challenges of life, we too can utilize our challenges as an opportunity to realize that only Hashem decides what the results of all our efforts will be.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.

Why were members of the tribe forced into such a dangerous profession?

If this is the case, how could the firstborns have been lowered in status to no longer serve in the Mishkan? Rabbi Mordechai HaKohen explains that the raising in status was a feint — it was for a limited time, to allow for the firstborns to be spared during the plague.

Perhaps in this light, the idea of redeeming the firstborns is a forever tribute to being spared at that time.

But there is one deeper message of the specific change from the firstborns to the Levites, as explained by Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor. “Those who service the Mishkan are unworthy of an inheritance, so they can be designated and dedicated to serving G-d. Since the firstborn received a double portion of the inheritance, G-d took the Levites to replace them, and also commanded that the Levites not receive an inheritance in the land.”

First we have the notion that the firstborns

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were never really consecrated to work in the Mishkan. Then we have the idea that their consecration status was only conferred upon them to save them from the plague in Egypt. Now we see they never could have served in the Mishkan. As firstborns, they will have too much property to concern themselves with; they could never properly devote their time to the Mishkan service.

Was G-d protecting the firstborns, or is there something to the idea that not every person can adequately “do it all”?

Many of us are trying to balance so much — being a parent. Being a devoted son or daughter.

Holding down a job. All the volunteer work. All the hobbies. Trying to be a learned Jew. It’s a lot.

Were G-d to only give us a pass on the things we have a harder time handling, wouldn’t life be so much easier?

Probably. But would it be as fulfilling?

Torah

Rabbi david eTengoff

Jewish Star columnist

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s the Torah attests, Yaakov Avinu’s emigration from the Land of Israel to Egypt was the collective action of a family — Yaakov, each of his sons, and their households, for a total of seventy souls (Shemot 1:1-5). The family’s 210-year sojourn in Egypt engendered a major change in their status, as during this period they became known as a people.

“A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we are’” (Shemot 1:8-9).

In a variety of midrashic passages, our Sages teach us that this recognition resulted

from our ancestors’ unwillingness to change their names, dress and language. Outwardly, at least, they remained distinct from their Egyptian neighbors.

Sadly, however, many of the Jewish people at this time were spiritually weak and unable to maintain the uncompromising monotheism that Avraham had brought to the world. This is illustrated by the well-known Midrash (Midrash Tehillim 1:20, 15:5, Zohar, Parashat Terumah 170) wherein the ministering angels declared at the Sea of Reeds, “These [Egyptians] and these [Jews] are idol worshippers; why, then, are you saving the Jewish people and drowning the Egyptians in the Sea [of Reeds], for in truth, there is no difference between them?!”

There was but one way to guarantee the continuity of our people.

Leading a nation of individuals Rabbi siR jonaThan sacks

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amidbar begins with a census of the Israelites. That is why this book is known in English as Numbers. But we note what appears to be a contradiction. On the one hand, Rashi says that the acts of counting in the Torah are gestures of love on the part of G-d: “Because they are dear to Him, G-d counts them often. He counted them when they were about to leave Egypt. He counted them after the Golden Calf to establish how many were left. And now that He was about to cause His presence to rest on them [with the inauguration of the sanctuary], He counted them again” (Rashi, Bamidbar 1:1).

So we learn that when G-d initiates a census of the Israelites, it is to show that He loves them.

In contradiction to this, centuries later King David counted the people, but there was

Divine anger and 70,000 people died. How can this be, if counting is an expression of love?

The Torah is explicit in saying that taking a census of the nation is fraught with risk: “Then G-d said to Moshe, ‘When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each must give to G-d a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them’” (Shemos 30:11-12). he answer to this apparent contradiction lies in the phrase the Torah uses to describe the counting: se’u et rosh, literally, “lift the head.” This is a strange expression. Biblical Hebrew contains many verbs meaning “to count”: limnot, lifkod, lispor, lachshov. Why does the Torah not use these simple words, instead of “lift the heads”?

The short answer is this: In any census or

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roll call, there is a tendency to focus on the total. A nation of 60 million people, a company with 100,000 employees, a sports crowd of 60,000. A total values the group or nation as a whole. The larger the total, the stronger the army, the more popular the team, the more successful the company. Counting devalues the individual and makes him or her replaceable. If one soldier dies in battle, another will take his place. If one person leaves the organization, someone else can be hired to do his or her job.

Notoriously, crowds also have the effect of making the individual lose independent judgment. We call this “herd behavior,” and it sometimes leads to collective madness. In 1841, Charles Mackay’s classic study, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, told of the South Sea Bubble that cost thousands their money in the 1720s, and the tulip mania in

We believe that every human being is in the image and likeness of G-d.

First, tame the wilderness Rabbi dR. Tzvi heRsh weinReb Orthodox Union

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y first exposure to the study of the Bible was in the Yiddish language. We spoke only English at home, but almost all the teachers we had in the yeshiva I attended were Holocaust survivors who had escaped to the safety of these shores only a few years prior.

We learned to translate into Yiddish by rote and had little conception of what the words meant in English. Thus, we translated the very first verse of the Torah as “In der anfang hatte der Oibeshter bashaffen,” not having a clue that in der anfang meant “in the beginning,” that the Oibeshter was “the One Above,” and that bashaffen meant “created.”

When we reached Sefer Bamidbar, we finally had a teacher who, although he continued to provide the Yiddish translation, told us in broken English what the words meant in the language we understood. And he would even provide visual aids, photographs and

drawings, which would help us truly grasp the meaning of what we were studying.

I’ll never forget his opening lesson. He told us that we were beginning a new book of the Torah, and a new weekly Torah portion, which both went by the name “Bamidbar.” “In Yiddish,” he said, “the word Bamidbar means ‘in der veesternisht.’”

We were about nine years old, and the word veesternisht triggered giggles that soon morphed into hilarious laughter. There is something about the sound of the word that is comical to me to this very day.

He waited for our laughter to subside, and then said that veesternisht in English meant “a desert.” He showed us a picture of the Sahara. “The Jewish people were wandering through such a desert,” he explained, “and the entire book that we are beginning to study took place there.”

He then asked if we remembered coming across the word veesternisht earlier in our studies, in a slightly abbreviated form.

It was my dear friend Michael, who passed

away some years ago, who remembered that first verse in Genesis contains the phrase “tohu vavohu,” which is generally translated as “unformed and void.” In Yiddish, the phrase is rendered as “poost und veest,” “empty and desolate.” amidbar is the Torah portion we read this week, which is always read on the Shabbat before Shavuot. I researched about a dozen biblical translations, including some non-Jewish ones, and found that only a few translated “Bamidbar” as “in the desert.” The vast majority preferred the word “wilderness,” so that the key phrase in the first verse of our parsha reads, “The L-rd spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai…”

Although the dictionaries I consulted did not distinguish sharply between “desert” and “wilderness,” it is the latter that rings true as the English equivalent of the Yiddish veesternisht — an empty, confusing, and frightening wasteland. It was in that wasteland that our ancestors wandered for forty years, and it is

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Why was the Torah given in the desert’s chaotic terrain?

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y rebbi and mentor, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l, known as “the Rav” by his students and followers, expanded upon this idea in a public lecture that analyzed the connection between our becoming gerim and the reading of Megillat Rut on Shavuot: “The parsha of Matan Torah, receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai, was the story of gerus, conversion of the Jewish people. The children of the patriarchs converted en masse at Ma’amad Har Sinai [the Revelation]. Hence the connection to Ruth. The story of Matan Torah and Ruth together comprise the topic of conversion … The principle of conversion is a fundamental connection between the events at Mount Sinai and the story of Ruth.

“As Boaz tells Ruth, she should be blessed for leaving everything behind to join a people that she did not know and for coming under the wings of the Shechina [the Divine Presence] of the G-d of Israel. In other words, she converted. The same idea is found at Ma’amad Har Sinai, where the Torah tells the story of the conversion of bnai Yisrael [the Jewish people] in conjunction with the Revelation of G-d on See Shavuot on page 16

Holland when fortunes were spent on single tulip bulbs. The Great Crashes of 1929 and 2008 had the same crowd psychology.

Another great work, Gustav Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) showed how crowds exercise a “magnetic influence” that transmutes the behavior of individuals into a collective “group mind.” As he put it, “An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.” People in a crowd become anonymous.

Their conscience is silenced. They lose a sense of personal responsibility. Crowds are prone to regressive behavior, primitive reactions and instinctual behavior. They are easily led by demagogues playing on fears and victimhood. Such leaders, he said, are “especially recruited from the ranks of those morbidly nervous excitable half-deranged persons who are bordering on madness,” a remarkable anticipation of Hitler.

Hence the significance of one remarkable feature of Judaism: its principled insistence — like no other civilization before — on the dignity and integrity of the individual. We believe that every human being is in the image and likeness of G-d.

The Sages said that every life is like a universe. Maimonides says each of us should See Nation on page 16 that wasteland that we received the Torah.

Why? Why was the Torah given in this wild and chaotic terrain?

Like most questions of this sort, numerous answers have been given over the ages. I would like to share with you an answer that makes great sense to me.

If one reads further than just the first verse of this week’s parsha (Bamidbar 1:14:20), he discovers that although the image we have of the wilderness is one of disorder and confusion, the narrative theme of these several opening chapters is one of order and systematic organization. The tribes are divided into 12 distinct units, each one is assigned its own unique flag or banner, and its place in the procession through the wilderness is precisely specified. The entire parsha can be summarized as “making order in the midst of chaos.”

It strikes me that the ability to organize one’s environment in a beneficial and orderly manner is a basic human skill that every society must first possess before it can proceed toward greater cultural achievement.

Having said that, we can appreciate that before the Torah could be given to the Jewish people there was a necessary prerequisite: the establishment of a functional society in which people could get along with each other in a peaceful and productive manner. Only in such a context could the Torah be properly absorbed.

See Wilderness on page 16

15 THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

The meaning of Shavuot

We are indeed fortunate that the Master of the Universe had very different plans for us. He knew there was but one way to guarantee the continuity of our people; namely, we would have to abandon idol worship and become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Shemot 19:6) In order to achieve this goal, we needed to undergo a radical transformation — we had to become converts, and accept the Torah and mitzvot.

This is precisely the significance of Shavuot, for it is on this day that we embraced the Torah and declared “na’aseh v’nishmah” — we will do and we will hear/learn (Shemot 24:7).

At that auspicious moment, we simultaneously became gerim and Hashem’s chosen people. As the Torah states: “And now, if you obey Me and keep My covenant [the Torah], you shall be to Me a treasure out of all peoples, for Mine is the entire earth” (Shemot 19:5).

Shavuot and the legacy of Sinai Kosher Bookworm

AlAn JAy GerBer

Jewish Star columnist

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f the three major festivals on the Jewish religious calendar, Shavuot is the shortest, with a one-day observance in Israel and two days in the Diaspora. However, when we consider that this holiday commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments, the very foundation of our faith, Shavuot assumes major festival status.

This year witnessed the authorship of several excellent books that deal with the history, theological, and midrashic influence of this holiday. The first volume that I wish to bring to your attention is titled The Call of Sinai [Mosaica Press, 2019] by one of the leading Jewish historians of our faith’s theological faith, Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein.

In our online interview, the author teaches us the following: “The first part of the book is devoted to Torah generally. The Torah is the basis of the Jewish people’s identity and Torah study forms a regular part of an observant Jew’s life. However, it is very easy for a person to learn every day without ever considering such basic questions as:

“What is Torah?

“Why is its study so central?

“How should it be approached and what should its effect be?

“Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah, is a perfect time to discuss these very basic questions and thus receive a deeper orientation regarding them.

“I was also happy for the sacred opportunity to discuss within the context of this work certain well-known ideas and events pertaining to the giving of the Torah, such as Moshe’s debate with the angels upon ascending to receive the Torah, or of Hashem suspending the mountain over the people’s heads. These sections require serious thought and treatment, not only to understand those events themselves, but also what they reveal about the Torah as it applies to us on an ongoing basis.

“Additionally, there are various customs that pertain to Shavuot which have become universally accepted, such as having flowers and eating dairy, which also deserve treatment, firstly, to receive a deeper appreciation of their background and meaning, as well as to seeing how they combine to develop the central theme of the day which is the giving of the Torah.” abbi Aryeh Pinchas Strickoff in his book, Inside Akdamus and Yetziv Pisgam: Shavuos’s Hidden Treasure, Demystified At Last [distributed by Feldheim, 2019], in his inter-

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Shavuot... Nation...

Continued from page 15 Mount Sinai” (public lecture, 5/24/1968).

The Rav is well-known for underscoring the concept that the exalted night of Pesach is existentially a re-experiencing of Yetziat Mitzraim, the Exodus from Egypt. This, he opines, is what the editor of the Haggadah meant when he wrote, “B’chol dor v’dor chayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza miMitzraim” — in each and every generation, a person is obligated to view himself as if he personally went out of Egypt.

In other words, for the Rav, the Exodus must never be viewed as a mere historical event; rather, all Jews, for all time, were and ever will be active participants in its continuous unfolding in our lives.

In my estimation, we can build upon this idea of the Rav and extend it to Shavuot. In so doing, we can perceive this majestic Yom Tov as the time to declare “na’aseh v’nishmah,” and, like Rut, come “under the wings of the Shechina of the G-d of Israel.”

Continued from page 15 see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world. Every dissenting view is carefully recorded in the Mishnah. Every verse of the Torah is capable, said the Sages, of 70 interpretations. No voice is silenced. Judaism never allows us to lose our individuality in the mass. here is a wonderful blessing to be said upon seeing 600,000 Israelites together: “Blessed are You, L-rd … who discerns secrets.” The Talmud explains that every person is different. Only G-d can enter the minds of each of us and know what we are thinking. Even in a crowd where, to human eyes, faces blur into a mass, G-d still relates to us as individuals.

That is the meaning of the phrase “lift the head” in the context of a census. G-d tells Moshe that there is a danger, when counting, that each individual will feel insignificant.

“What am I? What difference do I make? I am a mere grain of sand on the seashore, dust on

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view, shared with us the following impressions: “As you will see, this sefer presents a fascinating and enlightening new elucidated translation of these two remarkable piyutim that are said on Shavuot. Hearing them being chanted in their most beautiful and ancient nigunim, most people really want to truly come to better understand what these poems are all about, but because of their difficult Aramaic wording this can be a most daunting experience. Thus the motivation in writing this book.

“With extensive background material and an elucidated translation that flows — reading smoothly almost like a narrative — readers will

the surface of infinity.”

Against that, G-d tells Moshe to lift people’s heads by showing that they count; they matter as individuals. Indeed, in Jewish law a davar shebeminyan, something that is counted, sold individually rather than by weight, is never nullified even in a mixture of a thousand or a million others. In Judaism, taking a census must always signal that we are valued as individuals. We each have unique gifts.

There is a contribution only I can bring.

To lift someone’s head means to show them favor, to recognize them. It is a gesture of love.

There is, however, a difference between individuality and individualism. Individuality means that I am a unique and valued member of a team. Individualism means that I am not a team player at all. I am interested in myself alone. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam famously noted that in the United States, more people than ever are going bowling, but fewer than ever are joining teams. He called this trend “bowling alone.” MIT professor Sherry Turkle calls our age of Twitter, Facebook, and online friendships, “alone together.”

Judaism values individuality, not individualism. As Hillel said, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” All this has implications for Jewish leadership. We are not in the business of numbers.

The Jewish people always was small and yet achieved great things.

Judaism has a profound mistrust of demagogic leaders who manipulate the emotions of crowds. Moshe at the burning bush said, “I am not a man of words.” He thought this was a failing. In fact it was the opposite. Moshe did not sway people by his eloquence. Rather, he lifted them by his teaching.

A Jewish leader has to respect individuals. He or she must “lift their heads.”

However large the group you lead, you must always communicate the value you place on ev-

The The Chosen JEWISH STAR Paper Long Island’s #1 Jewish newspaper.

Some are bigger. None are better.

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June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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come away inspired with an enhanced understanding and better appreciation of these two remarkable and holy works. Moreover, once one comes to understand them, one’s Shavuot will never be the same.

“When Rabbi Paysach Krohn first reviewed this book’s manuscript before writing his haskama, he called me up with great enthusiasm about it, pointing out that this sefer is really needed to bring Akdamus back to the mainstream.”

This conclusion was reached

by Rabbi Krohn in the following manner. He helped network Rabbi Strickoff with the Gateways Shavuot Shabbaton that he himself attends, resulting in the publication of a special paperback edition of this very commentary, which will be distributed to every attendee as part of their program syllabus.

I conclude this essay with a quote from Rabbi Krohn’s letter: “…Rav Aryeh Pinchas has given us a lucid commentary, including history and insight to the beautiful piyut that is recited during the haftarah of the second day of Shavuot, ‘Yetziv Pitgam.’ This sefer is a must-have for every Jew who wishes to celebrate Shavuot with joy and understanding.”

I fully agree with these sentiments and urge you to further explore these new and exciting works.

eryone. You must never sway a crowd by appealing to fear or hate. You must never ride roughshod over the opinions of others.

It is hard to lead a nation of individuals, but this is the most challenging, empowering, inspiring leadership of all.

Wilderness...

Continued from page 15 here is an ancient saying which states this idea unequivocally: “Derech eretz kadma laTorah,” literally translated as “the way of the world precedes Torah” (Midrash Vayikra Rabba, 9:3). More generally, it means one must first have an ethical, just and humane society. Only then can one proceed to Torah.

We can classify this week’s Torah portion as the parsha of derech eretz, because in it a nation successfully copes with the trials and tribulations of its environment. It tames a wilderness by creating civilization. It deals with a wasteland by establishing a functioning and equitable society.

That is why it is precisely this parsha that precedes Shavuot. Shavuot is the anniversary of Matan Torah, of the Divine revelation, the giving of the Torah. The Almighty does not reveal Himself to a people who cannot get along with each other in an orderly and civilized manner. He does not express His will to individuals, communities, or nations who, in today’s jargon, “can’t get their act together.”

He does not give His Torah in a wilderness, in a wasteland, in a veesternisht. He expects us to first act toward each other with derech eretz, respectfully and courteously. He demands that we first tame that wilderness and cultivate that wasteland. Only then are we deserving of His great gift.

Derech eretz kadma laTorah. Humane behavior first, and only afterwards the Torah.

That’s how it was that very first time in the wilderness of Sinai, and that’s how it must be this weekend, when the Shabbat of Bamidbar immediately precedes the festival of Matan Torah.

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A memorable Shavuot meal

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t this point, I know to expect it.

For years now, each Erev Shavuot, on the eve of the holiday, I receive two joke phone calls from two good friends, and we laugh as they reference a supposedly beautiful and delicious dairy Shavuot holiday meal I once prepared.

The reason it’s a joke is because years ago, just before Shavuot, with some social politics to contend with, a friend had to cancel her holiday dinner plans. Accommodating her disappointment, I told her I’d prepare a Shavuot meal she could join. Since it was so last minute, everyone already had plans and I couldn’t really invite others, plus it was a nice opportunity to bond. So it was going to just be this friend, myself and one of my thenroommates.

Now you have to understand, I love Shavuot and I love dairy meals.

I was more than happy to have a reason to cook some dairy delicacies. Because it was last minute I was somewhat limited, but with the help of cooking bleeding into the holiday itself (circumstances warranted it!), I managed to knock out a meal I was proud of: caramelized onion croissants, an artistic platter of salmon niçoise, homemade blintzes accompanied by a pink strawberry sour cream sauce, a spanakopita, a colorful fresh salad, and perhaps a vegetable tart, too. For dessert there were petite cheesecakes and cheese babkas, along with a pitcher of Godiva-infused iced coffee.

I slaved to prepare this meal, wanting it to be a show of love for my friend and a decent consolation for the canceled dinner invitation. From the bread to the iced coffee, it was all homemade. And a good time was had by all. forget exactly how it happened, but fastforward a couple of years, and there were two of us talking Shavuot plans again. I was suddenly flooded with fond memories of that lovely dairy meal and wonderful conversation that lasted long into the night. I made a casual nostalgic reference to that near-impromptu meal.

Blank stare. Nada. Zip. Nothing registering on her face. Clearly there was zero recollection of what momentarily seemed in my mind like a phantom meal.

That’s OK, though. No problem. I chalked it up to her emotional state at the time. The second guest, my roommate, would surely recall the memorable meal with crystalline clarity. After all, it had lasted until about 2 am!

When she and I spoke, also making plans for Shavuot, this time I intentionally referenced the meal with a joke. But alas — again there was just a blank, awkward silence.

“Wait, guys, remember the stress of that cancelled meal? Remember those blintzes I served garnished with fresh cherries? Remember we spoke about x, y and z? Remember…?”

Nope. Neither had a smidgen of memory.

I jokingly declared to these two friends

Not one but both of these friends had zero recollection of the evening.

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Israeli democracy in crisis (again)?

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sraelis are rightly infuriated that their politicians couldn’t get their act together and form a government after national elections held on April 9. A rerun scheduled for Sept. 17 will be an enormous waste of time and money. But almost as infuriating as the new election is the way this turn of events will serve as an excuse for months of bloviating from Israeli and international pundits about the crisis in Israeli democracy.

That means we’re about to be subjected to nearly 100 more days of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics claiming that if he wins again, it will sound the death knell for Israeli democracy.

While there are cogent criticisms that can be directed at Israel’s method for electing governments as well as at Netanyahu’s policies and conduct in office, like all the previous rounds of “death of democracy” predictions, the apocalyptic jeremiads that will be churned out along these lines will be utterly disingenuous.

Those who make these arguments will sound high-minded and principled. But what they are really whining about are the democratic choices that Israelis have made — not the potential demise of liberty in the Jewish state. As they’ve done before, Netanyahu’s critics continue to confuse their disgust at the outcome of Israel’s democratic elections with the question of whether the country remains a democracy. he theme of “Israeli democracy in crisis” was proclaimed early and often in the months and weeks leading up to April 9.

Those making that argument went on about the tribalism of Israeli politics, the law that reaffirmed that Israel is a Jewish state, the failure to make peace or the threat to the rule of law from corruption allegations against the prime minister.

But as they did the previous three times they went to the polls, Israel’s voters rejected these arguments. A clear majority voted for right-wing and religious parties pledged to support Netanyahu. They did so not because they are stupid

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that I would never prepare another last-minute phantom Shavuot meal replete with homemade blintzes, and we had a good laugh about it. While it would have been nice if they had remembered the meal, I didn’t really care.

But sure as I was that I had prepared that Shavuot meal, sure as I was of the memory of it, sure as I was even of the content of some of that night’s conversation … I was secretly weirded out.

or don’t care about democracy. They voted for another Netanyahu-led government because they generally support the prime minister’s policies and didn’t want him replaced with one of the chorus line of ex-generals leading the new Blue and White Party, which formed the main opposition.

Instead of yet another Netanyahu government, they got the chaos of the last week and what amounts to an attempt at a “do-over” in September, even though there’s a good chance that the outcome won’t differ much from the April results.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for this mess.

Avigdor Lieberman’s refusal to join Netanyahu had little to do with a dispute about the drafting of ultra-Orthodox yeshivah students and everything to do with his conviction that this was the moment when the prime minister could be toppled, allowing the Yisrael Beiteinu leader to play kingmaker. Netanyahu’s desperate search for another coalition partner and/or a defector from the opposition was a similarly undignified display.

The prime minister’s problem was the corruption charges hanging over his head, coupled with his desire for the new Knesset to pass an immunity law to shield him from his legal woes. The desire for such a law is not, in and of itself, illegitimate. Parliamentary immunity is a feature of many, if not, most democracies. But even if you agree with Netanyahu — and arguably, the majority of Israelis who voted for parties pledged to govern with him — that the charges are a thinly disguised politically motivated attack rather than evidence of real corruption, passing an immunity law now purely for the purpose of keeping him in office is unseemly.

Yet even if such a law were passed, Israel would remain a democracy. ost of those crying for Netanyahu’s head to be mounted on a spike have never been terribly worked up about far more serious corruption when it concerned politicians they liked. Moreover, the flimsy nature of most of the charges against the prime minister — amounting

to an attempt to criminalize interactions with the media or the acceptance of gifts of cigars and champagne — are not significant enough to justify the eagerness of the legal establishment to overturn the verdict of the electorate.

Nothing the Netanyahu government has done or is likely to do will in any way invalidate the ability of the opposition or the free press to criticize him, or stop the voters from throwing him out of office at the next election.

The real problem with Israeli democracy is the system by which the Knesset and government is elected, not Netanyahu.

The proportional scheme of electing the Knesset has been a mess since the state was founded. It has empowered minorities, especially religious parties, out of proportion to their numbers.

And it gives small parties and their cynical leaders like Lieberman regular opportunities to hold the government hostage, as he has just done.

Israel has always needed a constitution with separations of powers between the branches, including the outof-control Supreme Court that considers itself superior to the elected legislature, and which would provide a more rational system for electing a parliament. Term limits for prime ministers who go on forever like the current incumbent wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

But given current realities, the kind of systemic change the country needs isn’t going to happen. Instead, it will continue to muddle along with a flawed system and sometimes equally flawed leaders. Occasionally, that will produce debacles like the election redux.

Whether or not Netanyahu governs for another few months or another few years, Israel will remain a vibrant and successful democracy. The answer for those who can’t stand his continued stay in office is not to eliminate him with a judicial coup or to smear his supporters as dolts or fascists. The only legitimate strategy for his foes is to defeat him at the polls, if they can.

But until that day arrives, their complaints about the doom of Israeli democracy should be ignored as nothing but cheap partisan invective.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for this mess.

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I mean, not one but both of these friends had zero recollection of the evening. he whole thing became a longstanding joke between the three of us. They remembered, blow by blow, every detail of the lead-up to that year’s Shavuot, up until the meal we had shared.

I harbored fantasies of throwing a Proust-like madeleine-style dinner for my friends in the hopes

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of giving them an artificial memory trigger. Like Marcel’s lemon tea-soaked madeleine, my friends would taste a bit of each of those prepared foods, and it would strip the cloudy years away and return to their consciousness a perfect memory of that dinner. By hook or by crook, I was going to bring this dinner back to my friends’ minds, and finally have confirmation that I did not imagine See Shavuot on page 19

17 THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

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Abortion not a right, pregnancy a responsibility raBBi aVi sHafraN

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s in all life matters, when it comes to abortion, Judaism doesn’t speak of rights but of responsibilities and obligations. Seeing things through that lens can be a real eye-opener.

The concept of “rights” is deeply ingrained in our Western minds. We rarely stop to question it.

But the idea, as wonderful as it is and as helpful as it has been to humanity, doesn’t coexist very cozily with a fundamental Jewish truth: Everything benefiting us isn’t due us, but is rather a gift that we are charged to use responsibly in the service of something higher than ourselves.

We have no legal or moral claim on financial success, happy marriages, health or good fortune — no “right” to any of those things — in Jewish law or in the Bill of Rights.

In addition to having no right to such things, Judaism also teaches that we have a fundamental obligation to act responsibly toward others.

While the much-invoked aphorism “the right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins” may well reflect the American legal approach, Judaism sees the assailant who doesn’t stop at a nose not as having violated the nose-owner’s rights, per se, but as having incurred a responsibility — an obligation to pay for the damage, pain, medical bills, missed work and embarrassment that the fist owner has wrought. It’s a subtle but important distinction.

Which brings us to Jewish religious law’s stance on abortion. As in many areas of halacha, it is complex: There are a variety of approaches, situations and opinions. A good overview of the halacha of abortion was written recently for JTA by nurse practitioner Ephraim Sherman. But a compendium of sources and applications cannot touch the core issue, the one that should be a game changer for Jewish-minded Jews: responsibility.

Abortion, in Jewish law, is not a right. In the

vast majority of cases it’s actually a wrong. But even in cases where it is permitted or required, as when a Jewish mother’s life is endangered, even indirectly (or, according to some respected rabbinic opinions, when the pregnancy seriously jeopardizes the mother’s health), the decision to terminate a pregnancy is not a question of a woman’s right to choose but of her responsibility to choose correctly, her obligation to do what halacha counsels in her particular case, whatever that may be. nd so, from a Jewish perspective, all the constitutional, judicial and philosophical issues whacked back and forth across the tennis court of public discourse are beside the main point.

It’s not the stage of pregnancy that ultimately matters and not the “status of a fetus.” Not “ensoulment” and not the specter of looming backalley abortionists. What counts alone in Judaism is the responsibility to do what Jewish law re-

It is not a question of a woman’s right to choose, but of her responsibility.

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quires in any particular case.

Most reasonable people on both sides of the perennial abortion debate would like abortion to be rare. Currently, although the abortion rate in the U.S. has dropped somewhat in recent years, it is very far from uncommon. The predominant reasons for seeking an abortion, according to a 2013 U.S. National Library of Medicine-National Institutes of Health survey, have been financial (40 percent), timing (36 percent), partner-related reasons (31 percent) and the need to focus on other children (29 percent).

From a “rights” perspective, all such justifications are perfectly acceptable. From a “responsibility” perspective, not so much. In fact, not at all. Halacha considers a potential life to trump most other concerns.

There is, of course, no reason why Jewish theology should be embodied in American jurisprudence. But Judaism’s stance happens to reflect the feelings of a majority of Americans. A 2018 Gallup survey found that only 29 percent of respondents believed abortion should be legal in all circumstances.

Blanket bans on abortion, to be sure, would See Abortion on page 19

Nabih Berri’s grotesque anti-Semitism Viewpoint

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n a puff piece on Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, published on the occasion of his 80th birthday last year, the broadcaster France 24 headlined its profile, “The Great Survivor of Lebanese Politics.” This wording suggested that Berri is a successful politician in the sense that this image is understood in Western democracies: someone who negotiates, navigates, cajoles and compromises his way through his country’s legislature and invariably comes out on top.

But if Berri has been the “great survivor,” this is due to far more than his acknowledged political skills. Berri has also been a warlord — specifically one of the founders of (and still the head of) the Lebanese Shi’a Amal militia. While at the helm of a paramilitary whose English name translates as “The Movement of the Disinherited,” Berri amassed a fortune of $78 million — not as much as some other Lebanese politicians, but enough to place him in a “top 10” list.

Many of the more gruesome episodes of his career have long been forgotten; for example, Berri’s mid-1980s alliance with Syrian dictator

Hafez Assad (the late father of current dictator Bashar Assad) against Yasser Arafat’s PLO. For three years, Amal militiamen imposed a punishing siege upon three of the main Palestinian refugee camps, during which thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed, wounded, starved, arrested and tortured in the ultimately successful bid to drive Yasser Arafat out of Lebanon.

Lebanon’s sectarian politics have served Berri well: He has never been held accountable for his war crimes (and probably never will be), and he has served uninterrupted as the speaker of the country’s parliament, a position reserved for a Shi’a Muslim, since 1992. Once an enemy of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Berri is now the terror group’s political guardian, stating only last year that Hezbollah’s “resistance” was one of the three pillars, along with the “people” and the Lebanese regular army, of Lebanon’s national security.

That status merely enhances his reputation with foreign leaders, who use Berri, according to France 24, as a conduit for messages to Hezbollah, a proscribed terrorist organization in several countries. As the man with the most institutionalized power in Lebanon alongside the president

and the prime minister, Berri is seen as a vital port of call for visiting U.S. politicians and diplomats, including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met with him in Beirut two months ago. nother U.S. politician who met with Berri more recently was Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), a leading congressional ally of Israel. Among the subjects they reportedly discussed was the maritime border between Lebanon and Israel as it relates to the vast natural-gas deposits in that part of the Mediterranean Sea. On May 29, Berri gave an interview to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Joumhouria, in which he mentioned his talk with Engel and reflected that Israel’s apparent unease with the present status of the maritime border was rooted in that age-old Jewish characteristic: greed.

For those who missed it the first time around, this is how he expressed himself.

“Someone was once asked, ‘How can you recognize a Jew?’” posed Berri. “The answer was: ‘It’s simple. If you see a pregnant woman, get close to her and toss a piece of gold next to her, or at her feet. If the fetus jumps out of his mother’s womb and grabs the gold, you know that he is a Jew.’”

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He has never been held accountable for his crimes.

This grotesquely anti-Semitic gag — peppered with a bit of misogyny for good measure — doubtless went down a storm with those in the room. But in the 24 hours that followed the publication of Al-Joumhouria’s interview, only Jewish news outlets and the MEMRI think tank reported on his comments. No politician of note stepped forward to condemn him.

Make no mistake: This sort of anti-Jewish barb belongs naturally to the pages of Der Stürmer, the Nazi propaganda sheet that exhibited a similarly pornographic anti-Semitism. It makes anti-Semitic canards uttered over the years by other Muslim leaders, like Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, seem almost mild by comparison. And yet it was met with silence.

Part of the explanation lies in the bigotry of low expectations. For all the transformations of our culture’s sensitivity to race and gender in the last 50 years, we still don’t bat an eyelid when Arab or Muslim leaders come out with same anti-Semitic garbage that has dominated casual discourse about Israel and Jews in the region for at least a century. As Robert Wistrich, the scholar of anti-Semitism, described it, this has involved a fusion of “traditional Islamic anti-Judaism with Western conspiracy myths, Third Worldist antiZionism, and Iranian Shi’ite contempt for Jews as ‘ritually impure’ and corrupt individuals.”

All those strands were represented in Nabih See Berri’s on page 19

Challenging the myth of ‘white, colonial’ Israel sephardic Perspective

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ccording to the late Israeli author Amos Oz, when his father was growing up in eastern Europe, the graffiti on the walls read “Jews, go back to Palestine.” For centuries, Jews were considered swarthy aliens in Europe. This trend reached its tragic nadir with the mass Nazi extermination of the Jews as racial untermenschen.

Nowadays, the inverse message is in evidence — not so much on walls, but in the media, on campus and in the writings of academics and journalists obsessed with identity politics.

Jews are portrayed as members of a privileged and powerful elite — white Westerners who came to colonize and steal land from the “na-

tive” Palestinian people. As a result, Jews are excluded from “intersectionality” — the idea that oppressed social groups, especially in the United States, stand up for each other.

This anti-Zionist, postcolonial trend in which Jews can never be victims has lately been insinuating itself into the ideology of the radical left of the U.S. Democratic Party. Positioning Israel as a white European colonialist aggressor delegitimizes Ashkenazi Jews as interlopers. This canard denies the Levantine origin, genes, culture, religion and language of Jews from Europe and the Americas.

The sin is compounded by the erasure from the narrative of Mizrahi Jews (Jews from Arab and Muslim countries), who now form the majority of Israeli Jews. These Jews are from nowextinct communities founded long before the

Arab Muslim imperialist conquest subjugated indigenous peoples to Arabization and Islam. In the 20th century, a million Mizrahi Jews were dispossessed and forced to flee as refugees.

Hen Mazzig, an Israeli activist and writer whose parents are Jews from Iraq and Tunisia, has been taking up the cudgels against this pernicious trend.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, he accuses the likes of Women’s March activist Tamika Mallory, Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill and, more recently, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) of misrepresenting Israel.

The reaction from Hill was swift (his tweet has since been deleted, but is still visible on Mazzig’s Facebook page). In it, he claims to be “baffled as to the basis” for Mazzig’s statement that Hill has “ignored Mizrahis or the racial diversity of Israel.” He then goes on to state that

Always inferiors in Muslim society.

“what [Mazzig] ignores, however is the racial and political project that transformed Palestinian Jews (who lived peacefully with other Palestinians) into the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.” he misconceptions lurking behind Hill’s tweet merit unpacking. By clumsily referring to Mizrahim as a false Jewish component of “Palestinian” identity (it is no longer de rigueur to talk about the “Arab-Israeli” conflict), Lamont-Hill is purveying the notion that Mizrahim are Jewish Arabs.

It is fashionable in far-left circles to push the line that Mizrahim have been torn away from their Arab brethren by Zionism, which has prevented them from making common cause with the Palestinians. The Mizrahim allegedly suffer from a “false consciousness,” alienated from their true, “Arab” selves.

See Israel on page 19

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Continued from page 17 the whole thing.

Well, I never did host that contrived Proust dinner. Proof never came. Instead we just kept laughing about it through the years. Every Shavuot my friends talk of the perfect menu and the dinner they will be hosting, jokingly named dishes from my “phantom” meal or teased me about what a fantastic Shavuot cook and hostess I am. They’d jokingly ask me what I am preparing for Shavuot, followed by, “Let me guess: salad niçoise and homemade blintzes...”

Well, never underestimate the power of a recipe request. Imagine my relief when I received the following message this week: “Hey Tehilla. This is going to sound crazy, but remember when I crashed at 2F (my apartment at the time) for Shavuos and you had made a little meal with your friend and your roommate, where one of the courses was blintzes with a pink sauce? Anyway, if you remember what I’m talking about, I was wondering if I could have the recipe...”

Never underestimate the power of hosting a guest — even if it’s just for sleeping. She might just prove to be the conduit for vindication, after 12 years! Now I’m the one who has two Erev Shavuot phone calls to make.

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Abortion...

Continued from page 18 deprive Jewish women of the ability to act responsibly in cases where abortion is halachically required. And so, what Orthodox groups like Agudath Israel of America, for which I work, have long promoted is the regulation of abortion through laws that generally prohibit the unjustifiable killing of fetuses, while protecting the right to abortion in exceptional cases.

In the end, while abortion in Judaism’s eyes may not be a matter of “rights,” it is indeed a matter of “choice,” a word much invoked in the abortion debate and central to all aspects of human life.

Not “choice” in the sense of “all choices are equal,” but rather in the sense conveyed by the word as it is used in Deuteronomy.

“I have placed before you,” G-d informs us through Moses, “life and death, the blessing and the curse.”

“Choose life,” the verse continues, “so that you and your offspring will live.”

The newspaper of our Orthodox communities is the #1 Jewish newspaper on Long Island.

Have The Jewish Star delivered to your Long Island shul, organization or business (it’s free!). Email a request to Publisher@The JewishStar.com

Berri’s

Continued from page 18 Berri’s anti-Semitic joke. In telling it, Berri sent a message to the next generation of Lebanese politicians that anti-Semitism is a legitimate instrument of politics, and that violently mocking Jews is a normal component of rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the silence of the outside world tells them that because of Lebanon’s conflict with Israel, attacks on Jews, even vilely medieval ones, will pass without comment or censure.

After all, this is how it’s always been.

Israel...

Continued from page 18 Radical leftists align themselves with antiZionists who argue on behalf of an “Arab Jewish” identity as a way of repudiating Jewish nationalism. They presuppose that Jews were just another faith group in the Arab world, that Arabs and Mizrahi Jews are natural allies and that both are postcolonial victims of the Ashkenazim, who lured Mizrahim to Israel under false pretenses as a reservoir of cheap labor.

Israel is thus delegitimized, and to blame for ruining the harmonious relationship that sup-

Photo by Christina Daly 1039439

THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

Shavuot...

posedly prevailed between local Jews and Arabs.

The myth is easily debunked — as Mazzig points out, Jews were always inferiors in Muslim society, never equal and ever more marginalized in the post-Ottoman Arab successor states. Sporadic outbreaks of mob violence, such as the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, meant that Jewish citizens were never going to be assured of the security they deserved.

Mizrahi Jews are loyal and fervent Zionists, taking a full part in building and defending their ancestral homeland. They have stamped an unmistakably Middle Eastern identity on the Jewish state. Israel is the free and democratic expression of the self-determination of an indigenous Middle Eastern people after centuries of Arab and Muslim subjugation and colonization.

This is what social justice warriors in the West ought to be celebrating and fighting for.

Lyn Julius is author of Uprooted: How 3,000 years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018).

Jews of color chronically undercounted: Report

By Josefin Dolsten, JTA The Jewish community has been undercounting the number of people of color who are Jewish, a new analysis found.

Researchers at Stanford University and the University of San Francisco examined 25 population studies of American Jews and found that many failed to ask about race, and their methods meant that nonwhite Jews were undersampled.

“The Jewish community has consistently been inconsistent with respect to how it attempts to account for Jews of color within the American Jewish community,” lead researcher Ari Kelman told JTA. Kelman is an associate professor of education and Jewish studies at Stanford.

Using three of the most comprehensive surveys that did ask about race and ethnicity, the researchers said they could estimate that 12 to 15 percent of American Jews are people of color.

The surveys used — the American Jewish Population Project, or AJPP, and community surveys in New York in 2011 and San Francisco in 2017 — found 10 to 14 percent Jews of color.

The surveys included people who self-identify as nonwhite, mixed race or Hispanic. The AJPP counted about 11 percent in this category.

Since the researchers posit that surveys undercount Jews of color, they estimate the slightly higher 12 to 15 percent. Kelman said it is crucial to keep in mind that the data is problematic.

“We offer population estimates based on data that was gathered inconsistently, so they should be read, interpreted and shared as we wrote them, which is as estimates,” he said.

The report, released earlier this month, was commissioned by the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, which seeks to advance and educate about Jews of color, and funded by a grant from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.

It comes at a time when the Jewish community is increasingly paying attention to questions of race and diversity. The Reform movement, the

Participants in a think tank event hosted by the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative in Berkeley.

Jewish Renewal movement, the Jewish Women’s Archive and Repair the World are among the organizations that have launched initiatives or said they are focusing on educating and promoting diversity in the Jewish community.

The director of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, Ilana Kaufman, decided to commission the research because of the dearth of data available about Jews of color. Often when she works with community leaders trying to engage the cohort, she is asked to provide data but has none.

“There are all these questions ... when talking about Jews of color and there’s a paucity of information,” said Kaufman, whose mother is an Ashkenazi Jew and father is African-American.

Presenting the results last week at the UJAFederation of New York, Kaufman recalled speaking about racism in the Jewish community at an event two years ago. An audience member questioned her, saying he had rarely come across people of color in the community.

“I think you’re really a unicorn and that this whole discussion around Jews of color and Jewish community diversity is much more an issue for the very few Jews of color in the Jewish com-

munity,” she recalled the man telling her.

Such statements show why data on Jewish community diversity is necessary, Kaufman said.

“That story illustrates the delta, the gap, the space between the perception and the reality of our U.S. Jewish community, and we have to use tools and data and facts to inform who we are,” she said at the event last week.

The researchers found that studies undercounted Jews of color in various ways, including failure to ask about race and ethnicity or doing so incompletely. For example, some surveys asked if respondents were Hispanic or Sephardic without asking about any other categories.

The way many studies sampled respondents was also problematic, the researchers said. Some recruited respondents who had “distinctively Jewish names” or used Jewish community lists.

That disadvantages Jews of color because many do not have “Jewish” names and often are underrepresented in communal organizations.

Kaufman presented the results this month at a conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, as well as at the UJA-Federation of New York

event. Next week she will be speaking at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

Gamal Palmer, the Los Angeles federation’s senior vice president of leadership development, said the lack of data on the racial makeup of the Jewish community creates “a blind spot,” where organizations are not properly able to create programming to engage people of color.

“Our hope is that this will give us some tools and some perspectives to help us direct our work towards the JOC community in a way that is effective and meaningful,” he said.

In addition to federation officials, representatives of 70 to 100 communal groups, as well as city government staff, are expected to attend the Los Angeles event. Palmer, an African-American Jew, hopes the event will help communal leaders make sure Jews of color don’t feel alienated.

Creating inclusive spaces means “people going to synagogue or sending their kids to camp, and that there shouldn’t be a worry about whether they’ll be accepted, whether someone will say something offensive or make them feel like that they’re not Jewish,” Palmer said, adding that he had experienced such comments.

Kelman said that one reason behind the inconsistent data in past surveys is that the Jewish community has been operating with a certain assumption about what its members look like.

“For most of the late 20th century and into the 21st century, the default assumption is that Jews were white or that [there was] such a preponderance of Jews identifying as white that any percentage of Jews of color was so small that they didn’t matter,” he said.

Kaufman hopes the project challenges that.

“We need to think about ourselves, see ourselves as racially diverse,” she said. “We need to think about all of our communities as environments that should function as multiracial, diverse environments, even if there’s limited racial diversity in the micropopulation.”

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Rice backs Israel and shul security, rips antiSemitism, in Shabbos talk at Beth Sholom These are the remarks that Rep. Kathleen Rice prepared for delivery last Shabbos at Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence.

There’s no denying that it feels a little different being in a synagogue today. In recent years, we’ve seen a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism, both here at home and abroad. It’s a frightening trend that has led to two deadly attacks on Jewish congregations in the United States in just the past year.

It’s hard for me to believe that we’re still fighting this fight. That communities like this one still have to worry about their safety. And that makes me sad — and it makes me angry.

The violence, the hateful graffiti, the dangerous online propaganda, the vitriol — it’s all a tragic and chilling reminder that anti-Semitism is still a very real threat, and that our communities remain vulnerable. But as much as there is no denying that anti-Semitism is on the rise, we cannot allow that to become our new reality. We cannot become numb to hate.

We cannot accept it as a daily occurrence. We must demand more from our country.

That’s why it’s more important than ever that we stand up and speak out against anti-Semitism whenever and wherever we see or hear it. And this is something that I have always been firm on throughout my entire career. wasn’t afraid to call out the President of the United States when he failed to denounce the violent neoNazi’s protests in Charlottesville two years ago. And I wasn’t afraid to call out a member of my own party when she used anti-Semitic stereotypes — on more than one occasion. Because let me be clear: bigotry and anti-Semitism have no place in America, they have no place in the White House, they have no place in the halls of Congress, and they have no place here on Long Island. Full stop.

And we can never equivocate on that. We need to stand strong. We need to take an immovable stance.

And, most importantly, we need to do the hard work of eradicating anti-Semitism and hate speech from our national discourse.

However, as much as it pains me to admit, the threat of violence and anti-Semitism will not vanish overnight. So, we also need to take the critical steps of making sure that buildings and communities like this

It’s never been more important to stand up and be vocal about our support for Israel.

I

one have the resources and support you need to remain safe.

Over the past four years, I have had the pleasure of helping more than 20 Jewish community organizations in our district secure over $2.5 million in federal funding for critical security enhancements to their facilities. These grants were awarded through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help support critical security enhancements at organizations like these, such as forced-entry-resistant technology, security-modified doors, alarm systems, and surveillance cameras.

These grants have helped provide thousands of organizations and communities across this country with the safety they need and the peace of mind they deserve and I’m glad that our district has benefited from this program. And I want to assure you that I will continue supporting this community’s efforts to leverage this vital program. s you know, another one of my priorities in Congress is to do everything I can to keep strengthening the bonds between the U.S. and Israel, to advocate for Israel’s security, and to ensure that both our countries continue to support each other and work closely together to take on the challenges we face. One thing that I know worries the Jewish community in this country is that support for Israel may be waning, especially among Democrats.

Well, let me just start off by saying that those Democrats do not speak for me, they do not speak for our party, and they certainly do not speak for our chamber. The Democratic Party and Congress are still overwhelmingly committed to ensuring Israel’s security and strengthening the partnership and friendship between our two countries.

And the recent and tragic rocket attacks by Hamas remind us why that support for Israel is so important. Because every day, hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens live in constant fear that a Hamas rocket could fall out of the sky. No country should have to contend with that type of security threat, which is why it’s so important that we support Israel’s right to defend itself.

To that end, it’s also a priority for me to ensure that we continue to have bipartisan support for Israel in the U.S. because this relationship is too important to get dragged into partisan fights. And that’s why I called on AIPAC to make its freshman member trip to Israel bipartisan — because Republican and Democratic freshman members should experience the trip together to further solidify bipartisan support for the Jewish state.

But I’m also gravely concerned by some politicians on the right who fail to denounce — or in some cases fully embrace — alt-right groups

A

Rep. Kathleen Rice with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015.

and Holocaust deniers that espouse anti-Semitic rhetoric. We cannot allow these hateful groups to gain a foothold in our government, in our communities or in our politics.

We need to continue speaking out against white supremacy and antiSemitism regardless of which side of the aisle it comes form.

We know that there has never been a shortage of people who are vocal in their criticism of Israel — and that’s particularly true on the international stage. And while it’s never wrong to challenge the policy of another country’s government — as people often do of the United States — it’s important to differentiate between criticism and the many attempts that people make

to delegitimize and undermine Israel’s rightful place as the Jewish homeland. And in the face of those efforts, Israel relies on us to have their back. ight now, we know that antiIsrael forces are turning more and more to the BDS movement as a tool to try to delegitimize Israel.

The UN Human Rights Council even passed a resolution to create a “blacklist” of companies that operate or do business with entities that operate beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

Much like the U.N. Security Council, this movement wants the world to believe that Israel is the obstacle to peace, that Israel is standing in the way of a lasting resolution to this conflict. And while forces be-

R

hind the BDS movement may claim to want peace between Israelis and Palestinians, we know that BDS will not bring about that peace — that’s not the real intention behind this movement. We know that lasting peace and a lasting resolution to this conflict will only come through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

But those forces are gaining strength right now in America, especially on college campuses — which is why it’s never been more important to have people stand up and be vocal about our support for Israel — Democrats and Republicans. We need to speak up about the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and shares a region with neighbors focused on its destruction. That Israel, like the U.S., values freedoms of speech and religion and shares a deep commitment to human rights, women’s rights, civil rights, and equality.

In Congress, I’m a strong and consistent supporter of legislation that condemns BDS efforts and anti-Semitism and maintains U.S. support for Israel’s economic prosperity and national security. I’m never afraid to be vocal about my support for Israel, and I’m never afraid to stand up to those who seek to demonize and delegitimize Israel — on college campuses or even if they’re members of my own party. That’s what all of us must be willing to do in order to ensure that this relationship remains strong and continues to grow.

I hope my remarks here this morning have given you a good sense of where I stand on these issues, and of my unwavering commitment to this community, to the Jewish State, and to your safety and prosperity.

Zeldin in black-Jewish caucus

North Shore LI Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin at the launching of a black-Jewish caucus in Washington on Monday. AJC

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Three black and two Jewish members of the U.S. House of Representatives from both parties — including Republican Lee Zeldin of Long Island’s North Shore — launched a black-Jewish caucus this week.

The caucus, organized after a meeting convened by the American Jewish Committee in January, will work to bring blacks and Jews together to back hate crimes legislation and combat white supremacist ideology and actions. White supremacists carried out two lethal attacks on synagogues since last October, in Pittsburgh and in Poway, Calif.

“The African-American and Jewish communities have a his-

tory of standing together for the promotion of social justice and civil rights,” Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., said Monday at the AJC’s annual Global Forum here. “To encourage and nurture this unique partnership, I have formed the Congressional Caucus on Black-Jewish Relations with the hopes of strengthening the trust and advancing our issues in a collective manner.”

The other members are Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., Will Hurd, R-Texas and John Lewis, D-Ga., a revered veteran of the 1960s civil rights marches.

Along with Lawrence, present at the AJC event were Zeldin and Wasserman Schultz, who are both Jewish.

THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

‘I’m never afraid to stand up to those who seek to demonize and delegitimize Israel — on college campuses or even if they’re members of my own party.’

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June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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From left: The Yeshiva University commencement in Madison Square Garden was the occasion for a selfie celebration; YU President Dr. Ari Berman and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman; Stern College for Woman Valedictorian Peri Zundell, of the Five Towns; Sy Syms School of Business Valedictorian Alexander Selesny, of West Hempstead; Yeshiva College Valedictorian Liam Eliach, of Woodmere.

More than 600 students from Yeshiva University’s undergraduate schools were presented with their degrees at YU’s 88th commencement exercises, held in the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, May 30.

An honorary degree was conferred upon U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who delivered the keynote address.

In his introduction to the conferral of the honorary degree, Dr. Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, cited Friedman’s longstanding support of Israel as reflecting the values and goals of YU. He also praised Friedman for a life devoted to making a positive impact upon the Jewish people and society at large.

Friedman emphasized that his life has been deeply influenced by YU’s “teaching, its principles, its core values” and spoke about the many members of his family who attended YU, including his great-uncle, Dr. Pinchos Churgin, the founder of the Teachers Insti-

tute, and his wife, Tammy, an alumna of Stern College for Women.

In charging the assembled graduates, Friedman encouraged that “whatever path you choose, bring to it a sense of purpose and a quest for meaning such that what you do matters more than just a paycheck. There’s nothing wrong with making a good living, but that alone won’t make you happy or bring us to a better place.”

Friedman underlined the importance of basing one’s principles upon a commitment to truth: “Follow the truth wherever it leads.

Embrace it, confront it, challenge it, and, if you don’t like it, make it better. But always live by the truth.”

Previous YU honorary degree recipients have included Nobel laureates (Albert Einstein), celebrated political leaders (Joseph Lieberman and Golda Meir) and noted jurists (Sandra Day O’Connor), along with scientists, artists, humanitarians and philanthropists.

In his address to the Class of 2019, Dr. Berman exhorted them to “choose Jewish history.”

Describing this as an era of unprecedented opportunity for the Jewish people, Dr. Berman enjoined each graduate to “place yourself in this greater context, see your life through this prism and have this as a guiding force in all of your actions, both large and small.”

He reminded them that the purpose of their YU experience — their immersion in Torah study, the quality of their education, the networks formed of friends and peers — has been to prepare them to “lead lives of great personal and professional success and to inspire you to be a leader in the world of tomorrow, a leader for the Jewish people and all of society, a role model for our Jewish values in ways large and small, from your everyday encounters with family, friends and colleagues, to the major decisions and transitions in your life.”

Nine undergraduate valedictorians received special recognition for their outstanding aca-

demic achievements. They included: •Samuel Gelman, Isaac Breuer College of Hebraic Studies •Asher Finkelstein, Mazer School of Talmudic Studies •Michael Ozery, James Striar School of General Studies •Rochel Hirsch, Rebecca Ivry Department of Jewish Studies •Liam Eliach, Yeshiva College •Aryeh-Leib Deutsch, Irving I. Stone Beit Midrash Program •Aliza Lobell-Klein and Alexander Selesny, Sy Syms School of Business, and •Peri Zundell, Stern College for Women The classes of 1959 and 1969 were also honored as they marked the 60th and 50th anniversary of their graduations, respectively, along with representatives of the class of 1949.

In total, more than 1,700 degrees were conferred upon students across Yeshiva University during this commencement season.

608 degrees awarded by Touro at Lincoln Center Graduating seniors at Touro’s Lander Colleges marched into Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall for the

school’s 45th commencement. In all, 608 graduates were awarded baccalaureate degrees from Lander College

of Arts and Sciences in Flatbush, Lander College for Women and Lander College for Men. Eighty received associate degrees from Machon L’Parnasa/The Institute for Professional Studies and The School for Lifelong Education.

Touro also awarded an honorary doctoral degree to Jonathan Halevy, co-director general of Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Valedictorians Moshe Baitelman, Sarit Hadi, Eric (Yitzy) Klipper and Rebecca (Rivka) Melka all looked beyond “adulting” to talk about becoming leaders and contributors to society.

Moshe Baitelman, valedictorian of Lander College of Arts and Sciences Men’s Division who will start medical school next year, thanked his biology professors who “took the spark of scientific curiosity in me and turned it into a roaring flame.” He was presi-

dent of the science society and executive editor of the science journal.

Sarit Hadi, valedictorian of Lander College of Arts and Sciences Women’s Division in Flatbush, told her classmates, “our careers may identify what we do, but they do not identify who we are.” She is following in the footsteps of her mother and sister, who are both Touro alumnae, and plans to become a speech-language pathologist.

Eric (Yitzy) Klipper, valedictorian of Lander College for Men, quoted former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who said, “Leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” He will begin Rutgers School of Dental Medicine this fall. He is a native of Elizabeth, NJ. Rebecca (Rivka) Melka, valedictorian of Lander College for Women,

spoke about leadership and determination: “If we have a vision of who we want to be and what we want to accomplish, with determination and self-confidence, we can and will rise to the occasion.” She will enroll this fall in Columbia University Dental School.

Dr. Alan Kadish (pictured), president of Touro College and University System, told the students they had all made a series of choices as they began their academic journey. “One of these choices was to choose Touro’s Lander Colleges, where we work to build a university system that will help repair the world through education and Jewish values.

“My wish for each and every one of you is that you take the lessons that you learned here and truly apply them, that for the rest of your lives, you have the opportunity to bring a tikun to a society that truly needs healing.”

THE JEWISH STAR June 7, 2019 4 Sivan, 5779

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